Are casual portal subscriptions good for devs?

[zoombapup]

I was reading another thread and wondered about this.

A lot of casual portals seem to be moving more and more to a subscription service. That is, they have some method of "locking in" thier customer.

So... my question is:

What does this mean for developers?

Do they then get a better %age (because the customer is buying in and hence is easier to retain, cutting the cost of advertising, which is one of the reasons the portals charge thier cut right?)
Do they get more sales?

What I dont understand, is that if my game were on one of these sites, normally selling for 20 dollars, then someone bought it as part of a subscription for say 6 dollars, how I would ever make the same return?

So it looks, superficially at least, a much bigger win for the portal, not so much for the developer?

Or am I missing something?

Not that it affects me, but I'm just wondering if there is a flaw in my understanding.

[jwc]

Portals say that for any games bought with the gamepass, devs gets full royalty. But this is NOT the point.
The point is, as I said in another post, that this way the customers gets used to $6 price tag AND not looking elsewhere - that's the true victory of portals.

Why go looking on google for more shooter/puzzle/words games when you can just subscribe to both real and BFG and get 2 games for less than $20 each month? :cool:

When next game from retro64 or twilight games comes out (just two random devs, nothing personal), I'll just wait a few months and get it with gamepass saving 2/3 on price.

[papillon]

OTOH, a lot of people don't make rational economic decisions. If your product is unique and compelling there will be those who will not be willing to wait around in the hopes it will eventually show up for lower cost.

After all, when a new mainstream retail game comes out, everyone knows that if you WAIT long enough you can pick it up for half, a third, even less of the price - discounted or used. And yet the new boxes still sell. :)

[soniCron]

What I dont understand, is that if my game were on one of these sites, normally selling for 20 dollars, then someone bought it as part of a subscription for say 6 dollars, how I would ever make the same return? You wouldn't, necessarily. It all depends on the site, but subscriptions, bandwidth, marketing, etc. all eat into what you take home at the end of the day. A casual developer was quoted recently saying he saw an average net sale of about $3 per unit. This doesn't bode well for what is supposed to be a more efficient distribution mechanism.

I'll be looking forward to portals exploring pay-per-play and advertising supported revenue models. I think there's a lot of money to be had, seeing as 98-99% of people don't shell out a buck for even the biggest hits - there's a lot of room for growth.

[Sybixsus]

You wouldn't, necessarily. It all depends on the site, but subscriptions, bandwidth, marketing, etc. all eat into what you take home at the end of the day. A casual developer was quoted recently saying he saw an average net sale of about $3 per unit. This doesn't bode well for what is supposed to be a more efficient distribution mechanism.

On the other hand, if people are spending less per-game, they may end up just buying more games in which case your total income remains the same or may even be higher. If all the games you bought suddenly starting costing you half the price, wouldn't you be inclined to buy more? Sure, some will be sensible and use it for more important things and just think how nice it is that they can get their games for half price, but most people ( especially people with credit cards! ) aren't very sensible with money. Most people, I suspect, will think "Great! Twice as many games!"

Of course your games still need to be the games they're buying.

[soniCron]

The $19.99 price point has been long-standing and well experimented. There's simply little elasticity below that price. In other words, selling for $9.95, you'd have to sell twice as many copies, and that just doesn't happen.

I got a nice little sales bump after I lowered the price of Jeweltopia to $4.95, but I'm still not making what I'd make if I sold it at $19.99. I've let the promotion run for quite some time to get a good perspective of the effect, maybe let word-of-mouth take hold, but it's simply not worth it. $19.99 really is a sweet spot. (At least, for casual games.)

But I'm not the only one - most major portals will back this up.

However, portals love the subscriptions because it locks their viewers into their site. For the portals, the hope is that customers will buy more over time and from them. However, seeing as developers usually distribute their games with several portals, this has little benefit for them. In fact, it simply devalues our products. This is not a Good Thing™.

[zoombapup]

I guess the problem is that you dont really get to say.. once you accept your game is on the portals, you kind of have to go with thier model, no matter what it is, because you are tied in to them selling your game.

Even if you get the full royalty, you still are providing them with more than that, for thier "customer buy in" so they no longer need to advertize to those particular people.

