What do Indie Developers want in a Publisher?

How about a non-exclusive contract?

Closely related to that is retention of IP. However, the issue isn't as important as great marketing/exposure; that's what I'd be looking at first.

it's a good start. A reasonable percentage of profits would help...

Probley in this order;

1. The marketing and exposure a publisher can bring to a title.
2. Non-exclusive contract.
3. Low % cut of the title's final price.
4. Prompt payment of funds owed.
5. Through traffic to my own site!. (when i have one :P)

A well established customer base to market too. Proven track record of success. An already impressive portfolio of quality products. I'd take a much lower % cut if the publisher had these. I'm not really interested in the IP unless I thought the product was going to spawn a franchise.

Help me out. IP? thnx.

Intellectual Property.

Sounds like you guys want a Portal not a publisher.

Intellectual property. In other words, ownership of the game. Exclusivity is closely related, but not the same. Just because somebody does or does not have an exclusive right to publish that game is a separate issue from who owns it.

It wouldn't bother me which as long as they did all the work. At the end of the day I just want to make the games. I want someone else to make the money for me. :)

Ones just another name for the other. If not, what will a publisher do that a portal wont?.

give you some credibility... or at the very least, 5 minutes of consideration... inspite of the fact that you don't come with a million dollar budgetary allowance...

--Mike

Semantics. What's the distinction in this case? That is, what are the things we've mentioned that a portal does and a publisher doesn't?

Forgive my ignorance, what is a Portal?

Frank did you start this thread because you are thinking of starting a publishing company, or did you just want to know what you should be looking for in a publisher?

Frank: Retention of IP, a good cut of the profits and revenue, good marketing and PR, and funding for projects that are still in the works.

Oddball: It's the former, he mentioned it earlier. His plans for his TournamentBlitz site are to publish independent games last I read.

TournamentBlitz.com will be providing a Publishing/Portal for Indie Game Software & Media. My definition of Publishing would include the replication, packaging, and distribution of software CDs and Booklets in addition to Electronic Distribution.

I have several Marketing Strategies on the drawingboard. Some conventional (ie: Press Release, Advertisement, Radio & Television), and others not so conventional (Affliate Programs, MLM Techniques, Prize Giveaways). This will be the next priority after the site goes operational. Noone can buy your games, if they don't know they exists.

Developers retain both Intellectual Properties and Ownership of their products. No holds bared on gameplay, content, etc. TournamentBlitz.com retails the software at 10%-15% markup above the Developer's Price. The developer retains full profits and can sell their software own and other sites.

Developers have complete access to the TournamentBlitz Developer's Center in which they can integrate the TournamentBlitz Services into their products: Online Scoreboard, Host Server Locator, Pay2Play, Prize Tournaments & Contests, In-game Commerce & Auctions.

Depending how successful profits are for TournamentBlitz.com we may be in a better position to fund projects. Of course this will dependent on the developers track record.

Will you be publishing Project Plasma FPS?

Depends on if any games ever come about from it.

Build a solid core strategy first - keep things managable and uncomplicated - so all parties understand.
I would stick to electronic distribution for now as packaging costs for low volume sales can be very expensive.
I don't know how much it costs in the USA but here in the UK Radio & TV advertising costs an absolute fortune.
Once your volume of sales increase then review.
I suppose what most developers want from a publisher is that they are well-known/reputable and sell lots of copies. That will be the hardest part to achieve because to get the reputation you already have to have succeeded to a certain extent.
I'm sure that with your talent for making even the most simple thing sound exotically technical you'll do very well in the world of hype ;)
I wish you the best on your latest endeavour.

Trust.

You're right! I've become very skilled at hyping things up. Which should prove very useful in this area of the Game Industry. Perhaps this was my calling all along.


Another epiphany...

hey... does this sound like a reasonable plan for self publishing...

1- make the game
2- write the dll for the licensing keys
3- contract with ShareIt to process orders either electronic download or cd
4- send press kits out to the world and put up your own great looking web page
5- post ads on all the niche boards and gamers boards you can

seriously... do ya think this method can this get a low budget indie some startup sales and credibility...

what would you see as the negatives...

thx

--Mike

support, inc. system in place for patches/upgrades.

Whatever happened to binary people? Weren't they doing something similar?

If you are going to do packaging on a $20 title then 10 to 15% won't cover packaging. I assume shipping will be charge
to the customer. 30% isn't unreasonable and 50% is acceptable if large scale marketing, distribution and packaging is included.

