Okay, several years after writing the tweets which basically said this exact same stuff and being told by a friend to, “blog this”, I actually am. Better late than never, huh?
This is not intended to be a guide, nor is it intended to be correct / absolute / insert-custom-superlative-of-your-choice. It’s intended to be a list of things to consider, to have in the back of your mind – things which have been in my mind and which I regard as reasonable considerations.
Look into the track record of the publisher
Nowadays we have convenient things such as SteamSpy. There have been lots of things written about sites like this in terms of how misleading they can be in terms of absolute financial values, however you can get a pretty good grasp of trends.
So look at the list of recent games to the publisher’s credit, ignore those which are made by the studio itself (if they have a development arm), and consider how many of those remaining had marketing pushes which you recall in any way at all.
Look to see the ratio of well performing published games and badly performing published games. Is this publisher signing a large amount of games in the hope that one or two performs well for them (the shooting fish in a barrel approach) as opposed to being more select and thus displaying more consistency in terms of performance?
When I’ve looked into some of these figures, it’s certainly appeared to me, that there have been certain games which had a moderate marketing campaign on the run up to launch, and then on the numbers not being super-strong in the first week, marketing was basically pulled. The publisher deciding very early on, “this game isn’t going to sell what we hoped”, and then yanking further spending on it. You don’t want to be this game especially if you’re now locked into a contract where a sizeable portion of whatever meagre sales you do now get is not even coming to you. What did you get for your percentage? A yanked marketing campaign.
On the flip-side, if you’re dealing with a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel publisher, then if you’re lucky enough to perform incredibly well in sales, then the percentage you’ve agreed on is effectively subsidising the games which didn’t sell. They’d want to make all the money from you to cover the costs of the turkeys they just threw out there speculatively to see what happens.
Consider the publisher’s brand
Most people are not going to know nor care who “My Indie Game Company” is. Publishers, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more commonly known. Does this publisher have a reputation for a certain type of game over others? A reputation for quality? Does your game fit nicely within this set? Would you be proud to have their name next to your game?
Good publishers will, themselves, be considering this too. A sign of a good publisher is getting a rejection on the grounds that it’s not that they don’t like your game (they might be saying lovely things about it in the rejection letter and wishing you great success), but that it simply doesn’t fit with the types of games they publish. Remember these people for when you do make the type of game they publish 😉
Good publishers say “no” and provide good reasons. Getting a rejection, while disappointing, should indicate at the very least that this is probably a publisher worth putting on the top of the pile for the future.
Read the contract
Obviously. But it needs stating – do not inadvertently lock yourself in because you didn’t notice the bit which said, “and all future related products”. In fact, if you read something to that effect then it’d probably be best to tear the contract up and run screaming for the hills. Good publishers don’t put crap like this in there.
Don’t be afraid to negotiate the contract
There are myriad ways to agree on financial splits while remaining fair to all parties. Consider tabling a variable percentage – lower baseline percentage, but rising for every n sales until it maxes out at this meatier higher percentage. Incentivise the publisher to really push your game, in other words – incentivise them to take slightly more risk than perhaps they would otherwise do.
You don’t necessarily need a publisher at all
If the primary thing you want out of a publisher relationship is a nice marketing push for your game, well many publishers use external PR firms for this. You could approach these firms directly and see what they can offer you. It’d be worth doing anyway, to be honest, so that when you talk with the publishers you’ve got something you can point at and say, “well I can get all this professional marketing for that amount, so what extra are you going to provide to justify this additional cost?”
If nothing else, that conversation can help solidify exactly what value this particular publisher brings to the table, what their strengths are, and how that will benefit your game long-term.