Time & Perspective Quote by Mike Wilson

Game publishing loves to sell itself as the invisible hand that turns chaos into product. Mike Wilson pops that balloon with a line that sounds like humility but lands like an accusation. The parenthetical aside, "(i.e. people who have never actually MADE a game)", is the knife twist: it reframes "publisher" from a neutral business role into a credential problem. Not evil, not stupid, just structurally unqualified to dictate creative or technical decisions after the fact.

The word "realistic" does heavy lifting. Wilson isn’t claiming publishers have zero impact; he’s attacking the fantasy that late-stage oversight can substitute for lived craft. The subtext is about the asymmetry of labor and risk. A team "slaving away" for two years carries the bruises: engine constraints, scope cuts, bug triage, morale, the daily compromises that shape what the game actually is. The publisher arrives with milestones, market positioning, and feedback loops that can be useful, but often arrive too bluntly or too late to be anything but disruption.

Calling the impulse "arrogant" is strategic rhetoric. It preempts the usual corporate defense ("we’re partners") by naming the ego beneath it: the belief that money and proximity to the market confer creative authority. In the broader context of the industry’s recurring publisher-developer friction, it reads like a plea for epistemic humility: if you didn’t build the machine, don’t pretend you can tune it by banging on the hood.