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How To Find a Mobile Games Publisher?
n01 writes "In the last few months of my spare time, I've been implementing an abstract strategy board game (that I invented) along with a decent AI. The game resembles TwixT in that it is also a connection game, and could be played without the need for a cellphone or computer. The implementation on the Java 2 Mobile Edition platform will soon be finished, with only some minor usability and sound issues to fix. While I enjoyed working on the game (actually more than on my day job as a programmer) I would still like to earn some money from selling the game, so I can work more on such projects in the future. What experiences have Slashdot readers had with selling their applications/games for mobile phones? With which publisher will I have the broadest audience and achieve the highest earnings? Would you try to publish the game both as a mobile game and a traditional board game?"
the obvious answer is, of course, opensource it and make money from related services, you insensitive clod!
I'm sorry Mario, but your profit is in another castle.
There's the cost of the developer SDK, getting your license, getting signed up on whatever development channel/website/thing the vendor wants everyone to play nice in, then you have to submit your work along with your SSN, DOB, and 3 drops of blood from your first born... Takes about 4-6 weeks to process your request, at which point... You find out that you violated some patent for using a contextual-menu based system utilizing the prefrontal lobes of sentient bipedal organisms for navigation and you actually owe them money.
There is no market for innovative games in the cell phone market-- There is only Zuul.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've been thinking about doing a cellphone game and what I thought regarding distribution is to both sell it over a channel (like the Google Android Market) and GPL it. There are several profitable business that work this way (MySQL comes to my mind) and it's an interesting gamble.
IMO, people who buy cellphone games for a dollar are not the people who will download and install GPLed games on their cellphone. Doing that you should maximize the number of people that uses your game without loosing money because of people that downloads the game and installs instead of just buying it. A paypal link (or similar) would also be a nice adition in the game web page.
That's where the cash is. Or so I hear.
Granted it's been about 5 years since I did cellphone development, but back then every phone was different and required tweaking or custom support, and each vendor had their own Java API. Some used BREW instead of Java, which is/was an entirely different language (I spent a couple weeks rewriting a game from BREW to Java).
That said, EA might be your best bet, they have a strong cellphone market presence now.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
gamejump.com I was recently in the same position as you and when I asked around, that was the site I was recommended.
Tradition board game in the sense of...a game on the PC/laptop? O.o Kids these days...
The problem in J2ME development is the cost of porting and QA. So my guess is that you will have hard time finding a publisher for your title, since the publisher would need to invest signifigant amount of resources to port and do QA for the title. Also, pretty much all mobile publishers have own porting platforms built on top of basic J2ME, so they would need to "port" your game to the platform as well. So in the worst case they would need to pretty much re-do your game. Plus they would need to negotiate some deal with you, which would cost time and money as well. So unless your game is extremely addictive and it shows in 2 minute gameplay, I think you can forget about finding a good mobile publisher for it.
I personally believe that DonationWare is one of the best ways to go, that is accept donations, but don't otherwise charge or license. For the following reasons:
1) People will pirate your shit either way. There is no stopping it. Pirating in itself is a game of sorts.
2) If its donation ware you don't have to feel bad providing absolutely no support.
3) Any kind of licensing system you can come up with will either be a huge time sync on your and people will crack it anyways.
4) The more your product is available to be distributed the more people will hear about it, increasing the possibility that someone may willingly send you money.
A recent article here on ./ stated that there game was pirated at an 80-90% meaning that only between 10 and 20 percent actually paid for it. Since pirating is inevitable why not instead increase your market size by making it freely available. Then the 10-20% of that increased market is going to be much more then if you were to try and license it through some scheme or another.
A great analogy is Trojan condom's marketing tactic. Trojan controls the vast majority of the market because they are well known among other reasons. It is hard for them to increase their market share anymore because there are only so many people who buy condoms and there are a lot of variety out there. So instead of trying to market customers away from another company they instead try to increase the market be trying to appeal to a wider variety of people.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Sleep with Carmack's wife. He'll find you!
People apparently make a bit of money by uploading their games to casual game sites, like Kongregate. Anybody can do this, and if your game becomes popular, you get a taste of the advertising revenue. The problem there is that only Flash games seem to be supported. Perhaps there's a way to compile a Java program to flash bytecodes instead of Java bytecodes?
Ever since I got my first PDA, I've downloaded (and often bought) mobile device software from sites like Handango. Google for "mobile software". Their mainstay seems to one-programmer shops like yours. Don't know how you get your software there, but it can't be hard.
