The World is Flat

More on publishing, another thing that's been on the mind and the waves recently is how there will never again be medium-sized game publishing houses because you're either working out of your garage and have no overhead because it's all sweat equity (like me) or you're a publishing giant that can cover its overhead with volume. A medium-sized outfit would simply never be able to turn a profit.

That's just a theory, anyway, but the article I was reading made a lot of assumptions about the costs of things like art and layout and graphic design. But it seemed to assume that big companies can outsource stuff like that to India - and for some reason medium-sized businesses can't? Sure, I get the idea that the middle ground here is economically disadvantaged. But if anything, the globalization of the world economy is more of an advantage for smaller publishers than larger. A corporate giant can spend all it wants on nice art because it knows its product will immediately be picked up. The developers with shallower pockets can either take a huge risk on getting pro art, or finding a 15-year-old on DeviantArt who'll be 'good enough.' What if I just start combing the Bangalore yellow pages, I can get professional art for a fraction of the cost of hiring an American artists because their overhead is lower. Tempting...