How to shoot yourself in the foot?! No, I’m not talking about us, developers. I’m talking about portals. It looks like we are going to face another war between the key players in the casual game market. And it starts to look like some portals want to become evil.

Market review

Big Fish Games is one of the biggest, if not the biggest casual game portal. It’s one of my favorite portals. It’s easy to navigate, delivers wide variety of games, is great to work with and very responsive. They’re not afraid to risk the launch of new genres or not so casual games. There’s just one problem with BFG – their game club which offers games at discounted price of as low as $6.99. But is it really a problem?

It looks like other players in the market starts to think so. What’s more, Big Fish Games is very successful at getting exclusive deals, mostly short-period. And that’s another thing that bothers other players. Some portals start to send threats to developers – if you give even short-time exclusive to BFG we won’t launch your game. You can read more about it at The good BIG bad FISH exclusive GAMES… in Maciek’s blog. Initially I was very upset about it. But let’s take a closer look at possible scenarios.

The end of exclusive deals?

Read the rest of this entry »

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Gaming industry is global. That’s why we create games in English. To maximize the chance that the person that plays your game will understand it. But just because people can undrestand what your game is “saying” doesn’t mean they wouldn’t prefer to play it in their’s native language.

If you haven’t already localized your games, then start doing it now. While we still get most of our sales from English speaking territories, it looks like German, French and Spanish speaking territories can earn you a few more bucks. The good thing is that Big Fish Games will help you translate your game into German, French, Spanish and Japan (for free, but it’s up to them to decide whether they’ll do it or not). Casual games are not text heavy so it shouldn’t be that hard to get your game translated.

Those markets are not soo crowded so it is much easier to stand out and get into the Top 100 or even Top 10 charts. Runes of Avalon 2 launched on June 9, 2008 on BigFishGames.de and made much bigger impact on the site than it had on global BFG website. Some say they like match-3 games in Germany, but my guess is that it is smaller market and new games due to the spike of sales during launch have it easier to get high positions. Runes of Avalon 2 got into Top 10 and reached position #9, while on BFG.com it has reached “just” #32.

Another good thing about European versions of your game is that those games are sold to game club members for 5.99 EUR which converts to a little bit more than 9 USD (instead of 6.99 USD) so actually you’re earning 30% more. Most probably you would not be able to get into those markets on your own (do you have a dedicated website for each language?) so it doesn’t hurt your own direct sales.

I don’t know yet how much you can earn on those language versions, but I am sure it’s less than you can earn on English version (global vs local market). Still, it’s worth getting those extra bucks.

Another good thing is that once you get translated version of your game it can be much easier for you to get a retail publisher for that market.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

So I already told you why it is good to work with publishers. Unfortunately working with publishers isn’t great for all the time. Even if the deal looks great on paper, sometimes it doesn’t work out for you. It doesn’t work out for many reasons, but here are my top 3.

#3 Less creative freedom

Once someone agree to put money into your game he may want to have creative control over your game. Most often both sides will work to make the game the best thing on earth, but it may happen, that you’ll be forced to add or remove features that doesn’t go with your ideas.

Remember, you have the passion for your game. Employees of your publisher may not.

#2 Lack of experience

Yeah, I know how does it sound, but believe. Just because they are cold publishers, doesn’t mean they are experienced in the area you are wanting them to be. Need an example? Great retail publisher doesn’t have to be great online publisher (and vice versa).

If you work on a casual game, make sure your publisher can provide you quality beta tests. And put it in contract! Casual game success depends a lot on gameplay balancing and without a real player testing your game it is not possible to catch all weak points in your game. Some devs advice to test game mechanic on every stage of development. Make sure to test it after each bigger change in gameplay mechanic.

#1 Money

Early cash advance is great, but then you have to wait for a long time before the flow of cash comes in… It can take 4 mothns (best case scenario) or… but it may never happen. Your publisher takes 50% or more of your game NET revenue and needs to recoupe your advance first.

Publishing online is quite easy. It can take some time, but it’s not worth giving away 50% of your games revenue. The only reason to go with a publisher in this case is only when you can’t get there without him… and there are only 2-3 places that will not work with indie developers directly (AOL, Yahoo). So sign a deal to publish your game only on those two portas. Submit your game yourself to the others.

Your publisher may want to trick you that he will get a better deal with a portal than you do on your own. I really doubt it (mine didn’t). Portals just don’t feel like giving more to anyone and it doesn’t matter for them if you’re small or not. Of course, they may want to try to give you lower royalties, but it doesn’t mean that you have to agree. Learn to say no. Negotiate. It is a great skill in the long run.

And last but not least… let’s say your game is not so hot as it seemed to be. With so many titles in publishers portfolio they may just don’t work that hard on monetizing your game, cause they may have better converting game. If you sign exclusive you’re screwed. Your game is probably all you have… you’ve been working on it for 6, 9, 12 or more months. You need to make those money back. Even if your game is not so well converting among all other games it may still be the best converting game in your portfolio. Keep at least the right to sell from your own website.

Whatever you choose – good luck!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Even if you are indie, you may consider working with a publisher to bring your next game to life. There are many pros and cons, but today I’ll list top 3 pros. It’s all based on my experience.

1. Cash advance
It takes a lot of time to create a great game… and time is money. Publishers are ready to pay you in advance against future royalties. If you work together with a publisher on your game, then you can get advance paid in parts for each milestone. Getting “constant” flow of cash can make life of independent* developer much easier. It can also speed up development of your game, because you’ll get the cash to invest into better art resources or development tools.

* some will say that if you work with a publisher then you are no longer independent, but as long as you are creating your vision you are independent enough for me.

2. QA
Do you have the time and resources to provide great QA service for your game? In the end of development process I am sick of my game and don’t have the passion to put the level of attention needed to testing all those little details. I am also so used to my game that I don’t notice a lot of issues. QA stuff that works for publishers very often does an awesome work and not only catches a lot of bugs, but also gives you ideas for improvement of gameplay.

3. Getting into the markets
Today everyone can setup a site and put a game on sale, though not everyone is able to catch peoples attention. Publishers either have established online sales channels or know how to reach them. They have established retail sales channels and can get your game into boxes or jewel cases and sell it in stores you would not be able to reach. What more, publishers have a lot of products and can make bundles of them to increase your games life. At the end, it can sum up to the great amount of cash… and that you sold more games than you would without a publisher.

What you have read above are my personal top 3 reasons to work with publishers, but don’t be fouled… it doesn’t mean that there is no cons… in the next post I will give you my top 3 reasons to not work with publishers :)

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...