Third idea: just put the software on your own web site, together with an Amazon or PayPal tip jar. Sometimes you can make more money by using your invention to create good will than you can by productizing it. I think over the years I've spend as much money rewarding authors of innovative mobile device freeware as I have buying software for these same devices.
An emerging revenue model is advergaming.
:) And "piracy" becomes everyone's friend ;) The more the game spreads, the happier everyone becomes!
:)
You could hook up with an ad agency or whatever brand/sponsor you manage to negotiate with, and then have them license or buy the game from you as a viral advergame and brand it with a product.
It's a pretty good business model and brings in money for some game developers/agencies.
Essentially, instead of selling the game to individual users, it's the sponsor/brand who "buys" or licenses it and signs your paycheck, and then the players get to download and spread it for free.
You can either sell the rights to the game to a sponsor, or have them license it for branding/skinning but you retain the rights. It's all up to whatever you negotiate.
The nice thing about this that you don't have to worry about sales management anymore. It's kinda win-win for the player too. Sponsors get their branding out, players get their game for free
It's what we did for some browser and mobile phone Flash games we made.
Best of luck!
http://www.object404.com
You'll make the most money on a Mobile game if you publish it on iTunes with no publisher.
So ditch j2me and learn Objective C + Cocoa.
Your best bet is contacting a publisher who will diffuse your game to various carriers, but like trying to find an editor to take your book, they are hard to convince and far between.
If you want to skip the publisher step entirely, I suggest you make builds of your game against the Sprint J2ME SDK, for multiple handset, while following their guidelines (like cancellable load screen, 'any-moment' killable application, choice of music or no music, textual usage of proper name for keys, etc). After Verizon (which is mostly, if not only, BREW), Sprint is the biggest carrier in the US, meaning a bigger market.
That being said, if you need more detailed information, contact me via PM and I'll see what I can do for you.
The company I work for is http://www.humagade.com/ recently merged with http://www.frimastudio.com/
Bah.
Given the current legal environment regarding "intellectual properties" ownership, are you sure that you actually own that code, and can legally sell it? Since you develop it while being employed, are you sure you didn't sign any agreement not to moonlight, or sign away any idea that passes through your head?
Since you develop it while being employed, are you sure you didn't sign any agreement not to moonlight
Moonlight? Are there even phones that run Silverlight yet?
...he said it's in J2ME. NOT objective C. Why one would want to port to obj c unless they meant to make some serious cash off the apple store is beyond me. Awkward language.
I know RIM has an upcoming app store, and Blackberry platforms run at least a subset of J2ME. I'm not a java guy so I can't say for sure how extensive the support is. Try giving it a go on a blackberry (if you don't have one, almost certainly someone you know does) and see if it runs. If it does, or all it needs is some minor tweaking, you're in business.
Apple SDK. It is free and easy. Make them 1-3 dollars and you make buco bucks. I buy nothing for more than 3 dollars, if I can't try it first.
See, I used to work within the depths of the mobile apps industry, so I pretty much have first hand knowledge of this sort of info. For example, when I worked for this dev that primarily worked on games and personalization apps for cellphones, most of the time, we went straight to the carrier to get our apps on the "deck," which is industry slang for the carrier's applications store that you access from your phone, hence we had business relationships with the major carriers. However, when that company first started out, it had to rely heavily on publishers, which in turn busted their balls in terms of QA'ing the apps to meet the dreaded carrier requirements.
When I was over there, I had to work with this publisher called Airborne for supporting one of our flagship games on AT&T. We tried our best to essentially cut them off completely in order to go direct to the carrier instead, but like the parasites that they are, they were ready to turn the tables on us and affect already live builds out on the market by killing off our subscription based system that is at the heart of the game in question. So we had no choice but to stay with them and put up with their piss poor staff that were in my honest opinion, some of the shittiest QA testers I've ever worked with, always reporting non-issues thinking that they are showstopper bugs, hence they held back submission to the carrier due to false alarms.
On the other hand, there are times you will need publishers since some of them hold the necessary digital signatures necessary to use certain MIDP API's locked out by the carrier. Case in point: T-Mobile, which requires THEIR very own digital signature to use the network on a J2ME midlet. Problem is: that sort of sig is only given out to big time mobile distributors and developers, so a person like you for example that runs a small time operation will have to rely on a publisher. What's worst is that when I worked on T-Mobile builds, I also had to work with Airborne and constantly send the builds to get signed in order to run it on the phones, and that would either take hours, or in some cases, days to get back fully signed, further slowing down the development process.
