Well-know Indie Game Publishers

What are some good indie game publishers?

I know Garage Games is one of the best, but they're pretty tough to get accepted by.

I found this publisher recently, and it looks promising: http://www.alten8.com

Any thoughts? Suggestions? I know this is a very basic question ;)

Edit: On second hand, Alten8 looks ehh...

www.BigFishGames.com

Chronic Logic is publishing my game. They are amazing, been great to work with :)

www.chroniclogic.com

My suggestion is just publish it everywhere you can. There's a billion places now. All of these casual games out as of late make rounds at every place.

Yeah, wasn't it Garage Games that was put up on sale on EBay that one time? Maybe it was Interplay, I wouldn't be a bit surprised... Speaking of which, wasn't Interplay a publisher during their time, or just a developer? I know that Virgin was the publisher for the Descent series, if I'm not mistaken, but outside of that, tho. R.I.P. Interplay...

If I remember correctly the first Descent was Interplay. They published some great games, most noteably fallout...I'm so grrr that Bethesda is doing fallout 3 >.<

But yeah, IKG, just look around like Jeremy said. If your making a casual game or a simplistic game almost any of the basic publishers would pick you up if you have a demo or full game to show off. If your going the more hardcore route, you might have to find a more specific company to cater to your needs, but there are def plenty to choose from.

That's not quite the same. You're saying "sell" it everywhere. A publisher needs to wrap it, slap their logo on it, and get it on the portals and shareware sites for you, unless you "self-publish".

Yeah, I don't think a publisher would allow you to.

Chronic Logic looks promising. Do they sell a lot of games? Are they very strict?

Well, Gish alone did amazingly well. It won one of the Independent Games Festival grand prizes one year. Their popularity has skyrocketed since then. That's not to mention all the other games they sell now. So I'd say they are doing very well. In terms of the strict thing, I would say not at all. They are very good with letting the developer keep their IP. It seems they stick to selling and marketing, and let the dev keep to making the game. Which is exactly how it should be.

But, and this goes for any publisher, always look at what kind of games they already sell. CL tends to do much less casual games, as that market is overly saturated to begin with. They do more non-conventional titles. I would say definatly talk to them, it coulden't hurt.

However, if you want to have it go anywhere, I would highly recommend you go in with a design doc, and a prototype. Have a full document written up about how the game should work, and have a small prototype outlining some of the game's key features. If you're game is already done, even better. :)

I didn't mean "strict" like that ;)

I'm still a long way off from getting a publisher anyway.

I didn't mean "strict" like that ;)

I'm still a long way off from getting a publisher anyway.

By far one of you most popular publishers of the time was Apogee/3D Realms. Of course, I don't think they do much publishing anymore, R*/Take Two is doing publishing for them... Stupid corporate takeovers, Grr...

We almost did a deal with RealArcade (a few years ago) for Sticky Balls. Their royalty rate was pretty rubbish (less than 25% I think for exclusive rights). I don't think that's a good deal when they aren't funding or even spending marketing money.

With Naked War we've decided to go it alone and start our own online Publisher. It'll probably cost us sales to start with but you have to start somewhere and we pay ourselves a much higher royalty rate (80%).

We are actually operating the publisher as a separate entity and ourselves (as The Pickford Brothers) are 'signed' up as an independant developer on the said royalty rate.

If we sign up any other games, the developers will be on the exact same rate.

Our aim isn't for Zee-3 to make its money by stiffing developers. The idea is that it, as a publisher, maximises the revenue from any given property. Which means going after console deals etc. Zee-3 is more like our agent. It's important that Zee-3 has control (but not outright ownership) of the rights. It needs to be free to make the best deals to exploit the property.

Console deals? Does that mean Zee-3 is going to get involved in retail publishing (i.e. boxes on store shelves), or do you mean online console games, a la Live Arcade?

No we don't plan to directly publish on consoles, but we plan to license our games to console publishers. Live Arcade is definitely a possibility. There's also a similar set up on PS3. "Boxes on Shelves" deals are quite possible but probably unlikely for Naked War or our current upcoming stuff. Although DS versions could happen.

We've been approached by a couple of interested parties already so it looks promising.

Ah, I see. Sounds like you're going places. I expect your industry contacts and reputation is going to help, too. :)

Best of luck.

Yeah, I dunno what, if any, indie publishers would want to publish for Nintendo's "Virtual Console" at all. I believe that Nintendo was going to have some indie games, but they're gonna cost a little more than the classic library, tho.

I would imagine that *every* indie publisher would be keen to publish on Nintendo's Virtual Console, Microsoft's Live Arcade or Sonys system.

This is extremely interesting :-)

This is very interesting. John, what kind of game should I/we be developing for you to become interested? :)

Something original - in as far as it isn't a clone of any other game - and something with crossover potential to consoles. I don't think we'd be interested in over crowded, high-budget genres like FPS or Racing games. But I think original, fun, quirky games can compete on their own terms.

We're not actively looking for games just yet - I think we should prove ourselves with our own games first. At this stage we don't have a lot to offer compared to established publishers.

That said, if the right game came along and the developer was willing to take a chance with us (and that means exclusive) then we'd consider it.

Royalty rate doesn't matter as much to me. If the rate sucks but they can sell a lot, then I'll be choosing them over me. You'll be earning more money than if you just sold it on your own for 100% profit.

That makes no sense. You have to balance both factors and work out which makes the most sense for you.