Getting Published

The problem with game development as a business is that too many people want to do it. Game development is just like any other entertainment business, such as movies, sports, and music; hordes of hopefuls are always trying to break-into show business, get drafted into professional sports, or get signed to recording contracts. "Wannabe" game developers are no different. As a group, they all love games, some have genuine talent, and most eventually end up trying to talk to established publishers about funding or publishing their game.

When they do try talking to publishers, they get referred to someone in the product development (PD) department, or to a division within product development which is sometimes called acquisitions, licensing, A&R (Artists and Repertoire, a music industry term), or inventor relations. For many "wannabe" game developers, talking to product development is an unexpectedly difficult experience. Why? The truth is, PD professionals at publishing companies, many of whom are really great people, must make a hard decision. Either:

The problem with the first option is that it leaves PD person with no way of getting his or her job done – too many game submissions, not enough time. Very few PD people choose the first option, and most of those that do work for little known companies, have no time for social/family life, or both.

The problem with the second approach is that it makes the PD person appear rude and/or unreachable, and even if all you want is five minutes of that person's time, an answer that her or she promised you five weeks ago, or just a clear "No thank you," getting that person to focus on you is like pulling teeth.

This article is the first of a three part series dealing with the issue of getting published. This article will outline a framework for evaluating whether or not your game submission is good enough to realistically approach a publisher with. Next month’s article, "How to Approach Game Publishers", will provide helpful hints regarding the dos and don’ts of getting publishers to pay attention to you and your game. The third and final article in the series, "What to do if you’ve been Rejected", will be of value to anyone determined to succeed as a developer, and who is willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

The Calculus of Product Development

To analyze the viability of game submissions, nearly every PD person looks for the following traits:

Let’s examine each of these traits in more depth.

Development risk

The lowest development risk for a publisher is, naturally, a game that is already finished. This may be obvious, but many developers, including those with "hit game" experience, are surprised at the number of submissions publishers actually get for games that are done or nearly done. A beta of a game is less risky than an alpha, while a playable demo is less risky than a technology demo. Solid, experienced teams with "hit game" track records are a lower risk than new teams; even a new team made of up of individuals with stellar backgrounds is considered a significant risk – the question is, can these guys work together as a team on a 12- to 24-month project?

Technology is also a source of development risk. Reusing an engine that the team has used before is low risk, while having to build or use technologies that the team has limited track record with is high risk. Off-the-shelf technologies can often be viewed as lower risk, unless their integration with the rest of the game is a potential issue.

Production values

No matter what the game genre or target platform, a game submission must look better than anything out there already, and be at least on par with competing games that are expected to ship at the same time. Does your first-person-shooter look as good as Quake II? If so, that’s great – if it had shipped when Quake II had shipped. It’s amazing to me the number of wannabe developers that think that being "as good" as a current game is good enough; sorry folks, but production values in this industry are definitely a moving target.

When assessing production values, the overall look and feel of the game is important, as well as the technology behind it. For real-time strategy games, for example, you can make a gorgeous, fun game using 2D sprites; unfortunately, the state of the art is moving to true 3D. But technology alone doesn’t make a game beautiful; a game can have a higher polygon count than any other game in the genre, yet could still be unattractive for other reasons – poor textures, clunky interface, and so on. Here’s a tip for developers in love with their own game: before telling publishers that your game looks better than X, Y, and Z, get some people to do side-by-side comparisons of your game versus X, Y, and Z. You’ll either confirm your beliefs or you’ll get a dose of reality before you lose credibility with a publisher.

Cool factor

With 4,000+ titles coming out per year, to get attention, a game has to have something that makes it unique and different, and that "something" has to instantly be recognized as "cool" when you describe it. The game itself doesn’t have to be completely alien to anything anyone has ever experienced before. If you’re able to say that your game submission is "like this other hit game, but with a twist", that’s a strong position to be in, provided that the "other game" was a hit, and your "twist" is really cool. Was Rainbow 6 totally alien, or did it offer familiar first-person shooter game play (like Quake) with a twist (mission planning, Tom Clancy license)? Was Starcraft totally alien, or did it offer familiar RTS game play (like Warcraft) with a twist (three races, each requiring a different "mindset" to play)?

You want an element of your game submission to be truly unique. If you can say that your game submission is the only game that has X, or that does Y, that’s important. If a publisher wants a clone or a knock-off, it will typically assign an internal team or an outside team it has worked with in the past to develop the project; it doesn’t need an outside game developer that it’s never worked with to develop a clone. Either through gameplay, graphics, technology, platform, or a license, you should have at least one element that no other game has.