Long story short, take your game directly to the carriers, cut the middleman, I say again, bypass him. Your game is near completion right, so surely you can easily whip up a demo that you can present to the carrier's product manager, and garner enough interest on their end to establish a business relationship with them. You're better off showing it to AT&T first since they're the largest J2ME phone carrier in the country, and most of their MIDP API's aren't locked down like the ones you need to playback video and sound. However, you're going to have to invest some money into things like digital signatures and more handsets to test it on, since once you get your foot through the door, they're going to want you to port your game to high priority devices like the RAZR and the low end LG's and Samsungs, so you have to make sure that your code is scalable to support these crappy, but high selling handsets. If I were you, I would just pool up some money to get yourself a few phones off of eBay, like a Moto RAZR, since the install base on AT&T is in the tens of millions, and a tiny screen phone like the LG CG225, which is slow as hell and has Jar size limits, but like the RAZR, is more prevalent among customers in the network. Pro-tip: the shittiest phones sold by AT&T are always the ones on the top of the priority list. Basically, the easy part was creating a working app, the hard is yet to come, where you have to port your code to various other handsets, which will mean different screen sizes, speed, and heap memory available, plus the bugs associated with them.
However, if you want to take the independent route, you could also try a site like hovr.com for example, which provides free games to users, but the devs get a cut of the ad revenues. Still, you would have to invest on at minimum a digital signature to ensur
iPhone apps are not based on java. He'd have to rewrite it.
And Android apps are not really based on J2ME, requiring extra work as well...
The hardest idea is thinking up a good game, rules, and interaction with the player. The code is nothing compared to that (well, not nothing but a good idea is still a good thing to port).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The ~$1,500 it would cost you for a Mac and iPod Touch
Come on. Everyone here on Slashdot needs a computer anyway, so it's not like getting a Mac really costs anything. If you do have to buy one from scratch, you could easily develop on the lowest end Mac MINI, about $400 in eBay dollars.
I also highly doubt he doesn't at least have a friend with a Touch or iPhone, do do final tweaking on - everything else could be done in the simulator.
I guess the Mac Tax everyone talks about is the inflation in cost Mac Haters apply to everyday figures...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try the telecom operators. They decide which games they want to embed in the phone they buy from the manufacturers. Keep in mind that they prefer games that generates traffic, so you might want to add some SMS level unlocking "feature" in your game.
Hi, Have you considered going the free ad-supported route? People these days are being extremely conservative with non-essential purchases, and an ad-supported platform might be your ticket to a big audience combined with revenues. There are currently two big networks out there - Hovr and Greystripe. The obvious advantage with putting your game on a network like this is that you pretty much instantaneously gain a HUGE audience, with little or no extra effort on your part.
Disclaimer - I am one of the founders and Chief Architect of Hovr Inc., one of the two networks mentioned.
Did you pitch your game to Octopi?
http://www.poxnora.com/
While I guess your post would be extremely helpful for the 'slashdot-asker', based on the nagative experiences in your post you might as well have said: Screw it, save yourself the agony.
Buy a used Intel Mac Mini, download the iPhone development tools, and convert your software to Objective-C with UIKit. Once its done, for $99 you get access to the most professional and most profitable shop for mobile phone software - the iTunes App Store. Do a search about what has been reported about revenues. You set the price that the end user pays, and you get to keep 70 percent of that. In the last quarter, Apple was the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue, and all of that revenue is iPhone. On top of that you can sell to iPod Touch users, and there are a few million of those around. And that is a market full of people who will actually _look_ at the iTunes App Store, so your application will be seen, and who are used to paying out actual cash for things.
Hi
...
You can connect with mobile content aggregators/distributors. The revenue model varies. If your intent is to reach a larger market, go for content aggregators.
Google around and you will get 100s of them. Leading mobile content / game development companies are also content aggregators.
Jamba, Handango, Sumea, Jamdat etc
Also note, there are so many different mobile handset brands and models. Your game/application should have handset specific versions. Check out a development framework from J2MEPolish.
They have various licensing options for using their framework including an open source one.
