Games industry veteran Alyssa Kollgaard has put together a tool called Publisher Pathfinder, which guides developers towards publishing partners and investors that match their game’s needs.
The tool is styled like an old-school text adventure title, in which developers answer various questions about their game, such as the targeted platforms, the game’s content, and the amount of funding they’re seeking. Once the user has completed their quest, Publisher Pathfinder provides a list of publishing partners, investors, and service providers that match the developer’s needs, selected from a database of nearly 800 companies.
Kollgaard, who is now the COO of Akupara Games, previously helped to lead The Indie Houses, a publisher collective that includes the likes of Raw Fury and Fellow Traveller. “It was really lovely sharing info and resources and being part of the same team,” she told GamesIndustry.biz. “Someone had made an offhanded comment at one point that it would be fun to make a sorting hat website for the seven Indie House publishers, and the idea always stuck with me. I decided to expand it to ALL publishers, and change the theming to something not rooted in the Harry Potter universe, because I really believe it will be a helpful resource for the community.”
Publisher Pathfinder is the result of months of work compiling and checking publisher resources. Kollgard started off by combining and consolidating three existing databases: Alan’s Gamedev Resources Sheet, Seyed’s Publisher & Investor Database for Indie Devs, and IndieGameBusiness.
“They already had MOST publishers and a fair amount of vetted info,” said Kollgard, “although I added my own criteria such as pillars and additional services. I also added in VCs and investors from two highly senior leaders in games that I advise, who are currently fundraising their companies at a large scale.
“From there, it took me probably about 100 hours over five months to fill in the missing details using publicly available and verifiable information from official sources. It was very hard!”
Kollgard is hoping that Publisher Pathfinder will prove to be a valuable resource for developers. “The game-publishing ecosystem deserves as much clarity, craft, and design thinking as the games themselves,” she said. “I know firsthand how overwhelming it can be when it comes to game financing and publishing. So I set out to cut through the noise and create a playable, searchable resource with the goal of making the opaque business of game-funding more transparent, actionable, and fun!”
In addition to the Publisher Pathfinder website, Kollgard has set up a Discord server for users, and Publisher Pathfinder is also on Bluesky and X.
