Money from publisher

Yes and so ? How is that an obstacle?

 

You have not a well known studio, so your unique way to success is to make something unique.
If you take the visuals form an asset, where is the only aspect of your game that can make you success?
It can apear a game that looks exactly like yours.

 

Concept
It was born out of love for zombie games. The player is in an urban and forest environment invaded by zombies.

Your main goal is to run a survivor in the middle of the apocalyptic, build and manage your camp, attract some
survivors, but also go out and explore your surroundings and find some interesting things along the way.

Rinse and repeat.

Who's Listening
We're talking to a core audience of chill players who love zombie and survival games with an exploration component.

Budget Requested: 188,660.26 Euros.

Personally speaking I think this is madness.

You want almost 200K for an unknown studio with no commercial success to show (or even commercial failures) and none of that is for marketing by the way so I assume you expect the publisher to cover this additional cost?

You would be incredibly lucky to get 5k -10K.

Just noticed you talk about multiplayer.... so who is paying for servers? (There is no budget listed for server cost/infrastructure).

You're in pre-production but you've got a prototype that has taken 4 months? Why are you spending 4 months making a prototype in pre-production? Your roadmap says the vertical slice comes in the production phase.

So if you are in pre-production then you don't have a vertical slice to show a publisher, right?

Just seen "Post-production: porting"

So, to recap:

- 200k budget
- Multiplayer (no budget for servers etc)
- Pc and console (no experience porting to console)
- No commercial success or any history or releasing a game
- 3/4(?) developers.
- No marketing budget

 

I think you misunderstood.
This is a wish to add new content after the game is finished. This is not planned for the initial release.

Yes and so ? A prototype is different from the vertical slice.

Yes once the game is finished we could consider a port, where is the problem?

 

The problem is that you have no idea what you're doing, everyone here can see it, and every publisher will see it too.

 

I think you are the one that doenst understand.

NOBODY IS GOING TO GIVE YOU 200000€ WITHOUT ANY PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE AND SUCH A SMALL TEAM

For your first commercial game, dont ask money to publishers, target consoles, or think on multiplayer. Just make a fun simple game, and then pay 100$, put it on Steam, learn about marketing, get experience...
And then, make another game, this time more complex (Basic p2p multiplayer, or more compex mechanics).
And, when you have made several games, earned experience(and money), created a community, then you wont need a publisher for your zombie shooter.

 

I think at this point the best idea would be to just let him try so he can see what happens. Because horses and water.

 

Yeah, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make Pytchou think

 

I'm all for optimism but you are reaching dangerous levels of hubris that will only result in failure. I think a moderate dose of reality when every publisher passes on your project will probably do you some good.

I wish you the best of luck though.

 

You have received lots of useful advice in this forum thread. Everybody is right regarding publishers. Game publishers are looking for the next unique amazing game that will generate many millions of dollars in revenue. Game publishers don't want to invest early in a project by an unproven team. Game publishers want to invest when it looks like a sure thing. Stardew Valley is an excellent example of that. The publisher did not invest before work began. The publisher got involved when it was obvious that Stardew Valley was going to be a hit. Millions of people (including me) believe Stardew Valley is one of the best games of all time. At this point, how many people believe that about your zombie game? That is the threshold for a lot of publishers. You need to convince a publisher that millions of people will one day agree that your game is one of the best games.

I read through your other threads. It looks like you are currently looking for a gameplay programmer, UI programmer, level designer, and animator. For your first game project, try to learn enough about programming to build a playable demo. Focus on a small subset of your original idea and simply release something. You will learn a lot along the way about game development. At this point, you don't even know what you don't know. That is why publishers want to invest is developers who already have experience releasing games.

 

Forget 'what ifs' like this. The question you need to have an answer to is this: if you ask a publisher for money, why should they give you that money?
If you're expecting someone to hand you a quarter of a million dollars, you'll be able to tell them why that would be a sound and logical investment, wont you?

I mean, hopefully its obvious to you that a publisher would only fund something that will make a guaranteed and acceptable profit. And you do understand that they'd want the entire investment repaid, and more, before they share an single cent of royalties with you?

So, what in your game pitch guarantees that they will get their investment back, their costs back, and a decent profit on that €200,000 investment (say €100,000) ?

Static pictures of off-the-shelf assets, an unproven team, and being the five-thousandth zombie survival game with no obvious Unique Selling Point are not going to be sufficient for that guarantee. So what do you offer that is?

Also, what's your business plan? You do have one, right? You'll have carefully planned what your costs are going to be, how that money will be used, what other funding you'll obtain, milestones, contingencies, etc etc and you'd be able to provide a publisher with all that?
And you'll accept that you'd probably owe them repayment no matter what happens, whether you finish the game or not?

I'd strongly suggest that when it comes to attracting investment, forget what your game pitch is. That wont be what gets you an investment, because it has no relationship to the success of your business and thus the worth of the investment. All it does from the perspective of an investor is identify whether your idea is particularly original or not. If you want €200,000 of investment, explain how your business can, and will, produce a game that will make a guaranteed minimum of €400,000 worth of sales.

 

This has gone on long enough. I believe enough experiences and insightful comments have been made from members who have actual experience and you are opting to ignore convention and conventional wisdom and experience.

If you provided that pitch to my team (we are an decent sized indie and much larger scale publisher) it would tossed and you would get a generic rejection letter. The game is generic (at best), zero interesting elements. No functional prototype and no experienced staff. Publishers do not invest in game ideas. Does not work that way. They invest in teams and solid products in development.

Stop making decks, and start making games. A functional game you can pitch, and experienced team you can pitch, a generic zombie shooter without the other two? Don't waste people's time. Stop posting threads discussing step 12,431 when you don't have step 1 done yet.
Closed.