I often see tht it''s a good idea to publish some type of game somewhere in order to get some kind of track record going for yourself, but I''ve been wondering, what exactly would be enough to make a game worthy of selling to a share/valueware publisher. I''m pretty sure slapping together another tetris clone wouldn''t work, but creating the next Quake/Unreal is also out of the question, so what is a good middle ground? opinions please.

I think the most important thing is that your game be fun. That is the bottom line. Take grand theft auto, for example. Graphically that game was nothing to run home about, but the fun factor made it sell.