Cactus Marketing

This question pops up on a regular basis. The normal answer is that this community advice you not to use an agent. A game agent is not the same thing as for example a book agent. The main reason is that this is a much smaller market.

A game agent will charge you for there initial work and for a presentable prototype. The only thing the agent guarantee is normally that they will present your game for x companies (I have never seen what that presentation includes).
If the agent succeeds, then they want a chare of what you make. Normally its 40-60%. Since you will not make so much from a game, you will normally loose on the deal.

... to the final question. I have never used Cactus Marketing.

// Johan

I'm in Uruguay, so I undertstand your position perfectly.

About agents, they're not required to find a publisher. Many publishers accept direct submissions without an agent, and are also your best bet unless you have a name. And you don't go sending prototypes by FedEx from the start, you send a simple description of your game (what it is about, how it is different or similar to other games already in the market, why you think they should publish your game). A simple email will be enough for the initial stage. If they ask for a prototype is because they are interested, but don't expect to receive so many prototype requests, even if your game is great.

Then, even if the game is good and you are lucky, you'll probably spend less money sending prototypes by FedEx than just hiring an agent.

An agent is supposed to have good contacts inside the publishing companies, and only tries to sell good games (to keep his reputation high), so they usually have a screening process before they accept you as a client. This process is similar to that of the publishers: first submit a game description, then they may ask for a prototype, then, if the game is really good and you're really lucky, they'll accept you as a client and try to sell your game. If they don't do this, they risk their reputation, or they have none to risk, and are just pouring money out of your gullibility.

So the only reason to use an agent is because you think they can get you a better deal with a publisher. A deal good enough to account for the HUGE share of your profits they're gonna get if your game is published. If you think you've found an agent that will get you a deal for about twice the money you could get by yourself, I would say "get that agent", otherwise, I would try by myself first, as Johan suggested.

Saludos,

Seo

Another consideration is that it depends what kind of game you're working on. For the European-style games market, you can directly contact most of the publishers. There are some that aren't accepting submissions, but an agent won't help you with that unless he can change your name to "Knizia". The ones that do accept unsolicited submissions can be reached by phone or email, and will have you send a prototype if they're interested.

For mass market games, eg, to work with a company like Hasbro, you do need an agent. Even then I think it's still a longshot to have them pick up a game, but I'm not sure we have any success stories of people who went that route (or failure stories, for that matter).

Good luck with your game!

-Jeff

There was an interesting article in the most recent SAZ newsletter about agents. It seems that their standard operating procedure is to make one sale for every 6 to 10 games they agree to take on. They charge a fee, but that fee doesn't actually cover the amount of money and time they spend on each game, most of the time: they rely on those occasional successes to make money.

If so, from a designer's perspective you're in a tough situation. The reality is that you will not reach Hasbro or Mattel directly, that you'll definitely need an agent for that kind of giant sales and associated moneymaking, but that there's a 83%-90% chance that you'll pay the fee and nothing will happen.

-- Matthew