They also have one business model where they can distribute your application / framework with 60:40 revenue share. Hope this helps. All the best. Ashok Kumar
You could try selling it as a board game...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Well i still work in the mobile phone industry for a games company, while we are moving towards the higher handsets (iPhone and Andriod) we still support 300-400 handsets. The department i work in is porting so trust me when i say support thousands to different devices/screen sizes/ quirks / jar limits / carrier specifications (especially vodafone always gives me a headache) So if you can avoid that route by going to a Publisher do so! they have the resources and the QA. unless your planning on getting this game on a couple of phones then the independent route would make more sense. The four biggest are EA, Glu, Gameloft and I-play (in no particular order but EA are the biggest) So theyre maybe worth a try, I work for one of them and all of them would probably be interested in picking up a game they didnt have to do the development and they could pick up the rights cheap.
http://www.ovi.com/
You should give up on J2ME all together, there is pretty much no way you will ever make any money from it, or even get any users at all (even for free).
You have three valid options:
You are totally fucked if you stick with J2ME.
Quite a few years ago I wrote a J2ME Bluetooth racing game (along with an artist friend). We secured a popular license and publisher for it, and the previews and reviews were good (in real printed magazines!). We then sat back waiting for the mountains of cash to be delivered to our doors. It didn't happen. The game didn't get the exposure we were expecting, for whatever reason.
Not to be deterred, we took an improved version of the game engine (since the license was tied to the publisher) and developed something new. Our previous lesson learned (don't tie yourself into stupid deals) we found a new publisher. A small one, but one who assured us premium placement on a popular brand of handsets. The testing period dragged out, much frustration ensued, but the game finally launched. Again, to good reviews (not as good as before, since this time the game was starting to show its age).
It didn't really sell. Never mind, we said, we can take the it elsewhere. So we took it to one of the bigger publishers, who would give us less of a cut but a lot more exposure. The game by this time was no longer cutting edge. In 2004, when it was originally created, the renderer was impressive. Fast forward to 2007 and it looks shabby next to the other hi-end racing titles.
Anyway, reviews were still okay and the game sold in decent numbers. That smaller cut, when going through multiple aggregators doesn't amount to much per unit, but the rise in sales make up for it. Or they would have done if we'd managed to get any of it from the distributor, who a year after the deal was signed went into receivership without ever paying a penny.
Developing games anonymously for the big guys made money. Pushing our own stuff never did.
For the curious, you can grab the game's source code here
After about three months of relentless Willy action I reckon I'm now as good as when I was 10.
Releasing to J2ME handsets is a money and time sink; consider Gameloft with their 200+ developers working fulltime on porting to specific handsets.. there are 300+ devices to test on. Consider targetting a single form factor like the iphone instead, or releasing it as a flash game - as a single mechanic without heavy production values would be a little light these days for a pc/mac downloadable.. then you'll probably have a fighting chance.
Best regards,
Emmanuel
Any advices how to get more visibility for freeware (Nokia Symbian 9.x) ? I've tried Nokia Mosh, but it seems not doing much.
Gameloft is the mobile games leader so I'd try to go with them.
All Hail Discordia. Hail Eris. Fnord.
But they keep moving around...
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
n01, you're on the right track thinking about going with a publisher.
I used to run developer programs for a large US wireless carrier, and now do so for a large Latin American wireless carrier. In general, I encourage small Java ME developers not to bury themselves trying to negotiate with the carrier directly. Unless you have something extremely innovative or a brand that a mid-level product manager type in a wireless company can recognize, you're probably going to lose a lot of money, time and brain cells getting anyone who can launch your product at SprATiT-zon to respond to you. And say you DO get their attention: that's almost even worse, since coming up with some kind of content distribution agreement with a gigantic corporation will consume all your waking hours.
So start small, and grow from there depending on how your app does.
- Make sure the stuff works. You should start researching Mobile Publishers out now, but before you do, make sure your game is rock-solid on as many devices as possible.
- Work with a content porting service. There are companies that can help you make sure your game works on all these devices. One I know of that I can recommend (they used to be a development shop as well, they know the pain of the small developer) is Tira Wireless -- they have a program that can take your midlet and help you port it to the hundreds of devices you'll need to build the MIDlet for to get any traction: http://gomobile.tirawireless.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
- Get your MIDlet run through a generic certification program like JavaVerified. Many operators require it, it is a very good basic quality test that meets about 96% of the requirements of any operator, and at least shows that you're serious. One company I've worked with that does a good job with that is NSTL (https://www.nstl.com/javaverified/gui/home_main.asp). The other labs that do Java Verified (RelQ, Babel, CapGemini) also have good reputations.
