Crediting developers and Casual Portal Inners

[cyrus_zuo]

Been working with CMP on a couple of articles and I happened to get both today .

On Gamasutra I'm starting a new monthly column on the casual games business. The first column, published today, is about the similarities and differences between the portals. I discovered some really interesting information while writing the article, if nothing else I strongly suggest checking out the table at the end (though all the drama is over by that point).

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=15955

In Game Developer magazine I did this month's (November) Business Level. It is an article about giving developer's credit for the games that they are making. The article talks about the fact that most portals don't include a byline crediting the developer on the game page's and that additionally portals require developers to include the portal logo in games wherever the developer logo is seen. This leads to customers not knowing who the developers are and believing that the games are being made by the portals. Essentially my concern is that credit isn't being given to the developers for the games they are making. When you buy a game from WalMart you don't see a WalMart logo in the game, and online stores like Amazon credit the developer/publisher of the products they sell.

As an interesting piece connected to the magazine article, in the casual games column of the latest Games for Windows Flip Words 2 is mentioned. The game is stated as being from Big Fish Games, which I think goes to show just how the current situation among portals is confusing the picture as to who makes the games.


It was really cool to get a chance to write for Game Developer, and hopefully they'll let me do it again someday . I'm also real excited to be doing a monthly for Gamasutra. Next month I'm planning on doing an article about clones and the casual games industry.


Anyway, there are two topics for discussion, and at least one article to read on this Happy Halloween...hopefully theyt aren't they frightening .

[Maupin]

Maybe you could get whoever is in charge of the Reflexive XML feed to list the actual developers.... For example, Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess is listed as developed by Big Fish Games (instead of Blue Tea Games).

I corrected a few developer listings on Game Socks but don't have the time to go through and fix them all...

Anyway, very nice article! You make some good analogies. I've seen the portal exclusive thing become more of an issue with customers, because there are many who download games from multiple sites to get additional trials. Recently Big Fish Games had(has?) an exclusive on Burger Shop, and my site with Reflexive content gets about 50 searches a day for Burger Shop.

[cyrus_zuo]

Maybe you could get whoever is in charge of the Reflexive XML feed to list the actual developers.... For example, Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess is listed as developed by Big Fish Games (instead of Blue Tea Games).

That has to do with who the publisher is. Some publishers (Game House...so I guess that means just one publisher) allow us to put the name of the developer in our information. The other publishers do not allow us to do so, so we can not.

That said, I would like to have Reflexive list both the developer and the publisher in the future. At the moment we list only one or the other (which is of course still than just about anyone does, but I still want more ).

Exclusives are interesting. The most interesting exclusive, in my mind, this year was a developer who chose to release their game on the portals based on how many discounts were available. They went with the portals with the least amount of discounts first down to the portal with the most discounts over a period of several weeks. Potentially it could maximize the amount of sales you have at higher prices.

Also interesting is the impact on other portals that exclusives are having. It almost seems as if some portals are both delaying and choosing not to carry some games that have been exclusives elsewhere. With the differences in the catalogues between Oberon, Big Fish and Game House, I'm not sure why exclusives carry much weight anyway. My guess is that the marketing behind them is their key driver.

[Andy]

For example, Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess is listed as developed by Big Fish Games (instead of Blue Tea Games).

Go figure really.
This stuff isn't such simple as it looks like.
Even if one states that he/she is developer of some particular game this doesn't mean he/she should be mentioned as developer in credits.
Work for hire terms very often exclude such credits as necessary.

Steve ( Pardon Steve! Used your title just as an example ) said that he has developed the game. And we have no reason not to trust him. But no one of us haven't read his agreement with BFG. And I assume if agreement is exclusive somehow BFG should have pretty high interest in being credited as developing/publishing house for the game.

I just mean that this is not Reflexive business at all (for example again) to solve such issues in favor to "actual" developers.

PS So what is the price for GT Russ? With such your high activities in different media around and another work you do I feel this is not such a stupid question any more. Nah. I'm kidding really. I've got no such a big money anyway.

