iOS "Publishers"/Marketing Partners

News & General Discussion
1

I put quotes around “publishers” becuase I am not looking for a traditional publishing model. I plan to present a finished game and seek marketing partners. I prefer to maintain ownership of my ip. Companies such as Chillingo, 6Waves, Zynga, etc. seem to be interested in working with indies who have iOS games… at least that is what they say on their websites.

Can anyone shed light on what to expect? Is keeping ownership of my ip realistic? Is there usually an advance on future royalties? What type of revenue split percentage is typical? Is there even a “typical” model?

Thanks,
Shawn

P.S. I am aware that competition is stiff and I may be completely ignored by all of the publishers… so that part is already assumed :slight_smile:

2

They contact you dude, trust me…if they like your stuff they will find you…

3

I would like you to browse the forums of

Whatever you might expect out of these guys, if you study some of the chillingo games, I don’t see any super memorable games on their portfolio. I know of some that reported that their financial outcome was beyond underwhelming. So the formula big publisher=big success can’t really be applied.
Don’t forget that they usually have either super polished products or they ask for lots and lots of iterations and rework to make a game up to their standards.

I can only say about chillingo that they kinda based their momentum on the angry birds success. Interesting article about rovio’s message there:

So it’s more about you getting a foot in the door with a big publisher, instead of making millons with your first published title. You can certainly gain a lot of newfound knowledge from their experience.
I mean even OwlchemyLabds JackLumber with superhuge SEGA behind them did underperform seemingly. It’s another chance of earning some money, but it’s no guarantee that you will find it, with any publisher behind your game.

4

eery

5

That would be very eery because I only have the game here on my local computer :wink: But that is not the part I am interested in… however contact is made and interest is generated… I’d like to know more about the business relationship. You say “trust me”… so you have been involved with this type of deal? Can you share anything about the experience?

Thanks for the link. I’m not saying I’m sold on publishers. Just want to gain knowledge about the options. I am assuming that publishers can market a game better than I can, but I certainly don’t think that simply getting a publisher = riches.

6

It is easy for Rovio to say they do not need a publisher: they are allergy a household name.

Truth is, Angry Birds is popular due to some very smart moves by Rovio. Today those same moves would not work, but in the infancy of iOS App Store, Angry Birds was no huge success. The combined downloads of the free and paid versions did sum up some high numbers though. So a few mohts later Rovio did what Apple wanted: they released numbers that looked impressive and portrayed the App Store as a place of success. They said the game had been downloaded half a million times (that was a cumulative of free and paid downloads, if I’m not mistaken.)

This was not rare at the time, but people used to be tight-lipped about their numbers. The press was starving for such hits and they ate the story extremely fast. Overnight, Angry Birds got huge press coverage all over the tech and gaming press and gained insane amount of attention. This combined with the game actually being rather polished resulted in the hit it is today.

By now, they no longer need the push, so it is true: Rovio needs no more publishing help in the mobile space. But the above is what a publisher does: they do their best to push your title into the spotlight. They invest money on getting you press coverage and advertise you, all this for a cut of your profits.

What should you expect from a publisher?
*You should expect them to promote you.
*You should expect them to get review sites to look at you.
*You should expect them (although not to succeed) to try to get you a spotlight.
*QA testing.
*Feedback on product quality.

What the publisher expects from you (this may vary from publisher to publisher):
*Integration with any social network the publisher owns.
*A cut of your profits (expect between 40% and 60% going to them after Apple gets its cut, percentage will vary based on sale numbers, how far into the publishing you are and your own negotiation skills)
*Full app store control (you won’t set prices, they will, it will be under their iTunes account not yours)
*Exclusive distribution rights for mobile for the next 5 years (for the entire IP, sequels and spinoffs included) They may also want Mac/PC rights.
*You to listen to the feedback they give (if you refuse to fix stuff they think is too bad, expect the deal to fall apart, depending on contract you may be legally bound to do the changes.)

Not all these things apply to all publishers, but it is the mixture of things that I got when I was asking around.

Mind you: you are not hiring publishers. They pick you. This means you can bring your product to them, and they may like it enough to pick it, but just because you look for a publisher does not mean you will find one that is willing to pick up your product. Easiest way to be picked would be going to a game convention. Decent publishers send representatives to all the decent sized ones, even the ones the press does not cover highly. They are there precisely hunting for potential. Contacting them directly may work, but the effort of getting to a con will carry a bit of weight (besides, the guys at the cons are in hunting mode, the guys at the other side of an email account are in fending mode trying to disregard all the junk mail they get.)

7

Jack lumber also made it onto steam without a publisher, would have been able to make it on steam without being published by sega on mobile…

8

Thanks, StarsMan! That helps a lot :slight_smile:

9

Lets get some facts on the table. I already had a good email conversation with Rovio’s boss a few years ago.

  1. The first angry birds game WAS with a publisher.
  2. Rovio regret letting go of so much of their profits. They basically said - if a game is going to be viral and a success, a publisher won’t make a blind bit of difference - the game will fly regardless.

To bear those facts in mind you have to consider what is meant by success. For a title that may only earn under 10k in it’s lifetime, then a publisher is probably a fantastic opportunity. For a title that will no doubt earn a lot more, well then you’re just giving a publisher money for no reason.

Our company isn’t adverse to publishers: we think they can be a good partner for bringing a title to platforms you don’t have reach for or grunt to operate within. Mobile isn’t one of those platforms. Ultimately you need to be realistic about your own limitations: if you can’t get connections because you suck at connections, and you’ve no desire to market anything, then a publisher on mobile may be a good thing for you. It’s a simple business arrangement.

