Suggestion for Publishers

[pinstar]

At the moment, the publisher phase is a mixed bag. Depending on what contracts you are offered, you might find it a easy breeze to hit 100k fans or a tooth and nail slog through garbage contracts. To add a little RPG element, allow me to suggest the following.

When you first research medium games and unlock publisher contracts…the list will be a bit different. Every single publisher will have exactly one offering. (So you’ll see more than 4 listings total). All of them will demand a specific topic/genre/platform/age group. All of them will only offer a 7-8% royalty, but all of them will only have a 4.0+ score expectation. They’re all going to suck, more or less.

Every time you complete a contract for a specific publisher AND meet their score requirement, you level up your relation with them. So say I make a game for Active Visions and it meets their 4.0 score requirement. The next contract offered by active visions will be better.

They will offer a higher royalty 8-9% and have a higher score expectation (5.0). They will also only demand 3 aspects and leave the fourth up to you. So they might demand a specific topic, genre, and age group, but let you pick the platform.

Each time you successfully complete a contract AND hit the target score for a publisher, the next contract will have a higher royalty rate, have one more aspect that is flexible for you to choose and also have a higher expectation.

At the highest relationship level, the publisher will offer you a 13-14% royalty contract, with complete freedom as to what game you want to make (any topic, any genre, any platform, any audience)…but also have an 8.0+ score expectation.

Each publisher has its own relationship level with you.

If you fail to hit a target score on a publisher’s game, you do not go down in level with them unless you are at max level.

[Deskairn]

I like this idea, but am I entirely weird to say that I want them to be a little more random than that? Maybe make one publisher at a time treating you as if you’re in a better relationship with them than they really are. A random event that makes one of the publishers like you would also be a good thing. (“The VP of [Paperclips] at [Publisher] is a fan of your games! They’re offering better publishing contracts to us and hope we’ll work with them more in the future.”)

I also find it ridiculous whenever publishers offer an ‘anything goes’ contract. I’m not convinced they should ever be that generous. They should have to be targeting something.

As long as it doesn’t have a truly miserable royalty rate, taking an ‘anything goes’ contract is still worth doing even when you’re far enough in the game to self-publish. You shed some of the money you could’ve gotten, but publisher-backed contracts very reliably give me more fans than self-publishing. Those extra fans mean setting up my future games for greater success.

[Toad004]

I think publishers should be able to contract a sequel to a game they published. Of course, this means that you are very restricted - the game’s name will likely be locked, and every aspect (or almost every) as well. Possibly even the engine might be something Active Visions forced you to use
(this might be a boon if their engine is better than yours).

A publisher that likes you enough should be able to request a long term contract (for example, they want a trilogy of games). They would have a time limit (release all three games in 6 years) but very high royalties and fans if successful.

At the late game, you should be able to BE the publisher. Say your team is stacked with design ans sucks at tech - hire another company to design an action game for you. This would also allow your team to design a game while the other company ALSO designs games as well.