IMO, if you want to appeal to a publisher, you should nail the market first -- who would buy it, casual gamers or hardcore gamers? Would members of any sort of gaming group buy the game? Publishers care more about sales than they do reputation or product quality, so if you were to research your market and present a sales figure (an estimated number of sales in a certain period of time, such as a year), I think it could increase your chances of acceptance. You should keep in mind that, when submitting to a publisher, your game is probably competing with 20-30 other games for that one acceptance letter. If you do your market research, it means publishers won't have to, and that would already put you above most of the other submissions.

1. You have admitted that your game won't compete with big budget triple A titles. Unfortunately if that is the case then the game will have to go through a budget publisher and they almost never fund development (some may pay a small guarantee on completion - most will only pay royalties). That means you have to fund the game to completion yourself or find external investment (as hard if not harder than getting publisher funding).

2. Getting your game into retail - This costs money. First you need to pay to have the game manufactured. Next you have to pay distributors to store and transport it and sales staff to contact the retailers and get them to order the game (or else you have to stop developing in order to make the sales calls yourself and process the orders whenever they come in. Next you have to pay the shops to stock your game (at least the large stores) - These retailers will expect you to pay tens of thousands of dollars in "marketing contributions". - this is money to pay for them to produce their brochures (which feature your game) and promotional materials.

Last, and by no means least, you have to have a marketing budget. Shops won't stock your game unless they think it will sell. It won't sell if no one knows about it. People will only know about it if you spend money on marketing so the retailers will only stock your game if you spend enough money on marketing.

3. The point about marketing only partially applies in your case because your game is a budget game. Publishers don't spend money marketing budget games. Instead they spend the money marketing the actual budget range (the label) as a whole. Sold Out, Explosive or Activisionvalue will do trade advertising to promote their brand and the retailers will often order a set of titles, rather than just one. This means the publishers marketing spend is spread across all the titles in their range. You don't have a range of games so your marketing spend would all count against the one title. You couldn't afford to compete with the publishers who have a range of games and your game would be lost in the noise.

Conclusion
If you had enough money to get your game into retail and do the necessary marketing then you could afford to spend that money making your game into a triple A title and selling it through a big publisher.

As a budget developer with limited resources you will need to put your finished game through a budget publisher.

Okay, about the triple A titles thing, that is no longer. The company has been working for weeks on redoing the engine, and we have some new people helping out with the graphics. The people and monsters are near realistic looking, and the objects and environments are photorealistic. We have gone from a small team of 12 to a still small but growing team of 24. We think we can now try to find a deal soon. About self publishing, we have just bought some cd replication and box printing materials. We think that we can do the publishing, but maybe we are mistaken. M-Works is also adding in a new feature to the game: multistorylines. We will have the player follow along with 5 different storys throughout the cource of the game. The game will also feature free play, arenas, and 8 person death match mutiplayer expantion packs. Our 6 modelers are working their butts off right now to make some new graphics. I think that this game can now compete. We are expecting to add 6 more people to the team, and we have raised an extra $10000 for the game's budget. We will be releasing screens, a site, and a demo soon enough. We have just updated the whole system, and we are now near completion of the 3d game engine. We are about 85% done, and we have 10 levels done out of the 100 needed. Once the engine and editor are finished, we will be completing levels within days. We are to have 100 maps instead of the original 20, and we are now adding custom arenas. The enemy AI in the game is more sophisticated than Doom 3's AI, and the enemies are realistic.

The player will be able to hack computers, scare enemies, cloak identities, hide, call for help, and complete levels in a non-linear fasion. I think that the game is now coming to the point where we can compete.

M-Works is this you M-Works Software Productions

Good luck with your publishing, I hope you make it. Just keep in mind that you need to have room to store all those replicated copies, and you need to have steady production so you can meet all your orders. If you think your game is going to sell a large amount of copies then you might want to get about 50+ CD burners going at a time. Are you printing sticker labels or are you doing inkjet printing? Inkjet will give you the professional look and will more likely get your game on the shelf.

Quote: Original post by M-Works
About self publishing, we have just bought some cd replication and box printing materials. We think that we can do the publishing, but maybe we are mistaken.

Duplication is the smallest of the publishing expenses. To sell those copies you need marketing and the usual marketing budget is 2 to 3 times as much as the development budget.

Quote: Okay, about the triple A titles thing, that is no longer.

I'm worried about your project. AAA is alot more than pretty pictures and good AI. It's a comittment to making a solid game that works right the first and last time.

These quotes are what concerns me:

Quote: It looks as though I can get a working demo with one full mission (20 levels), multiplayer, advanced AI, sound intergrated, and cutscenes within a month

Quote: We have just updated the whole system, and we are now near completion of the 3d game engine. We are about 85% done

Quote: Once the engine and editor are finished, we will be completing levels within days.

Quote: We are to have 100 maps instead of the original 20

and

Quote: The enemy AI in the game is more sophisticated than Doom 3's AI, and the enemies are realistic.

Beware the feature creep

This all sounds a might bit unrealistic and prone to collapse under the weight of the quest for AAA

You may be sabotaging you chances of even being "A" game if you keep gilding the lilly so to speak. Also, people that claim that in one month they can make a product better than however long it took Doom3...well...we have a name for people like that and to be nice, I'll merely call them "dreamers".

Be realistic about your goals and timeline...don't introduce features into the middle of the production...finish what you start, no matter how small it may seem. And don't put 30 people on a project if getting 10K USD is a major accomplishment...you won't be able to retain them and the legal implications of "royalty sharing" with 30 people will break the bank in legal fees either pre or post release.

well EDI did it. why not ask them?

Looking at your website I would suggest you arnt even 5% of the way towards a AAA title. 1 month to finish the game and you havnt got the engine finished yet or started the levels. Looks to me as if you have at least 3 years more work to do. So I really dont think you should be worrying about how you are going to sell it just now.

I doubt you could make a AAA product with Darkbasic, reading through your site is quite amusing, you have 7 members on your forum and say you need another moderator to control it. And then you say Rock Star Games are going to publish another one of your games, can we see that one?