Publishers like Dreamcatcher, JoWood, Mindscape, etc. specialise in bringing to the public games that it would otherwise have no access to. And I’m very grateful for that. Most of their developers do not have access to the millions of dollars in development budgets that has somewhat ridiculously become the norm in today’s gaming industry.
Many gems, like Sanitarium, Gorky 17 (a.k.a. Odium), Spellforce, etc., have seen the light of day thanks to these publishers. And in many ways, these games are being sold through the same principles employed by Sierra all those years ago. Sanitarium is still selling relatively well six years after its release (and it really is an excellent game). And personally, good word of mouth has always had far more power to persuade me into buying a product than any amount of trailers, ads or reviews in the mainstream gaming press.