[Roman Budzowski]

Exclusives are interesting. The most interesting exclusive, in my mind, this year was a developer who chose to release their game on the portals based on how many discounts were available. They went with the portals with the least amount of discounts first down to the portal with the most discounts over a period of several weeks. Potentially it could maximize the amount of sales you have at higher prices.

I was going to do the same... I mean, I will do the same. I don't give a damn that portal X sell 50% more than portal Y if discount reduce my share to the silly amount of less than $3. Portal Y can sell over 2.25 times less and still make you same amount of money.

It almost seems as if some portals are both delaying and choosing not to carry some games that have been exclusives elsewhere.

Someone from Oberon on GameZebo interview said that RA, BFG and O-M doesn't carry games developed inhouse or published by one of them.

best
Roman

[Spore Man]

The not crediting the developer is intentional. The "confusion" is intentional. It's just like in the older days of console development. In the NES days, you rarely saw developer credits on the game box. But you saw a nice big logo of the publisher. Then slowly in 16 bit days some developers wised up and negotiated getting their logo on the box packaging and game intros, and now it's pretty much the norm.

Hogging the credit can backfire too, if you put out a crappy game.

[SteveZ]

Maybe you could get whoever is in charge of the Reflexive XML feed to list the actual developers.... For example, Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess is listed as developed by Big Fish Games (instead of Blue Tea Games).

Good catch there. I think it should be fine to switch it back to "Blue Tea Games", though I don't mind either way. Since users can search games by company, I do see an advantage to having it under BFG.

Steve ( Pardon Steve! Used your title just as an example ) said that he has developed the game. And we have no reason not to trust him. But no one of us haven't read his agreement with BFG. And I assume if agreement is exclusive somehow BFG should have pretty high interest in being credited as developing/publishing house for the game.

No worries Andy. Though I can't go too much into my contract, but I can say that it allows me to retain my IP, thus "developing by" should be BTG while "publishing by" should be BFG.

Personally I'm not too worried about branding myself as a company at this point. My focus is on branding the games, as each title is made with sequels in mind.

-Steve Z.

[Nikos Beck]

There are still plenty of games nowadays that are developed on contract. The contracts have a clause that says the contractor will not have their name on the box, in credits and they are not allowed to use the game's name or any parts of it whatsoever in their own marketing, advertising.

I forget which game it was but when I read the credits, I noticed that the game was developed by a single programmer, two artists and a tester. The publisher tacked on the names of another programmer, another artist, a few more testers and about six executives. I'm sure the executives did their job negotiating contracts and making contacts. It just seems skewed to have more people managing a project than actually working on a project.

[Andy]

No worries Andy. Though I can't go too much into my contract, but I can say that it allows me to retain my IP, thus "developing by" should be BTG while "publishing by" should be BFG. -Steve Z.

Steve, I mean you can say what ever you want. The question is if you are ready to show your contract with BFG to every portal around and (what is more important) if they would like to get into such details.

I don't know who has submitted the game to Reflexive ( if we already use you both as examples ) but I believe they just feel on the safe side when they give all credits to BFG. This is sad but true.

Anyway, I wouldn't be so worried about such issues. Most of players/customers mostly trust to the place where they download game and don't pay too much attention to all these percentages/credits/clones/etc. And I know this for sure. Huge amount of players of our online games were wondering where they could try our another games. Guys ( and ladies )! This is written right on the main screen of the game: @www.blah-blah.com - click here for more our games". No way!

Edit:

Personally I'm not too worried about branding myself as a company at this point. My focus is on branding the games, as each title is made with sequels in mind..

And this part above - I agree, this is most important when you are focused on work for portals. Not even the games itselves, but branding the quality of your job and financial success of your previous games.

[SteveZ]

Steve, I mean you can say what ever you want. The question is if you are ready to show your contract with BFG to every portal around and (what is more important) if they would like to get into such details.

