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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.
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.