Warren Spector, the guy behind Epic Mickey 2, System Shock, Deus Ex and Thief, does not care about how publishers treat him, and he has said that he isn’t too worried about it in an interview with Gamesradar.
“I understand who I am – I don’t care if publishers like me or not. I know what I want to do,” he said. “And if they don’t want to do it, someone else will, and if they don’t, I’ll go back and write novels again. Whatever.
“I want to write comic books so bad – and in fact I got to do that last year. “Oh no, someone isn’t going to fund my game.” Whatever. My obligation is to sell one more copy than I need to – that’s my only obligation to you, Mr Publisher. And if you don’t want to fund it, don’t fund it – I’m not going to make you give me money.”
He was pretty straightforward and mentioned that a publisher needs to properly read his pitches or the relationship simply won’t work.
“You’re all adults, just decide if you want to do it. And so I just say, here’s what I want to do, do you want it or not? But I’m very bad at elevator pitches – my elevator pitches are usually two to four pages long. And if you’re not willing to read that, we’re probably not going to get along very well anyway.”