This doesn't make sense, why would any developer do that. I personally don't mind if portals say FR is by BFG, and if I wanted it changed, a nice short email to them should do the job.

-Steve Z.

[James C. Smith]

I think many of you are missing the bigger point. You are focusing on the difference between developer vs. publisher and which one should get credit. But the point of Russel’s article is that NEITHER one gets credit on most portals and often the portal (retailer) gets credit for making the game rather than the publisher who funded the game. For example the Games for Windows article where they didn't give credit to the developer or the publisher and instead credit the retailer (portal).

This is not the same as the NES days when the publishers got their names on the box rather than the developers. This is like Wal-mart putting their name on the box rather than letting the publisher put his name on there. And Wal-mart demanding that their logo also but put on the loading screen of the game.
(no, Wal-mart doesn’t do that. This is an analogy demonstrating how silly the requirements of the portals are)

Sure, as a developer I would prefer that the developer get all the credit. But this fighting between developer and publisher is distracting from the bigger problem of rights holder vs. portal. The portal should credit the right holder (publisher or developer) and most do not.

[ninesquirrels]

this fighting between developer and publisher is distracting from the bigger problem of rights holder vs. portal. The portal should credit the right holder (publisher or developer) and most do not.

This is very true. At the end of the day, the IP holder of the product has sacrificed something to maintain those IP rights - be it financing, or bootstrapping their development, etc. When you sell your IP rights on a game, you are getting something ($$$) in exchange for giving something (the right to call it yours). Whoever made that sacrifice - be it the guy who wrote the code or the developer who financed the guy who wrote the code, or the publisher who financed the developer - that party should be credited as the IP holder.

The problem now is exactly what James points out - that the customer develops a brand loyalty to the portal (BFG, Oberon, etc.) instead of to the IP holder. Of course, this works both ways. Boomzap.com has a few hundred games on our site through Reflexive affiliate, and I spend a lot of time explaining to friends/family that we only made 3 of the games on the site... Not because I am trying to take credit for the games - but because nobody bothers to even look.

So in the end, it's really difficult to "brand" anything you don't build, finance, and distribute yourself. Not sure there is an easy way around that - even for people with the right intentions.

Cn

[cyrus_zuo]

It isn't about signing off IP rights. If it was just IP rights, then when you went to Portal 'xyz' and looked at game 'psr' it would list the name of the IP rights holder.

The issue on Crediting isn't who is being credited. It's that no-one is being credited on most portals.

If someone is being credited, then you can argue about who should be credited. The argument isn't about who should be credited. The argument is that 'someone' should be credited. Until there are credits on the portals, the question of who is being credited is beyond the argument.

[lennard]

... I'm not sure why exclusives carry much weight anyway. My guess is that the marketing behind them is their key driver.

The portals provide eyeballs for which they pay $. If, due to branding and exclusives, these visitors believe they are getting something unique from the website then they are more likely to come back for free because they believe that they are getting something from The Portal that they couldn't get elsewhere.

Let's say you are a portal with a catalog of games on which you net $12 a sale and that are converting at 1% and that half of your visitors are making a download. Roughly that means you are earning 6 cents per visitor. If each visitor costs 15 cents and they never come back then you are losing money. If you can average repeat visits of at least 4 times per visitor then you are making money on your paid eyeballs.

I'm making informed guesses about those numbers - feel free to educate me if you know better .

[Spaiz]

At Logler we show credits to right owners of every game. We often get contacted by developers and publishers with request to correct missing or incorrect data, so, credits are very important and this is like a some form of respect to people who made or published the game. I think this is a good practice to show the gamer who developed/published the game.

[Roman Budzowski]

...are more likely to come back for free because they believe that they are getting something from The Portal that they couldn't get elsewhere.

They shouldn't come back because they think portal X made another game. They should come back because portal X offers better service, method of payments, selection of games, community features, whatever.

I used to prefer Big Fish Games over other portals but since they introducer download manager I don't like them as much as I used to.

best
Roman

[Spore Man]

That's the thing about the average Mass-Market Mary. They don't think like developers. So you, the developer, must learn how Mass-Market Mary thinks.

