Wintermute Engine Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: FogGobbler on February 27, 2007, 11:26:16 AM
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Hi!
We (from Germany) are developing / planning and creating a commercial adventure game (using the WME of cause ;D ) . Now I´ve got some general questions about selling the product.
1. How do you get in touch with a publisher? Do you send them a demo, the whole story as a script or what is the best way to present your game/ideas?
2. if 1. = yes ;-) --> how long should this demo be?
3. How far does the game have to developed, before you get in touch with the publisher?
4. Do publishers offer a financing scheme for the time of development of some kind?
5. Do you have to a lot of capital?
6. Can anybody perhaps offer a list of publishers in Germany?
7. Has anybody had any kind of experience with this "problem" and would like to tell me how the dealt with it?
Thanks for your time and answers,
Oli
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I think that the best way to meet publishers is to go to professionnal conventions, you'll be able to meet several publishers on the same day when they're actually shopping for new projects. You'll probably need to arrange for appointments in advance.
From my experience, the publisher finances the development of the game, but not really. They usually pay every time they approve a 'milestone' (defined in the contract, it should pay at least for the developpers' salaries) and then a bigger amount on project completion. The developper earns royalties on the game, but these royalties are first spent on repaying the publisher for the money they gave to the developper, so they're not really paying for the development, they're actually advancing the funds (To be honnest I should add that most games don't sell enough to repay for their development costs). In very few cases the publisher will support the development cost and pay royalties on every box that is sold. I know that Nintendo does that with 2nd party developpers, but PC publishers probably don't.
Hope this helped.
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This is one scenario that adonf has mentioned, but another is to create the project yourself, be self-sufficient do not take any money from publishers for development costs and then have a royalty per unit sold contract.
Keep your team mean and lean and your overheads down, that way your royalties wil not be eaten up.
There are many publishers that like this scenario as you are a smaller risk to them financially and your game project will look more appertiseing to them if no money is needed up front.
Remember - Noone will back an unknown qty!
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Here's an old list of publishers from my Starving Developer's Guide:
http://www.coniserver.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=573372
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Thanks for all your comments and thanks for your list, orange!
Oli