Hi friends,
Has anyone had any experience with some publisher (like Chillingo) to promote your game? Please, could you share your experience and how this strategy has been impacted on the sales of your game?
Thanks in advance! [import]uid: 29154 topic_id: 14126 reply_id: 314126[/import]
Here’s an Angry Birds developer’s take on publishers: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/angry-birds-chillingo/
Vesterbacka told TechCrunch,”We only did the first iPad/iPhone integration with Chillingo and aside from that we’ve published everything ourselves. We will not use Chillingo again.”
Vesterbacka also added that the role of the publisher has diminished in modern game development; “You don’t need publishers.”
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I have some publisher experience in the Flash world.
Well it’s also called sponsoring, licensing or branding.
The terms doesn’t matter. what they all mean is:
put the sponsor’s logo everywhere, build in their specific APIs like leaderboards or micro-transactions and don’t sell the game to anyone else!
In return you get (very) high visibility. Some of my sponsored flash games have millions of views.
Take a look at the stats for Your Face
http://www.mochibot.com/shared/shared_swfdetail.html?key=9f7807988ebddbf61542402e5154fd5f
over 20 million. not bad, eh?
The problem is… except from showing off my great success I have no further benefit. I got my money once, they paid well. But in the long term they made the better deal. On the other hand: without them the game wouldn’t have been recognized in the first place. So what. I got my money, they have their traffic/ads/views/clicks.
Of course, mobile marketing is a bit different. But especially on the android platform I recognize many of the business models I know from the flash world. So read the license agreements carefully and don’t sell below cost 
-finefin
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@canupa, nice game! Music reminds me Icy Tower 
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If going with a publisher can give you more exposure with less work on your part then it may very well be worth it.
Writing a cool game is one thing – getting enough people to know about it is a whole other ballgame. Most game developers want to develop games – they don’t want to handle all of the marketing that’s required to get the game to sell.
While I like being a complete independent, there are certain things I’d be willing to give up in return for some marketing muscle behind one of my products. If Chiilingo or someone like that comes knocking on my door I’ll at least consider it, for sure.
Jay
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I agree with Jay.
The time we spend trying to promote our game could be used to develope another one.
Although we really do a considerable marketing effort, many of us still don’t have the experience to reach the right people/places. [import]uid: 29154 topic_id: 14126 reply_id: 55127[/import]
You could consider LunarAds (http://lunarads.com) for app promotion and monetizing.
Richard
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