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Unfortunately she is in error. Beyond the orcs, trolls and dragons there is no mythical wealth, nor cups of milk and honey. Rather, there are percentages of 4-6% on the price ex works of the game, which sells only some thousand of copies, in Italy (with few exceptions). I can illustrate a rough calculation: a game that costs 10 $ in the stores leaves the factory at about 3-4$, so the designer’s royalty for it is about 20 cents per copy. If the game sells 10,000 copies (a sort of miracle, in Italy), the designer receives 2,000$. That is, you have a good quantity of milk and honey (about 1,500 litres), but this doesn’t change your life. Therefore, only a small number of designers succeeds in making a living on games. Among these designers, very few can do the work by creating only what they really want; often they must yield to think up ‘monetary’ things, like an advertisement Game of Goose. Enter the editor. The person who will
actually consider the game you submitted to the company is called an “editor”;
that is, a professional reader. In small companies like daVinci, he is
the editor-in-chief himself (me!), in larger companies the editor is usually
a guy who screens among all the proposals, and passes on to the editor-in-chief
only the most interesting ones. The editor has 150 life points to survive
the hardest rules sets. Moreover, he has some special abilities like the
ones of the Druids: he is usually keen on games and knows many of them.
Through experience, an editor is able to notice a camouflaged “Fox
and the gooses” or some not-enough-playtested rules. Crime doesn't pay, playtest does. Here
follow the main points about playtesting. Your game should be tested in
all the situations presented in the rules, before submitting it. Some
minor faults can escape even an in-depth analysis, but you must playtest
hard in order to eliminate the greater faults (if you want the editor
to continue reading your rules). If on page one you write that the game
is for 2 to 6 players, and that each player receives a hand of 8 cards,
while the cards in the box are only 36... you most likely have tested
the game with at most 4 players. If the designer herself had no desire
to try her own game, why should the publishing company do it for her?
The games publishing company. Before
submitting your game proposals, try to know the potential recipients.
For example, it is almost useless to send games full of engines and strange
objects – like Looping Louie – to Cheapass, a company that
prints in thrift. Or those rules for collectible card games to the Chess
and no more, Inc. Statements like “Well, they have published only
games for Playstation until now, but maybe they want to open a chessboard
line of games” simply don’t pay. It would be not very different
to submit your game to Ford or “Animals’ Friends” association!
Should I patent the game? Two letters: no.In Italy, as well as in most other countries, it’s practically impossible to patent a rules set. If your game is, let’s say, Looping Louie, it would be probably possible to patent the mechanical apparatus that moves the cute little plane, but it would not be possible to patent the rules for playing it. As a matter of fact, the simplest way to protect a game is its publication. Patenting, sending a sealed copy of the game to you, and filing it to a notary: all the solutions do not protect against copy. But who wants to copy a game? The last “hit” of the small Italian market is dated at least 20 years ago!, with the exceptions of games based on television licenses (that sells a box, not the game inside). The Italian games publishing companies that publish games created by external authors can be truly counted on the fingers of one hand, and each year publish, all together, 5-6 titles at most (and have possibly a long queue of soon-to-be-printed games). There are few persons keen on games, and they more and more turn to the foreign markets… If you want to protect your game, anyway, I think that the only feasible way is the self-production. Publish an edition by yourself or on a magazine, and then propose it to game companies that could be interested: now you have some minimal guarantees. For the self-edition, it is recommended to ask a professional printer that also works for third parties. A professional product costs more, naturally, but it is possible to send it and sell it to people beyond the circle of the designer’s friends. The proposal. At this point, we suppose that from the distillate of playtest, blind playtest, experts’ readings, building of beautiful prototypes, an interesting game has emerged. Now you have to write to the game companies you picked out as possible publishers. How to introduce yourself? By writing. An e-mail or a letter is enough: it’s not necessary to phone the company or to meet the editor personally. Just explain how your game works, and try, if you can, to do it in less than a page. Don’t be too formal on the heading of the letter: personally, I have read even letters beginning with “Dear head-hunter”... these make me feel like reading my books of Gary Larson, instead (do you remember that strip with the big head fellow who is the “Moby Dick” of head-hunters?). If you like, begin with “I am a games designer…” and good luck! Try to avoid indirect offenses (“I am told that you really need good games!”) or direct ones (“Who grants me that you will not steal my idea?”), unnecessary boastings (“My mother really liked my game!”, “This famous person said that it is wonderful!”), threatening proposals (“Can I meet you to test my game?”), and, moreover, avoid ultimatums (“I expect an answer from you in one week at most!”). As for the other stuff, almost everything goes. The art of waiting. Now your counterpart (the game publishing company) has to carry out a work on your game, and, very important, you are not paying this work. What moves the company is the hope to discovery a good game: sometimes it happens – to be optimistic – once out of 100 submissions (for the big companies; I’d say once out of 10,000 in our case). This search has indeed some costs associated to it – including industrial risks – since it involves persons that are variously paid to dig and dig, looking for that gold nugget that somebody else said to find, in the same region, in some other time. I am not saying to beatify the editors, but at least think for a moment about their very heavy and ungrateful job that they must go through… and the time it does require!
Some potentially “problems generator” designers have been discarded in spite of interesting ideas: if a designer shows since now – that is, when he is yet unpublished – a natural feeling towards money and lawyers, it’s reasonable that after the publication he will cause nuisances rather than sales. Unfortunately often unpublished designers write dangerous things in their presentations. But the editor always hopes to be able to distinguish between the ingeniousness (“my friend, a patent lawyer, says that this game is absolutely original”) and the impending danger (“I showed this game to some other games companies, but they are a group of criminals, and I warned them through my lawyer not to use my idea”). The bigger companies, that have specific solicitor’s offices specialized in suing you and removing your underclothes together with your copyrights, may throw off your presentation letter as well, and simply evaluate the game. As I said before, when you submit something you should have always in mind the recipient. Let’s go back to your submission. You are now waiting… what? If everything goes well, you will receive an agreement or a contract (wow!), which will establish duration, the percentage of royalties owed, and other things that we will probably describe in another article. But, as we said before, the number of games published yearly in Italy is ridiculously low nowadays. So, even with a signed contract, the game box with your name on will only see the shelves in time intervals that vary from six months (a miracle!) to two years or more. This time generates additional stress… but at least you will have time to design other games, obviously!
 If you read the article above, you know how to submit
your game or your prototype to an earnest or famous company. But let’s
take a step backward: how to produce a decent prototype of your beloved
game? |
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