- Join the developer programs of operators worldwide you'd WANT to work with. It will give you a sense of whether or not they care about developers like you. Companies in English-speaking countries that I think are able/willing to work with smaller developers are AT&T, Orange, Sprint (the Nextel side), T-Mobile to a certain extent, and of course, we are (although I must say that you're probably not quite there yet to work with us, mostly due to language issues). Particularly, make sure you can that it is easy to get the data services you need for your application to work - since yours uses a data network, if it's tricky to get the service (or tricky for you as a developer to get it working) chances are you're going to be hitting a brick wall sooner rather than later. The forums on these sites will give you a good idea of where the pain points are for developers.
NOW, find a publisher.
There are a number Publishers or Aggregators that work with guys like you to get good game placement without trying to gouge you too badly. I will mention two that I have worked with and respect (and that have a good reputation), and that are of a size that would work well with what your game sounds like it does.
- Digital Chocolate - focuses on social mobile games. Good company to do business with from a carrier's perspective. http://www.digitalchocolate.com/
- Cellmania - they're an aggregator that also runs a number of storefronts for various operators worldwide. They do a good job putting apps on the long tail to see what happens with it. http://www.cellmania.com/content_providers/
IF YOU ARE SERIOUS about it, then do this. There is money to be made if your application really is good and different and sticky.
If you're not in a position or willing to spend some money on it up front, or to dedicate s
***Foucault is watching you..***
If you’re good, I’ll publish you! But it has to be good.
Thinkingman.com New Media
Money? from making games on your spare time? I wish I knew how to do that....
~ChibiSkuld~
When the Palms originally came out I thought that it would be a good opportunity to make an entry into the gaming industry. I didn't get the impression that I could probably ever make enough to support myself doing it and so I didn't pursue it. Not sure exactly how your app works, but MySpace has been starting to offer some, kind of neat, old-old school style, turn based apps and when I first started fooling around with them I immediately thought that this was a very promising new avenue for entry into the market. I'd highly recommend checking out some of the games to get a feel for if your game could be ported and get an idea of how you could generate a revenue stream. Downside. You'd be giving your game out for free, so no revenue from game sales. Upside. The business model basically involves you selling bonuses, upgrades, etc for the game. I kind of like this idea better myself as the main reason I didn't go after the Palm market was that I immediately realized that I personally wouldn't spend money to download a game onto my Palm and there were plenty of free ones available so who would pay me for mine? However, on Mafia Wars on MySpace for example, I've even been half tempted to spend a few bucks on some upgrades even though they don't even sell anything you can't get for free with patience. I'm not one to spend my money on frivolous things like ring tones, but it's a multi-million dollar industry. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who spend money on this kind of stuff. If your game is popular you could quite possibly make some decent cash just selling some different skins for it. Let me know if you decide to go this route and want any help with the port as I'm quite curious about their API and have some ideas myself for some possible apps.
you need to find a good games house who have the tools to port games across lots of platforms, who aren't afraid of games which require thought and strategy. the obvious one is Astraware. I'd write to them and ask them if they'd like to license the game, and give you a royalty.
tthey will handle the support, the payment processing etc etc. if it goes well and you have more ideas, maybe they would license more games from you.
I have had experience on both sides of the fence...product developer and venture capitalist... So I see what makes applications successful in the mobile or web world. The first challenge is always how to get consumer adoption...as a "side gig" the issue is how to do this on no or very little budget. Launching a Facebook or iPhone application can provide some traction, however with so much competition you could also get lost in space with all of the applications being submitted on a daily basis. So, my recommendation is to conduct a competitive review of iPhone apps and Facebook, to start. Determine if your game is unique and how long it would take you to launch an application utilizing the provided SDK. If nothing else, going through this process will help you familiarize yourself with the capabilities of their API's. Who knows where that could lead. I've often found that the first product launched usually helps to understand an industry rather than make an impact on it...it is the future iterations, developed through learning and improvement that make the impact. So keep it simple, get your product into the hands of consumers and see what happens. I know this is a general response, however there is no quick and easy path to revenue generation...not real revenue generation. I'd be willing to provide you with additional insight or guidance if you'd like...no strings attached. I am an entrepreneur by heart and love to see the take on the world spirit...so anything i can do to foster that passion... David
I like traditional games(board games) even though I have no one to play with it's nice when I do so we can just sit around, talk, and not have the flashing stuff which can cause an uncontrollable moment in me(seizure's like) or distrastions