@Mike (Red), How do you think we started? Except we purchased the security software, purchased the press database, purchased submission software and work with eSellerate.

Someone asked what is the difference between a portal and a publisher.

Portal :- online Software Distributor, sells everything by anyone (as long as it's a bejewelled clone), keeps about 70% of Net revenue, does very little marketing to support your product (it either sells or it does not, they promote thier portal, not your game). You retain the IP.

Publisher :- Utilises Software Distributors, does a shed load of product specific marketing, have an interest in selling your game (ie. they paid money upfront that they want back). Normally take ownership of the IP. Will not work with anyone, will only work with titles that they think will shift x thousand units.

Hybrid :- Does both, you retain IP, get a long term marketing plan, good royalty rate - possible upfront funding. Exclusive and non-exclusive agreements.

We fall into the Hybrid category, we recently released 4 games by other indie developers and have another 4 slated for release before xmas. Want to know more? Read this : http://cloverleafgames.com/developers.php

Tim.

That's how I think of a portal, but your definition of a publisher is different than mine. Essentially, I don't think any of the stuff you mention is necessary for a publisher, that's just how the big retail publishers happen to do things. To me, "publisher" implies just one thing, that they publish your game (ie. bring it to market; they get it distributed and making sure people know about it.)

In my mind, "portal" is specific to online while "publisher" doesn't imply either on- or off-line. "Portal" also doesn't do any marketing, while "publisher" does.

@ Indiepath... i think that's the initial route i'm gonna wind up taking as well...

--Mike

Customers.

Tim,

Cloverleaf, looks very nice.

TournamentBlitz.comwill be a Hybrid.

Advertisement is a huge priority. A majority of it will be focused on driving traffic to the site where games are showcased. Strategies include: Press Releases, Prize Giveaways, Word-Of-Mouth & Affliate Program, Radio/Television/Newspaper/Magazine Advertisements.

Developers can rent additional advertisement space on the TournamentBlitz.com website and in games that use TBEMS Services.

Developers earn 100% profit from the sale of their products. A 15% retail markup is applied to the Developers price (even if there is no price). Developers also earn regenerative and subscription profits by integrating TBEMS Services into their products.

'Soft' Distribution will be the primary form of distribution with the option of 'Hard' distribution for additional cost to the buyer.

We accept all platforms, 2D/3D, genres, styles, with no restrictions. However, a rating system will be in place. Mature Rated games will require proof of age for purchase.

How would you do this, exactly?

While I realize the website is far from complete, I'm already turned off by one thing; ditch the intro screen and instead go straight to the main page.



Whatever that means.

jhocking,

The site is under development and obviously not much to see on the front end. The First Page is primo advertising space.

What do you need clarification on? Developer sets price for X game at 14.95. TournamentBlitz adds %15+ markup (2.25), selling the game for 17.39.

TBEMS Cash Services: Cash Tournaments, CoinOp, In-Game Commerce.
TBEMS Free Services: Online Scoreboard, Server Locator, Prize Tournaments.

big10p

We of course review the game and follow guidelines set by http://www.esrb.org/esrbratings_guide.asp#symbols. We only have two categories: Everyone and Mature.

If you have non-exclusive titles, then whats stopping people from going other places to save that 15% ?

Absolutely nothing!

Ah, so the game costs $17 and the developer gets 85%. I was confused by the roundabout way you put it. I was like "100%? So, um, you're working for free?"

I still don't understand what "regenerative profits" are.



That would be the point of a non-exclusive license.

Sure, if you want to look at it that way. Ultimately, the Developer sets the asking price and gets 100% of it.

Regenerative profits are multiple profits generated from the use of a single product, unlike a one time profit from a single sell. Just visualize a coinop arcade game where you insert coins to continue...

Except for the 15% you get. I'm not sure how you define "asking price," but I define it as the amount of money the customer pays for the game. The developer does not get 100% of what the customer paid.

Make no mistake, 15% is not much (frankly I'm a bit concerned about the services you plan to provide for just that cut, considering simple order taking sites have a larger fee,) but please don't lie.

That's fine. What I was asking is how you can prove an on-line purchaser is the age they say they are?

I don't think calling him a liar is helpful. And the developer does get 100% of the price that they want for the game. Frank simply adds 15% on top of that. Do you see?

You win.

What services are you concerned about? Integrating TBEMS Services is a option, not a requirement.

Hopefully the low percentage markup and regenerative profit potential of our services motivate Developers to integrate them.

Two options: online age verification service and disclaimer.

