I''ve been working on my game for a little over 2 months now, and things are coming along well! I still have a tremendous amount of work ahead of me, but for being a 1 man team, I''m making very good time against my design document/itenerary. I truely feel the game will be able to compete with average to above average titles on the shelves right now (though it won''t likely be a blockbuster), so I''m considering looking to one of the bigger publishers to get the game out to stores, but at what point do I do so? 50% complete? 75%? 100%? When do I start "shopping" and showing my ''wares'' so to speak? Also, what is the going rate for the big publishers? I know the publisher''s cut is tremendous, but I''m a one man show, doing this on my own time (of course, aren''t we all), so I''m not having to pay an entire team. "So many ideas! Never enough time!"

I''ve been wondering the same thing. Anybody?

If you want to pitch the game to a large retail publisher, I recommend that you go as far as possible with the game as you can on your own before you begin shopping it around. If you can finish it on your own, then do so. You''ll increase your chances of getting a deal if the risk for the publisher is lower. But you also take on more risk yourself in doing this because you may put all your time into creating a product that no one wants.

For a typical retail publishing deal, you''ll probably see something in the range of 10-20% of the wholesale price in royalties. Wholesale is usually about half of retail, so that''s about 5-10% of the retail price. Plus a major publisher will likely try to throw in plenty of deductions from your royalties: cost of goods, freight, marketing expenses, cost of sales, etc.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Bearing in mind you''re likely to maybe get 10% through a publisher or 80-90% if you build your own site for direct sales, which would get more money? Making your own site is a lot of hassle to get the payment stuff up and secure, and presumably a publisher would sell LOADS more copies due to better advertising. But would they sell enough copies to make it workthwhile? Also, I think I''ll price my game at ~$10 wheras a publisher would want to be nearer ~$40, right?


Read about my game, project #1
NEW (13th August): A new screenshot is up, plus diaries for week #3

John 3:16

quote: Original post by d000hg
Bearing in mind you're likely to maybe get 10% through a publisher or 80-90% if you build your own site for direct sales, which would get more money? Making your own site is a lot of hassle to get the payment stuff up and secure, and presumably a publisher would sell LOADS more copies due to better advertising. But would they sell enough copies to make it workthwhile? Also, I think I'll price my game at ~$10 wheras a publisher would want to be nearer ~$40, right?

If you can find a retail publisher with good relationships with distributors and retailers, you'll almost certainly sell many more via the publisher than on your own. The "if you build it they will come" philosophy simply no longer applies (if it ever did) to small developer sites. In addition, a publisher who signs your game is likely to provide advances against royalties. These often give you enough cash to finish development, but at the cost of having to pay it back before seeing any royalty checks. Many/most small developers never see a dollar of royalties as a result.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that people are more likely to buy your game if you price it at ~$10 instead of higher. Pricing is a funny psychological game in itself. Retail games today cost $40-60 because that's what people will pay for first-run content at retail. They will not buy 2x that if you price the games at $30 or 4-6x at $10. We just don't work that way.

Finally, while the poster above didn't mention it specifically, you should definitely check out Dexterity Software if you're thinking of completing your own PC game and don't want to go with a retail publisher or haven't been able to find one who will take you on. To my mind (and I don't think I'm being overly idealistic), this avenue could well turn into our "indie" model, where cool small games actually have a chance to flourish, instead of being squeezed out of existance in the BigGameCo studio system.

Mike Sellers

Online Alchemy: Fire + Structure = Transformation

[edited by - archetypist on September 4, 2002 8:33:12 PM]

As to the original question in my experience its more like 60-75% when you should approach them. Publishers always have different views on the game to you, don''t be surprised to hear them say "Its cool, but can we make it a real time game instead?" or "can we find a way to get terrorists in the game?" and other gems.
a 100% game is a take it or leave it pitch to them , whereas at 75% they see some flexibility and can steer the game the way they want. And publishers are used to looking at half finished games, (at least most of em are).

When it comes to the royalty point, I cant emphasise enough that there aree big advantages to selling your game yourself.
1) You keep maybe 80%+ of the money
2) You build up a mailing list and get direct feedback from your customrs
3) You handle your own tech support. Publishers are useless at it, you DO want to do this yourself
4) You know nobody is getting rich off your hard work

Publishing deals can be more lucrative, but the best option is to be non exclusive and do both.

http://www.positech.co.uk

cliffski:

quote:
When it comes to the royalty point, I cant emphasise enough that there aree big advantages to selling your game yourself.
1) You keep maybe 80%+ of the money
2) You build up a mailing list and get direct feedback from your customrs
3) You handle your own tech support. Publishers are useless at it, you DO want to do this yourself
4) You know nobody is getting rich off your hard work

I've given this a lot of consideration, but often marketing your own product online to "amass the wealth" is incredibly time consuming! In addition, I still believe the majority of the population tends to buy their product at the retail store (I know this is changing slowly, but the trend still leans to the retail store). In addition, they (the public) tend to recognize big publishers as producing quality games. For this reason I feel that a large publisher could move more products and though I would take a smaller payment per product, the end result would be more product moved, more name recognition, and an established working relationship with a major publisher for future endeavors.


archetypist:

quote:
These often give you enough cash to finish development, but at the cost of having to pay it back before seeing any royalty checks.

By this do you mean that they give you an advance (let's just say $20,000 for argument sake), you finish development. Then when they publish.. the royalties are first used to pay back the $20,000 before you receive any checks? Under this system, are you given a regular itemized statement showing how much has been "paid"/sold?

While we're on the subject of advances, let's assume I have my product 75-80% complete, and pitch it to one of the large publishers.. What is a fair advance to ask for as a 1 man developer.....or is it fair to ask for slightly more to bring on help? What's the "going rate" so to speak when asking for an advance for completion?

BTW: I really appreciate everyone's feedback. This has been incredibly helpful!

"So many ideas! Never enough time!"

[edited by - NTense on September 5, 2002 11:14:54 AM]

The IGDA has a column where similar issues have been answered.
The legal issues, what terms to avoid like the devil, and other things are mentioned there.
And being a member of the IGDA and getting a free newsletter every so often isn''t so bad either.
Paying for it almost pays for itself with the discounts you get in books and such.
http://www.igda.org/Endeavors/Articles/jcharne_royalties.htm
http://www.igda.org/Services/Legal/lastwords/lastwords.htm
The Famous Last Words column is good for finding out all sorts of legal information.

http://www.avault.com/developer/getarticle.asp?name=bwardell7

Hell the IGDA has so much, I just realized that there was a lot of stuff I haven''t seen yet.
Hope this helps.

I have a similar problem, but my problem is not WHEN but to WHO?
Where can I find contacts of possible interested people in J2SE and J2ME games?? :|

I program games for fun, but if I could take some profit out of it, it would be great

www.codingdreams.xrs.net

Telmo Amaro

As the ol' saying goes tho...
You'll never get rich diggin somebody else's ditch.

Adrian Cummings (Proprietor)
Mutation Software
www.mutationsoftware.com
www.dweebs.info

[edited by - Mutation on September 6, 2002 5:26:43 PM]