Who do I market my game to and how?

Hi Flygirl

First thing is taking a step back.

You know that you want to sell/license it to a publisher but it is not usually so easy or all of us would be published. Hundreds of games get pitched to publishers for every one that gets made.

I would suggest you start by doing some reading. Get a copy of the Board Game Inventor’s Guidebook for example and certainly start reading through the posts here. There are certain things publishers expect of you and if you don’t approach them properly they assume you are unprofessional. I can’t tell you all you need to know in this post or even 1% of it. What I can tell you is rushing ahead of yourself is the first path to failure.

Not to discourage you but in case you have the idea that game designers make easy money that is not usually the case. If you are fortunate enough to get your game published you might get 5% to 8% of what they sell it to the distributed for which is 40%-%50% SRP. That’s only $.60 - $1.20 on a $30 game. If you use a broker to help place you with a publisher they might take 25% of that.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, this is the game industry we are talking about after all.

Good luck and keep asking questions.

Be warned asking me questions about myself may lead to long boring stories.

I have designed many games. Some are even good ;)

I have self published a game in very small quantity with another coming out for fall, have one in development with an American publisher and another is under consideration by a German publisher.

As to who makes the games we all play it depends. Most game company can’t afford to have full time designers on the payroll and most game designers don’t make enough money to do it as their sole source of income. Games are designed by engineers, teachers, lawyers, burger flippers, students, etc.. and of course a handful of full timers.