Gregor H. Max Koch
Chronos-Games, Germany
Title: Game development “free to developâ€, has middleware and game engine licensing now gone to a similar business model as free to play in the end customer context and what does this mean for developers and publishers as well as the all over game developer landscape?
Biography
Biography: Gregor H. Max Koch
Abstract
We have seen over the past four years the big players in the middleware and game engine licensing and development business change in a drastic way. Rather than charging substantial amounts of money in relation to the game developers budget up front they have adopted per developer seat license based as well as subscription models and in some cases even no charges at all but rather offer a revenue share model. This change has also extended beyond the core game engine and direct development tools section. But what does this mean beyond the obvious potential to save money during the production time of a project. Well this question becomes significant when looking at a game project over its entire lifetime. For example, the release of a game based on a license where the middleware or engine provider gets the revenue share in return for not paying any licensing fees during the development has a significant impact into the relation between a studio and its publisher. Beyond those implications that are directly related to budget and monetisation of the projects this also has a drastic effect for the entire market landscape. Previously the game engine and middleware providers acted as gatekeepers that prevented small teams with low budgets from accessing the up-to-date technology used by the big studios. This has now changed and can be seen as a democratization of the technology side of the game development business. So the question becomes who will benefit from this change in what way.