Frontier completes self-publishing transformation

Elite Dangerous creator Frontier Developments says it has no plans to make games for anyone else ever again.

The firm, who has made games for the likes of Microsoft, Atari and Amazon, is readying the release of Planet Coaster – a game it considers its second self-published franchise (after Elite).

Once we publish Planet Coaster, we will be 100 per cent self-published,” said Frontier’s creative director Jonny Watts. The transition is almost complete."

Publishers form a really strong part of quality control. When The Beatles was making the best music, you had John Lennon and Paul McCartney sort of being antagonistic in the creative process. A publisher is almost your conscious, so not only have we had to grow our publishing department, but also from a creative point-of-view, we have to keep challenging ourselves. We don’t want to be complacent.”

He continued: About six years ago, we decided we wanted to be self-published. We have done some amazing work with Microsoft, but we were always doing that with an eye on parting company. We were very professional until the end – we always tried to deliver more than what was asked for us.

But it is a nice reward for all the teams, who have stuck by during some challenging development times so that we can make games for ourselves.