I''m about to send my first game to a publisher. I want to kno what kinds of experiences other folks have had with publishing. What was your game like 2d/3d, genre, overall quality? What publisher did you use? Why? Is there any publishing company that you wouldn''t use? Were you rejected from anywhere? What would you do different next time? any help would be greatly appreciated.

You ever look into agents? They do 10x a better job of getting your game published than a newbie like you could try www.thinkbigco.com They''re imo pretty damn good..... they take 10% off your intial pay and 10% of royalties afterward. And as for publishers...... the best out there (imo again) is G.O.D. Gathering of Developers, they aren''t out there to give you raw deals on publishing....... like a lot of "nameless" publishers out there...... but a publisher is stil a publisher so expect unfairness. Uhhh, I''ve been rejected sure....... some publishers aren''t looking for your genre at that time...... or platform etc. Did my game suck nah I don''t think so...... but I got it picked up........ what I woulda done different well first time around I tried soliciting the games myself its a hassle have an agent do it...... oh ya get an account and a lawyer too...... and make sure before a company reads anything you get and NDA (nondisclosure agreement) -Anonymous DUN-DUN-DUN!!

Contacting all these places... trying to settle a deal and having to sign an NDA just to protect your material... what a mission!!

Surely there must be a publishing company which is out to help game developers, not screw them?



regards,

GeniX

I think Extreme Games (Andre LaMothe''s company) at www.xgames3d.com says that it''s out there just to help developers. What''s the truth, I don''t know for sure. I think freeware is still the easiest way

Jarkko

Not the easiest way to get rich I´m sure

Has anyone out there used Andre LaMothe''s Xtreme games, or egames? I like to know details about the submission, review and negotiations. How long did it take them to get back to you? Did they give you a figure and say "take it or leave it" or did you get to bargain with them? How long was it until you game was ''on the shelf'' somewhere? Did you end up making more or less money than you had expected?

I found LaMothe''s whole deal rather confusing.

I submitted my games to him a while back, when he was asking people to submit small-format puzzle games. I eventually got a reply saying that while he was looking for small format games, mine weren''t quite right. Never quite figured out what he wanted.

The only place I''ve seen LaMothe''s stuff is in Expert Software''s game packs. Given that I published my stuff through Expert directly, I never much understood why I would need LaMothe as a middleman.

Yes I agree about Andre Lamothe. It''s not very well explained why to submit a game to him. He is only a developer who help beginning developers with some consult.
And that is not usefulll, whe have the gamedev.net and other sites for troubleshooting etc.
Why submit a game to him, he will get more of the profits.
And the developer earns a little.
It''s a very strange company Extreme Games. It isn''t a publishing company, that is sure. Why do they work with other publishers then.
A publisher works with distributors, the distributor sells the game to the retailers. Some publishers are also working as a distributor in some countries.
So in this chain it''s very strange to have Andre Lamothe between.

His role SEEMS to be one of being an Agent
type-
person -
thing.

Why would some need an agent? If you''ve already got a publisher, how would an agent fit in? If you don''t, maybe having him as an agent-type-person-thing would be of value in that he''d have a much wider range of publisher contracts than most programmers would have developped.

my 2 cents worth

ZoomBoy
A 2D RPG with skills, weapons, and adventure.
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Yes I agree, an agent for mostly budget games is very very strange.

Only for the big multi million dollar game projects, an agent can be helpfull for searching on the whole market for a usefull publisher who will fund your project. You can try of course first self to find a publisher for your big to fund game concept. When you don''t have luck ask a well known agent you can trust for help. Only for the very big games, where you need a whole team to be financed an agent can be usefull.
The agent must have contracts over the whole world.
In the case of Andre Lamothe it''s all very strange.

The conclusion is to be very carefull always when you work with a company for publishing. Work only with well known companies who have a very good name to the public.
Always analyse your contract in detail before you sign. Make a list with all your questions and ask everything you
need to know.