Salability

If a publisher doesn’t think it can sell a game, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the graphics are or how fun it is to play. Ed Del Castillo, the producer of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert, likes to say that "interactive games are these slippery, unknown quantities that most consumers will not pick-up off the shelf unless the game has handles placed on it." Handles can range from eye-popping graphics, to familiar movie, book, arcade, and board game licenses, to sequels of popular interactive games, to very cool, familiar themes/subject matter, to even putting a big name actor on the cover. Even the platform of the game can be a handle; right now, there are still not a lot of Windows CE games, there are not enough Color Game Boy titles, and when the time comes, Sega Dreamcast titles will have handles on them just because they are out early.

One of the problems with highly innovative games is that they can be hard for a publisher to market them, and for the sales staff to sell them to the channel. "Familiar" and "understandable" are two traits that retailers look for when making purchasing decisions. Is there any question in anyone’s mind why sequels are so popular in this industry? Or why familiar toy, board game, and arcade brands (Barbie, Monopoly, Frogger) have been so successful? Or movie, book, and sports licenses? Do you think that part of the appeal of the Deer Hunter phenomena was the fact that a segment of mainstream America can fundamentally understand and connect with what they see on the cover of the box?

Fun

Over the last decade, a number of Hollywood and media/entertainment industry companies have started up interactive divisions, failed, and have exited the market. They didn’t "get it". In other words, they didn’t understand what interactive entertainment was all about. The problem for some of these companies is they thought that their skills (e.g.,. animation skills, story-telling skills, engineering skills, marketing skills) for creating other types of non-interactive entertainment (such as movies) were sufficient to make high-quality interactive products. Unfortunately for them, interactive entertainment is fundamentally different than other entertainment ventures – there has to be something fun for the player to do in the game, otherwise it’s a dud. The majority of interactive games are duds – it’s hard to put "fun" in a box, and its hard to explain to someone who doesn’t "get it" just what "it" is.

A great measure of whether or not your game is fun is if it’s addictive. If people that are not on your development team can honestly say they like the game enough to play and replay, that’s very good. Don’t let "realism" or "authenticity" get in the way of making a fun product; the fun product is going to have a much better chance of getting published, and of selling big numbers. For example, many people would argue that Diablo was not a "realistic" RPG, or that the Panzer General series was not a realistic family of wargames. The fact is they were both fun, and sold very well for their genres.

So, for most PD professionals, an ideal game submission is:

Another big plus is if it’s easy to sell, so if the game is "like this other hit game, with a twist", if it has a big license associated with it (already secured, of course), or if it is part of a successful, established brand franchise, that’s even more appealing. Did I mention publishing plans? If a game submission is a fit with a publisher’s current plans (i.e., if it is in a genre and on a platform that they are actively seeking outside submissions for), that’s good too.

Game Submissions by the Numbers

Is your game submission good enough for to get a PD person excited, and to eventually land you a publishing deal? Here is a test to determine whether you’re stuff is "submission-worthy". While some of the questions have necessarily subjective answers, and only the PD person’s opinion really matters when it comes right down to it, these questions may help you get a better picture of your game’s potential.

1. Which best describes your team?

Subtract 1 from the score if the team has not completed a development project together, -2 if the team is not a team yet (i.e. a "proposed" team).

2. How complete is your game?

3. What’s the underlying technology? (Only answer this question if the team does not have at least a technology demo.)

4. What do the graphics look like? (Skip if no graphics are available, i.e., still at the concept stage)

5. What does the user interface look like? (Skip if no user interface graphics are available, i.e., still at the concept stage)

6. What is the audio quality like? (Skip if no audio is available, i.e., the game is still at the concept stage)

7. What is the game’s "cool factor"?

8. What platform is it targeting?

9. What genre/theme is the game?

10. Does it use any licensed/franchised material?

Note: Licenses/franchises can be hit or miss, unless you are the license holder. If you are not the license holder, there still are opportunities. For example, companies like Hasbro have properties for which they are looking for outside submissions for interactive products. The challenge with developing designs and demos for other companies is that the license holders may already have plans for the license, and those plans may preclude your game, no matter how good it is. Do some research into the status of the license before spending too much time on a submission that may have no opportunity associated with it.

11. Does your game meet the publisher’s needs?

Note: Just because a publisher is looking for certain types of games does not necessarily mean those games will sell better at retail. However, it does mean the PD people will have an easy time selling your game internally to their companies’ marketing and sales departments.

12. How familiar is the subject of the game?

13. How fun is the game?

Scoring

If you have given yourself a –4 or lower for any category, don’t worry about the rest of your scores – you have a problem that you need to address. If you have a –3 for any category, you are on the borderline – you better have something real good elsewhere, and you still should look at addressing the negative category. Add up all your scores, and see where you fall in the table below.

So you think your game has what it takes, that you are ready to get a publishing deal? Stay tuned for next month’s article, "Getting Published, Part II: How to approach game publishers."