Does any one have any idea where or how much it costs to get a game on a cdrom published

Some more details would be helpful as it depends on what business model you are thinking of. Are you talking about self publishing from home (costs will be a from 50p up to a couple of £ to make it plus postage to get it delivered) or setting up a developer that self publishes and actually pays for advertising, marketing etc? Is this mailorder/internet order or are you looking at going to retail?

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

I was looking at more of a developer that self publishes. Me and a few friends have a good enough idea for a game and I hope that we could get it finished before we finish in college next summer.

If this was possible I imagined setting up a company, making around 5000 cd's and hopefully selling them in the UK and IRL.

This business model is very similiar to the garage band that makes it big. But at the moment it is just speculation. It's not something I worried about. Although it would be good to know.

[edited by - kertap on October 22, 2003 11:15:25 AM]

OK well you haven''t really answered all my questions so I can''t really provide much useful information.

Setting up a business costs money and if your going to spend money it would be wise to have a plan as to how you intend to get it back again (plus a profit hopefully). Unless you know 5,000 people within walking distance who already know about your game and are waiting to buy it you will need a way to ensure people know about the game, can buy it and you can get it from you to them. How you do all that will affect how much it costs.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

What is needed is a site that allows self-publishers/developers a place to advertise/sell their game. Of course, a small "I am serious about this game" fee per month for hosting the advertisement site and a small per-game/sale fee for selling the game should be paid to the site.

Keep in mind that that advertising is a timing issue - it takes a little time for a self-published game to generate energy amongst potential customers, but within that same ammount of time, people can also start heading towards "it will never be released" side of things. Any prospective self-publishers need to keep in mind that any game they pay to advertise should be ready to release within 2-4 months of announcement and shouldn''t be priced astronmically high, especially if it is your first game or your other games were not "drink coasters". Just don''t demonstrate the "Duke Nukem''" syndrome.

I am not an expert in the industry, but I am just stating what makes logical sense. I hate waiting for a game more than 3 months as I am quite forgetful.

This is something obscure got me thinking about when he said

"Unless you know 5,000 people within walking distance who already know about your game and are waiting to buy it you will need a way to ensure people know about the game."

Ideally I would want to advertise in magazines but without a big budget for the game that would never happen. So that pretty much leaves the internet for advertising. Which should be cheaper.

Also if people know what is going on in a game''s development, it should get rid of the it will never be released thing.

Taking aside the marketing side, and if by "publishing" you meant actually get the game on CD's ready to ship, drop at your local Software store and such, well, you have several posibilities.

The extra cheap one is burning the CD's yourself, pasting a label on them (write the name of the game on the CD with a pilot if you are extra cheap) put them on one of those CD envelopes and youre done. The cost? what ever it costs you to do exactly that.

. . . I am not kidding there, it may be distasteful, and really, really cheap, but completely valid.

Now I asume you want to get the CD's printed at an industrial level, meaning you want your CD's to look exactly like a record CD or a game CD, there are several places where you can get that done, the cost is usually from $1.50 to $3.00 per CD depending on how many colors you want to print, how much of the surface will be printed, etc, of course usually you have to pay them to make at least 500 CD's, you just need to sent them a master copy of the CD you want to be "pressed", they may also take care of the booklet, however the nifty cardboard box and manuals you probably would have to print somewhere else.

Now, you may not want to even make a CD, and sell your game online, you could set up a site and charge with paypal or something like that per download, or you could use the services of someone more experienced on publishing such as Dexterity Software and let them do all the marketing and publishing while you focus on programming and tech support.

Edit: if you are interested on getting the CD professionaly pressed, do a search for "CD replication" on google.

Hope that help in some way



[edited by - Kwizatz on October 28, 2003 10:07:08 AM]

Dexterity''s ego got a little too big, now they only sell their own "games." LOL! It''s a shame too, because most of ''em really suck.

I just remembered that if one would have a polished game they wanted to self-publish, maybe the folks at Longbow (the makers of TreadMarks) would be able to assist, at least in an informational stand point.

i was talking to a few musicians and it is actually fairly cheap to get a music cd produced, around 1000 cd''s for 800euro, which is for a jewel case cd with inlay card with 4 - 8 pages.

I can''t see it being much more for a cdrom.

But Im still way off from doing any of this stuff yet.