First post and questions about Gen Con.

There is always Protospiel.

This year we had representatives from; Academy Games, Arcane Wonders, Blue Panther LLC, Indie Boards & Cards, Mayfair Games, Minion Games, Tasty Minstrel, Tweedle tech, and would have had 5th Street Games & Elfinwerks but they had to cancel.

Protospiel is for testing games and it is bad etiquette to badger the publishers to look at your game. That being said the reason we are getting more and more publishers attending is that they are realizing Protospiel is a supermarket of games many ready or nearly ready to publish. We had 55 designers this year with most having 2-3 games apiece. That’s well over 100 games. Instead of having all 100+ games pitched to them publishers approach the designers that have what they are interested in.

Minion games alone discovered; Manhattan Project, Nitro Dice, Venture Forth, Grave Business, &Tahiti at Protospiel. Academy games recently published 1812, The Invasion of Canada and reportedly has 3 other in development. Steve Jackson games picked up Nanuk a few years ago. There are more but my fingers and mind is getting tired.

I realize this won’t help you in the short run since it’s nearly a year away but it could be an option for you if GenCon doesn’t pan out. I'll be at GenCon working the Mayfair Booth as usual.

Hello, in general yes, I have found conventions to be the best way to talk to the most number of publishers in the shortest amount of time. My first game, Mars Needs Mechanics, is being published by Nevermore Games (http://nevermoregames.com/index.php/games/mars-needs-mechanics). I played the game with them at a convention. And if you do come to GenCon, head over to the Game Salute table in the publisher's hall, where I'll be demoing Mars Needs Mechanics!

Cheers,
Ben Rosset
@BenjaminRosset

If your planning on self publishing why do you want to speak with publishers?

I have heard that everything is negotiable, but I know that our publishing contract grants digital publishing rights to our publisher, so it's something you're going to want to be clear about if/when you get an agreement in place to publish. One thing to consider is that game assets, like art and graphic design, that a physical publisher provides are usually something that would make a digital version shine.

I guess what I'm saying is that if I was a publisher in that situation, I'd be wary of someone wanting me to take the risk of putting out a print version of the game but not including me in the digital process, especially if the resources I put into the game were going to be used to make sales/profit that I don't benefit from... but I'm NOT a publisher, so take that with a grain of salt :)