What is your experience?

Absolutely NOTHING but bad experiences. That''s why, for about 1/1000th the sales, but no heartaches and no worries about being paid or ripped off or sued, I sell my stuff all myself on the internet. Publishers are the devil incarnate. Come to think of it, I''ve never actually even HEARD of a good experience with a publisher. ANY publisher. It was the same when I worked at a ''real'' development house as it is now working for myself. But there it was more of a joke since I wasn''t the one personally going broke (until the company went under of course).

So hey everybody, come support independent development by buying my games! http://www.hamumu.com . You want them anyway, they are fun.

Mike Hommel
Marshmallow Head
Hamumu Software
jamul@hamumu.com
http://www.hamumu.com

Nice site.
Also the game "spooky castle" look very nice.

You sold it to egames. So your game is sold worldwide.
Also the another game "eddy galaxy" was sold by egames worldwide?

Is the earnings enough to live from?
I heard that egames only continue to sell a product "the next year", if it sells in at least 50.000 units after the first year the product is launched.

No, the earnings aren''t enough to live from, yet anyway. The earnings from the eGames sales were great, while they existed, which was NOT LONG (I have no way of knowing who to blame for that - there were 2 companies involved besides me). Then there were legal fees... (Eddie Galaxy, meet Hasbro).

And I''ve also dealt with Real back when they were getting started (the realgames thing, not the whole company) - you guessed it, another bad experience! I think it was related to them just getting started, but nonetheless, a seriously bad experience for me. Nothing compared to my other experiences though. Doing it yourself really is the only way to go! Although right now I''m putting real tentative steps into distributorships and things, this time with lots of legal backup so it''s not my own clueless butt getting me in trouble - probably not going to sign many deals, but the ones I do at least won''t cause me much pain. The only question is, will the lawyer fees involved bankrupt me first??

I just love to make games! Unfortunately, people only pay you to do that if you make them according to their specs.

Mike Hommel
Marshmallow Head
Hamumu Software
jamul@hamumu.com
http://www.hamumu.com

Depends greatly on the company and the individual who is handling your project. Sometimes, we didn''t have any problems. Sometimes, gettting paid for milestones was like pulling teeth.

every publisher is different, and every producer is different. Typically, they want to make money. The best way for this to happen is for them to forge solid relationships with teams that have made good games, are making good games and will probably make good games in the future.