As the new kid on the block xD i am, I'm wondering if any indie dev have tried to approach any big publishers? If so, what has been your experience with them? Any successful stories around? any info related to this topic would be very enlightening!!! Thnx in Advance ^_^
Right now our game is far from finished, but when it approaches let's say 80% it could be worthwhile to present it to different publishers, not only chillingo... Showing it right now would be counterproductive.
wellgoing with a publisher once is always interesting to see how things work with dealing with them etc. but in general you could say if you product is good enough to be recognized by a major publisher.. your chances are mote than good to make decent sales yourself.. publisher like chilingo invest ZERO! money into pr for your product.. non, njinte, nada.. all you rely on is their name when it gets released to catch the attention of news outlets etc.. and for that you pay your shares to them.. i can't see a real reason to partner up with them at all, especialy if you check their recent portfolio where at least 50% is crap.. they went downhill very fast after loosing rovio and being bought by EA.. so if you want to get a bit more exposure, and want to be force to implement their horrible crystal crap into your game, chillingo is the way to go.. to be honest.. i rather try to go with the smaller joint, who actualy care about your product.. like cresent moon.. in every product they published they invested alot of additional manpower to make it an even better game.. thats dedication.. not the generic , put my label on anything, behaviour the big ones are..
I would probably had said something different few days ago... but I just released a great little fun game on IOS... I can't tell you how hard it had become to be noticed by anyone. If your game is good enough to be considered by a publisher, may be you should use one. The AppStore is EXTREMELY crowded. (and it is getting worst at a faster speed). JC
Well tough descision to compete againts the onslaught of cut the rope like physics puzzle games that where just released the last couple days/week which have tenfold more polish to it..not to mention all thoose who dont.. Would have pushed the release date a couple weeks back at least till thoose games are "old" news.. maybe polish a bit here and there and start with te next thing in your shedule And if you think being with chillingo would have made a difference i think you would be dissapointed. Check the stats of the games they have released in the last couple weeks.. Its quite an eye opener in alot of cases.
That's very interesting! Didn't knew about crescent moon games. Really cool to get to know new publishers. Thx Mr ugly. Btw, if you know more publishers like this one i would love to hear about them.
Ovogame, I believe the issue for you is your price point. With most premium games like Angry Birds, Cut the rope etc at 99 cents, $2.99 for a game will make many people pass you by. Plants vs. Zombies does well at that price, however they had a huge following before it even came to IOS.
That's for the HD version, the SD is at $1.99. You are probably right that I should have gone for $0.99 but if it is the only price point viable for ios, then may be I should run away from ios dev then. JC
Well, we'll never know... I'm not sure a bit of polish would have change drastically the exposure. I guess my main mistake are: - releasing 2 apps for the same game - asking for an insane amount of money JC
No your problem is direct competition. And damn strong competition too. Not the overall buzz of the store. You should have choosen a better release date imho.. As for price, we wont talk about what an app is worth but at what price it sells. And 1,99 is too high for the sd version.. You get two competitors for that price, who look more polished than yours.. Again tough descision releasing it so soon, may i ask if you even checked the other games out? I assume ju must and felt confident enough to still release it so close. checkout the the game on the appstore.. and.. i have a few question - why only 3 screenshots showing very similar enviroments? you should show of more of your worlds/levels - in no way you even show in your description (from what i've seen) that the game HD is for ipad and iphone.. you should not rely to heavily on the little + apple adds - in the video the little bird protagonis looked pretty lifeless.. i somehow expected to see some nice flapping animations why he bounces around.. i see his eyes are animated but overall, judging from the video it feels a bit stiff, maybe you can do add some animations to him. - does it needed to be such a generic name.. i know it can be sometimes good or bad.. but "jump bird jump" does not even have a cool vibe too it.. if you speak that out.. it does not "pop".. its hard to tell it in english.. but jump and bird the first part of the word are spoken out very similar and it feels a bit like you repeat the same word 3 times.. gnaa.. hard to describe what i want to say..
this is really an eye-opener. Though I don't have any experience in working with publisher, imo, for a newbie in the buzz appstore, it's helpful to partner with a major publisher for their first game release, at least to make your own brand known, so next time you may publish yourself. They won't invest in your game, but they will provide constructive feedbacks and professional suggestion to your game which is more important than money for the success of your game. apart from Chillingo, there are many other good publishers, like Freeverse, gameloft, com2us etc.
Yeah I thought the price was too high as well. When most games on the app store are $0.99... How about a lite version with iap to upgrade to full? Freemium games seem to make all the money these days.
I disagree with the sentimenet about picking a spot to launch. Firstly there's too much lag from Apple to stop you sitting there hovering over the "publish now" button, so it's not practical even if desireable. Secondly, there's always some big new thing coming out. My game lives in the strategy chart and usually does pretty well in there, thankfully. However at least once a week there's a dip when some other new strategy game hits "new and noteworthy" and pisses to the top of the chart, knocking the rest of us down one. Sometimes they dissappear again a few weeks later, other times they've stayed there. Can't even complain - I'll bet plenty of people were annoyed when I did it! Publish and be damned is about all I can suggest for wisdom. But I agree you should sell the low def version for 0.99 - you'll sell more than twice as many to make up for the price difference and you get more than twice the exposure because of it, which has longer term value.
I don't think the $0.99 thing is so clear cut. I launched TiltStorm at $1.99. It didn't do very well, so a few weeks later I dropped the price to $0.99, and after a couple of days to allow for price-tracker sales, the sales volume actually reduced. I then put the price back to $1.99 and sales picked up a bit again, and it took months for the gradual drop off to come down to the level I had at $0.99.
OMG, a fellow Brit! Your experience does seem a bit odd to me, I must admit. Maybe this is an exposure thing and you've only found the people who are less price conscious?
well if you see it as a wise decision to release very close to a few similar games with a higher quality, in a close time frame.. then well ..ok.. your opinion.. still a wrong one imho. also what lag are you talking about? we do not talk about hours or so.. so if you set you game to release 2 weeks later it will do so totally fine. ? well that true to some extend.. but not scoping out the competition and see what they do , how they do it and when they want todo it.. is just neglecting an important part of publishing a product. you have an unique strategy game in your hands and not the next cutesy physics actions puzzler.. its all about chances and if you release an low cost fps next to something like gears of war etc. you product will be just blown away.. releasing it in an more silently time, which less new games similar to yours coming out, give you the chance for bigger exposure and more available spending capacity. well it would be nice if the "slash the price by half and get more than twice the sales" tale would be truth.. maybe this happened to you but that does not automatically make it true for everyone.. maybe taking a look at the rankings of the game(s) would show you that the game is completely dead in the water.. which brings me to another point.. why the heck did you ovo put it into action/arcade.. thats an odd choice. to sum it up - bad release date ( too much direct competition) - too expensive (iphone version, universal is fine) - 3 too similar (boring) screenshots (hey you have 5! if you can't fill thoose something is wrong with your game) - odd selection of categories - not enough variety (judging by video) so the myth is broken.. just adding a cute bird to a game does not make it sell.. lets hope you recoup some chart positions with lowering the price.. good luck with that.
Please stop being auto-confrontational, it's gotten old already. If someone has some kind of presentient inspiration that a big similar game is coming out a day before yours, then sure - give them all the limelight if you want and go try to suck up some crumbs. The rest of us mere mortals only know what's out now though. If a bigger and better game than yours come out a day before release, then yes. Set your own release back a fortnight and wait for the next big game to come out thats bigger than yours. You speak like a good game coming out is a rarity you can avoid. If only.
