For those who have finished games, have you considered any low cost retail deals? I have turned down many of these offers in the past, because I worry about how it will affect my online sales. I realize that it's a big world out there, and most people would be very unlikely to encounter both, but it still scares me

Also, I do not trust most publishers to actually pay on time (or pay at all for that matter). So these offers always give me a "bad feeling". Plus, I like being able to say "Not available in stores" on my website :)

Thanks,
Mike

What do you mean by low cost? Are you referring to the low pay (not cost) deals, like those budget compilations that only offer you a few hundred (or less) dollars? If so, I tend to think those deals aren't really cost effective by the time you figure in negotiations and everything.

I mean low cost in terms of games that show up at walmart for $9.99 or lower, where the developer may see 25 cents per copy sold...

Hey Mike,

I've done a few of them... primarily in Europe, since North America has pretty much dried up for LCR deals.

I think there is very little overlap in online and store customers - I've never had a single e-mail from a customer complaining that they found a cheaper version in stores - and I'm estimating that there must have been at least 10,000 copies of various LCR versions sold over the years.

A few things I've done to get around the problem of the lower price retail version vs the regular price online version:

- cut down levels in the LCR version. We did this for Colony (LCR version has I think 40 Levels, online has 60), and might do this for Wonderland as well (70 vs 85). The LCR dealer doesn't really care, and that way you can justify to the consumer the difference in price - if a customer should complain.

- have the LCR company not publish the price on their online site.

- have LCR versions only available in certain countries. None of our LCR versions are currently sold in the states, where of course most of our online sales come from.

Primarily though the LCR deals aren't worth a lot of money, and hence not a lot of effort. In days past we used to get a fairly good advance payment ($5000 and up per title), and then it didn't matter how much it sold. Those days are gone, you can hardly get an advance anymore, and/or they are tiny amounts. We have an offer for an LCR version for Wonderland, but I just can't make up my mind if I should take it. It's extra work, and might not pay a lot at all. Especially in comparison now that online sales for Wonderland have really taken off.

Hope any of this helps,
Patrick

25 cents may not be such a bad deal really. Think about it this way. If they sell 10,000 of them, you'll get $2500. But of all the people who bought it, would they have found your website to purchase it for the full price that you were asking? You have to look at your target market. If you don't think they would end up at your website or have downloaded a copy of your game anyway, then getting 'only' 25 cents is better than getting nothing. On the other hand, if your target audience is already visiting your website, selling like that would actually hurt you.

Major hardware distributors (Dell, Gateway, Apple, etc) offer less than that, although their volume more than makes up for it. I looked into retail publishing extensively a while back and it's not cheap by any means. It can cost upwards of $15 for the packaging alone, depending on what you want. Obviously just a pressed CD and a full color insert will be much much less, but you get the idea.

We're avoiding retail outlets for the time being because we feel that not only are the margins better with online distribution, we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. Do well at one thing, and then expand. If your game is already successful online, then talk to some mainstream computer vendors. Maybe you can get them to distribute your game installed on their machines. You'd be amazed at how much money you can make. 10 cents per distribution on 1 million machines? Yea, I suppose I'd take it.

The publicity alone would be worth it. You may take a reduced income on one game, but the increased site traffic may lead to extensive sales of your other games. If you go that route, let us know how it goes.

I've done several such deals. It's hard to find good ones though that are worth the time and effort. Many LCR deals will not make the developer more than $1000 total, and many end up paying $0. I've had at least two publishers go out of business shortly after releasing our games. One of them filed for bankruptcy as soon as our game hit the shelves, and we didn't see a dime in royalties.

Also, many LCR publishers are very difficult to deal with. They present you with a contract that's only 2-3 pages long and missing many key sections (like precisely when and how you get paid, who handles tech support, and a deadline in which the game must be released). Sometimes when I look at such a contract, I just say, "I'll pass," because I know this publisher doesn't know what they're doing. In fact, I've learned from past experience that the quality of the contract is a pretty good indication of the quality of the publisher. If the publisher presents you with a clearly written contract that covers all the bases, that's a very good sign. But this is surprisingly rare.

Thanks, Patrick, Mtaber, Steve:

Your thoughts echo mine pretty much. Mtaber's suggestion of a bundle deal would definitely be worth it. But those aren't so easy to come by :)

The other thing is that my experience in the past has been that it's very difficult to get anyone to actually pay- which is sad.

Another factor is this: what if a really great exclusive deal were to come along, but you couldn't do it because you already set up non-exclusives with some smaller outfits.

Patrick: I had a similar tempting offer for Best Friends. I bet it's the same publisher. I probed it a lot, but eventually turned it down because of uncertainty.

Do you consider publishing in retail stores as an advancement
in your game developing carrer?

I know that anyone here would wish to go in the way of
Id software or such (going from shareware to fully succesful
retail line of products)

but is this the way to do that?
do you consider this as a step before getting a deal with a large
publishing company?

or in another words, is the low price worth of the publicity
and the credit that you get if you were to turn to a large
publishing company?

I consider it a one-time shot to make some money. In general, it actually detracts from my ultimate goal. Would you rather make 5000$ selling a game to a LCR publisher, or make an improvement to your games/site that increases your sales by 10% forever?

So, at least for me, I consider it a distraction mainly. I have had games on the shelves before, and it ain't all it's cracked up to be!

I don't prefer to work with retail publishers anymore. I only got bad experience. Some aren't real publishers, but acting as an agent. One publisher didn't send the signed contract to me, the contactperson said they will send it, but they never did. So I don't want to work anymore with retail publishers. Also I heard many bad stories from other developers. So I don't want to take any risk anymore. Also the time that it was possible to cooperate well with retail publishers (like ID did with GT Interactive) is over. So the future is online marketing for developers.