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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?"
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.
>The iPhone totally changed the game.
And it is likely that Android will change the game much, much more (when it finally really takes off). Imagine writing once and being able to run on dozens of different handsets across several networks. It will be far more attractive for developers than a single, proprietary platform like the iPhone.
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
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.
As my sig notes, I'm somewhat biased on this topic, but I still think you're taking a narrow, short-term view of what the iPhone is.
iPhone will have most of those same problems too. Just a bit more slowly.
Sure, there's only two iPhones now, plus an iPod Touch or two, but a year from now...
Do you honestly expect Apple will forevermore keep the same resolution, aspect ratio, RAM, CPU speed, system events, input methods, and whatnot that they have today? I think Apple is going to keep innovating, and that means new devices with new characteristics, characteristics that will differ from the current iPhone and will need to be taken into account by developers.
If Apple changes specs with future iPhone models, you will need to either support only a subset of iPhone models, or you will need to make sure your applications work well across all relevant iPhone models. No different from the scenarios you were just kvetching about.
Android will have a far wider range of device characteristics far sooner, because there are several manufacturers and carriers involved, let alone the possibility of more homebrew efforts like porting it to existing devices. But it's not like iPhone will be immune from this. If it is, then iPhone is toast in a decade.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development