Agents?

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I'm in a bit of a quandary...

My game is almost done. It's very much casual/portal targeted, and I'm confident it will be a strong seller on the portals (and others who are plugged-in and have seen it agree with me).

The problem? I'm not real eager to spend the next two months negotiating with 6-8 major portals, plus secondary rights outlets (mobile and other alternative outlets), each with a 40 page contract to hash through. I did this kind of thing a lot once upon a time, and I don't enjoy it - I'd rather make games and minimize time spent on the biz side (within reason).

One alternative is going through a publisher, but in general, they seem more focused on having a large involvement in a project (up front funding, and a lot of development hand-holding along the way), and in return, want a large cut of the revenue pie. I don't need advances or development hand-holding (my game is almost done), but I suspect that publishers would still ask for an outsized share of the revenue. I am exploring this route at present and should know firmly by next week if potential deals here meet the parameters I'm looking for, but I'm somewhat pessimistic.

Alternative two is to go directly to the portals. I can do this, and I'm fortunate to have a couple people who will help with contacts and lay out what typical deal terms with the different portals are like. So that's helpful, but this route still involves a lot of legwork for me.

Alternative three is to use an agent, who would (theoretically) take a modest revenue percent or even an up-front retainer in exchange for getting hands-on into the pitching and negotiation with the portals, and for their general expertise/advice in the process.

But I've asked around a bit, and searched this forum, and I'm not aware of any agents who specialize in this sub-market (casual games). There are a handful of 'game agents', but all that I'm aware of are focused on big console/PC deals. I've gotten a couple of "talk to my cousin Vinny - he helped one company sign a portal deal", but, not surprisingly, on closer inspection these people are certainly not specialists in the field.

Given that no such agent regularly posts on these forums, and that a number of people I've asked already are unaware of any such agent, I'm doubtful he/she exists. Still, maybe someone here knows someone good? Were any agents trolling the crowds at Casual Game Conf. in July?

I'm assuming that my most likely scenario at this point is alternative 2 - going straight to the portals. Still, I thought I'd ask...

[Nexic]

Phil, you've got it totally wrong!

First off, there are no 40 page contracts in this business that I've encountered (and I've done a fair few retail and portals ones), all are less than 10 and are quite often less than 5.

Negociating? Yes you might wan't to do some of that, but it really won't take two months. I think you are making the assumption that in this business things are so high profile that fraught, two month negociations are necessary. This of course is completely untrue.

For example, for Xeno Assault II each distributor probably took up around a couple of hours of my time each at most. This was maybe minor negociation, making their build, and a reading and signing the contracts. For my new game, as most of the portals already have a game by me adding a new game is almost effortless (either an add a simple 1 page addendum or an email).

My advice would not to go with an agent or an exclusive purblisher, and submit to the portals and retail distributors yourself. Overall you will earn a lot more money, that simple.

[svero]

There are some publishing agreements with big complicated contracts etc... but those tend to be for financed work. In general portals etc.. have fairly simple requirements. Many publishers will act as agents if they're happy enough with the final product. Gamehouse is a good example. Bigfish seems to have done it recently for Atlantis. The problem being of course, revenue share, as you pointed out already. So I guess it depends what you consider too much. Most publishers in their role as agents farming out to 3rd parties will give you a higher percentage of the profits from the 3rd party sites though. May still not be enough for you. I suppose it depends what kind of percentages you have in mind.

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I've heard that [Portal 'X'] has a long contract that must be very closely inspected (several potential 'gotchas') Good to hear that the others have simpler shorter contracts and simpler processes. Thanks for the info.

[cliffski]

I agree. go straight to the portals (if you MUST sell through them :)), no point in having middle men taking a cut. You might as well learn to love the negotiating and business side, as you will do much better in the long run if you build up those skills together with traditional gamedev ones.

[luggage]

You can sign up with Bigfish and they'll submit it to other portals for a share of the royalties so I guess that's one option.

[Mike Boeh]

The following companies all do this:
Gamehouse
iWin
Playfirst
BigFish
Oberon

We will be using Playfirst for WaterBugs to get to the portals we currently don't have relationships with or don't have the time to deal with. I think Retro64's track record is good enough to get to most/all of the portals, but it's just a question of time vs revenue. I will likely use other distributors in the future too- best not to put all your eggs in any single basket :)

Are they middle men? Absolutely. But right now my biggest limitation is time.

[James C. Smith]

[Edit: I took to long to write my message and Mike's post stole my thunder in a more concise way. In other words, his message wasn't there when I started writing mine]


First of all, let me clarify that when I say publisher, I am not talking about retail web sites like Shockwave, Real Arcade, Pogo, and Big Fish. Some people call these places “portals”. I like to call them retailers. But many people mistakenly call them publishers or distributors. I know Phil understand the difference, but I wanted to make sure everyone else does.

There are several companies that would be happy to publish your game. Play First is the first that comes to mind but there are some other. They are capable of being a “full service” publisher and getting involved in the game in many ways that is helpful to some, but apparently not helpful to you. But most of these publishers are also open to varying levels of involvement. I think the term agent is a very accurate way to describe the service you a looking for. Many companies that you may think of as publishers (or even developers who self publish) would be happy to be your agent and would likely be willing to work for an agent’s commission rather than a publisher’s commission. The first companies that come to mind for this are Play First, iWin, and Game House. I am sure there are more and I wish I could think of them right now.

You are right that it can very time consuming to negotiate each individual deal with each retailer and content aggregator. It is also difficult to have any leverage in these negations when you only have one game from an unproven developer. It may be easy to do a few deals direct yourself. But some retails won’t even talk you. For example, AOL will not take a game unless it comes though one the companies on a very short list. In other words, if you want your game on AOL you are required to go though either company A, B, or C. AOL has not outsourced their game content acquisition the way MSN did with Oberon, but they don’t with to maintain separate relationships with each individual game developer. They only deal with a few proven parnets.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying you NEED an agent. I am saying there are many benefits to have one (and also some drawback that are obvious). But I am mostly saying that if you want an agent, don’t overlook the publishers. They can be agents rather than publishers.

[Sirrus]

Are they middle men? Absolutely. But right now my biggest limitation is time.

Time to hire another employee? ;)

[Mike Boeh]

Time to hire another employee? ;)

That is an option, yes. But that has pros and cons too, of course.