Time to put this forum to some good use… I hope.
I’m wondering if anyone has much experience with typical royalties paid by publishers of smaller games such as those featured on shockwave, pogo, yahoo, etc. I’m hoping to be negotiating that myself soon, but due to NDA’s and the fact that in reality most people probably don’t know, I can’t find as much information as I’d like to on the subject, I hate to go into things with the wrong impression (too high or too low).
If it’s helpful, the game is totally developed, so there isn’t any advances or anything along those lines (and if there was, I’d already know the royalty stuff since I’d have an agreement with someone long before any advances happened). I don’t expect the game to actually hit store shelves, but I can’t rule out merchandising (I might just have to get me a one off coffee cup made… this is probably about the limit of any merchandising though hehe).
I’m hoping someone of the vets here have some experience with this that they can share (on a general basis, as I’m reasonably sure specifics would mean breaking an NDA or two). Most the information I found was regarding publishing of books, which while similar, has a much different ratio of work for a publisher and developer like the developer of a book is usually one person and maybe an artist for some cover art (reference material probably involves a lot of researchers/reference people though). The publisher has to manufacture the actual books, deal with distribution, marketting, a pile of work… with computer games, the publisher still has plenty of work to do, but entire teams of people are involved in the creation of the game, really, teams of teams… this of course doesn’t apply to me, but overall I’d assume that publishers in the computer industry typically pay higher royalties than publishers of books.
Seems like cas had mentioned trying to get a game or two published, any feedback (not sure if you tried and got denied, or actually got to a point of negotiations and couldn’t get a large enough royalty to make it worth giving up control of distribution or anything)? Anyway, I appreciate whatever information can be provided, and hopefully I’ll be able to put that information to good use (by getting a game published).
