Getting ignored by publishers is something we all need to get used to, and get over. Always look at it as a sign they are not interested, and move on asap. We could point fingers at iDigicon, but ive had the same experiences with much more established publishers. In fact, ive never come accross a publisher that didnt leave me hanging to some degree. A thumbs up for GarageGames though. They were by far the most attentive and professional people I have yet to work with.
Yet, they still recieve 100's of games for which they never send a response. It really is a fact of life, publishers often have so many games to look at there's just not time to craft a tactful "were not interested" letter to the developer. I agree with bongpig, if you are working with publishers you just have to get used to getting the cold sholder. It's nothing personal, it's just business.
No need to craft one - they could send a standard "not interested" email. That would be much better than being ignored!
I agree. I don't think there's any excuse for this kind of behaviour. It's just rude and IMHO it reflects poorly on the publisher.
Granted. It does reflect poorly on the publishers. But theres nothing we can do about it. Every line of business ive ever worked in is exactly the same. We need to accept we cannot change the world, and deal with situations best we can. Coming to the same 'publishers suck' conclusion over and over again doesnt get us anywhere. Believe me, ive been there same as everybody else. Ive been ignored with the best of them! It used to really bother me till I realised I was wasting my time and productivity getting wound up. The formula is simple. If a publisher likes your game, they WILL reply. If they dont, then they dont like it. Usually the developer goes through all kinds of paranoid thoughts. Did they get my demo? What if they didnt? What if the e-mail got lost? What if the link didnt work? Usually followed by lots more mails to the pub asking whether they got your original mail or not. Im sure this process is familiar to many of us here, including me! We need to take back the power, and stop hassling these people for scraps. Ignore them like they ignore us. Dont let it get to you. They dont want your game? So what? The best you you can do is focus on something more productive.
The cold shoulder I can handle, and you're absolutely right that the key in those situations is to just move on if you don't hear anything. My pet peeve, and what occurred in the aforemention Idigicon situation was that the publisher did express interest and then disappeared - and on rare occasions when they could be tracked down they would reaffirm that interest but never act on it. All I ask is that a publisher have the balls to either say "no" or just ignore me, but not lead me on. I specifically got out of mainstream game development because of nonsense like that! Thankfully, I don't plan on dealing with many publishers in the future as I'm wagering I can do better on my own.
All of this has been really good advice, Is there a way we could put together a page or thread that would give us all a list of publishers and a rating for each of them? I think this could be really helpful for those of us starting that process. I was thinking of something along the lines of an "epinions" sort of thing, but I'm not sure that's possible on this forum. Maybe instead this could be a simple as a sticky thread with everyone giving a rating for publishers they have some experience with. That could help us new indies to know where to concentrate our efforts. What do you all think?
I think that this would be a very good idea. There was a thread in old dex forums with publisher list, but I'd prefer a sticky one in the Indie Business forums. To KNau: publishers often make promises then they disappear. I remember one that offered me 5000 euros for distribution of UBM in Poland. Then he said 2500 with futile excuses. Then again, When I asked for contract, they disappeared. But I didn't requested more info either Bad for them, my game could have sold very well in Poland (boxe is popular there), they'd have recouped that investment in 1 month I think
Just to throw in my 2 cents as I had dealt with EVERY major publisher when I had my own company (and I even work a publisher now [but as a developer]).. ALL publishers will usually seem interested even if really they are not. It's just how it goes with human nature. We had it happen tons of times. It's true that if you have something they REALLY want, you will hear from them. And I think it's not extremely useful to post ratings of publishers since you are usually not dealing with a publisher as much as you are dealing with a particular PERSON. (Now, if there were ratings for people that worked at publishers, that would be far more useful.. though I'm not suggesting that. ) Each person within a publisher is completely different from the next, and having a bad experience with one (because that person is flaky or whatever) does not at all indicate what kind of dealings you would have if you reached a different person at the same publisher.
Yes sure, it depends on the person and not on the Company in general. However I found that the contact person for those companies (that specialize in small budget games) remain the same for long time (long time in game industry = 2-3 years even). In fact could be worth a company list specifying the name of the person
Hello! I just wanted to post here to clear a few misconceptions up if I may. Especially to "KNau" (I'm not familiar with this pseudonym so I can't directly comment, but please get in touch as I'm curious why you'd say such harsh words - Please email me and let me know who you are, so I can try and get to the bottom of your comments.) - What I will say to you is this; there's always two sides to a story and one of the biggest problems I've faced in my 4- 5 years of overseeing external projects and product licensing & acquisition here, is one of communication. (A sad side to this is that I've had abusive emails personally and again harsh postings on forums from authors of certain products we've decided not to publish; purely and simply for commercial reasons. We always explain why a product won't work FOR US (doesn't mean it won't work elsewhere) & suggest/guide the developer to making their product more of a marketable product in areas we trade in. We never burn bridges and our door is always open. Again, sadly, I/we've had to take quite a bit of abusive over the years, when all we are is honest and fair.) tbh & In my experience, a very high percentage of the independent community that we've dealt with, won't call (phone) us during a products development or similar, I even offer to call people if they leave a number (so there's no cost to them) and if feasible, get them up to the offices regularly, again at our cost, but most people seem to prefer email, which can be frustrating for me/us. Plus, you can't deny that email, as quick & instant as it is, can commonly be misinterpreted, as opposed to a face to face meeting or a telephone call. Again, tbh & to reiterate. In my 10 years of working for Idigicon, 99.9% of problems have been down to a lack of communication or miscommunication and not through any malpractice that I feel we are being accused