[Musings of a Game Store Owner] Getting the Games Published : A Series

I'm a game store owner. I sell games to geeks & nerds like you every day.

I've talked about how we have more than one distributor, to get the best variety of games, to offer multiple avenues for the hard to find game, and to offer the best possible service we can; because our customers expect it. 

Getting the games from the distributors is relatively easy. We call them up, and we order whatever items we need, and they get shipped to us. 

But how do the items get to the distributors? How do those intelligently designed games I talked about a while ago get from the minds of their creators into the hands of the folks that want to play them?

There are a lot of ways to get a game from a sketch on a napkin to a full fledged project that sits on shelves. Every route has its ups and downs, fun and futility, strengths and weaknesses. For the designer with dreams of putting an incredible idea into the hands of gamers everywhere, a walk through of the landscape might be in order. 

I'm just doing an overview of the different methods here, and in weeks to come, I'll get more in depth, with interviews, example projects and a lot more. 

The brass ring of getting your game marketed is through direct publication by a big name like WotC, Paizo, Fantasy Flight, Corvus Belli or someone with just as much recognition. This avenue is a giant ride, and most of it is downhill. However, the payout (when it happens) is HUGE. 

There's DIY- Do it yourself. This is a road filled with risk, but almost no compromise. Every time you fund your own project, you hold out hope that some one out there loves it as much as you do. Sometimes you're right and other times you are flat out wrong.

There's third party - Publication of a product for a "big name", but using a "smaller scale" company to get your game out there. This is a different kind of work than direct calls for publication from the big names, or getting directly hired. It involves several rounds of editing and jumping through hoops, but is a ton more accessible than scaling the ivory towers. 

There's Kickstarter; which has a lot of people all excited, and tons of people using it to fund projects without a lot of corporate involvement. It's tremendously popular, and even the big guys are using it for funding. For a smaller name, the playing field isn't even, and getting your project noticed is almost a job itself. 

I personally know people who have managed to succeed in publication in all of these venues. I'm getting a lot of them together to talk to me about their experiences, the process, and other things that might be helpful for the fledgling game designer. I'll report what I find, and share it with you in my usual chatty fashion.

There might be a few other options I've missed, and if that's the case, I'll devote a week to them as well. If you guys have questions or ideas, pass them on, and I'll try my best to address them so we can see more good stuff on the shelves. And then I'll sell it to you =)