I see. The disclaimer sounds cheaper. :)

Frank, there appears to be some synergy here. I have a number of tools and services that we, Indiepath, have developed that I am positive you will find of great benefit to your business and would assist in winning you some customers. We have not released any of the aforementioned yet but I am happy to discuss them with you.

I have tried your email but it bounces, can you please let me know how to get in contact; assuming you are interesting in talking :D

Personally if I wanted to look for a publisher, which at the moment I confess I do not, but what I would be looking for is shop floor coverage. My team already has a big website and could do a portal ourselves, any indie developer can - just give a few games away and you can make more targetted traffic come in a week than you can afford the bandwidth bill for. What my team cannot do is put a game in the shops, so, that's what i'd want - if I wanted a publisher.

This is not a flame..!

Sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about. You will not make a portal a viable success in a week. Far more industrious people have tried - and failed.

You have to virtually pay for shop floor coverage these days. The only way you get that is AAA - nothing less. If you can make an AAA game, then so be it. Because that is your only chance.

That's probably true - most AAA titles only seem to get a couple of months shelf space before being consigned to the bargain bin. Although, most game shops have a back shelf with some budget PC titles. Can't imagine getting too many sales from that, though. Don't know what the attraction of selling in-store is, anyway. I think indy developers would stand to make far greater sales on the web, than in-store.

Tim, I'm interested. I'll investigate the trouble with the email. I'm not sure what the problem is, I tx and rx emails with no trouble. I've replied with an alternate address.

You are right I exagerated a wee bit, infact in the first week of a game i'm lucky if it breaks 10,000 downloads. The point was valid however, a free game can be used to generate very heavy traffic.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you may have more luck with a 'catchier' and/or easier to remember name than Tournamentblitz...
Kind of what Indiepath did with 'cloverleaf games'.

Face it, outside this community 'tournamentblitz' doesn't really mean much, and it doesn't sound like the kind of name that the average person would find easy to remember or care much about.
Add to that that a substantial number of games won't even be remotely 'tournament' related, and you're alienating part of your customer base right up front, by name alone.

Now, as far as what to look for in a 'publisher'... I must admit and haven't really looked into this area myself before, never yet having anything solid good enough to look to have published. ;-)
But were I at that point, I would probably consider the following items when looking around for a publisher:

1) Customers. The major reason for using a publisher is to generate (additional) sales of course, so a publisher would need to be able to get my game in front of a substantial number of people to be 'useful'

2) Non-exclusive deal. (Unless the publisher can reasonably assure a significant exposure and has a good track record, I wouldn't want to be prohibited from using additional publishers and/or directly sell it myself as well

3) Reports. I would like to be able to view sales reports in a frequent fashion, rather than having to wait for the end of a quarter to find out if you sold anything or not.

4) Exposure. Will the publisher simply slap a copy of a game on their site and that's it, or will they also take an active role in submitting demos of the game(s) to reviewers, magazines, shareware sites?
(This one gets less important if the publisher in question can show they get a significant number of visitors on their site itself)

This is the purpose of advertisement.
Our customer base is Game Developers and Game Players. No restrictions on our site alienating games without tournament capability. Nor are the games we showcase limited to Blitz-made games. Besides, any game can be a tournament game, just add a score system and http interface.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of the website's name has yet to be determined. We can measure this when I start advertising. Additionally, I can set up a poll to get more feedback on this. It will take a 1000+ more opinions for me to even slightly consider re-branding. IMHO, the website makes the name, not the reverse.

Re-branding is not a problem prior to launch, only after. Allow me to be opinion #2 that the name needs changed.

Allow me to rephrase.

It will take a 1000+ more opinions for me to even slightly consider renaming my website.

Add me and you only need 997 others.

changing the name of your site will only cost the registration fee of a dot com or a dot uk. Both are cheap. Re-doing the logo shouldn't take too long.

Also, your web host seems a bit slow. Can't really test overall bandwidth but latency seems overly high (takes a long time from mouse-click to page-update).

I think you're on to a winner if you've got the spare time and bags of motivation. If you're still around when I manage to finish a project (some time within the next x years!) I'll look you up.

...Advertising's purpose is to spend extra money to overcome a burden and hopefully get the same results?



But 'game developers' only care about how effective signing up with you will be to their sales, and 'game players' don't know blitz and generally couldn't care less about what language the games are written in.

It will cost you a lot more to market a 'mediocre' hard-to-remember name that people can't relate to than it is to market an easy/cute name. If people can't remember the name, you'll have to do a lot more marketing for them to start remembering you than when you have an easy name instead.