10

One thing I think publishers bring to the table is cross promotion with their other titles. Another is, as hippocoder mentioned, established connections. I am guessing that emails/phone calls from Zynga, Rovio, Chillingo, 6Waves, etc. get opened before mine… if mine get opened at all.

And I am guessing they have some good insight on how to monetize. It seems like they have developed a pretty slick blend of advertising screens, upgrade promotion screens, and microtransactions. (Yes, I know many people think that stuff is evil, but that is another conversation).

@hippocoder: So it sounds like you do not regret skipping the publishers… for The Other Brothers? I know you guys got a New and Noteworthy feature, but did the other promotional efforts work out as you had hoped? Do you have any cross promotional stuff in game? Do you guys advertise it? Sorry for all the questions, but The Other Brothers is an excellent example of a polished indie game. If you for some reason changed your minds, is it too late to seek a publisher? Do they only want unreleased titles?

Thanks,
Shawn

11

Although the thoughts of Rovio on the matter are certainly interesting, you also can’t ignore the plain facts: Angry Birds had a publisher and was successful. Its not necessarily a causal link, but I’m not going to discount it either.

12

Sure, but that isn’t a piece of information that will ever help anyone make a decision. “Viral”. Yes, if it’s going to go viral a publisher won’t make a difference. But since we don’t have crystal balls with which to see the future we can’t plan based on viral success.

13

I target casual PC games, but this might be relevant to OP.

No publisher is gonna spend money and time on promoting your game, get that!
You can expect a rewvie at the best.

Big publishers release a new game every day!
Which should ring the bell, that they recieve a lot of games to go through before selling them.
No big casual publisher will give you 60% from sales, no way, just no.
30-40%, occasinaly you can negotiate upto 45% and that doesn’t happen often.

Yes, you are at the mercy of the portals.
You can sell on your own, afiliate with freinds and other sites, ship to the Moon, whatever.
You will never match the volume of sales portals do on your own.

You may think it’s a rip off, and be pissed off that somone takes your money while you worked hard.
But think of it as movie industry. You make a movie but you don’t own the cinemas.
And the portals have huge audiences.

In the end you most likely make more money with portals. I know I do.

14

Along with helping you make the game better (or at least better suited to their target audience) that’s kind of the main purpose of a publisher. Although some of the marketing will come through the publishers social networks, if they aren’t committed (i.e. contracted) to spending time and money* then there’s very little reason to sacrifice large chunks of your revenue.

  • I should add that its usual for the publisher to redeem their expenses (like marketing budget, advances, etc) from profits before you see anything.
15

@ JohnnA
Yeap, almost all portals offer an advice to help you to make your game match their audience’s expectations.
And that’s immensely helpful!

Some even go as far as to participating into the project, by providing code, storyline and game assets, which of course only can be accomplished if you sign a special contract with them and they have a bigger cut. That is if they really like your game.

To save time on coding, I tried to buy a kit from one of my friends he said he couldn’t since it was also a property of BigFish.

16

JohnnA Because of you I almost forgot to mention one important thing :slight_smile:

Remember your main revenue will be the first 1-2 months of the release of your game. Thus you want to reach as many customers as you can.
You can calculate lifetime sales etc. but it is all in your head and all hypothetical.

What you really should bet on is the very first 2-4 weeks of sales.

I don’t even care what happens after 3 months of sales of my games, even if they get pirated.

17

Note I’m not pushing in favor of publishers, but I do want to dismiss some potential hyperbole from Rovio’s side. Angry Birds did not become a viral success on it’s own. It was press manipulation on clickgamer/chillingo’s part that got them there. Now that they are viral they certainly don’t need them, but, if you ask me, Chillingo earned it’s slice of the cake.

It’s like taxes. Lots of people advocate for fair taxing and for people to do their part for society… until they earn a lot of money and realize the same percentage for them is enough to buy several houses 100% cash up front.

Rovio is forgetting that if it was not because of the Chillingo tax, they likely would have not earned that much money. Mind you, this is not saying they should use them again, at this point they don’t need to use anyone again, but they are preaching no one needs the help and that is IMO a poisonous message to spread.

Yea, once in a while you will get a Temple Run that came out of nowhere and became insanely successful. Its a huge gamble. I personally didn’t go for a publisher because I was too fond of my IP to tie it up to anyone for 5 years (I still want to someday do a sequel, a proper long platformer, with my bomb spitting cat) plus I didn’t want to implement any stupid third party social network junk into my game.

18

I think you are mixing up publishers with stores/portals. A publisher’s job IS to promote and spend time on your game. Not even EA release titles every day precisely because they have limited resources to spend on each title to make sure they make money too.

A store/retail/portal, though, will just take stuff and put it in their catalog. THEY wont spend time promoting you.

19

That’s not been my experience. The more products I release, the better all of my products do. There are 2 reasons for this: 1) my skills are improving, and 2) my audience is growing. New products draw new people. They enjoy the new product, and then they enjoy the old one too. My downloads and reviews are both slowly increasing over time (a positive slope upwards).

Yesterday, my 5th app went live. Even though my apps aren’t like yours, my long-term strategy should work for anyone. Build a high-quality experience that your users love and recommend - it’s a long-term relationship. In a few months, I’ll be able to say for sure.

Gigi.

PS - My newest is ‘The Compliment Habit’ - guess I should make a post about it.

20

I agree entirely. They don’t need it now because the brand has been built in such a way that it’s easy to maintain. A part of that was luck, for sure, but a part of it was also the publisher doing their job - without which the lucky break may well have gone to waste.