Greg Costikyan (right) and Johnny Wilson form Manifesto Games, an independent publishing house with an eye for Internet distribution. The reason? In this Edge Online article, Costikyan states, “…historically, the major hits, the titles that have expanded the industry to new markets and created new audiences have been highly innovative. It is time for us to find a way to foster innovation, because it’s not going to happen if we leave it to the large publishers.”

Those of you who already recognize the Internet as a viable publishing platform with casual games may be surprised at Costikyan’s thoughts on the existing market. He says that current on-line distribution leaders are missing the mark by distributing casual and backlog titles, claiming on-line publishers like RealArcade and Yahoo! Games are selling games to people who don’t really want them. “We’d rather try to sell games to people who already buy them…fans of offbeat and niche games…that the retail channel doesn’t think are worth carrying”

Surprisingly unprepared, Costikyan writes in his blog, “At this point, I have no funding, other than a little money myself; nothing ready to launch, either. But I do have a partner, the offered support of some other companies, a clear sense of what I need to accomplish in the next few months, and a draft (not a final one) of a business plan and financials.”

Manifesto Games CEO Greg Costikyan is a writer and game designer. Johnny Wilson is also a writer with a background as an editorial director at Computer Gaming World and has written nine books about games.

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