There's a very good reason that 'Google', 'Yahoo', 'Tivo', 'Kazaa', 'Skype' and the likes picked those names and not some random 15-letter word combination like you're about to.

If you are serious about getting into that particular line of business, you should recognize that you would have to do a *lot* more work to overcome a poorly chosen name... Why would anyone want to start a race while being weighted down from the very beginning?

I'm sorry if you don't like the suggestion of a name change, but we're really not trying to be mean to you -- just trying to protect you from an (in my mind obvious) mistake that could negatively affect your chances of succeeding with your business venture. Especially in the line of business you want to be in, image and name-recognition is everything

Of course you are completely free to ignore it, but if I were you, I would definitely do some deep thinking about it... The simple fact that three complete strangers have indicated to you in the thread above that maybe you should look into a different name, with noone putting in a word to the contrary isn't exactly a good sign after all.

We know you like blitz, the vast majority of the people on these forums do... but outside, few people get the warm fuzzy feeling about its name that you/we do. There is no emotional association with the word to the general public, except possible a negative one: 'TournamentBlitz' might indicate just 'wargames' to non-programmers, since many English-speakers would only associate the word 'blitz' with the German 'blitzkrieg' of WWII. That too could alienate part of your potential customer base, considering that the most popular kind of indie games are various puzzle games.

Sorry. :-?

Anyway, whatever you decide to do, I do wish you the best of luck!

Actually, let me add 2 more points to the 'what I would want in a publisher' questionaire:

5) An accessible website. a 10-second fade-in full screen advertisement before even seeing any site content is a very bad sign

6) A speedy website. your current hosting provider seems exceptionally slow, it took me probably about 40 seconds to load the front page of your site. Subsequent page links on there are very sluggish as well. No matter how good your content is going to be, if your host is so slow you won't have many people casually browsing around on your site. People don't want to wait forever for pages to load, so they don't 'waste' their time waiting for something potentially interesting to come up.

That in turn means that people wouldn't even see many of the possible great games you have up for sale, leading to lower sales of these items.

If you are serious about selling products, you also need a serious webhost to back you up -- the chain is only as strong as the weakest link, after all.

(Again, please don't think I'm trying to do everything I can to burn your dreams here -- I am, however, a realist.)

996

Thanks Team

I really do appreciate your insight. I agree the page loads way too slow. The host is investigating.

Google TournamentBlitz and post your results

Google claims 819 hits, but only showing 2 pages of results (when going to page 2, page 3 disappears)

(It's pretty much a given that you're going to be the #1 result for a term like that, but in reality that won't be what people will be searching for. A google search for 'xlsior' shows 4 hits for my website (xlsior.org) in the top 10 results.
But when I look at the web statistics for my site, I can see among others the keywords that people entered in search engines to end up on my page. 'xlsior' isn't among the top-100 words searched for that led people there, so its good ranking for that term becomes almost insignificant. By far the most popular keyword used to find my site is 'powerbasic'.

The vast majority of people will be searching for stuff like 'download free games' not 'tournamentblitz'.
(As a final thought: Googling for 'tornament' and 'tournement' returns 362,000 matches, so looks like a commonly mispelled word.)

On the contrary I must argue. If you name your website "HappySlappyTournamentHoes.com" I doubt you will get any traffic for games, even if the name "Tournament" is in there.

Having the name Blitz in there will surely direct hardcore DB users away as they value pride in language more than anything.

"Tournament"


"Blitz"


So the only game I would associate with it would be Football (being an American).

Not trying to offend you here TL, just trying to get you to change the name ;-)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=online+game+cash+prizes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tournament+video+games+cash
even -> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tournament+blitz

Nothing personal, but years of marketing research shows that a name is everything in todays world of commerce.

http://www.akamarketing.com/your-domain-name.html

When I was at Simply the order processing on the website took 2 seconds to go through the checkout. One day we had some latency and it took 5 seconds, we lost £10,000 of turnover a minute until the problem was fixed.

With regards to the tournamentblitz thing, Frank is almost right - the advertising and the website will make the name, but he's missed one piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

A lot of people cannot spell tournament, so if a potential customer remembers the name they still may not be able to find it.

LOL!

10,000 quid a minute! amazing

what's the turnover at banshee studios, andy?

"amazing" is right. That works out to ~£4.8 million turnover a day!!! I'm saying nothing. :P

I think he was on about "Simply" computers ltd?

And assuming the company traded every day in the year that's nearly £2 billion a year turnover, nice, for a mega corp.

