Ghostbusters Developer Frustrated With Alternating Publishers

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

You know, we often hear stories of developers who are at the mercy of the publisher for their project. In some ways, this makes sense; the publisher has agreed to produce your game for you, so yes, you should kinda do what they say (to some extent). However, as we can see, things can get awfully muddled sometimes.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, Terminal Reality isn't too happy about the "merry-go-round" of publishers surrounding Ghostbusters: The Video Game. It started with Activision, dropped to Atari, and then most recently, shifted to Sony in Europe. And as the developer said, they really had "no say in publishing or distribution decisions." Said Brendon Goss, executive producer at Terminal Reality:

"It is not the ideal situation for a developer like Terminal Reality as we really enjoy a collaborative relationship when we work with publishers, so that has had to be rebooted every time the game changes hands. As an independent developer that has been in business for 15 years, Terminal Reality has learned the importance of making good partnership decisions when we take a look at what projects we will do. If you would have told me the roller coaster ride we were in for on this project three years ago I would have said that you are crazy and yet here we are."

As we now know, North American gamers will have their choice of numerous versions in June, but European consumers will only get the PS3 version (the others will come later in the year). Goss says the team hopes that this "last-minute exclusivity deal with Sony won't spoil consumers' reaction to the game when the multiformat titles are released further down the line." Of course, there's no way of knowing how this will play out, but we could look at other examples of timed exclusives in the past. Goss added that he doesn't want "the consumer to be confused," but we're hoping things have been cleared up by now.

Yeah, developers and publishers are sometimes at odds, and when a team's game goes through three different publishers, we can understand there's a certain level of frustration involved.

Related Game(s): Ghostbusters: The Video Game

5/7/2009 John Shepard

Put this on your webpage or blog:
Email this to a friend
Subscribe to John Shepard on Twitter