SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida doesn’t want to tell indies what to do, even when he’s signing their pay checks.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Yoshida used Dear Esther developer thechineseroom as an example of Sony’s hands-off approach to first-party publishing of games from independent teams.
“When we fund 100 percent, we publish. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to dictate the creative development of thechineseroom team,” he said.
“We don’t think that’s good for the project. We just support the team and probably help them. We have lots of resources, in terms of tech, or services, or testing – whatever it fits with the needs of the team, a small team like thechineseroom, we want to provide support so they can realize their ambitions or vision. They might become even more ambitious with our support.”
Yoshida said Sony publishes small games from small teams “just for fun”.
“Because we love working with these teams. We get lots of inspiration from these guys. It’s just healthy for us to work with some of those who are very aggressive creative, who try to do something not conventional,” he said.
“We have to provide big titles to support the platform, but if we are just doing that, maybe we lose some touch with the bleeding edge of thinking. It’s not like we have to fund these games. Without us, these teams would create some great indie games on their own. Luckily, these teams who have chosen to work with us have seen some value that we can bring to their project.”
Sony is publishing thechineseroom’s next game, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, exclusively for PS4.
