TASSY P2P FORUMS

Time for an update!!
06.25.07 by Rusty

First of all, the Contract is signed. A joint press release will be going out tomorrow morning, but it’s important to all of us here that our community hear it first and here it straight from us. So without further ado:

Pirates of the Burning Sea will be published in partnership with Sony Online Entertainment’s Platform Publishing. This is an important deal for Flying Lab Software and we know how passionate our community is about this issue. So before you start posting your thoughts on our forums, let me share how this particular arrangement differs from publishing deals you may have read about in the past.

So what is “Platform Publishing”? It’s a partnership program in which SOE and an independent developer work together to release a game. It’s very different from SOE’s main publishing efforts, where they develop the games internally (i.e. Everquest 2, Star Wars: Galaxies). Instead the developer makes the game, SOE publishes it, and together we divvy up the various responsibilities.

Here is the breakdown:

Flying Lab Software
• Game Development
• Community
• Customer Support
• Server Operations

Sony Online Entertainment
• Billing
• Launcher
• Retail Distribution
• Localization
• Marketing

Here’s why we decided to work together.
First, we weren’t going to work with anybody unless we kept control of the game development and the community. That eliminated a lot of potential partners right off the bat. Let me tell you a few things that are different about working with SOE than with the other MMO publishers we talked with:

1) We keep complete ownership of Pirates of the Burning Sea.
2) We have no interference from SOE on the development/ideas of the game.
3) Because we financed Pirates ourselves, we keep most of the revenues so we stay strong and independent.
4) The contract they gave us actually says what we agreed to verbally.

Pretty basic stuff, I know, but we talked to maybe a dozen other development houses and MMO publishers, and many of them had one or more of the following in their relationships and contracts:

1) Publisher takes ownership of the intellectual property.
2) All sorts of verbal promises that never appeared in the contract.
3) Publisher approval over the game’s design.

All of this is why negotiating with SOE was such a breath of fresh air. I kept tensing at various points, expecting them to pull off the mask of humanity and say “Puny humans, our superior alien contract will take control of your game!” But thankfully for both us and all life on Earth, that never happened.

Here’s exactly what SOE brings to this that we want:

1) Strong distribution – We want Pirates of the Burning Sea to be in every retail store that carries games. SOE has that down cold.
2) Great localization process – We really want a simultaneous launch in Europe and the US because we think it could do as well over there as over here. Working with SOE gives us the best chance of making that happen.
3) Enthusiasm – I really can’t stress this enough. You can write a contract to say anything you want about how much work each party will do, but that’s nothing compared to having your partners genuinely excited to work with you, from the marketing people to the programmers to the executives. And boy, are they excited. (You would be, too, if a great game fell into your lap!)
4) Clockwork process – We want to launch Pirates this fall. The game is in great shape and we’re going into large-scale beta testing this week. To hit a fall launch date, we needed a partner who knows the entire process inside and out, someone who can just start turning the crank and making it happen.

We had two other paths to launching this fall: going it alone and working with another independent outfit we’ve been spending time with. Both of these were good options in general (especially the partnership approach, as we really like those guys). But for either of those approaches to work for a fall launch, everything would have to go right the first time and we’d still need some luck. By working with SOE we know it’ll just happen.

So now you know why we made the decision. But let’s talk about why you should love it:
Platform Publishing is a channel for independent developers to compete on the same level as a big publisher – without selling their soul.
If you’re looking for the next WoW, you probably don’t care about Platform Publishing. The industry’s got you covered. But if you want something off the beaten track, something that’s more of a labor of love than an entry on a spreadsheet, then you want independent developers to thrive. And Platform Publishing is exactly how they can thrive without either being ghettoized into download-only (though this becomes more legitimate every day) or having to sell out to a publisher.

And that’s what I want. You know me, I believe in off-beat, different content. I’ve put my money where my mouth is. And I want more developers to do the same. A big part of our business plan was the uncertainty of where download distribution would be when we shipped, and if we wanted to go retail, how we’d do it on our own. Platform Publishing lets the developer avoid all of that business overhead and focus on making their game. Which would be a good thing because frankly, I see a number of companies that are struggling to do both at the same time and run the risk of doing neither well.

So, now you know the broad strokes of what’s going on. I’m sure that we’ll be answering a lot of questions over the next few days, but let me get a jump start on them now.

What will it cost to play?
We aren’t ready to announce that yet but it’ll be typical of recent MMOs. Pirates will be a subscription-based game just as it’s always been.

Will Pirates be on Station Access Pass?
Yes. For one price you can play EQ, EQ2, Pirates, and everything else SOE has to offer.

Can I pre-order?
There will be pre-order boxes in stores this summer.

The changes SOE made to Star Wars: Galaxies have been really controversial. Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be next?
No. The design of the game is entirely in our control.

Won’t Sony end up buying you out the way they did Vanguard?
The difficulties Sigil had with Vanguard have been pretty well publicized at this point. We’re in a very different situation financially and have no fear of shutting down. A lot of independent studios have just enough money to shove the game out the door and then go bankrupt if they don’t have their next project already financed. We are very, very fortunate to not be in that situation. We’re self-financed and beholden to no one. Flying Lab is in good shape. We made this decision because we wanted to, not because we had to.

I hate SOE and I will never play your game.
That’s okay. I’m sure there will be people who play our game and then hate it anyway. We can’t make everyone happy but I can make you this promise: if Pirates isn’t good, if you don’t like how the game is designed, or how the servers are operated, or how we interact with our community, it’ll be our fault, not SOE’s. We own the game and the buck stops here.

Will this affect your trade show schedule?
Yeah, it’s increasing! We’ll be at E3, at the SOE FanFaire, and at Leipzig, for example. And of course you’ll still see us at the Penny Arcade Expo and many other events.

Will the Flying Lab forums continue, or will there be a new Sony Pirates forum?
We’ve gone to a lot of effort to build a thriving community here, and we have every intention of continuing it. We own community management, so our website forum will still be the place to go. You’ll need to create a free SOE account that links to our forums, because we’re using their servers for downloading the beta and other backend things, but Aether and the rest of us will still be here on the forums every day as usual.

Hey, what about that expanded beta you’ve talked about recently? Does this affect it?
Nope. We’ll be releasing our big new build to the beta in the next 24 hours and after a couple weeks of shakedown time, we’ll be inviting 10,000 new beta testers in to try it out!

What about open beta?
Stay tuned.

So there you have it folks. I know you will have additional questions, and we will be here to answer them directly. First, you can stop by this thread and share your thoughts, and second, you can attend our next IRC Devchat that we’ve scheduled for Tuesday, June 26th at 2:00p PST (GMT -8) in #potbs-devchat on the irc.coldfront.net server.

Flying Lab Software has always had a commitment to open communication, and our new partnership with SOE does not change that.

Finally, thank you for your patience during this process. I know you guys will have a lot of questions, so we’ll be around tonight to answer them.

See you on the forums!

Discuss This Article