How many game submissions do the portals get?

You might find this interesting. I spoke to some people at Casuality who process game submissions.
http://greyaliengames.com/blog/how-many-game-submissions-do-the-portals-get/

Yeah, I know they get loads. That's why I get so annoyed with folks who submitted a game three days ago and whine on the forums because nobody replied yet.

I'm more interested in PHP and SQL lately than Blitzmax though, so probably won't be going down the portals route any more (unless I get a surge of enthusiasm to finish Magicville).

YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!

/end surge

Gfk

I'm looking at submitting TU to Reflexive in the not too distant future (after a big game update).

But how do find them as a portal? And can blitz progs be wrapped in their security software?

Yes, Blitz can be wrapped. They did Aerial Antics not long ago.

Reflexive are OK. Buzzword was written in Blitzmax and had all its files included with IncBin, and everything worked fine with their software - even streaming audio files using REDi's MaxMod.

Wouldn't touch Oberon Media with a long, poopy stick. Had an altercation with them recently after I got an e-mail from them which put them in breach of their own contract. So I terminated it straight away. Any company that tries to screw me can sod right off.

To explain - they only managed $32 of sales in 6 months. A small amount, but they owed it. Their contract states that they pay you when the total payments due reaches $500, OR every three months whatever the amount.

I contacted them after their payment was five weeks late. They said they hadn't paid me because the bank transfer fee would have taken most of the payment.

I suggested Paypal - "We don't deal with paypal accounts" was the entirety of their reply. So I asked them to send a cheque and they still whinged about that! They said they'd send me a cheque but ONLY THIS ONCE. They went on to say that in future they would not pay me unless they owed over $500 - which was not what their contract said! They even had the nerve to send me a quote from the contract to highlight the fact that they only pay over $500. Unfortunately for them, it also said that they pay every 3 months regardless of the balance.

So I told them to terminate the contract.

They sent a cheque but it took six weeks to arrive. It equates to about £16. They sent it in USD so I have to pay a conversion charge to GBP which gives Barclays an excuse to take half of it.

So all that agro for eight quid. I should have told them to roll their cheque up nice and tight, and shove it where the mice won't get it.

Thanks. Doing some digging on indie forums they seem to have reasonable cred - but it's always good to hear it from someone who's had direct dealings with them.

I'm heartened by the idea that Reflexive takes submissions from developers directly.

I've had a publisher in contact (a reasonably well known one too) who've said they'd be interested in non-exclusive electronic sales distribution rights to TU, with a view to putting it on the portals. At first I was intrigued by the idea of having a 'publisher', but I'm having second thoughts now.

The publisher mentioned a revenue split of 50/50. The publisher doesn't have their own portal so I assume the 50/50 split would be after other portals have taken their cut - which I understand can be 60%+ of the sales price (usually $20). The only advantage I could see in having a 'publisher' would be that hopefully they'd be actively marketing the game and they may open up other publishing opportunities I'd be unlikely to secure as a lone dev.

I need to get more details from the publisher, but the poor return on each sale to me as the developer really makes me doubtful.


They won't last long with that sort of behaviour - that's just an excuse to keep your money. Hope the word gets round.

If its a publisher, be careful and read between the lines.

They'll probably offer you a percentage of the net revenue, which basically gives them free licence to deduct whatever amount they like before they pay you anything.

If they get your game onto, say, Reflexive (just as an example), Reflexive will pay them 40% royalties. So the amount you get 50% of, is down to $7.98 straight away. They might also choose to deduct an amount for other things, for instance, if they make any promotional media; artwork, screenshots, videos etc.

50% sounds reasonable at first, until you think about it and realise that you could be getting 50% of hardly anything at all.

Yes - need to get more info from them - don't know if the 50/50 is net/gross/whatever - and if they were to charge for marketing, then they can bugger off.

At first I was just chuffed to have been approached by a publisher, but now that I've had time to think about it, I'll be asking some specific questions. Something along the lines of 'I've spent long hours working on this piece of software, so how can you convince me that it's worthwhile dealing with you?'

MadJack: Don't bother with a publisher, just submit your games to some big action-based portals (Reflexive, Arcade Town, Real, Retro64 etc) and sign the contracts yourself and take 100% of the revenue (50/50 will be of the NET royalties received from portals - so like 50% of 40% at the very best = approx $3.80 per game if sold for $19.95 (assuming 5% expenses)). Also sell it on your own site (if you can be bothered to spend the money on software passport and figure out how it works - it's pretty cryptic). However, the above is BORING and takes quite a while so a publisher is good for doing that. Furthermore you'll never get on AOL and MSN and Yahoo without going through an aggregator like Oberon.

Reflexive have taken all 5 of my games and have always been on time with royalties. They should be good for an action game. You need to email Terri Hardie as per my article. Your game is pretty neat so should stand a good chance, depends on how many clearly big selling "casual" games get submitted at the same time...

Oberon has done me good, they've made me thousands of dollars on Holiday Bonus (it was their idea to call it "Holiday" and not "Xmas") and Easter Bonus. They are sometimes a bit slow with payments but not too bad. Gabe Carter is who I deal with. BUT I'm not sure your game is the sort they are looking for...

Good luck.

GA



Yes - that's the conclusion I'm coming too. I'll look for more info from them, but I'm leaning towards Reflexive at this point.

However there is the other option - sign with Reflexive, sell from my own website, also have a short term non-exclusive contract with the publisher (if they'd agree) - that might be the best of all worlds.

If I was selling Tank Universal, my absolute first port of call would be Steam. The perfect portal for your game.

I heard a story where somebody already had a contract with Reflexive, and they were about to sign a contract with a publisher too.

The developer was a bit surprised when he got a "what's going on?" e-mail from Reflexive, when the publisher tried to muscle in and claim that they were now liaising with the developer and any future payments/contact etc must go through them. The publisher had not even signed a contract at that stage.

Can't remember which game it was now. I'm 99% sure who the publisher was but I'm not going to say in case it wasn't. There was a thread about it on indiegamer.com

Weird. Yeah basically whatever you sign must be non-exclusive so you can sell it yourself and go to portals at your discretion.

Gabriel has a very good point, but I don't know how you get on steam, if you find out how, please let me know :-)

(This is why we need an 'Indie business' thread on this forum)



Rude!

Since I've not signed anything, I might as well let slip that it's Merscom Ltd who've approached me - don't know how people feel about them - haven't seen any gripes on the web. They do have a number of medium profile games - such as 'The Ship', but they don't seem to be involved in Steam distribution of that title.

Merscom do put box copies in shops however - would definitely be interested in that - might even be reason to enter into a limited, non-ESD contract if there was the possibility of boxed copies down the line.



After some websurfing, it appears some devs have contacted them directly and had Valve look at their demos - but Valve would have a fairly high standard I'd expect. My game is fairly polished, but is still definitely 'indie' in some areas - notably character design and animation.

yeah cool, well contact them.

My OZ game was put in shops by egames. Another big one is mumbo jumbo but they may only be interested in casual titles...

GA

Apart from the buzzfactor of seeing your game on a shelf somewhere - did having boxed copies add much to your sales of that particular game?