[princec]

Sure, as a developer I would prefer that the developer get all the credit. But this fighting between developer and publisher is distracting from the bigger problem of rights holder vs. portal. The portal should credit the right holder (publisher or developer) and most do not.

Serves everyone right for agreeing to it then eh?

Imagine a book publisher that didn't allow an author to put his name on a book. Can you see authors lining up to go with that publisher?

Imagine if Amazon didn't allow either the publisher or author to put their names on a book. Can you see Amazon getting any products to sell?

So why is it that indie game developers are such wimps?

Cas

[Pyabo]

So why is it that indie game developers are such wimps?

This is an excellent question. It's been said many times before, but no one wants to actually do anything about it: Developers have to band together to improve their lot.

[princec]

This is an excellent question. It's been said many times before, but no one wants to actually do anything about it: Developers have to band together to improve their lot.

We are Sort of.

Cas

[MerscomMan]

One thing that nobody mentioned is that this is not always a smart idea for the portals, but none of them have seemed to realize it. For example, Big Fish's first party games like MCF are almost always top-5 titles with tremendous production values. By making all 365 games that are released on their portal "Big Fish games", their brand is watered down by all the games at the bottom of the list. The casual casual game customer (couldn't resist) is not going to know the nuances of who the actual developer is and thus will not place a premium on the Big Fish brand. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some tension internally between the development group (who is trying to build their reputation by creating top notch products) and the portal side (who is trying to build the brand awareness of the portal). Same for the other portals except Real, which has done a good job of using the Gamehouse brand for their products and Real for the portal.

[cyrus_zuo]

these visitors believe they are getting something unique from the website then they are more likely to come back for free because they believe that they are getting something from The Portal that they couldn't get elsewhere.

Well, my reply just got eaten...so I'll try to recreate it...

I think the key isn't the numbers, it is the "believing that they are getting something different."

However, I have two thoughts about that (both are detailed in my article on Gama...which is linked...and can be read...and some comments in this thread make it clear that it hasn't been...)

1) Oberon, BFG and Real have somewhat mutually exclusive catalogs. So most of the bigger portals have unique exclusive content naturally. However, a good portion (the majority?) of what is called exclusive content doesn't come from that catalog, it comes from games created by the smaller developers (many of whom visit these boards). I find that very interesting as the catalogs are already fairly distinct. It seems small developers are being brought into the conflict, and I wonder if it benefits the small developers to be involved in that way. (I'm speaking of games that eventually go to all the portals, but receive a carrot to be exclusive with any one portal for a period of time - 'Timed Exclusives')

2) The majority of the game catalogs, despite being fairly unique in title name, are essentially the same in content. For example, each major publisher has a Hidden Object game (MCF, Mortimer Becket, Dream Day Wedding) that sells quite well. Those games aren't found on all of the major portals, but I don't believe that the customers care much. I think this is because the games aren't different enough for customers to really value one over another. This being the case, it calls into question what is valued specifically about exclusives. I think it might be that the customer cares that games are called 'New' and 'Exclusive' as much as anything, and perhaps more-so than caring about what the game actual is. That's of course a bit of an overstatement, but I think there is probably a good deal more truth to it than has probably been appreciated.


The credits discussion seems to have had some really good thoughts on it over the last half dozen posts, I don't have anything to add at the moment .

[James C. Smith]

I just received my copy of Game Developer magazine at home yesterday. It has Russell's Where Credit Is Due article on the last page of the magazine. I recommend everyone flips to the back and reads that article now that it is actually in print.

It is the "November 2007" issue with 2K Games' Bioshock on the cover.

[Greg Squire]

I just got my copy on Saturday (the 10th), and its a good read. Great job as always Russ!

Unfortunately this practice will probably continue until there are enough developers that are willing to walk away from portal deals unless they get the credit they deserve. Making other casual developers aware of the problem is a good first step.