Lets say that a couple of people make a game - story,engine... Now they want sombody to sell it. So wath shoud I ("they") do. I asume contacting an publisher like EA,EIDOS ... And how much is the profit from this (take a gues at percent). This of course is not realy hapening it''s yust for planing in advance. The game woud be for PC and it woud be multi API (DirectX/OpenGL) becouse i hawe heard that the publishers insist on a huge compatibility. P.S Sory abouth gramatical errors

There are so many factors and gotchas that go into a publishing deal it''s enough to make your head explode. The royalty from that is only one small point - it may include such factors as how sales are determined (sell-in vs. sell-through --- almost always the former because the latter is very difficult to calculate), advance, requirements for the developer to create patches / maintenance, I.P. (Intellectual Property) rights, right of refusal on the part of the publisher on additional titles, etc.

If you are a new, inexperienced team working on a small budget, it is extremely unlikely that you''ll sign on with a major-league publisher like Eidos or EA. Sure, it could happen if your title really walks on water. But you are far more likely to get interest from smaller and on-line only (shareware / independent) publishers.

The numbers I hear on the smaller publisher front are across the board. You could be offered a few thousand up-front but have very little chance of seeing anything on the back end. Many of the online-only publishers have pretty straightforward percentages - the best royalties are at around 50%, but the bigger publishers (with hundreds or thousand of times the market share) usually offer much less.

Self-publishing is always an option, too.

"Self-publishing is always an option, too."
Lets say I wil exclude that one from my list (to many legal stuff)

So if i want to make a game that matches the quality of today''s hits (Unreal 2004/MaxPayne 2) what are the criteries??
I mean what does count for + and for -.

And how can I even get a shot at presenting a game to "major-league" publishers?

Thanks.

IF you get a game like UT2004 or MaxPayne2 done.. well.. just release a demo and wait for them to come :-)

Actualy my group and I hawe a game more like Nevervinter knights - an RPG with 3D graphiks but it implements a lot of the elements from FPS . It is not even at the midle of production but i asked this question to see is it worth of all the trouble of creating it ...
What i ment with UT2004 or MaxPayne2 was that those games where "good" so I wanted to know what criterium is there for looking at the game (besides the graphiks and story) :
a) Compatibility
b) Preformancce
....

quote: What i ment with UT2004 or MaxPayne2 was that those games where "good" so I wanted to know what criterium is there for looking at the game (besides the graphiks and story) :
a) Compatibility
b) Preformancce

It appears to be just graphics, graphics and graphics these days: eye candy, 3D this, 3D that. Performance goes hand in hand with graphics, so I guess that''s very important too.

If you can get a good graphics engine going that runs fairly smoothly, you may begin to arouse some attention.

Stay Clausal,

Red Sodium

Thank''s!
I think I got all the info (i was yust curious)

i have a similar question if i have a good graphics engine (just a renderer) that is comparable to unreal engine 2 (just the graphics engine, no network, physics, ai support or even
script support) what can i get from it? , how much?, and where should i go?

Almost nothing - unless you are able to invest money in marketing and have a decent support set-up. Most engine licensing is based on
i. Proven risk reduction
ii. Good support

That means you need to have shown the technology can be used to more easily make a game, by actually having made one (which was successful). Then you need to show that clients will be able to make full use of your technology by means of your good support service.

Without those things you are unlikely to get many commercial customers (although hobby users may be interested if it is any good). Check out Garagegames' Torque engine for an example of a cheap commercial engine (www.garagegames.com).

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

[edited by - obscure on May 29, 2004 9:02:57 PM]

well, thanx
so how can a good demo or a set of demos (just a graphics demo not a game demo) or something like a graphics card benchmark could help me or must i have another unreal2004 made with it to get anything out of it