A quick calculation tells me that I leave about 40 mails per day unread. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s also not something that triggers any guilt feelings. Imho there isn’t any  moral obligation to read and respond to each and every single mail. From time to time however there is an unanswered email to which I feel I should’ve responded.

This one for instance, from publisher X:

>> Instead of finished goods, we’d like to offer you a worldwide publishing deal for Dragon Commander. Please tell me your financial expectations. You should consider that the good old days of selling a lot of units in retail are over<<

It’s been in my mailbox for several months because I wasn’t sure how to react initially. Then other stuff got inbetween so I just forgot about it. I only remembered about it today when I received a mail that referred to said publisher X.

>> “so yes, I would work with him as my last choice before i resort to true bastards like publisher X, but in general, i don’t think he has any passion in him. Anyway, you have much better options.”

So why hadn’t I responded to Publisher X ? Simply put, because the implied message was – Goodmorning, we’d like to rip you off , are you gullible enough ?

Why did I think that ? Well, I learnt that in general, the best way not to make any money on a game is to sign a worldwide publishing deal.

It “might” work to get a game funded, but in such a deal you really need to be a complete idiot to expect that you’ll actually get any money once the game is out. And usually that’s the money you need to  make a new game, unless of course you sign another worldwide publishing deal.

I’ll try to explain the exact mechanics behind this in future entries here, but for now I’ll  just hint at the existence of a secret black book of advanced techniques for making sure the developer doesn’t get a penny.

Ceterum censeo malignos editores esse delendos