In theory you as a developer dont lose, because you recieve full royalty, but if that were the case, why would they run subs in the first place (i.e. the dev is getting his %age which surely must be more than a single sub would cost??), so effectively they LOSE on the sub, but save on the advertizing and make up the money on cross-selling?

Or is there something more fundamental here?

Its funny, because I'm not interested in portal sales, but I feel like I should know this stuff :)

[Coyote]

You may get the royalties, you don't get the customers / branding / etc.

Not that it's any different from going on other portals. But the pain in the ol' patootey is that every game you release is just as difficult (if not more so) to make money on as the last one. And it may also cheapen the perceived value of your game, maybe.

Big win for the portal. Conceivably a minor loss for the developer with the perceived loss of value, maybe.

[James Gwertzman]

the thinking goes like this:

the average customer buys one game (or less) per year. That's an average revenue per customer of $20/year let's call it.

The goal of the subscription programs is to get customers to buy more than one game a year -- ideally to be worth more than $20/year.

Take the most extreme BFG plan, for example. The customer gets games at $7 each, but has to buy 12 games. That customer has gone from being worth $20/year to $84/year. that's a great boost in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Clearly this is good for the portals.

The next obvious question -- is this good for developers? Let's look at the numbers.

Let's assume hypothetically that a site has 120 games for sale and all games receive the same revenue share of 35% of gross revenue. Let's also assume that the site has 1000 customers.

Under the first model, each customer buys exactly one game for $20 in an entire year. Let's assume again that all 120 games are equally good and the decision as to which game the players buys is completely random.

Each developer in this case makes 1000 * $20 / 120 * 35% = $58 per year.

Now consider the second case. Each customer buys 12 games at $7 each. Each developer makes 1000 * 12 * $7 / 120 * 35% = $245 per year.

That's a 422% increase in revenue, even though each game is priced 70% less, because of the increased volume. It's what you should expect -- if the ARPU is going up, then everyone benefits because it's more revenue to spread around. Granted you make less per individual sale, but you're making a lot more sales.

What about the case where you remove the "all games sell equally" rule? what if you stop assuming that all games are equal? What if 90% of the sales go to 10% of the titles?

The answer has to do with how many games are distributed on the site each year. If there are a lot of games, enough games that the 10% of the titles is still less than the # of games you have to buy in the subscription program then nothing changes. A subscription program is still good. Consider:

In the first model we described above, where each customer buys one game a year, 90% of the sales go to 10% of the games, and the remaining 10% of the sales go to the remaining 90% of the games.

10% * 120 = 12 games
90% * 120 = 108 games

Sales = 1000 users * $20 (one game per year) = $20,000 total

90% of sales = 90% * $20,000 = $18,000 goes to 12 games or $1500 / game
The developer of those top games gets 35% * 1500 = $525

10% of sales = 10% * $20,000 = $2,000 goes to the remaining 108 games or $18.52 / game. The developer of each of those games gets 35% * $18.52 = $6.50 each.

Now consider the case with subscriptions.

Sales = 1000 users * $7 * 12 games = $84,000 total.

The best 10% of games still do better:
90% * $84,000 / 12 * 35% = $2,205 per developer

And the bottom 90% of games also do better:
10% * $84,000 / 108 * 35% = $27 per developer.

So the bottom line is that subscription programs ARE good for developers, all developers, on a given portal. Everyone is making more money if you can raise the ARPU.

One big caveats to this:
You need to consider the breakage model. Breakage in subscription models refers to revenue collected from users who are not actually using the service. In the case of cable TV, for example, it's user who pay for HBO but never watch it --- or in the case of game services, users who agree to buy 12 games for $7 each but then only actually buy 3 games. In this case $21 is allocated to 3 games --- but what happens to the remaining $63? Good question. That's a question you should ask your portal partner. Are they keeping that $63 entirely themselves? Or is it being spread across all games according to the % of games purchased?

So in the case of RealNetworks, when customers sign up for GamePass, and pay their $8/month, and don't buy any games that month, what happens to that money?

[Dan MacDonald]

So in the case of RealNetworks, when customers sign up for GamePass, and pay their $8/month, and don't buy any games that month, what happens to that money?


