Non casual game publishers - any positive feedback?

[zoombapup]

Well, I know most people here seem to be into casual games as a way of downsizing or rightsizing thier development.

But I'm a bit of a throwback in that I've done the 2D thing a *lot* and basically seem to be heading down the route of doing 3D games for a while at least.

So I wondered if anyone had anything good to say about any smaller non-casual publishers they've worked with recently?

What I'm looking for is a publishing partner for a couple of our future games (we'll be doing singleplayer versions of our next games), so if you have any good feedback about any company you have worked with recently or are working with right now, please pass it on.

Let me be clear here. I've worked with plenty of large publishers and I don't have any rose tinted specs on, but I'm hoping somewhere in this crazy industry, there is a partner we can find to help us distribute our titles into other avenues (we'll do our own ESD), preferably a small publisher who is both hungry for good games and actually knows how to work with developers.

Our games are targetted at the mature hardcore gamer (i.e. thirysomethings) who have a history of playing hardcore games and still like to do that, but cant afford the time to give thier lives to a single game. So we incorporate things like short play sessions, one-click game startup, robust community support, voice chat etc).

Its always nice to hear about the good guys! there are so many stories about the bad ones.

[ninesquirrels]

While my experiences with Ubisoft were not always positive, they do understand the market you are trying to hit better than most publishers, and they have great designers at high levels in the company that know what they are doing.

For better or worse, high level decisions there are made by people with some clue about design - as opposed to most of the major publishers that have a "designer glass ceiling" that keeps their exc producers and VPs completely ignorant of production or design.

[zoombapup]

I know a lot of this is based around wether you luck out and get some of the few guys that is great or you get the duffer who is the inevitable baggage all companies carry around.

But some companies seem to have a higher proportion of smart people and I just want to get a feel for the smaller publisher marketplace.

Ubi isnt exactly the smaller publisher I'm looking for though (I've worked with them before and they certainly werent as bad as others we've worked with, but certainly not the thing I'm thinking of here).

[sillytuna]

I honestly think you're barking up the wrong tree. No publisher will do anything significant for you if you're claiming ED rights. Outside of that, PC money is very poor anyway.

If you can self-fund, concentrate on ED and look to negotiate per territory distribution deals on fixed fee or guaranteed advance sales/royalty deals.

[zoombapup]

Well, you may be right there. But I figured it has to be worth asking in case someone lucked out and found a publisher that actually WAS worth dealing with?

I guess we will be looking at the typical ESD "publishers" in general, but it feels wrong somehow doing a deal with a publisher for ESD considering we can do that easily ourselves. What we dont necassarily want to do ourselves, is to look for a retail distribution partner etc. Hence publisher.

I might just follow along with what Defcon has been doing. I'll look into that.