The sad part is that the first and foremost criterea these days is becoming
graphics qaulity and by graphics quality I mean that your game should have
good sketched art and not 'programmer" art..the other thing is that you should have a game that the publisher was kind of looking for...Years back I got lucky
because one pubpisher was looking for mass market low budget games and they accepted the game..
I know of a professional project that has taken 6 years of development in A5..
its an extremely professional and uniqye project with movie quality voice acting
but since it started 6 years back so they were the A5 days and now the game looks outdated because of lack of shaders etc..consequently,most of the publishers rejected the game just after the screnshots and trailer...this sounds depressing indeed,so these days I think its the wisest thing to invest in game art if you plan to sell your game !