Amusing :) but does anyone really have any doubt where this money goes?

(I think that paticular detail has already been brought up on these forums previously)

Thanks for the concise description though james, that probably the most straigh forward I've ever seen it explained.

[cliffski]

I guess the problem is that you dont really get to say.. once you accept your game is on the portals, you kind of have to go with thier model, no matter what it is, because you are tied in to them selling your game.


Im not sure thats right. You can have anything you want in a contract. You can stipulate a minimum price point, minimum revenue per copy, minimum days on front page, exclusion from bundling, absolutely anything you want. Granted, its not easy to get the terms you want, and you may have to turn down the placement entirely, but portals aren't doing a "we dont negotiate terms" thing. Or if they are, its not with everyone.
Its like record deals, people often say to new musicians, "its a standard contract, take it or leave it", but thats bull. There is no such thing, everything can be negotiated.

[zoombapup]

Cliff, I was more alluding to the fact that if you are buying into the portal sales methodology, it would be kind of counter intuitive to then not agree to thier methods of selling.

James: thanks for the breakdown. It does make more sense. I'm not sure it necassarily makes the most sense (for instance in comparison to having 3 for 2 and other bundling deals), but it certainly makes sense.

[Fost]

I have asked on several portals not to be part of these kinds of deals, and also not to be part of any affiliate network that portal runs, but the response is usually 'lump it or leave it'.

Perhaps if everyone started asking for those options something would happen, but I somehow doubt everyone is going to club together in such a way.

Portals (of course) have their own interests at heart, this method of selling only benefits them. It's just a reworking of the old budget bundling scam. I certainly don't think of portals as evil; they are like any money making business - ie. they'll **** you in the *** given any opportunity.

[Snooker]

Portals (of course) have their own interests at heart, this method of selling only benefits them. It's just a reworking of the old budget bundling scam. I certainly don't think of portals as evil; they are like any money making business - ie. they'll **** you in the *** given any opportunity.

I'll take offense at this. We don't have any guidance, explicit or implicit, to screw you (the dev) down to the lowest point. There are only three people at Real that currently work contracts for games and all three of us will give you the best deal that your game deserves within our limits.

We're looking to build long-term relationships with developers. If we screw you in some manner, the chances of building that relationship aren't great. We always sit down at the table looking for the cliched "win-win".

[Dan MacDonald]

BTW: The thread I was referring to in my previous post is here. (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=8391) I'm not trying to run a smear campaign, just providing context.

[Drake]

I think it would be nice if portals having subscription clubs would make their proposition more flexible by distinguishing between new releases and catalog titles. That is, allow developers to negotiate a "catalog entry date" for each title that they put on the service, and offer the game at its regular price until that date. Club members could still be offered discounts on new releases, they just wouldn't be able to buy at 70% off on the release date. Reasonable, no?

For evidence of such a system in action, see Columbia House or BMG. Each studio negotiates a catalog entry date for their titles, typically 60-90 days from release. Until that point, new releases cannot be bought with club credits. People who just have to have that new DVD or CD will pay the regular club price, and those that are more lukewarm about the new stuff will wait.

In the absence of such a system, the studios/labels would likely withhold their titles entirely from the club services, until such time (60-180 days) as they could justify offering the large markdown that those club sales represent. The customers who want new releases would end up buying them elsewhere, and the clubs would lose those high value sales.

[jwc]

Portals (of course) have their own interests at heart, this method of selling only benefits them. It's just a reworking of the old budget bundling scam. I certainly don't think of portals as evil; they are like any money making business - ie. they'll **** you in the *** given any opportunity.

Fost, you're one of the few people here to actually have the balls to sell directly online and I really admire you for this! You don't need really a portal deal to survive! just keep making the great games you are making (I've just read your gametunnel interview) and leave portals for the "big developers wannabe"! ;)

p.s. you're also one of the few people to say the truth as it is, when I read devs complaining privately in a remote post in their blog about "a bad portal deal" is very funny, like if they were pissed but too scared to make any names!

