I''m not particularly experienced in this field, but it seems to me that the goal of a company/individual''s first game should be to build up as large of a userbase as possible, many of whom will probably purchase the next game released by the company no matter how it''s released. So, the first game should be released via a publisher like RealNetworks, AND you should do your best to publicize on your own. Then the next game you can go the same route, or you can opt to release it on your own and still expect at least a good portion of those users to purchase it whereas if you didn''t have that userbase you couldn''t expect that.

Has any research been done on the costs and methods of advertising for games?

How to get a game into a store would be really good info. Phone numbers and addresses, ect.

I''ll be working on production methods and costs next week.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com
http://www.teenproductions.com

@Kevin:

Advertising in a games mag. costs you about 5000$ > a page.
Banner advertising on download.com costs similiar amounts.
Premium positions for your game on other download sites are negotiable and dependend on the site. You can expect anything between 100$ and again 5000$.

For the covermount edition of Smugglers 2 I will take some small advertising pics. With a range of 1.5 million people for the covermount edition in Germany I will charge about 100$ for each rotating banner ad and 500$ for a permanent banner. If someone is interested: e-mail: contact@nbsd.de

<<<>>>>
Call the call center of the appropriate store and ask for a person responsible for your case. At least in Germany that''s all you need to do to get to the right persons.

Publishers upfront money to devolpers, they handle all the advertisement, marketing, QA, liscensing, and more. In general, they take all the monetary risks. I don''t see posts here crying when publishers lose money on games, while the devolpment house is unaffected. If I took most of the monetary risks, I would expect most of the monetary rewards, plain and simple.


Mike

We are obviously talking about budget publishers which don''t pay the development of a game and only in very very rare cases pay advances.

Also I never have seen a publisher cry when a developer lost money. Hell, do you think development costs no money? Yes, a kid at home programming maybe does not lose money. But the serious people here already have a degree or at least - like me - are studying.

I want to clarify though that I am not crying or bitching about anything. If I were them I would do the same. But because I am not a publisher I can tell everyone to be sly and avoid them.

If you want to do a fullprice game and a publisher finances the project from the beginnng - fine go ahead. I''ve never seen anyone on this (business) board developing like this though.