Hi all!
I'm a software developer from Russia. I've developed a demo-version of a 2D point'n'click adventure game in my spare time. Now I want to offer it to the game publishers hoping they'll fund the further development of the game. I understand, that each case is considered separately, but maybe there is something like a more or less standard indie adventure funding range?
It would be a shame to ask for a completely minimal sum (in my case it's $2000) which will cover only the most necessary expenses and will lead to reducing the amount of levels/animations/etc just in order to not scare off the publishers, while those publishers may consider both $2k and $20k as not such a big deal in both cases (I think that $20k is a maximum amount of money that I'll need).
Also what do you think about my $2-20k range? Maybe $2k is too small in any case, and $20k is too much for an indie-adventure?
Thanks beforehand for your answers!
How much money should I ask for a game development from a publisher?
A publisher might want to see a full budget breakdown, not just one number too. e.g. Exactly what the money will be spent on. You can actually go to them with multiple budgets for different prices, with different promises attached to each - a cheaper smaller version and a more expensive fuller version.
Are there even 'publishers' for this kind of low budget game nowadays? I always assumed that aside from specialist stuff like webgames, to get any kind of market you would be doing it for iOS / android, in which case surely you would be using google / apple to 'publish' (they just take a cut).
If what you mean is you need a cash advance for development, you don't necessarily need a publisher you just need an investor / investors, in which case there are other options like crowdfunding sites, casinos etc. I get the impression most people at this level self fund.
>> How much money should I ask for a game development from a publisher?
find one first - if you can. if you do, see what they offer. if they ask you how much you need, say 4K, then drop back to 2K if they balk at 4K. but at those dollar levels, self funded is the typical approach.
the big question is how much can the game make? how many units per month at what price point for how many months? that's what a publisher will weigh against any figure you ask for upfront.
and the big questions for how much it can make for small games are: how unique is it? how high quality is it? how much fun is it? how mass appeal is it? how addictive is it?
you don't want to be "yet another whatever game". you don't want to be second rate quality vs your direct competitors. you want lots of people to find it fun and addictive. not all game types are fun and addictive to lots of people.
Hodgman's advice for a budget breakdown is more important than what the publisher might want. This is essential to operating. If you're asking for money and have no clue how much money you need, you have no business asking for money in the first place. Simple as that. And we can't answer this for you. We have _no idea_ what the details of y our project are, the the level of detail we need to give you a real number requires far more data than you can post to the forum (and would take a lot of work on our end, which we're not going to do for you).
Step one is to properly estimate your project. That entails breaking it down to its component pieces and milestones and estimating them all individually, determining what can be parallelized in the development cycle, and building a schedule. The cost of the project derives almost entirely from the schedule; the vast vast majority of your costs are a pure function of how many people you need working and for what length of time.
Breaking down the project is going to be the hard part. You have to be fine-grained and _experienced_ to do this. "2D renderer" is not fine-grained. "Parallax background GLSL shader" is too fine-grained for this stage.
The second part is being realistic about time. This is basically the problem of task estimation turned up to 11. Remember to count time for research, prototyping, main development, QA and bug-fixing, polish, and continued maintenance costs. You might be able to whip up a renderer in a week but over the length of the project that renderer is probably going to cost you many man-months of effort. You must be realistic; you want to err on the side of over-estimation if you must err at all, but you want the estimate to be as tight/accurate as possible. Over-estimating makes your project look more expensive and less likely to get approved, but under-estimating is just going to lead to eventual project cancellation and a bad rep. Again, you need a lot of experience to do this well.
On a complete side note, publishers rarely take submissions for game ideas for unknown third parties. If you have a relationship with an existing publisher you might be able to get them to assist in the high-level planning/development (in fact, they'll almost certainly insist in having one of their people plan and oversee how their money is spent). Small indie games were only ever able to flourish in the first place because of the ability to self-publish. Also recall that if a publisher is involved, even if your game is a breakaway success that they're going to make all the money. You'll get your development fees (if you're lucky, you might even make a profit off that) and _maybe_ some very small percentage of sales (after the publisher makes back their investment, including their administrative and marketing and distribution fees that will be many times larger than your development costs). Publishers aren't there to help you; they're there to make money for themselves.
Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful!
I might add that I have a playable demo, so I think that some of my tasks are partly solved, like 2D renderer, script parsing, etc (but I may be certainly wrong about that, software development is surely full of surprises :) ).
If I don't put any salary for me in the budget (so I stay on my current day job and will be developing the game in my free time), reduce the amount of content and stick to the most necessary expenses only, then I can make it with $2000, I guess. But maybe all that sacrifices are needless and maybe I can be so bold to ask for a bigger sum not fearing to scare off the publishers. I understand that I should go into the details with my budget and so on, but now I'm just trying to know some kind of funding levels to get a picture of publishing budgets.
Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful!
I might add that I have a playable demo, so I think that some of my tasks are partly solved, like 2D renderer, script parsing, etc (but I may be certainly wrong about that, software development is surely full of surprises :) ).
If I don't put any salary for me in the budget (so I stay on my current day job and will be developing the game in my free time), reduce the amount of content and stick to the most necessary expenses only, then I can make it with $2000, I guess. But maybe all that sacrifices are needless and maybe I can be so bold to ask for a bigger sum not fearing to scare off the publishers. I understand that I should go into the details with my budget and so on, but now I'm just trying to know some kind of funding levels to get a picture of publishing budgets.
If you have a day job, and that pays more than the bare minimum to pay your bills (don't know what the wages are in russia in software development, especially now), why even go looking for a publisher at all?
2k$ is a tiny sum. Not saying its nothing, certainly chucking 2k$ out of the window is a bad idea, but: you will need to put in quite some of your own time to find, approach, and eventually win over a publisher. You know, actually finding one that DOES listen to small Indies is hard work already. Might take you days of searching, unless somebody can recommend one. Then you will need to prepare a pitch. You got a Demo, great. You still will need to put in many hours to make your pitch sound professional, else the publisher will most probably not trust you with even 2000$.
And then, as other have said, you will have to accept a deal that favours the publisher, not you. Maybe put in extra work because the publisher want alterations to your concept, maybe present at Milestones (if that even makes sense for such a small project).
That extra work put in by you could easely cost MORE than 2k$ in your own time.
(Again, don't know what your hourly rate is, but even if its only 5$ per hour, that is 400 hours, which translates to 10 work weeks around here. How many days will you spend looking for publishers, preparing and improving your pitch, negotiating a contract and discussing the specifics, communicating back and forth with the publisher? That could translate to many work weeks quickly)
Why not see if you can pay the 2000$ out of your own pocket? With savings or Stuff like that? Its a risk, and you have to burden the full risk. But at least you will profit IF you are successfull.
Why not run a Kickstarter (or IndieGogo or whatever is the equivalent available to users from russia) if you cannot pay the money out of your pocket? Again, there is some work involved to run a successfull Kickstarter campaign (usually people say 3+ months of preparation would be good)... but you get something in addition to the money if you succeed, a community already invested in your game, and a first successfull test if there is enough interest in your game concept to justify the work you still have to put in.