[cliffski]

I think it would be nice if portals having subscription clubs would make their proposition more flexible by distinguishing between new releases and catalog titles...
For evidence of such a system in action, see Columbia House or BMG. Each studio negotiates a catalog entry date for their titles, typically 60-90 days from release.

Although thats a good system, and goes some way towards where the devs want to be, its still done with the blockbuster mindset. Indie games dont have this silly short 30 day shelf life of triple A games or movies. Democracy sells only slightly less now than it did a year ago, and there is certainly no pressure on me to drop the price even though its over a year old. If I had a portal deal for Democracy, I'd want to be sure the price stayed right at the top for at least another year.

Portals probably don't realise what a turn-off for devs it is to have their product bundled, marked down and discounted. If a developer sells direct from his site, that kind of discounting is seriously harmful, and I've got little doubt that it is a major factor in scaring some devs away from doing portal deals at all. I guess its less of a concern for your typical match-3 game with its short dev cycle, but for games like mine, which can take a year to make, having them discounted after 2 months is just silly.
If nothing else, portals need to be flexible on pricing terms. It shouldn't be difficult to have a contract where you agree a minimum price point, and if the portal find sales too low at that point, they can just de-list the game.

[Fost]

I'll take offense at this.
Darn! There's my lucrative RA deal shot in the foot ;)

We don't have any guidance, explicit or implicit, to screw you (the dev) down to the lowest point.
To be fair, I never claimed you did, and I wasn't talking specifically about Real. However, I do still claim that big business will always screw you over; unintentionally if they don't do it deliberately. It's the nature of business, and I'm always surprised that people think otherwise. It doesn't happen because anyone at a portal is a complete b****** :) it happens because their goals are different to the developers. Note - I don't actually have a problem with this, it just probably sounds like I do because we are communicating textually rather than speaking face to face - I certainly do not hate portals. Business is business, I just have a problem when we try to make out it's some kind of happy, righteous family out to save the world together. Lets all just be honest here - Portals will try to take as much as they can up to the point that the developer is still happy enough to keep working with them. It's not evil, it's business, if developers demanded more, then portals would have to work within that market to exist. I once met the director of a UK aggregator company at ECTS; his company worked worked with Yahoo games. This guy wore a medallion and was orange from sunbed worshipping. He told me he did pretty much nothing and just worked as a go between for Yahoo and the developers, but that without him your chances of getting on Yahoo were pretty low. I had to admire his honesty, he didn't bs me, he just told me he took 50% for doing pretty much nothing, but that's how the business worked. I liked that, he was the kind of guy you'd be happy to work with, because he told you everything bad up front. I suppose most people would get upset if they were told straight how the industry worked, whereas I appreciate that kind of honesty.

Incidentally, I try to be open minded about such things, and I should have read James Gwertzman's earlier post which has some very precise maths. I have to say, that's the first time I've ever read anything that's made me think twice about my views on subscriptions, it has certainly given me food for thought - thanks James!

Anyway, you want to cultivate a good relationship with developers? How about any of these things if you want to make a difference:


Give developers the email addresses of the customers that buy their games, so they can grow a sustainable business rather than growing your business at the expense of their own. (There's at least one portal that does this - well done to them!)
Stop being so secretive - you are developer relations for the biggest (?) portal out there, and yet you have less than 20 posts to your name on the biggest indie/casual game forum there is. I would have thought your opinion would be considered gold to 99% of developers here - get involved! It would certainly earn respect if any portal owners were on here explaining what their portal was doing to help sell your game better than any other portal.
Fund the development of some games. Oh my god! fund some games? You mean, actually pay up front to develop some games? What a crazy idea! and yet it happens all the time in the mainstream industry. Again, there are a few people doing this, but it's not prevalent within the industry.
Regularly publish example financial and/or sales volume details of some of your products, i.e. what did they sell, over what period and how much did the developer make? Obviously you would need the developer's permission to do this but I'm sure at least 1 or 2 would be willing. What's the big secret if things are so great for all involved?
When you talk to developers, tell them what you are doing to justify earning twice what they are out of their product. Most portals just give the impression they are happy to take your product and fill another week's release slot up; not very inspiring.


