Has Your Game Been Published By A Publisher? Please Read

Hey Guys,
After watching Treys "Publisher Elite" video it kind of got me thinking. How different is it when you get a publishing deal compared to self publishing?

I'm not asking how much money you are making or anything like that, just want to know if you're better off with a publisher or not. I'm just curious because we are all striving to get publishing deals thinking we will make tons of money if we can just get a publishing deal, but is that really true?

I'm just looking for real answers by those who have been on both sides and can let us people who are striving to get published know what it's like.

Hopefully we can get a really good discussion going on this cause I am sure I am not the only one that wants to know.

Thanks for your input.

 

if you watch trey video you will notice even if you get a publishing deal its not guaranteed that you are going to make decent money as it depend on differents factors as most publisher nowday depend only in their user base and cross promotion and that is not enough. only if you get to ketchapp. also with that you will need to have a killing game by taking wall switch as example it didnt succeed as you know.

 

Yeah I know what you mean, I saw that too, that's why I am asking for real live examples from people who have had publishing deals. I'd like to know what it's really like.

 

Yes and no. It depends. It is actually a pretty complex thing. We have small publishers, medium publishers and big publishers.

The big ones normally succeed with every game they release. They can cross promote with a huge active userbase. But as wesam points out, this hasn't to be 100% true. If the publisher decides not to cross promote your game for whatever reason, then your stuck. And as far as I know, you can't really discuss with them. They say whats happening and that's it. It's a take it or leave it relationship (don't know for sure as I have not published with a big one) but normally the bigger the company the less personal interactions are going on (like in every other industry). Another downside is the waiting time. Big publishers have waiting times of up to a year. And the shares aren't normally in favor of the developer. So prepare yourself of getting only a small piece of the pie. But they are big for a reason and if you can get a deal with one of them you normally have a big chance of making enough money anyway to keep working on new games for several months or even years. It is what we all want, believe me.

The medium publishers get you normally more downloads than you can get yourself. Why? They have good relations with Apple and can get your game featured. They have a medium sized active userbase and can get you some downloads with cross promotion as well. Another plus for medium publishers is, that you still keep most of the creative freedom and can do whatever you want. After all it's your game and you collaborate 'only' for the release with them (not 100% true but I put it that way to make a point). A big downside is that medium publishers can not advertise your game at all. It simply doesn't make enough money to do this and that's a shame. So they really depend on the feature which would be the same when you publish for yourself. But they do this a lot so it's easier for them than it is for you. Plus your chance of getting an US feature are much higher if you get published with a well known publisher from the US. Apple likes to feature locally.

And the small publishers are pretty much not worth it in my humble opinion. So this leaves us with the third option: to publish for yourself. Check out the appstore and see how many games are published with a publisher. You'll see that most indies do not publish with a publisher at all. But you really need the feature as well. It is a lottery though and as said, if you are from Peru or from China and publish on your own, the chance to get a local feature is big, but don't count on the US feature which is the most important one. You can get featured all over Europe and it doesn't traduce in a lot of installs. As said, the only one that really counts is the one from the US. The only way of really making money by publishing yourself is to do niche games. And even then it really must be top quality. One of the advantages is that you even could try to advertise it on facebook for example. If you have a barbie game and hunt down all barbie lovers there is a big chance they will download your game. This is almost impossible for casual arcade games which have saturated the appstore anyway. So when you publish an arcade game for yourself, in most cases you will get between 50 and 500 downloads which is nothing. This can happen to medium publishers as well but when you publish for yourself this is the normal case which pretty much sucks.

Another important fact to take into account is the ARPU of action arcade games. This is something people do not talk a lot about, but it gives you actually a pretty good estimate of what the revenue is of a game. Normally it is anywhere between $0.04 and $0.1 usd. So if your game has 100 installs your revenue will be between 4 and 10 dollars. You can do the math for yourself. But to keep it short, what we all want are games that get more than 100,000 downloads and to get them you really need that US feature or a big publisher. This or you really need a lot of games. If you have 100 games which all make you 10 dollars per month then you probably survive as well going alone.

So the best thing to do in my humble opinion is to do as much quality games as you can and experience for yourself. I know people who never would go with a publisher and some others who only release with publishers. It can work both ways, but it really is up to you.

 

This is lottery ) and don't tell me a game like bottle flip has been polish and extra polish...the game have no story line...nothing , i play it to see it how it's look and to get more that 5 mil installs with that is woow.
You can make 10 games and aĺl with no luck .
So this is lottery )

 

its a business more than to say a lottery if you have a product you will need to advertise it so people will know about it so simple as that / thats the normal way.

 

I don't understand why the publisher would wait up to 1 year to publish the game. Trends and themes are changing so frequently, in a few weeks or months your game may not be any good anymore.

 

from my experience.
I admit that I was an indie games.
and my income is more than $2k in 1 month.
I fend for themselves.
the number of games I have only a few seeds.
probably about 9/12
I only use one strategy used by ketchapps.
ketchapp probably have a lot of strategy.
but I only use one strategy.
I use cross promotion strategy.
You can see it in games ketchapps.
please download the application ketchapps and play.
on their front pages to promote their other applications.
ketchapp using scripts in the channel on their website containing promotional image file.
they make it possible for the promotional needs.
but I use my own mind and thoughts to use this provider.

