Fun feeling seeing this for the first time!
I don't suppose there's a chance we'll get to play with that demo version?
Not til release I'm afraid! I will be sharing playthrough videos showcasing new stuff here instead, at least. Also if you are planning on attending GDC, PAX East or Rezzed next month you can have a play there.
Congrats on all the success! Sounds like things are really snowballing quickly. Any insights on how you signed with a publisher, what they offer and any sort of non-NDA covered figures you're comfortable with sharing?
Very good question. I'll expand on this into a proper blog post at some point but here's some initial thoughts. I can't share specifics of the contract I signed or others I was offered under NDA, but I can talk about some more general stuff.
Why use a publisher?The main reason to use a publisher has gone away. They used be the
only way to properly reach the market, be that getting your game in boxes on shelves or on the top digital platforms.
This is no longer the case. Any game worth publishing can breeze through greenlight and get onto the xbone/ps4/wii without a publisher. Boxed copies is a different story, but fuck that.
The other reason was traditionally
moneys. You could pitch a game idea to a publisher and if they liked it enough they would pay you to develop it. In return they would generally
own it (as in IP, the idea itself, the right to get OTHER PEOPLE to make sequels, etc) and you would only get a small percentage of the money it brought in. In return you were paid (sometimes a lot of money) to be able to make the thing.
Personally I think there are better ways to fund small games nowadays. Kickstarter, bootstrapping, 'wifefunding', you name it. So what's the point of getting a publisher involved?
Well for me it came down to this: marketing money & expertise. I've always strongly recommended indie devs invest
serious time into marketing, and you should certainly do that. But there are some things you cannot bootstrap. For me it was getting Guild of Dungeoneering to some of the really big consumer game shows (like PAX). These things will cost you about $10K a pop, and that's doing it on the cheap. So I decided to find a publisher to act as a 'launch partner'; someone who would fund some marketing stuff like consumer shows and who would help with press outreach, PR, marketplace partners etc.
Are there indie-friendly publishers?I started with one publisher who I had seen was doing exactly this for small scale games: Devolver. I then asked around on twitter and reddit for suggestions and eventually compiled quite a good list:
http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/I then pitched almost every single one of the companies on that list via email.
Pitching a publisherYou should have a 'press pitch' for your game which you are continually refining. This is what you send out to games journos to get them excited about what you are making (or your own story, in making it) so that they write about your game. You can take this pitch and tweak it slightly to get a publisher interested. Personally I kept most of my press pitch and just added a couple of sentences about what I was looking for with a publisher. I would then get into more specifics if they got back to me.
Here's what I was sending to publishers last September:
Hi folks!
I'm making a pretty awesome game called Guild of Dungeoneering and I'd love to have a chat with you about bringing it to a wider audience.
It's a turn-based dungeon crawler with a twist: instead of controlling the hero you build the dungeon around him. Using cards drawn from your Guild decks you lay down rooms, monsters, traps and of course loot! Defeating monsters lets you place better items for your hero to use, but placing ever harder monsters is the only way to keep the Dread Meter in check. Let it get too high and Bad Things start to happen! Meanwhile your hero is making his own decisions on where to go and what to fight. But will he be strong enough to take on the dungeon's overlord?
Despite only releasing a bare bones alpha demo so far I've already attracted some great attention from press and players alike.
Guild of Dungeoneering was greenlit for Steam in May after over 8,000 yes votes in a month, reaching the #5 spot out of over 1,700 games on Greenlight before being chosen by Valve.
I'll be releasing on PC & Mac first with tablets to follow and am currently looking for some help around launch to be able to make the biggest splash possible.
Check out some more info about the game below and then get back to me for a chat!
Thanks,
Colm
More info on Guild of Dungeoneering (including web-playable alpha) can be found here:
http://gambrinous.com/games/dungeoneering/Our video trailer can be seen here:
Some notable press articles include:
- "I love the hand-drawn style, evocative of every schoolroom doodling ever put to paper by a bored geek!", Boing Boing, Apr 2014
- "There’s a huge amount of potential in the concept ..", Rock Paper Shotgun, Feb 2014
- ".. a lovely sketches-on-graph-paper aesthetic ..", IndieGames.com, Feb 2014
Here are some examples of positive feedback from players:
- "Looked at the style, loved it, read about the influences (card games, dungeon keeper, etc) loved them as well. Always willing to fund indie games I believe in", via email
- "After playing the demo about a half-dozen times, I decided it was well worth $10 to pre-order
", via email
- "I heard about the game on Rock Paper Shotgun, and after a (very) brief go on the demo, I was sold
I love the boardgame aesthetic. Looking forward to the final build!", via email
- "Uh oh, looks like the playable demo of #GuildOfDungeoneering was updated since I last tried it. Bye bye Saturday", via twitter
- "Guild of #dungeoneering looks like it'll be a great game, no doubt something I'm buying when it's out", via twitter
- "WOWOW! Guild of Dungeoneering seems like an interesting project. Love the art style!", via twitter
- "Guild Of Dungeoneering is absolutely BRILLIANT so far, keep going!", via twitter
Usually this was a cold email, but in a couple of instances I had tweeted the company to get an email address so they knew it was coming. I followed up politely a 2nd time one month later with folks who hadn't answered. Out of about 15 companies I pitched I think I heard back from 12, which is pretty good.
How far along should you be?It really depends on your own situation but I think a good rule of thumb is if you know with decent certainty when your game will be finished. Sadly this is one of the hardest things to be correct about, in my experience! You should certainly know exactly what your game will be like when finished (full scope defined), where you will be selling it, why it's interesting, who will like it, etc. Bonus points if you have good validation of your concept already from press, players, greenlight, kickstarter and the like.
What does the publisher get out of it?Generally speaking they will get a cut of all game revenue for their involvement. A handwavey ballpark amount I heard before I started this process was the publisher getting around 30%, and that's in the case where they aren't funding actual development of the game (like salaries), just partnering with you to launch it. Secondly any money they spend is generally an 'advance', ie it is loaned to the game and paid back in full from game sales before you the developer start seeing any of the revenue (this is to make up for the fact that they are taking a risk on you with this money). (Note: all of this depends entirely on the contract you sign with your publisher, and
all contracts are negotiable.)
As a first time gamedev I thought it was very worthwhile to give up a cut of revenue if partnering with a publisher meant the overall amount of sales was going to be higher. IE if their marketing money/expertise meant the game sold 50% more copies then giving up 30% of that was still an overall win.
How long does it take?For me the process took about 4 months from pitching various publishers, to getting actual offers from a few, to negotiating the actual contract we ended up signing. At certain points this took up
all my time, so be aware.
[that's all for now, I'll certainly be turning this into a proper blog post though - thanks for the poke about it!]