The reason the above rarely happens, is that portals don't need to do it, so why would they? Developer relations can't really speak openly on forums, because there's very little they can actually tell you without breaking a contract or risking their job by saying too much. Developers seem happy to give emails away to portals, so they keep them. They don't need to fund development, because they have a position where developers give them their work for nothing. Why would they do otherwise? Out of the goodness of their hearts? come off it! :)

Incidentally, If you are a portal developer, I really wouldn't worry about what I think, I'm hardly a lightning rod for the opinions of indie game developers, and certainly not for casual developers. ;)

[Bmc]

Fost, you're one of the few people here to actually have the balls to sell directly online and I really admire you for this! You don't need really a portal deal to survive! just keep making the great games you are making (I've just read your gametunnel interview) and leave portals for the "big developers wannabe"! ;)

p.s. you're also one of the few people to say the truth as it is, when I read devs complaining privately in a remote post in their blog about "a bad portal deal" is very funny, like if they were pissed but too scared to make any names!


so are you the new savant? one idiot leaves another takes his place.

[jwc]

so are you the new savant? one idiot leaves another takes his place.

I've met personally the good Warren on my trip in USA, and I can assure you, that I'm not idiot like him. I'm much more idiot. Remember it when you speak in my presence.

BTW how goes your business? tired of posting here with "bmc", the portal's best friend ? ;)

[KNau]

What do portals offer that's worth at least 65% of transaction revenue?

It all boils down to the fact that they aren't lazy about creating a community.

Us indie developers are a lazy, lazy bunch - probably the laziest of any business people. We don't want to make websites, we don't want to create a newsletter, we don't want to do marketing, we don't want to get reviews and we don't want to communicate with the customers in any way. From what I've seen we just want to release 1 game a year and hope it's enough to earn a living.

Literally the only thing a portal offers you is that they've taken the time to nuture a community of users. And if you're truly lazy then yes it's worth 65% of the transaction.

I'm not pointing any fingers. I went down that road myself, believing "I just wanna make games'. It's a naive, childish approach to this industry.

[arcadetown]

I've met personally the good Warren on my trip in USA, and I can assure you, that I'm not idiot like him. I'm much more idiot. Remember it when you speak in my presence.

BTW how goes your business? tired of posting here with "bmc", the portal's best friend ? ;)
Please be careful with your posts and don't throw insults around. Just because you are posting under an alter identity (so you don't burn your portal bridges?) doesn't make it cool.

[Pyabo]

Fost. You are so dead on. That is all.

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Just as it's not pure greed that motivates portals to keep, say, 65% of the revenue, it's also not laziness that prevents small developers from improving their community and trying to keep that extra ~2/3 of revenue.

Both parties are acting, for the most part, as rational business entities.

The portals charge what they can get away with, both to customers (more or less than $19.99 reduces profit/revenue - that's the approximate peak of the profit curve), and to developers (less than current terms means they will get fewer titles from devs, hurting themselves. More means they're leaving too much money on the table). The current ratios may not be perfect, but they're probably pretty close to the optimum.

As for developers, it makes little sense to invest effort in web building/community if the return is not likely to be there. Speaking personally, if I attach a rough 'dollars per hour' to time spent on my website versus time spent actually making the game (with the former largely increasing the share of total game revenue that is realized through my website, and the latter simply increasing total game revenue, period), then it seems that my time is better spent making more/better games rather than trying to claw a slightly higher ratio of customers through my website.

[KNau]

Producing one game a year and handing over total control to another entity who contributes nothing to the development cost is not a rational business plan. In fact, that's about as far from rational as you can get. Your only hope is that Big Fish will buy you out eventually and get you off that treadmill, because the only other option is a slow death.

You need to sell 2 - 3 times the number of copies on a portal to equal the amount of revenue you could generate from your website plus you need to factor the additional cost of having no contact with your customers and zero repeat customers. As far as the average consumer is concerned Big Fish (or whoever) created Bonnie's Bookstore. That's why your home site has so little traffic by comparison to anyone who runs even a modest community of users (ie. Hamumu).

In the end I disagree, anyone who just wants to make games at the expense of a business plan is being lazy. If not laziness then a startling lack of ambition. Again, I've been there and done that - and it doesn't work. Congrats if you're successful short-term, but my money is on it not lasting.

