Game Agents, Part 2: Case Study: Silverback and RED

By Andy Muir
June 18, 2003

In the Spring of 2000, the six-man crew of Silverback Entertainment descended upon E3 in search of a publisher for our first title. We had been working on a science fiction action/role-playing game called Harbinger for a little under a year, and we were excited by the prospect of showing our work to publishers. We weren't naïve enough to believe we would actually walk away with a deal, but we figured that with enough persistence we could make a few good contacts, and work on building relationships from there.

That year we had only set up two meetings before the show: one with a large RPG web site, and the other was with a game agent. The agent had seen our recently launched web site, and was very interested in seeing our game in action. We were told to meet him at the booth his company was sharing in the bowels of the Los Angeles Convention Center. We showed up fifteen minutes early for recon purposes, but his company's name was nowhere to be found at the designated booth. We lingered around, and soon enough our contact made his appearance. After locating a power outlet and a card table, we fired up our laptop and started showing off the game. Less than five minutes into the demonstration, he awkwardly admitted that he was from the business division, and didn't really play games. He sent off for his "gamer guy" and the demo proceeded with a lot of smiles, nods and promises to mail a copy of the demo to him after the show. This initial meeting left us a little off balance, however.

Nevertheless, we were still determined to set up publisher meetings at the show. This proved much more easily said than done, though. We lugged the laptop from booth to booth, trying to make contacts at every big and small publisher of PC games that we could find. We talked to everyone, but in the end, we only managed to line up two real meetings, and one of those was with a person we knew prior to the show that worked for a dying publisher. While both of these meetings were better than our first one, they ended in an almost identical manner: smiles, nodding heads, and a request to mail them a demo after E3 was over. We also managed to collect a handful of business cards for producers to get in touch with later.

In 2001 we came to E3 much more prepared. Our team had grown from six to eight people, our demo was much bigger and it was beginning to look like a finished game. In the months leading up to E3, we spent a lot more time promoting Harbinger on the Internet in order to build public awareness of the game and our team. Most important, we followed up on every contact we made at E3 the previous year, and had a full schedule of meetings before arriving at the show. One of those meetings looked extremely promising, and the crew was cautiously optimistic.

As usual, the meetings started out a little rough. The first person we were supposed to meet told us to show up "any time after eleven", but when we arrived we spent nearly an hour lingering around her booth, waiting for a slot in her schedule to open up. The whole time art director Steve Macomber and I watched a stream of women stroll in and out of the booth's office, speculating which one was our contact. We were surprised to learn that our contact, Heidi, was actually small German man.

After that, we were off to our meeting with the Big Publisher. The meeting was a dream: she gave us food, laughed at our stupid jokes, and she genuinely loved the game. We agreed to send her a copy, and she pressed to set meetings every fortnight after the show.

After this meeting, we were walking on air. After two years of hard work and a string of rocky meetings, it looked like we were finally going to sign a deal. Not only were we going to have a publishing deal, but we were going to have a publishing deal with one of the biggest companies on our wish list. Things were looking up, and the Silverback team returned to Arizona with spirits high.

Ironically, the only meeting we missed that year was with an agency called Representing Entertainers and Developers (RED). We knew RED, based in Los Angeles, had a solid reputation. Unfortunately, there was a mixup at the show and out meeting fell through. Instead, we got in touch with them after the show, apologized for the the mix-up, and they asked us to send them a copy of our game. We mailed one, but truth be told, I figured that was the end of the story with them.

In the months that followed, our big publishing deal gradually fizzled away. No more meetings every fortnight; in fact, there were no meetings at all. The woman we spoke with at E3 was let go and, for all intents and purposes, we were back to square one. Yet work on the game proceeded, and we resolved to go back to E3 in 2002 with a nearly finished game. Then the phone rang.

It was Jeff Brunner from RED. He had found our game in a pile of unread mail, started playing it, and was having fun. Most important, he strongly felt it was something he could sell. That day we signed an agreement with him, and we were happy to give him ten percent of whatever deal he could put together just to put the publisher shopping in more competent hands.

Jeff was relentless. We sent him an updated version of the game, and he shopped it tirelessly. Not only did he do all the legwork, he also provided our team with valuable feedback from the publishers he met with. We had a number of offers, but he kept pressing until he could find a deal that would make everyone happy.

At the 2002 Game Developers Conference, Jeff set up a number of meetings with publishers that wouldn't even look at us before. In the end, we signed a worldwide publishing deal for Harbinger with DreamCatcher Interactive. In addition to this deal, he set up a separate deal for Russian-speaking territories with Akella.

At E3 the same year, we didn't have to lug a laptop from booth to booth collecting business cards. Instead, we were showing Harbinger for DreamCatcher Interactive, and giving interviews to the press. Less than a year later, in February 2003, Harbinger was on store shelves.

With a small team like ours, making games is very difficult work. But we learned that the right agent can be an invaluable asset in bringing your game to market.