Hello fellow developers, this post is fairly short, but from my two year business experience in the budget game developer industry I have come to one conclusion: The best publisher on earth is...you. Nobody will do better publicity for your game than you can do yourself by posting in all message boards, uploading it everywhere, posting to news sections, sending it to magazines, etc. And in the end you will get the results of your work - all FOR YOU. No crappy 10 percent. All! If you now say: I tried it and my game has not sold two copies in six months. Then something happened to you that I guess happens to most independend developers. But the same would have happened if a (so called) publisher would have taken your product. I guess most times (Yes! most times!) its not the publisher who is wrong (or dishonest), but your game is not (no not good enough) not popular enough. Just my 2 cents. Now I go back in my hut and be quiet. Live long and happy - I will!

You should advertise your butt off no matter who you go through.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

Great deal. You advertise your ass off yourself and still only get 10 percent.

Its your children you want to send through school, not your publisher ones.

Edited by - Jester101 on July 20, 2001 3:17:45 AM

Its true that you can make a lot more per unit by selling yourself. When someone registers Asteroid Miner or Rocky Racers in their shareware version I get 2 or 3 times the amount I get when I sell the same game through a publisher. In fact with some publishers you never seem to see the money at all.
BUT
when you find a good publisher (like RealGames) you sell a LOT more units than otherwise, simply because they give your game high visibility. At one stage I could tell how near the top of the page at RealGames my StarLines game was by the number of units it sold per day. Now its relegated to the bottom of their strategy section it sells much fewer (though still more than it would as pure shareware).
Of course we can all help each other sell more copies by working together more as a community. We need a good, reliable community of banner-ad swapping, link exchanges and pooling of resources. In other words if you discover a service/company/ftp site that really helps you as an Indie developer... LET US ALL KNOW!

http://www.positech.co.uk

The problem is you never know how it would have sold by self-published Shareware.

For sure this is a pessimistic view of publishers. Its great if you have found a better publisher!

With Teen Productions you get 100% of your asking price.

DigiBuy you get 86.1% of what they sell it for. I''m not sure how they set the price. Probably the same way I do or close to it. They may not allow the author to set their price. I have about a 20-30% mark-up myself to cover costs.

Publishers and distibuters aren''t all evil.

The reason major Publishers take a huge chunk is because it takes a huge chunk in costs to produce a professionally packaged game. You have have written the game but after everyone gets their hands on it (marketing, box and label designers, printers, artists, ect) you really havn''t done the majority of the work.

Demanding more than what they give you from a publisher is like demanding some people don''t get paid just so you can have an extra buck or two.

Have you ever gone to a major publisher and asked where all the money goes or do you assume it just goes into a greedy person''s pocket?

I''ll be sending the author a reciept containing a list of all the costs with each sale so they know what''s going on with the money.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

"The reason major Publishers take a huge chunk is because it takes a huge chunk in costs to produce a professionally
packaged game. You have have written the game but after everyone gets their hands on it (marketing, box and label
designers, printers, artists, ect) you really havn''t done the majority of the work."


I Beg to differ, the people who develop the game (programmers/Artists/musicians/etc) do the vast majority of the work - there is no two ways about that.


Publishers do have to recoup their costs and make a nice profit, but they also do seem to think that they can control the developers - and they are correct.

However, to say that publishers do the majority of the work and to argue that asking for money is like taking another person wage is laughable, because it''s not. Major publishers are major because they make a very nice chunk of money ON TOP of what they''ve earned from the work they''ve put in. If this wasn''t the case, then why are they Major? The only exceptions are those developers who can command how the publishers handle their work (like Lionhead/Rare) , but the publishers know that they are going to earn a huge amount of these teams, no matter what.


Publishers aren''t evil, they are just out to make money. It''s a simple as that.





Marc Lambert

marc@darkhex.com

Cliffsky: "In fact with some publishers you never seem to see the money at all."

Any specific example you would like to mention?
Also did you get the money for the 150000 copies sold of Star Miner?

I stand corrected.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com
http://www.teenproductions.com

@KalvinB: Thank you. I am long enough in the biz to know what it costs. When I talked about publishers I meant companies like egames or xtreme games, not regnow or getsoftware that handle your creditcart orders.

While tricky to get it in stores yourself - it is not impossible. I rather spend the 300$-400$ to package my game myself.

<<<<>>>>
Excuse me but that's exactly what I want to have. I don't care about a single employee of any publisher. I worked on the game one or two months and want to get paid what righteously belongs to me.

@mlambert:

<<<>>>
Yes, thats what I wanted to say in my post. And that you can do the same - for yourself.

@everyone:
With this post I wanted to show you a possible different way. It is in no way my intention on making anyone bad. From my EXPERIENCE I know though, that the only thing you need is a good game (in terma of a POPULAR game) and not a publisher. Other people like cliffsky may have different experiences though. But I honestly believe Star Lines would have sold very good as normal Shareware too - maybe not so many sales, but he would have got a higher percentage of the profit.

Maybe the best solution would be to first try to sell the game as much as you can and when the sequel is finished you still can give the first game to a publisher.








Edited by - Jester101 on July 21, 2001 2:38:59 AM