Well, sort of.
Greg Costikyan has unoffically launched the site of his new company Manifesto Games by posting a link to the site on his blog this past Friday. While the site (and I guess the company itself) is still in the beta phase, It doesn’t hurt to remind readers what Mr. Costikyan is trying to accomplish.
Ever since his fiery rant at GDC 2005, Mr. Costikyan has blogged about the challenges and experiences of starting his indie games distribution company. At his GDC talk, Mr. Costikyan claimed the current publishing model to be defunct and outdated, and needing a serious makeover. He further expounded on his ideas in more detail with a two-part article aptly named Death to the Games Industry: Long Live Games (Part One and Part Two). However, unlike others who have spoken out against the broken state of the industry but have done nothing about it (does the name Warren Spector ring a bell), Mr. Costikyan actually backed up his words with a clear set of actions. He invested all his time and money into a new startup venture, whose goal would be support and help distribute the games of developers would be othewise shunned by the mainstream games industry because they don’t follow the mold of movie license or sequel or big budgets.
I know I am butchering Mr. Costikyan’s message, so I will point you to the manifesto of his Manifesto Games company, which I urge to read, as he clearly sets out what he seeks to do.
I want to wish Mr. Costikyan the best of luck with his new venture. I hope he succeeds, and helps re-invent the games business. We need more people like him, willing to take a chance, willing to actually go out and fix the root causes of the issues that plague our industry.
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