Interest Starbound-Dev-We-Want-to-Protect-Indies-From-Predatory-Publishers

tbulford

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132012-Starbound-Dev-We-Want-to-Protect-Indies-From-Predatory-Publishers

I found this interesting. Nice to see some of the successful guys putting something like this together.

EvanGreenwood

Ty is a super great guy. We chatted to him a bit a while back, and some of the developers whom he's publishing who universally thought he was great.

And we also chatted to some more predatory publishers who were definitely not Ty.

tbulford

Nice to hear @BlackShipsFilltheSky I wounder how we could all benefit from the knowledge about predatory publishers? Perhaps you might be able to put a post down on how to identify them without naming names since I think that would be a bit troublesome in the long run.

I only ask since there seams to be more and more games coming to the point where publishing is important and few people with good current experience on the subject.

Bladesway

From what I have found http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/index.htm a good method for understanding a company you want to do business with. What their employees say about them often tells you a lot about their methods and their achievements or lack there of. Also references are super important. You can very easily see which other games a company has published, then pick one that has not done all that well, try to contact the dev and ask them how they found working with that publisher. I find pissed off devs are pretty eager to rip on publishers they deem were unfair. However to be objective it would be good to confront the publisher about dirt you find on them as there are always 3 sides to a story right :P

tbulford

@Bladesway true that. I guess I am thinking more in line with the key words and phrases that you should keep an eye out for. Things like exclusivity, never getting tied down or talking about cut of profits instead of sales etc. Those are key things that I would avoid right out.

Bladesway

@tbulford generally exclusivity should be connected to a fixed time period and a platform and usually involved some prior payout, as with profits, it is common practice for publishers that payed for some of the development to require that their costs are covered first, but be careful about publishers that want you to also cover advertising cost. One of my friends from Romania was done in like that. The publisher said they had to cover their costs first and then pay out, but they were a publishing house plus advertising agency owned by the same guy. So he spent all profits on the advertising agency and despite the game shipping over 10million copies, my friend's business saw none of the revenue... But I would be weary of looking for buzz words to avoid. From what I have seen the best scams know which words not to say.

EvanGreenwood

From my experience... which isn't particularly wide or deep...

Personally, the single most crucial thing I'd look for is:

Good guy publishers (like Chucklefish) offer to put you in contact with developers they have worked with the first time you chat to them (after introductions). Publishers that have a positive personal relationship with their developers also have smaller portfolios of games, and so give each developer more attention.

This for me is the main point because you can't fake having actually done a good job in the past. Or at least it's much harder to get a third party to lie for you.

Other thoughts:

Chucklefish in particular really does offer developers a better cut than the standard 50 - 70 percent that other publishers offer.

Being able to speak to the decision making person themselves is a good sign in my experience. Ty chatted to us directly, whereas with some publishers you might chat to a talent scout who then has to chat to their VP.

Of course, bigger companies aren't inherently worse. But more layers of bureaucracy IS going to cost money that might otherwise be spent on actually marketing your game, and more layers of bureaucracy is going to mean less flexibility (which is bad if you are assuming a cookie cutter publishing solution doesn't suit your game).

Some publishers are going to be literally just planning on sticking your game on their portal and cross-pollinating it with their other games. Every single publisher does that anyway... so if they are emphasizing that then they really don't have much to offer. But some publishers really do drive a lot of traffic.

EVERY publisher will say: "We have good contacts with Sony / Microsoft" if your game is suitable for consoles. If they don't then they should quit their careers.

And obviously look at their catalog of games, particularly the games they are going to be releasing in the near future. If only shitty games are signing up then there is probably a reason.