Game Portal reviews requested

[panforgold]

Is anyone willing to share their experiences with Big Fish, Real ect?

-repore
-revenue share
-promotion
-flexiblity
-?

We are developing multi-carrier and multiplatform multiplayer games. I am working with carriers (north america) and ready to begin with game portals. I'm sure similarr fourm members would also find this information useful if others are comfortable sharing some of their experiences. Thank you in advance.

[electronicStar]

I think most of these questions are covered by NDAs in their contracts:o

[Yarlen]

Yeah, all that stuff, except for how nice they are to work with, would typically be under non-disclosure.

[joe]

We worked with different portals in the past. One of the nicest people to work with are the ones at Big Fish Games and Reflexive.

[impossible]

Although my experience in dealing with portals is limited I can tell you that Big Fish Games has been very helpful and responsive.

[panforgold]

Just a short note to thank those that contributed to this post and for creating and supporting this forum. The information provide helped "jump-start" my growing knowledge about game portals.

[Snooker]

I think we treat our devs fairly and with integrity. We are looking for longer-term relationships these days, so "one-off" exclusives are becoming more rare.

With new developers we usually start the conversation with a game review. Once the game is submitted (http://gamedevs.realarcade.com/GameSubmission/index.jsp), we review it and contact the dev with the eval. If we're interested in distribution, we talk one of two options: distribution or publishing.

Here are our standard offerings:

Distribution

Non-exclusive
30% direct royalties
Distribution through RealArcade, Zylom, GameHouse
Possibility of localization & distribution through Zylom into six languages (requires 90 day exclusive per language)


Publishing

Exclusive deals
35% direct royalties
50% wholesale royalties
Distribution includes our wholesale channels (includes AOL, Yahoo, MS, Shockwave, Big Fish, and others)
In-depth production assistance on the game
Shared beta test results
Advances against royalties, where needed
Marketing committments for our long-term relationships, including top placement in our "Score" newsletter, placement among Featured Games, top search returns on search engines, preferential treamtment in new marketing strategies (such as the recently announced in-game ads)

[Genimo]

Informative post, thanks Jeremy!

For possible publishing deal do you expect submitted game to be a "prototype", "near completed" or "finished"?

[Snooker]

Informative post, thanks Jeremy!

For possible publishing deal do you expect submitted game to be a "prototype", "near completed" or "finished"?

You're welcome!

We take game submissions in various stages, but we prefer it to be in a beta / near complete stage; the reason being that we have a much clearer grasp of the final game's design and production levels. Regardless of what stage it is in, do be sure to note that when you submit it, along with any notes about what remains to be done. That will help us in our evals.

[Chris Evans]

Yeah thanks for posting that. It's probably the most definitive info posted about a portal since.... ever. :) That'll definitely help devs get an idea what's on the table when considering distribution/publishing partners.

[panforgold]

I started this post and with help from folks like Reflexive, Real Arcade, eGames and others I wanted to share some of my casual research below.

What I need now are to know about more retailers/portals like Real Arcade that are willing to give developers the option of working with developers that want to distribute their own games as the publisher as well; or, hand over the publisher responsibilities to a retailer like Real for wider distribution.

My research thus far:

Casual game developers can be the publisher, distributor and retailer. Results from the 2006 IGDA Casual Games Industry Survey on Typical Royalty Rates were,

“The results from this question about typical royalty rates demonstrate how in-flux the publishing dynamic is today. According to the responses, Developers, will typically see between twenty-one (21%) and forty percent (40), Publishers between thirty-one percent (31%) and fifty percent (50%), Retailers between thirty-one percent (31%) and seventy percent (70%), and Aggregators/Distributors between eleven percent (11%) and fifty percent (50%).”

Working independently gives the developer greater upside potential and control. Additional costs and securing distribution need to be weighted against future monetization of the brand value and customer retention.
A developer should compare potential services that would be acquired internally to perform the publisher, distributor and retailer duties versus using available external services. Key considerations are costs, expertise, and securing meaningful distribution.

Publisher “…the best publishers can help you developer your platforms, secure, funding, evaluate game concepts, tighten game-play. In addition, publishers assist with testing, localization, marketing and distribution.” “Online Casual Games Q&A, Minna Magazine Vol 1 Issue 1, June 2006.

Distributor/Aggregator “…in many cases distributors are adding value to portals by offering outsource their game retail operations, operating their day-to-day sales, managing their promotions, and aggregating together many games into a single feed that is much easier for retailers to handle.
On the flip side, distributors add value to publishers by helping them publish their games on hundreds of channels to which they would not otherwise have the bandwidth to manage. A publisher can hand a game off to a distributor once, and let the distributor handle the process of getting the game out onto many channels. This especially makes sense for the smaller sites which are to small for a publisher to justify managing directly, but which in the aggregate still represent significant sales, especially internationally”; (2006 Casual Games White Paper IGDA Casual Games SIG.)

Retail/Portal consumers purchase games downloadable games from these sites. Game developers seeking to offer games from their site need to have a “wrapper”; which is are services that handle money, tracking and include Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Hybrid Business Model Examples

There doesn’t appear to be pure play business models but various permutations of business models that combine aspects of a Publisher, Distributor or Portal. Below are examples:

Mumbo Jumbo http://www.mumbojumbo.comis both a Developer, Publisher, and can accomplish physical retail distribution.

Oberon Media http://www.oberongames.comis both a Publisher and Distributor.

Trymedia Games/Macrovision http://www.trymedia.comis a tool vendor for DRM etc., that has created a B2B catalogue for Publishers and Portals to interact that utilize their Active MARK product.

[Snooker]

What I need now are to know about more retailers/portals like Real Arcade that are willing to give developers the option of working with developers that want to distribute their own games as the publisher as well; or, hand over the publisher responsibilities to a retailer like Real for wider distribution.


I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you try rephrasing this? I think you are asking if we (RA) are willing to work developers as a publisher - which is yes.


Thanks.

[Sybixsus]

I *think* he wants to know what other portals there are like RealArcade who offer the different types of deal that you mentioned above. IE: That may work as either publisher or distributor, not just one.

[panforgold]

Sybixsus, exactly! Snooker, I'm sorry it sounded confusing, you probably weren't the only one:) .