of here. Period. Now, I don't profess that we are perfect but we DO have morals, ethics and we've been in business over 20 years now & that comes only through hard work, and working "with" people. Personally, I find it difficult to respond to everyone, but I do try to contact everyone who takes the time out to email me. There's always 101 things going on here and we are genuinely busy, but WE DO care as most of our staff (myself included) come from a "back bedroom" background, and I truly believe this is where the real (& original) talent lies. We current publish over 300 products, we also licensed Platypus to Mike Boeh (retro64) who most of you may know... All this said, we know and appreciate it is a minefield out there and to make any kind of business work is very hard going & for that I/we respect you if you go it alone, again it ISN'T easy out there. Plus, heck, even if we had the money, we couldn't physically publish every single game offered to us! Finally, as I have to dash, as the office is just about to be closed for the night. (hence I'm furiously typing this, so please excuse any spelling mistakes or errors in my grammar) - There's more I'd like to say etc...but I openly invite anyone to email me if they have a problem or have had a problem with Idigicon, because we are not out to nor do we want to upset anyone, or make anyone feel as if they've had a raw deal when communicating with us, irrespective of whether they have a publishing deal with us or not. We are just ordinary people who love games & the computer industry & we have a wealth of contacts and experience to actually generate the all important key ingredient - SALES - So, if anyone wishes to discuss this post or anything relating to it, or the industry at large, I'm at george@idigicon.com - Plus, if any of you living in the UK want a guided tour & an informal chat regarding Idigicon, the industry and or indeed the prospect of publishing (on or offline) then please email me and I'll arrange for it to happen at our cost! Good luck in what ever you do. Warmest wishes George
Idigicon DO...on each and every box we manufacture, on the back of the box is the developers real name. Thanks for listening
BongPig (what a nick) has the right idea. Just imagine that you sent them a resume. Ringing their phones is just going to seem desperate and weak. Actually, this could apply to all sorts of relationships....
We've had no problems with George and Idigicon. He has even offered to fly me over to the UK for a face-to-face...
If you're too busy mike I Volunteer to take the free trip to the UK for you. I have a hankering for some fish n chips.
What I personally like in all that publishers that they are trying to look so smooth in forums and especially in different press. George - you said me in email that you are going to discuss the publishing of some of our games at your company meeting. I didn't get anything from you after that - no any single NO even. I don't think that this could work like "We always explain why a product won't work FOR US". Period. Thanks,
"Note that I haven't received any of the money owed to me yet (4 months into the process) but that has more to do with the subdistributors and a quick changing of our contract this past month than it does Xing's practices. I have faith that it will all be ironed out soon." Don't. I have only ever made 3 deals retail wise I have been happy with. 1 was Take2 (very happy) one was Akella(pretty happy) and a third was egames. Only egames didnt offer upfront money, but they came highly recommended. you MUST get money upfront, and assume thats all you will get. I hate to bring bad news, but anyone who signed their game on the promise of later royalties is unlikely to ever see a penny. I know I never did in 2 cases.
It's fun in effect that as soon as someone talk badly about a publisher in those forums they suddenly pop-up explaining everything So I've decided to make a quick summary about all my publishers relationship so far: Idigicon - www.idigicon.com - they requested to sell in exclusive UBM also online... unacceptable request for me (I said that I wanted to sell only retail rights) PLAY Sp - www.play.com.pl - they offered 5000 euro flat fee for UBM. Then because was in OpenGL they said 2500 - I say ok and asked for a contract sample - no answer yet (was 1st may so over 3 months passed) Take 2 - they sent me an enthusiast email about UBM and my other games, but got no reply yet (6th of may) I'm talking with another one currently but they're making me lot of questions (like "how many copies you sell monthly?" - "which percentage of your sales comes to germany?") so I stopped them asking "how much money are you going to pay me upfront?" If I had the money I'd publish UBM myself, that game at a sale price of 15 euros could sell thousand in UK and in USA (80% of my orders are from those 2 countries)... bah, even if you have a unique product publishers don't want to invest?
Please remember that I said you could've sold it online yourself too, we already have this agreement with several developers. Just so people know, we sell games made in Blitz, Dark Basic, C, C++, Delphi, Pure Basic etc....each deal is worked on a games merit and marketability from the companies point of view, not the language or standard it uses. ps..With regards to a publisher just popping up! I was a member of the dexterity forums for a long time but only posted when I needed to (busy). Plus we develop, publish, design packaging, print packaging, all internally, so we are not just a publisher in the traditional sense. Anyway, I don't want to go off on tangents etc...if you need to discuss any of this further, please feel free to drop me a line. NB: I just wanted people to know that we are here & available to talk if need be & if certain people haven't received replies then it has not been intentional, plus, as we were just dipping our toes in the PC games market (4 - 5 years ago) It has just been myself dealing with all acquisitions, and tbh it has been hard, I've worked from home many, many nights & I'm trying to slow that down for the sanity of me (& the wife/kids who are the most important thing to me) - Please note, I'm not after sympathy, I just want people to realise that we've worked our a$$e$ off here to make a living as we take nothing for granted. The upshot is that last month we acquired www.smiliegames.com & the guy behind it works for us and no doubt some of you guys will be hearing from Jonni (Ball) as he is heading up a big online sales/marketing push for us, which takes a bit of the pressure away from me. Anyway, good luck with your development & sales. Thx
This could go on forever. Some say they are happy. Others say they are not. Some are ignored. Others aint. Get a grip people. I think one of the harshest realities indie devs need to learn is that thier games are simply not good enough to make decent money. Period. Thats why they get ignored. Thats why the publisher isnt chasing them down and sending flowers & chocolates. Its not because the publisher ( or whoever depending what buisness you are in ) is an asshole. Its the easiest thing to blame the world for your failures, but absolutely ego shattering to accept its because your skills are not up to it ( yet ). Welcome to planet earth.