These strategies you can use it on all of your applications.

if your application there that have the highest number of downloads you can advertise your other applications in it ..
and so on and so on ...

you try to think.
you do not have to spend a fortune to become a millionaire.
hahahahaha LOL ...

 

Who create trends?
In fashion industry you can buy a lookbook of trends for upcoming few years because it needs time to design, produce and distribute millions of clothes around the world. The same thing is in every industry. I believe trends for 2017 in games are already set. And publishers need time to cross-promote current games, ad campaigns are properly calculated. If you publish 10 games and promote them you have some amount of ad slots which you don't want to split for next 10 titles because it will do the same with downloads and installs. And there are more factors I suppose.
I wish I could have 50 downloads, I have 9 for now :/ It sucks.

 

Thought i would put in my useless two cents worth.
This is only my opinion. OK.
If a publisher accepts your game, and gets a feature, it will gain 10,000 to 20,000 downloads in a quick space of time depending on countries it gets featured. USA feature will gain you more downloads, no doubt.
If your game is different and interesting, and addicting, you will continue to gain more downloads. And if its making revenue with in app purchases, then they will of course cross promote it a lot more, So its up to yourself to have to have the features that make users want to spend money on your game, if your game isn't bringing in the revenue, the publishers are not going to invest on marketing it.
If its making good revenue they will invest in it 100%. Its like the stock market, your not going to invest in something thats not giving return.
So we all, including my self, sometimes need to really look at what where making and think about if we would invest money in this game we are playing. Would i pay to remove ads, would i buy a character because it would help me get higher on the leaderboard, would i watch a video ad because I'm stuck on a certain level.
And finally, find a Niche. You can follow trends for as long as they last and then thats it, the party is over.
But a Niche will last a lot longer. Probably for ever, who knows.
So if we look at the game showcase on this forum and have a look, 70% of the games are all the same, with a little twist added, different graphics, and then we all complain my game isn't getting downloads, what do i do, I'm not making money, blah blah blah.
The app stores are all flooded with the same game play, different look,
Back to a Niche game, sorry got of track.
Niche games, published by your self, will eventually get there, with the correct keywords.
Wont happen over night but will slowly happen. Because these type are games are searched for repeatedly.
I have two games, in what i think is a popular Niche, with kids. In four months, they have combined over both stores over 100,000 downloads. Not great but I'm bloody happy with it, And every day they get downloads, One of them on android is averaging over a 1,000 downloads a day, i have not spent no money on marketing this game, not one cent. But in the first four weeks it had only had a couple of hundred downloads. Then it started to progress, then my second game on android has just started to gain downloads. Not much yet but I'm hoping as its the same niche it will progress in time as the other did, as i think its much better than the first.
The both games on Apple were different, they boomed at the start then slowly decreased. then settled to 20 to 50 downloads a day, but are slowly starting to increase, and are both sitting around 100 to 150 downloads a day.
Anyway thats my two cents.
have a great day and a good Christmas, enjoy it with your family and friends.
And hopefully with the holiday period everyones games get some downloads and lots of play and lots of revenue.
all the best.

 

playsgames6666, your insights are hardly useless, I found them excellent! Thanks for sharing. Have a question, what are 3-4 examples of types of niche games you have in mind? Not asking for specific games, just types of niches or categories of games.

 

My Opinion, as many have different opinions on it, A niche game for example, is something that people are interested in. Hobbies, sports, casino, etc, So when these type of users search the app stores, they search for that topic, not game names. So lets say I'm a mad cricket fan, i search the app stores for cricket, then in the search suggestions, comes up cricket games. As for the same as Football etc,. I know also that if you search other games, like jumping, it suggests jumping games, But jumping games are flooded in the stores. and to be in the top 50 in search is hard. So also i guess your game name needs to be something users would search. Zombie games is a popular one, car games, bike games, shooting games, And there are also many of them. But naming your game with any of these titles in it may get more downloads, as that is what users are searching.
So nothing against the games I'm going to mention, i enjoy playing them and they are really good.
So who searches the App Store for Blop Pop 2 galaxy quest, Or Super Mini World, or CMYK, Unless these games get featured, they are lost in the store. and won't gain many downloads, as good as these games are, its not happening.
Same as ball games, one of the biggest, unless it gets featured its lost. Only way they will get anywhere is buy incentive installs and hopefully get in the charts.
So Think about what kids are into, as they are the biggest players in the market.
Also the basic two things need to be spot on, ICON and SCREENSHOTS. These two are a must. Then game play must be good as you want users to spread it around and keep playing it.

 

So with 100k downloads, what kind of revenues can we expect ? I see Buildbox boasting about download numbers but does that translate to meaningful revenue?

 

sarath2300@gmail.com
brother I have many games made with buildbox full license
i want to publish them can you promote my games we can talk about it

 

IT's not the download numbers. It is the retention. In other words how many of those people still keeping your game in their phones and playing the game. (talking about free apps with ads) If 10.000 of 100.000 playing then it all changes.