[soniCron]

I agree with you completely, Kyle. I'd like to further comment on some of your points:

You need to sell 2 - 3 times the number of copies on a portal to equal the amount of revenue you could generate from your website... Provided you had equitable conversion rates and they had (at least) 2-3 times as many visitors, this doesn't seem like an impossible task. Multiply that to varying degrees by the 15 major portals and you could find yourself with an order of magnitude more customers than ever possible with your own site.

That's why [a casual developer's] home site has so little traffic by comparison to anyone who runs even a modest community of users (ie. Hamumu). That sounds like a matter of efforts and priorities, not an inherent disability. Strong marketing in multiple locations can cater to a variety of users.

Congrats if you're successful short-term, but my money is on it not lasting. I can't tell if you're referring to selling exclusively on portals, or selling casual games et al. If you're talking about selling exclusively, then I can understand and agree. However, if you think there is some inherent value in collecting your customer's emails, then I think you're wrong. You're still at the whim of demand - the customers aren't going to buy your games twice! They'll certainly prove their worth when you release your next title, but before then, they're worthless. Of course, at that point, we're back to portals selling an order of magnitude what you do...


It's imperative developers utilize a broad strategy for maximizing the sales of their games. If a portal stops promoting a game after a month, then it's in the developer's hands to continue promoting - and profiting - from that game. However, avoiding portals for the sake of building one's own community - especially since it takes very little work to release a game on a portal - it's just silly. No? :)

[Fost]

However, avoiding portals for the sake of building one's own community - especially since it takes very little work to release a game on a portal - it's just silly. No? :)

Could it perhaps be that there is differentiation here between indie/casual developers? One rule does not necessarily apply to all. I certainly think for casual developers, you may have a much harder time selling games on your own site than perhaps we have done with a non-casual game like Starscape. I would actually quite like to work on one casual game idea that my colleague Mark has come up with (just because it's a fun concept), and if we ever make it, I'd push specifically to sell that through portals because it would make much more sense than trying to sell the audience we currently have. Conversely, I'm not sure portals have much interest in non-casual stuff although they'll take it to fill out their catalogue, I never got the impression that there was any more interest in pushing for a new audience than that, so I never felt compelled to pursue matters. It seemed like the minimal effort spent supporting portal releases would actually be better spent on my existing customers who were (and still are) supporting us.

You may be right in that a balance needs to be struck between spending time on both your own sales and portals; working the system for what you can get. Although I suspect indie devs may want to weight it far more towards their own site, and casual devs more towards the portal side of things.



PS: just wanted to second Brian, and say that hurling insults around doesn't become us :)

Disclaimer: Sorry, I know I always add these, but I feel it's worth noting, that Moonpod is 4 in November, and we only have one (non-casual) game to our name, so weight your opinion of my comments appropriately ;)

[soniCron]

I didn't mean to misrepresent my message. This thread was directed at casual developers, and so my response reflected that. What I'd like to see are developers trying to cut into a cross-section of the two facets of our downloadable industry. Cliffski is a fine example of this with his Kudos game. While his isn't the first, I think it's a great inspiration that games can appeal to a crossover audience. The only risk is diluting the product to avoid off-putting either side, but I think careful deliberation can find resolution to this delicate problem.

[Snooker]

Fost –

Darn! There's my lucrative RA deal shot in the foot

No worries – I didn’t take anything personally, nor did I mean you to. But if you have a game you’d like me to take a look at, I prefer small denominations ifyaknowhatImsayin. ;)


Lets all just be honest here - Portals will try to take as much as they can up to the point that the developer is still happy enough to keep working with them. It's not evil, it's business, if developers demanded more, then portals would have to work within that market to exist.

Of course. My point was simply that we try to work with the developer to find an agreement that satisfies my boss and yours. I worked the dev side of the core industry for five years and have seen my fill of greedy publishers; believe it or not, that was a strong benefit of the job here – I’m empowered to make agreements, not screw devs over. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

…it has certainly given me food for thought - thanks James!

Indeed and seconded. Subscriptions are a good revenue source for both pub and dev.



Give developers the email addresses of the customers that buy their games, so they can grow a sustainable business rather than growing your business at the expense of their own. (There's at least one portal that does this - well done to them!)

