What do you think has been the impact of PlayFirst and other publishers on the casual games space?
I think it was visionary (and even controversial!) when casual games were just heating up for John Welch to say, “Hey, this industry is ready for a traditional publisher.” Back when the company launched, the casual games industry was just heating up – developers had low barriers to entry and many developers just said “no way, we don’t need publishers, we can self fund and go directly to the portals with our games.” And many developers remained wary of publishers – after all, casual games (with their low costs and low barriers to entry) had offered a good deal of creative freedom and experimentation by letting talented developers fly free under the radar of executives and marketers – and many indie casual developers had been burned by publishers in their console days. But the thing is, now the industry is growing up – and no one thinks it’s crazy to offer publishing services in the space anymore. In fact lots of our brothers and sisters in the industry (like PopCap, Big Fish, iWin and O
