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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?"
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
or just download the android SDK for free, load up eclipse and you'll have hello world running in about 10 minutes - I was suitably impressed
iPhone apps are not based on java. He'd have to rewrite it.
Android is where I'm planning to focus my efforts. The process for getting a j2me app distributed through the carriers is jsut a hair shy of futile for an independent developer. Sure there are other options to distribute J2ME apps through, but most of the market just goes throgh their carrier. Things like the Android and iPhone stores are a perfect match for independent developers.
Dude, you don't know what you're talking about.
The real issue here is carrier certification (if you're living in the US). Everything else is free/unusued. The JDK is free (there is no developer sdk, just the midp library), you need no license, you just need carrier certification, which a publish house can help you get through.
As far as how to actually do this, I have no clue. You might want to check with some of the publishing companies. Good luck with that though; I have no idea how difficult that is. I can only think of one publisher off the top of my head: EA. THQ wireless I believe has gone out of business. I bet activision might do something. I think Konami might be able to do it, as might namco. Essentially all the big game publishers apply except for the first parties (Nintendo, sony, microsoft). You might have better luck with a smaller publisher, but I don't really know who you'd use.
Would I do both a board game and a mobile game at the same time? only if I was already committed to the board game. The mobile game is an after thought, really. If it's your first thought, go with that, and set up a webpage with your game marked as "Comming Soon" and see how many hits you get. As a board gamer, I have no idea how difficult it is to get a game published (I imagine very difficult).
There is no market for innovative games in the cell phone market.
I beg to differ.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
gamejump.com I was recently in the same position as you and when I asked around, that was the site I was recommended.
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.
...because everybody wants to shell out the 99$ fee, buy a Mac, and learn objective-C when they could develop on Java ME and have it run everywhere else without having to pay the faggot tax with false hopes of winning the lottery.
Also, you could consider porting your game to Flash. Actionscript 3 syntax is very close to Java now so porting shouldn't be as painful as porting from Java to C/C++.
;)
:P
If you don't want to pony up for the Flash or Flex IDEs, you can use the free Flashdevelop AS Editor/IDE + JDK + free Flex SDK combo.
You won't be able to publish for older phones with that combo tho but it should run on Flash 10 which will be running on upcoming phones (I think it was demoed on T-Mobiles G1 Android phone at Adobe Max earlier this week. Nokia and Sony-Ericsson's pretty chummy too, so expect Flash 10 to appear on future handsets
Now where's our Flash for the iPhone, Apple?
http://www.object404.com
The ~$1,500 it would cost you for a Mac and iPod Touch is far less than a development license would cost for any other gaming platform (no, Linux doesn't count). Maybe a PC would cost less, but you wouldn't be using a commercial copy of Visual Studio.
After it's all said and done you still have a computer and an iPod. Far more useful than say a a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP development kit.
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but really it's the best. No compatibility problems that come with J2ME, relatively good development platform, and a super low barrier to entry. $99 and relatively little hassle? Try talking to Verizon or AT&T and see how high they've strung your balls up by the time you get your game out there.
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
Maybe a PC would cost less, but you wouldn't be using a commercial copy of Visual Studio.
Visual Studio 2008 Professional is $679 on Amazon (or $375 through something like the Empower program), and you can easily get a decent PC for under $800. Then you can develop for Windows and Windows Mobile, both of which have a much larger install base than their Apple counterparts, and neither of which require some other company's permission for you to sell your software.
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.
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..***