How to publish my game?

Be aware that there's a huge difference between "sounds good" and "is good" and the difference is this huge chasm called hard work.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, just be aware that you still have a long way to go. It's exciting to see that your idea has legs, but it's the development of the idea, testing of the idea, and implementation of the idea that's going to get you places.

To publish your game is another beast entirely. There are several routes you can take and none of them are easy in the slightest.

1. Crowdfund. This is, by far, the fastest and easiest way, but the distance from A to B is separated by a huge cliff. You'll need a team for this and it's going to consume you...so much you'll lose development time on your game to focus on things like manufacturing, printing, shipping, promotion, etc. You do everything. Fast money/support, some competition, you do all the work, no guidance, most of the profit, fast time frame, but you'll lose development time to account for everything else you have to do.

2. Go through a publisher. This is the harder route because you're going to some place that's professional and know what's good in a game. You're also in stiff competition, just like the music industry...so many people out there wanting to pitch to a game company. But the benefits are that they take care of you, provided you sacrifice a little of your vision to the publisher. Fast money/support, extremely high competition, they do a lot of work for you, full guidance, some profit, and medium time frame depending on the project.

3. Fund yourself. This is just like crowdfunding, but you won't get the money support as fast and will most likely take way longer because you're funding this on your own. It's not easy and you'll have no real guidance, so if you're an all or nothing guy, you can go this route. Slow money, extremely high competition, you do all the work, no guidance, all the profit, but extremely slow time frame.

I'm sure there are more ways to get your stuff published, but these seem to be the things that I see the most. If there was an easy route to publishing a game, everyone would do it.

If you do decide to find a publisher, you can use this Google Spreadsheet with over 40 publishers including data on what kind of games they are and aren't interested in.

You can view the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JtXSb77QLDPDFFV3nuYbdEb6BC6dXaxT...

And you can use this form to add more publishers to the list: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-wuSJ7VRrbY5HEct9sfhQCYUJJuzyPSk7OfBVRx...

The spreadsheet can be edited if you see any information that should be updated.

The info is an aggregate of everything I could find on BGG, BGDF, James Mathe's site and from talking to publishers on my own.