They give you money... Seriously. Maybe that's a particular French-English-in house special vocabulary. We have 2 types of project: - 100% finance by the publisher ( what we call editor). They buy a game. What I mean is that they give 100% of the money needed for production, and they usually give a small royalty share to the developper to motivate him to do a good game. But the publisher own the game, the graphic asset, the code, everything. He can do what ever he want, and he is more involved in the creation process ( like an editor in the book industry ). - Publisher don't make any investement in the production. They only do distribution and marketing. The developper own the game, and finance the developpement. He can make an episode 2, he can sell t-shirt, et.. without asking permission. Publisher can give money to the developper, but that's an advance on royalty. And in our case, they usually give money only when the beta is released. Of course the developper get a bigger share. Iphone game are most of the time in the second case. Probably because it's still a high risk, and small investment business(it's more complicate to handle 100 iphone projects instead of one AAA title if you are an investor). And sometime we see a coproduction between the publisher and the developper.
Hi there Aruki, I had actually very good experience from the publishers I tried to reach for my first iphone game that is going to be released in the coming months, some advice from my experience: 1. make a list from publishers 2. narrow down that list checking the kind and genres of games each company is publishing 3. send your demo video/screenshots 4. dont send something if you dont have something ready cause they will probably ask for an adhoc build if they get interested in your game
I was contacted by one of the biggest publishers for both of our games Assault Commando (already on the Appstore) and for Armored Combat (trailer and screens can be found in the upcoming forums - will be released soon - look also at my sig). They mentioned that they will need an ad hoc version and it was suggested that they would polish the game. Everything else should have been discussed after they saw the actual game. I didn't want to do a cooperation with them, because I don't think, they would do anything good for my game, if I look at their games now. Assault Commando was downloaded by 150.000 users a day when it was free. At 99 cents it sells not really well (but I can't complain either). I think, the game has potential, but it needs something, which we will try to figure out after Armored Combat is released. I don't think, that any publisher will invest too much in marketing in advance, but just with their name you have nothing outstanding. Rather the opposite. As somebody said, nobody will recognise your name, but theirs. If you want to build up a name, you have to do it on your own. I don't want to talk against publishers in general, because my company tries to establish a brand as a publisher as well and we also try to market our games as good as it is possible, but we made the experience, that a few hundred/thousand dollar is not enough for marketing and not even the biggests will invest millions. I think, big publishers also take a big cut in your revenue. We take 10%, but we are really commited to our games even if it wasn't developed by us. So I would say, try a publisher if you think, you can't or don't want to make the marketing yourself, but look very closely, who you are dealing with and don't get blinded by a big name.
Thx for sharing your thoughts !!! It really help me out, as well as the dev community!!! Keep Sharing pls! ^_^
you take only 10%? lol...most games are published by their developers according to the app store info, irregardless of Chillingo.
If you have no clue, it's better you don't say a word. Just because you can, you still don't have to always butt in
"Jump Birdy Jump" Downloaded, rated and commented. What a GREAT, well done game you have! Cross between Angry Birds and Cut the Rope! A shame it can't get noticed, it deserves to. I wish the app store had more quality apps like this and they were easier to find. Good job!
Yea, it's very hard to get noticed and picked up by blogs. I'm sure these blogs get hundreds of emails a day, and the big guys (such as Chillingo) get noticed first since they probably have direct avenues to reviewers etc. We've entered into the pre-marketing phase of our game 'Goop', and so far it's definitely been quite the challenge. We've got a decent number of views and comments in our upcoming post forum post, but the real challenge is actually getting written about by these blogs. But we'll truck through it and see how far we can take it ourselves.