I understand your point; I’m not certain that it’s possible, though. I’ll look into it.


Stop being so secretive - you are developer relations for the biggest (?) portal out there, and yet you have less than 20 posts to your name on the biggest indie/casual game forum there is. I would have thought your opinion would be considered gold to 99% of developers here - get involved! It would certainly earn respect if any portal owners were on here explaining what their portal was doing to help sell your game better than any other portal.

Good point. My title is slightly misleading – it’s not a PR role for making you guys love us. It’s a producer / contract / biz dev role that works directly with devs for getting their games up on our services. If you look at it from inside this org, it makes more sense - we (Dan, Sarah, and I) manage the relationships with the devs for the company. Small point – it may not matter to you.

In a realistic environment, the dev works with a two-person team here: a producer and a dev manager. The producer works primarily on the production-related tasks of the deal (getting builds, evaluating schedules, posting bits to our eval program, getting the final build into the release queue); the dev manager works the contracts, helps with financials, interfaces with marketing, works with the dev on future games, etc. But there is a fair amount of overlap; we also work together closely, so we're always (or most always) in concert on the state of the game.

But it is a good point – you’d like to hear more from us. Noted!


Fund the development of some games. Oh my god! fund some games? You mean, actually pay up front to develop some games? What a crazy idea! and yet it happens all the time in the mainstream industry. Again, there are a few people doing this, but it's not prevalent within the industry.

We do, actually. As a former dev, though, I encourage the studios I work with to minimize the advances, as it can put you into a black hole of recouping after launch if you borrow too deeply. Some studios need the upfront moolah to boot-strap their companies, hire new artists, or the like. That’s fine, too. But be realistic and honest – the majority of your revenue will come in the first 90 days. If you take an advance that you can earn out of in the first 30, you can make a tidy profit for the next two months. Beyond that, though, and you’re looking at much smaller checks.


Regularly publish example financial and/or sales volume details of some of your products, i.e. what did they sell, over what period and how much did the developer make? Obviously you would need the developer's permission to do this but I'm sure at least 1 or 2 would be willing. What's the big secret if things are so great for all involved?

That’s a good idea. I’ll look into it. I’d flip it around, too – there are plenty of devs here who could likewise provide example data.


When you talk to developers, tell them what you are doing to justify earning twice what they are out of their product. Most portals just give the impression they are happy to take your product and fill another week's release slot up; not very inspiring.

Well, I’m not worshipping the sun lamp, if that counts for anything.:)

See my post over here (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showpost.php?p=106316&postcount=7) to get an overview of what Real does for devs.

Incidentally, If you are a portal developer, I really wouldn't worry about what I think, I'm hardly a lightning rod for the opinions of indie game developers, and certainly not for casual developers. ;)

Thanks for your honesty! But I do worry about what public voices say. I worry about what the other voices say, too, but I guess I'm not supposed to pay attention. :)

[jwc]

I didn't mean to misrepresent my message. This thread was directed at casual developers, and so my response reflected that.

Except for the fact that you don't have any games on any portals so, pardon me, but what you know?

before you reply - no I'm not a game dev, I prefer to work in the much more lucrative market of business application - but I know many game devs from this forum and talked with them privately.
Let me repeat again - a game on a portal doesn't mean you'll get $10k in a month - a game need to be very good to earn that, otherwise you'll earn a misery even if is in a portal.
And if your game is nothing exceptional, the best choice is to keep selling directly.
But let you put your game in portals once you finish it, maybe after your see the big earning you'll make you'll start to see the light... ;)

[zoombapup]

Anyhoo, getting back on topic. I think clearly there is a lot of stratification in terms of casual portal development and sales.

If your top small percentage of games delivers most of the revenue, clearly the portals are going to concentrate on delivering those games to thier customers in an optimal way.

But thats a very short term view. In the longer term, would it not be worth working with some of the developers who ALMOST made the top 10 and actually work to improve them, seeing the added value being that you then get MORE top 10 worthy games.

Perhaps this is another question.. in fact.. I'm going to post another thread. Check out my thread (once I post it) about what %age of games are top 10 worthy.