Hi, Im making a game very similar to unreal tournament, but with a few additions, different playing modes, and a gta-style view. Please be very honest; assuming that the final game is of very high quality, do I have any chance at all of getting such a game published by a ''cheap range'' company such as XPlosiv? Thanks in advance for your opinion, - Ashley Oliver Lead Programmer, Interplanitary Productions

Sure, you''d have a good chance. However, the chances aren''t so great that you''re going to make a game of the same quality as Unreal. Games like these take years to complete, even with many experienced programmers. Hate to bust your bubble, but you''d probably be better off starting with a smaller project.

Don''t know if this is intentional, but you misspelled Interplanetary. If you can''t spell that correctly I don''t know how you''re going to make an Unreal level game

Quality will always attract interest from publishers. Even the big ones. But I would like to take away a slight misconception. The fact that you refer to Xplosiv as a cheap range company isn''t correct. It''s not correct in the sense that Xplosiv isn''t so much a company but a budget label maintained by Empire Interactive. Similar to Sold Out, even though that is partly in the hands of private investors last time I heard.

Fact is that the industry consists of these mammoth companies like Activision, Infogrames, EA, Eidos and Ubi Soft, as well as rather small companies who struggle to prolong their marginal existence. The big companies have the millions to put behind top notch projects and they churn out PC and console products by the Gigabyte... The sheer difference in power between the bigger companies and even the medium sized ones means that any business that''s not playing ball with the big boys in the bid for top titles is stuck with

A) In-house productions
B) Second rate products the big companies rejected (not necessarily bad products but Activision can only publish so much a year)
C) Innovative products which provide too big a risk to the big players and with which the smaller companies can still make a good deal.

All comes down to money. Of which the big companies have more then enough. In order to corner the market for budget titles they re-release their ex-prime games as cheap budget offerings (Sold Out, Xplosiv and Virgin White Label for example) which totally destroys the market for smaller companies who never published a AAA title in the first place and hence cannot re-release these afterwards on a budget label. So it is a continuous struggle between the smaller companies who offer original product which is a first release at $9.95 or $14.95 and the big boys taking "Unreal" or "Tomb Raider III" for another round of jewel case marketing at the exact same price.

Can you blame a buyer at say CompUSA for thinking "Hmm what shall I pick... Unreal which sold 300.000 units already or some no name product from a company which cannot offer me any marketing development funds (in plain English: a pointless contribution to the advertising of your product in-store)?". Most buyers will stick with the proven winner as at the end of the day there is only one goal: making more profit. A proven seller is nice and will always generate a safe revenue. A new product is a risk and therefore most small publishers find the $20.000,- entrance fee per product for CompUSA too steep.

Now the more succesful budget companies who concentrate on original product are Valusoft, Cosmi, Global Star Software and until very recently eGames. The fact that eGames are in deep financial trouble right now isn''t a surprise as the market is deteriorating rapidly with more and more big name publishers doing another run of budget re-releases. The key to success for these companies was (and still is) not the mainstream retail market but non-traditional outlets. With that I mean places where you wouldn''t look to buy a software product if you were looking for it. I mean a small rack of games in a Supermarket for example. People see a nice little non-violent game for $4.95 and on impulse they decide to take it home for their kids. All the marketing elements like colourful and attractive packaging, low prices, good placement and high quality product are present in this concept and the only reason the big companies don''t do it also is that the margins are too low. Cosmi sell hundreds of thousands of units of certain titles but they also have a lot of duds each quarter. Those will stay in the mix for a few weeks and then get replaced by something new which hopefully will sell better. Too bad for the author who will get only a few hundred dollars and Cosmi sit on his title for the duration of the contract (2 years). That''s the risk you are taking and only few are lucky enough to score a hit title.

So in the end answering your question about the Unreal clone: yes, you can sell it to a small or medium sized company but see it as an investment in your future. The small company will sell an X number of units which basically goes on your resume. Then you can go to a bigger publisher with your Unreal 2 clone ;-)

Just my 2 cents...

Take care,

Alex

Yes I agree with Alex.
The big publisher got there own budget label. They use this budget label to publish the "old" high quality games for a low budget price. And also they use the bundle method. So you can buy a compilation of "old" wel known high quality games. Who aren''t original at all. But only a couple of years old and for a low price, some are bundled and some are sold stand alone.

The original budget prized games of the small sized publishers must compete with these big publisher budget labels.
And that is difficult, every consumer or buyer remember those big games, because of the big promotion attention. So the buyer of a retail chain prefers to buy something he is sure about, without any doubt. So he chooses for the big games to put on the shelves. In this case using the budget label. There is a nice article about this subject on gamedev.net and it confirms this problem.http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article867.asp

I''m not sure that things in the long term will be as bad as people claim. Remember that these budget re-releases by the big boys are still a relatively new phenomena.
For me, as someone who plays lots of games and reads the games press, most of the budget rereleases dont appeal to me. I remember the hype when they first came out, if i decided not to get them then, the chances are i wont get them later, even at a cheap price.
The problem is, that their prescence on the shelves crowds out the games I do like to see, which are new and different and original.
I can walk into GAME and look at the shelves and never see a game I havent read about and seen previews and demos of. This annoys me, because I am only going in there looking for something new and different to play. When I see a game on a shelf I have never heard of or seen ebfore I always pick up the box and take a look.
As an example, a game like my strategy title ''StarLines'' cant compete production wise with Imperium Galctica, although you might see them both on a budget price. The big difference to the consumer is that they know all about (maybe are sick of) IG, and yet my product is something new, different and possibly just as good. So in short, I think it might be in the stores interests to stock the shelves with some new and original stuff, just to keep up the interest of those gamers who remember the budget re-releases the first time around.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Cliffski,

I agree with the rest of your story. Only not with:
>releases by the big boys are still a relatively new phenomena.
It isn''t new at all. This marketing method is used a long time and it''s still succesfull. GT Value for instance now called Wizard works of Infogrames is still there. Activision with there division Activision Value same story, EA the same etc.

Cosmi sells also other software products, not only game titles. Valusoft the same, only Valusoft sells more game titles in there productline then Cosmi. Egames sells mainly games. The same is for Globalstar.

>Cosmi sells also other software products, not only game titles. >Valusoft the same, only Valusoft sells more game titles in >there productline then Cosmi. Egames sells mainly games. The >same is for Globalstar.

This is only some background information I gave about these budget publishers productline. eGames is not doing well financial.

As you noticed there aren''t much "real" retail budget publishers out there. Budget publishers Expertsoftware and Headgames are owned by Activision Value for your information.

It''s a difficult market, the games market.

Only online shareware marketing is our only hope to survive as game developer

quote: Original post by cliffski
I''m not sure that things in the long term will be as bad as people claim. Remember that these budget re-releases by the big boys are still a relatively new phenomena.

Cliffski, you should know that this isn''t strictly true, unless you are younger than I had guessed you were... all the major publishers were rereleasing games at budget prices in the late 80s. It was only during the 16 bit era and the early days of the PC gaining dominance as the home computer that these rereleases ceased to be common. Of course, they then made a big comeback a few years ago.

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Thanks for your help everybody, didnt expect such a big response. Oh and yes supernova, the misspelling of Interplanitary is intentional :-P

Thanks again,




- Ashley Oliver
Lead Programmer, Interplanitary Productions