Online or a Publisher?

[Yuriy O]

Hey guys. You all know that even several years ago the online sales from own web site been much better than right now. At least that's what we are experiencing.

This seem to be started by big guys like Real and alike coming into industry and taking majority people off your web site to their portals.

The questions is, do you see the same tendency? Now what? The only way to make some money is submit to a publisher?

What are your thoughts?

[Jack Norton]

The questions is, do you see the same tendency? Now what? The only way to make some money is submit to a publisher?

Answering your questions:
1) For casual games, yes.
2) Continue to make more games on my own.
3) And even if you submit? you don't have a guarantee that they'll publish your game :P If you have a nice game I'd suggest to look for affiliates too.

[Greg Squire]

I'm no expert at this yet, but to me the question isn’t whether to go through a publisher or to self publish. The question ought to be “What can I do to get the most exposure for my game, and thus the most registrations?” In my mind that means trying to get your game with every publisher, every affiliate, and every shareware site possible. Obviously there are limits in both time and money, so you should focus your time on those places that could give you the biggest “bang for your buck” first, and then work on the others.

[Yuriy O]

Yes, maximum exposure is the key factor.

[Valen]

Due to the success of casual games over the last few years, what's happening now is big players are coming in and taking over lucrative markets. But they're only interested in markets with a huge prospective customer base. Niche markets are unprofitable to them, because their business model revolves around large amounts of revenue. So basically the best thing to do right now is to find a niche that's unsaturated, and do your best to dominate it. The only way you'll be able to make any decent money with casual games from now on is by going through the big portals. So it's not really a matter of whether to self publish or have Real publish your game, but a matter of what game to make such that you can successfully self publish it (if that's what you want).

[super_e]

I'm still wrapping up my first PC casual game and like you, I'm also experiencing the dilemma of whether to self-publish or have it published by someone else. Unfortunately, I don't have any data to base on if I were to choose either one of these options except for a few docs and papers I found on the net.

However, I have contacted 2 publishers and they both mentioned that they can "expose" my game to bigger sites like EA's pogo, Yahoo Games, RealArcade, Shockwave, etc., if I were to "exclusively" have them publish my game. What I am not sure is how this process works and what's the guarantee that my product will be seen on these sites. So I guess if you're going to have someone else publish your product, be sure to ask a lot of questions and weigh their answers one by one because selecting the "right publisher" will make your game successful.

Hope this helps!

[Greg Squire]

Be careful of "exclusive" contracts. If you ever do decide that an "exclusive" contract is okay with you, be sure there's a "lame duck" clause in it (I believe that's what it's called). The lame duck clause would state some thing to the effect that if they don't sell X amount of units in X amount of time, then the contract is void and rights are given back to you to go with another publisher.

Always consult with a lawyer before signing any rights away to your game. Too many developers have done this in the past and have gotten burned.