I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the financial future of developers.
The supply chain for creative work
To go back a ways, back in 2006 I suggested that you could look at the winding path a piece of media takes to the public in this way:
 A funder of some sort ponies up the money so that a creative can eat while they work. Sometimes this is self-funding, sometimes it’s an advance, sometimes it’s patronage. |
 A creator actually makes the artwork. |
 An editor serves the role of gatekeeper and quality check, deciding what makes it further up the ladder. They serve in a curatorial role not just for the sake of gatekeeping but also to keep the overall market from being impossible to navigate, and to maximize the revenue from a given work. |
 A publisher disseminates the work to the market under their name. A lot of folks might think this role doesn’t matter, but there are huge economies of scale in aggregating work; there’s boring tax. legal, and business reasons to do it; it serves brand identity, making the work easier, to market… |
 Marketing channels make it possible for the artwork to be seen by the public: reviews, trade magazines, ads. This is how the public finds out something even exists. |
 Distributors actually convey the work to the store’s hands. This role functions in the background, but it’s absolutely critical. There’s a lot of infrastructure required. |
 Stores then retail the packaged form of the artwork to the end customer. Stores have their own branding task, and likely serve as a curatorial and recommendation engine all over again, this time trying to find the right fit for the customer. |
 The audience then gets to experience the work. |
 Re-users then take the creation and restart the process in alternate forms; adaptations to movies, audiobooks, classic game packages, what have you. |