Actually I know someone who works for Nomura (large Japanese bank (London branch) that does stock market stuff) , he's in charge of their software. If it goes down, huge sums of money can be lost n a very short time due to the nature of the business.

I figured Becky was talking about Simply Computers Ltd. Even so, that seems like a hell of a turnover. Not that I know anything about such things. :)

Anyway, back on topic...

<---Becky, and the answer is £0.

With regards Simply's turnover, I was not high enough to be partial to the full figures however I can say that it was highly seasonal and working there at xmas required the speed of a gazelle on anabolic steroids and the stamina of a billegerant mountain.

It did amuse me even then that the hundreds of people working there on the phones produced a turnover that was only "comparable" to two guys in the middle of a sprawl of desks who ran the web site amongst their other duties.

Anyway the point is that the speed of a web site has a direct and tangeable value, every tenth of a second delay adds a little bit more to the impatience and frustration of potential customers.

We all have to agree that if your game is not fun, it will not sale, no matter how much exposure the publisher brings.

TournamentBlitz.com is offering:
Publishing Portal Services
+ Non-exclusive contract
+ 85% Profit
+ Prompt payment of funds owed
+ Through traffic to your own site
+ Online/Offline Affliate Program
+ Free Development Tools
+ Conventional Advertisement
SDK In-Game Services:
+ Online Scoreboard
+ TBNet Enhanced Server Locator
+ Advertisement Coop
+ Cash Tournament
+ Prize Tournament
+ Pay2Play
+ Commerce/Auction

I do things different and different is what you need to stand out online. You can use some or all the services. Its your choice. If you want to earn $|£ with your game, then you want the services TBlitz offers.

I assume you meant a high percentage. A low cut is what you take, a high cut is what you offer.

Your right! I corrected that.

Make that 995.

Advertising is far from enough to make a name. Besides which there are other (and more potent) forms of advertising than banners and magazine adds, and picking a name that's easy to remember (EA, Ubi, id) should be part of any serious companys long-term marketing strategy.

Does this mean that TB is potentially an online gambling portal?

I think that two words are easier to remember than two letters FlameDuck, because they mean something. For instance, I can remember the name FlameDuck easily, but I struggle to remember xlsior's from earlier in the thread. Because I can remember the name FlameDuck I can also remember aspects of the associated personality, and indeed anticipate a quote/flame response, but I cannot remember if i've ever "gone up against" xlsior or what he's likely to do if I said anything contrary to his opinion.

In this respect Tournament Blitz works, it also abbreviates to TB or TBlitz which works well too, and falls within your remit in the same way that EA is really called Electronic Arts.

So I think Frank is right, except that tournament is a hard word to spell.

I agree... I couldn't spell tournament without looking. I doubt I'll remember the name. And I certainly agree about its meaning.

The name needs to be changed. I don't see why you are stuborn about it.

In any case... You wouldn't believe the BS that people type into google to get my site...

Granted.. I don't get that many hits. But most of them come from a search for "Lucifarian Teachings" or just "Lucifarian" I also get hits for "Gangsta Rap" and "Rap" and "Ryan's buffet" and even one for "Krollen" I assume someone just misspelled Krillin.

Which goes to show you... you never really know how people are going to stumble onto your site.

I agree that "Tournament Blitz" is thinking in the right direction, it's just not the best choice of words.

Isn't there some distinction between a skills-related game and a completely random game like a slotmachine when it comes to being considered 'gambling'?

But I guess that depending on how he would implement things, there very well could be a grey area, and he probably should get some sound legal advice before any money starts changing hands there... there are a lot of rules when it comes to gambling, and violating them can get a very costly affair... You;ll want to be very sure that you're in the clear I imagine.

There is a taxation isssue in the UK, that's why we have daft questions on television phone ins like:

Name the Prime Ministers:
A) Tony Blair
B) Alex Furgusson
C) George W. Bush

100% of the country sniggers at those who go for option C, 100% of those who don't phone in snigger at those who do "because they know the answer", whilst 100% of those who phone in know everyone knows the right answer and just want a shot at the prize for a £2 premium rate call.

However there is also skill in the game of poker, blackjack, pontoon and most of the other gambling games. I don't know what the gambling regulations are but i'm sure that having an element of skill does not automatically exclude you from being covered by them.

I had assumed that he meant a pay per play thing.... just like an arcade... didn't think about prizes...

That's correct. In the beginning, TournamentBlitz.com was intended to support Cash Skill-based Games. After careful consideration I decided to extend the features of the SDK and services of the website.