Generally this involves careful development of a business and technical case to take to a publisher, who will (hopefully) fund the project.

Publishers often receive hundreds of new game submissions/proposals per year, with only 10-15% making it past the initial proposal.

Of those that do survive the initial screening, less than a quarter will be funded to completion - with most of the rest being screened out at a very early stage of development.

Of the 2 or 3% that are actually completed and published, only a small fraction will be truly successful - many never recouping their development costs.

In the initial sales pitch, the game designer is trying to convince the publisher that their game is one of that tiny fraction that will actually turn a significant profit for both the publisher and the developer.

Who makes the decisions

Most publishers will have at least a few people review each serious submission, with each reviewer looking at it from different perpectives:

• Sales and marketing - How well will it sell? How much will it cost to market?

• Product development - How practical is it to build? Is the development plan technically sound?

• Legal - Are the licensing, intellectual property, and contracting plans valid and reasonable?

• Business - Is the management plan sound? How risky is the investment? Does the project make good business sense?

Where the money goes

If you're plunking down $50 at the store for a new console game, ever wondered where that money goes?

Here's a hypothetical breakdown for a successful game, assuming sales of around 200,000 copies at $50 retail each:

• retailer costs/profits: 30%
• developer costs/profits: 25%
• marketing costs: 10%
• platform royalties: 15%
• manufacturing/packaging costs: 7%
• publisher profits: 13%

What makes a good sales pitch?

Remember, you're trying to convince some very busy and very skeptical people that your game is one of that tiny fraction that is really worth there time -- and that's likely to take some serious preparation.

Pitch the game in person if at all possibly, and remember to check with the publishing company ahead of time to see if they have any special/standard game submission requirements or proceses.

Submission/sales pitch materials:

• Concept document / sell sheet
  A single page, summarizing what your game is and who will buy it. This should clearly tie in with the publisher's goals/market areas, and should be targetted as a clear summary for folks who don't see the rest of the submission.

• Company prospectus
  This summarizes your company, with the intent of showing the publisher you have the skills, assets, and experience to complete the job.

  • Overview: include your company name, logo, contact information, location(s), and a short paragraph describing your company's history, successes, and philosophies.
    Emphasize your strengths and successes!

  • Detailed team description: provide a lengthier description of your team's skills, talents, and successes.

    Include bios for the key people in the company (executive management, senior developers, key artists).

    Also be sure to include all the titles your company has worked on, and those you are currently working on with other publishers. (To comply with NDAs you have with other companies, you may need to list some of the project names or publisher names as "confidential", rather than providing the real names.)

    Most publishers will want to see proven success on the target platform and in the target genre.

  • Technical description: describe the core technology, middleware, and tools that are fundamental to the project, and the strengths these have compared to what other developers are doing.

  • Product strategy: describe your planned strategy for this product/project, as well as its potential to lead into other products/projects.

• Promotional video
  These are typically animation sequences/cutscenes that highlight the game style, gameplay, and characters/storyline for the game.

  They may be used as an alternative to, or in addition to, a game demo, and provide a look and feel for the publisher.

  AVIs may also be used by sales/marketing in the early stages.

• Demo
  Ideally a demo will be a short playable version of part of the game, illustrating the gameplay, mechanics, and look and feel of the game.

  Make sure it works on the target platform, is easy to learn to play/use quickly, and is stable enough for publisher reps to play without crashing!

  To allow people to experiment with the demo, it is highly advisable to include walk-throughs and cheats in the demo. (Few things lead to rejection quicker than a demo where the person playing it gets stuck halfway through the opening scene!)

• Game design overview
  This describes the games features in more detail than the overview (though in nowhere near the detail discussed for the game design document).

  This will likely include discussion of

  • the key characters, storyline and flow of the game
  • the gameplay mechanics, interface, and controls
  • the artistic styles (images, animation, music)
  • the online/multiplayer aspects
  • preliminary development timelines and milestones

• Technical design overview
  This should describe the technical essentials of the target platform(s), the game engine, any new or proprietary technologies, tools, and techniques.

• Competitive analysis
  This should summarize the current/forthcoming games that will be in direct competition with yours, including any available sales figures, reviews, and a short commentary on how your game stacks up against it.

• Legal considerations
  Carefully identify who owns each of the different game assets (images, names, trademarks, characters, code, music, tools, etc) including material you will be licensing from other sources.

  Initial dealings with publishers are likely to include Confidentiality Agreements or Non-Disclosure Agreements.

REMEMBER TO FOLLOW UP!

The submission process is often a slow one - it is well worth your time and effort to keep a log of who you talk to, when, and what the results were. Try to be persistant but not annoying in following up on the review process.