How To Find a Publisher For Your Indie Game

Many game developers in Indonesia, especially those who develop premium games, are looking for publishers to help make their games successful. Having a publisher allows us to focus on game development, as the selling aspects of the game will be handled by the publisher. Furthermore, many publishers even provide funding for our game development. But remember, this isn’t a grant, but a “debt” that must be repaid through the game’s revenue share. Of course, this means there’s risk sharing and a potential to make the game more successful if we work with a publisher.

The biggest question is, where can we find a publisher and how do we properly choose which publisher we should approach? To find a publisher, you can simply google game publishers. Fortunately, there are kind-hearted people who have compiled a list of existing publishers. I don’t know how up-to-date this list is, but at least you can see there are approximately 300 publishing and funding companies you can explore. Here’s the complete list on Alan’s Gamedev Resource link.

What you need to do is filter that publisher list according to your needs. After that, you study each name on it and possibly create a list of publishers most compatible with your game. You can look at the portfolio of games they publish, the vision of the publisher, even assess the performance of the publisher from the games they’ve already published, and the scale of the games they typically publish. You’ll need to take notes on each publisher, so when you send an introductory email later, you can also add why you think that publisher will be a good fit for your game.

Once you have a list of potential publishers, you can still email blast the rest. Who knows, they might be looking to expand the collection of games they publish. Maybe they usually publish strategy games, but suddenly they’re looking for a beat-em-up game. We don’t know, right? So, there’s no harm in sending them an email too. So, keep your spirits high in finding a publisher and securing a deal for your game. If anyone is still confused, feel free to ask in the comments section. And you can follow to this medium to get daily updates from me.

Original post from my blog, ardisaz.com