Publishers. Large corporations that put games
into the hands of players around the world. Publishers have the knowledge and experience to
increase sales. They can help finance development. They also have contacts to make localization,
certification and release smoother. There are some negatives too. Publishers will take a percentage
of the revenue, there is potential for a bad or one-sided contract, and corrupt publishers do
nothing for their cut. Whether you like them or hate them, if you are making games as a business,
publishers may find more players for your game.
Hello, I’m Tim Beaudet and today I am sharing my
experience pitching Turbo Boom! to publishers, why I chose to, and how I went about doing so.
Back in June 2019 the idea of Turbo Boom! was chosen from more than 20 other
ideas through an intense process. It was the most feasible and attractive idea of the bunch and
was something I planned to have finished in 4 months. (Monky: Little did he know!). By middle
August I had all the features for the game ready, and was alpha testing on my stream. The
game was highly received and players were competing on the leaderboards. This reassured
me that Turbo Boom! was an explosive hit.
After reading a few books,
articles, and post-mortems the idea of pitching Turbo Boom! to
publishers was planted in my brain. I didn’t take it seriously at first, but
after a few weeks it began to flower. There are many scary stories of publishers ripping
off small developers with unfavorable contracts. I did not require a publisher but I wanted
to see if working one would help my game and business grow. Publishers know how to market and
promote a game. They have contacts in the press and a following of players. Developers
can benefit from this relationship too.
During September 2019 I focused on
making a vertical slice of Turbo Boom! This would be pitched to publishers and
if I didn’t find a deal I was happy with, I would simply walk away. This is a very important
mindset to have when dealing with publishers. Don’t go in with “I must find one”, pay close
attention to details about how it benefits and costs you. It is a relationship, there will
be some give and take. Mid-September the game was looking great, and I picked a small amount
of the best levels to create a demo build.
I had my community test the build, made changes
and repeated the process until I was happy with the results. I then began a pitch-deck spreadsheet
to show off the best screenshots and give information to the potential publishers.
This pitch deck explained the game idea, the target audience and competitive analysis. It
also contained what I wanted from the publisher, and a little bit about my business in games.
There is a link in the description to this pitch deck and other contents.
The pitch deck took more effort than expected as it was time consuming to fine
tune each word but researching publishers took even longer. This process began with lists of
publishers found on reddit and other sources and ended by digging through similar games to
find publishers not on the list. It makes no sense to blast your email to ALL publishers, instead
find the ones that have games similar to yours. I was primarily looking for publishers of
racing games, but because Turbo Boom! has a lot of explosives so I also pitched to places
with and fast-paced action in their library.
With my target list I began to write emails. A LOT
of emails. I personalized each one to the specific publisher, and triple checked before sending that
I didn’t say “Hello Ubisoft” when pitching to EA. I did have a boilerplate paragraph about me
and the game as this was optimized for clarity and attention grabbing. I sent out more than 30
emails, then I waited. (Monky: And waited some more.) 30 is not a large number for this sort of
thing, but it was enough for me at the time.
I should note that I did not do a deep dive on
each publisher I emailed. I recommend skipping this as it would be incredibly time consuming.
But if a publisher was interested and discussion began getting serious that would be the time to
find references and dive deeper into the brand. Have you heard of the games in their library?
Contact the developers of those games to hear their experience working with the publisher.
Cover yourself because nobody else will and the publisher will be trying to make the deal sweeter
for them, you should be doing the same for you.
I had 7 responses come back, many not interested
but the care in their response email told me they took the pitch seriously. A couple responses came
back requesting more information and ultimately fizzled out. One publisher and I conversed
back and forth via email several times and wound up not making any deals because I was not
using a popular engine like Unity or Unreal.
I wrote a post on reddit about this, but having
a custom engine adds more risk to a publisher and this prevented a deal from forming.
Would it have been a deal I wanted? Unknown. But it was a valuable lesson to keep
in mind, there is more to building a custom engine than just time-cost and effort as you
can see in this video why to use an engine.
The experience of pitching Turbo Boom!
to publishers was incredibly valuable. Even if I didn’t get to talk about
deals or land a publisher to work with, I learned a lot and practiced creating
marketing/promotional material. Turbo Boom! will be coming to Steam in the
future. There is no release date at this time, but you can wishlist now to go
rally racing with explosives.
While you should approach with caution and do your
research, finding a publisher for your game can benefit you as well. Having 50-80% of a large pie
is much better than having a tiny pie to yourself. The publisher can leverage press contact, their
branding resources, following of players and more to get your game into the hands of players.
They have the promotional experience and while it isn’t impossible to do yourself, it sure
sounds like a beneficial relationship to me.
If you liked this story give it a thumbs
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game development tips and techniques.
Until later Turtles,
Have a good one!
