Hey guys,
First off, this is my first post, so if I am posting in the wrong place, or breaking any rules of any sort, please forgive me. Anyways, I have a question regarding my mobile HTML5 game. I have recently finished my first, Turtle Soup, and am looking to commercialize it through sponsorships. My question is, does anyone know of any HTML5 publishers out there? I have looked, but can only seem to find like 2 that will actually pay you. Also, if you have any other information, such as articles, or anything else that would help me, please tell me. Any help would be greatly appreciated and uprepped!
HTML5 Game Sponsors?
1. I have recently finished my first, Turtle Soup, and am looking to commercialize it through sponsorships.
2. My question is, does anyone know of any HTML5 publishers out there? I have looked, but can only seem to find like 2 that will actually pay you.
3 Also, if you have any other information, such as articles, or anything else that would help me, please tell me.
1. Congratulations. You made your first game.
2. Selling a game is HARD. It is often harder than making the game in the first place. I'm sure Tom Sloper will be around shortly with the proper links to his web site and IGDA columns that cover that. He's got quite a few connections.
3. There are several things you need to do before taking your game to the publisher.
You need to talk to a lawyer. You need to protect your idea. Most game publishers are reputable since they want your business, but you still need to be smart about it, include proper copyright notices, add watermarks to submissions, and so on.
You also need to figure out what you expect the publisher to do for you. You need to figure this out BEFORE you talk to the publishers.
Make a list of what you are expecting them to do. Prioritize that list. Figure out what it would cost if you did it yourself, because it is probably cheaper that way.
The publisher can do quite a lot for you:
* QA. This is required. They will require you to pay for a serious QA effort to verify the game runs on all major systems configuration. This will require bug fixing and then re-submitting, often repeating the cycle several times.
* Branding. This is usually required. They will require you to modify your app to handle their branding.
* Cross-Branding or ads. This is often required, either directly or as placeholders for in-game ads.
* Certifications. Does your game need ESRB or PEGI ratings? Will having them help you?
* Marketing. This is generally required, and the main purpose of an online publisher. Who do you intend to market to? How much are you going to spend? What about soliciting reviews and getting testimonials? What do you expect them to provide in terms of online ads, social media, print, or more? Who is going to create those ads?
* SEO and driving customers. It is closely related to marketing, but following the path through from an initial web search through to actual money is a very important job.
* Hosting or COG. The publisher may require you to host your content through them, and don't expect them to do it for free.
* Order fulfillment. Do you expect them to handle the money, or are you doing that?
* Customer support. Who do the customers complain to when things go wrong?
* Legal concerns. Your lawyer and their lawyer will sort these out.
* Payment. How do you get money?
* etc.
You are not prepared to discuss your submission with a game publisher until you know the answer to those questions.
Once you do know the answer to those questions, you need to figure out how much each of those is going to cost. You may discover that it is cheaper to do those items yourself rather than having the publisher do them for you.
Either you need to pay for all those services up front, or the publisher will loan you the money as an advance for a fee. Only AFTER the publisher has been paid off will you start to see any revenue from them. That can take many months after the game is successfully published before you see your first check.
[quote name='Terrified Virus' timestamp='1348775205' post='4984471']
1. I have recently finished my first, Turtle Soup, and am looking to commercialize it through sponsorships.
2. My question is, does anyone know of any HTML5 publishers out there?
2. Selling a game is HARD. It is often harder than making the game in the first place. I'm sure Tom Sloper will be around shortly with the proper links to his web site and IGDA columns that cover that.
3. There are several things you need to do before taking your game to the publisher.
[/quote]
2. Wasn't planning to respond. I have not written any articles about finding sponsors or advertisers.
3. I thought Terrified was saying he wanted advertisers. Isn't that what somebody means when he says he's looking for sponsors? We don't usually use the terms "sponsors" or "sponsorships" in the game industry, but I've seen the term used several times here on gamedev by indies or aspiring indies. Since the industry doesn't use those terms, there's no established industry usage of those terms, but perhaps we ought to see if we can work out a widely agreed meaning for those terms here. Either that, or whenever somebody uses one of those terms, we have to ask him what he means by it.
All the stuff frob said about publishers is right. And I do have a couple articles about going with publishers.
Terrified-Virus, i've played Turtle Soup, and it's definitely got potential to be sold for a couple hundred bucks a pop. Keep working on the artwork, polish every single detail and and make variations to the game with incremental improvements.
i think the way frob puts it is fair, the detailed process is hard, but it's always been the way how games change hands between the developer and publisher. You can solve a lot of the friction by making a high quality game.
also thanks for uploading Turtle Soup to MarketJS
i think the way frob puts it is fair, the detailed process is hard, but it's always been the way how games change hands between the developer and publisher. You can solve a lot of the friction by making a high quality game.
also thanks for uploading Turtle Soup to MarketJS
"Sponsorship", in this usage is a special kind of publishing deal that has until recently been mostly attached to Flash-based games played in the web browser: see Armor Games as an example. A Flash sponsorship usually involves being paid a single fixed amount payment to display the sponsor's splash screen at the start of the game, and maybe their logo on the menu and/or in credits. The sponsor also usually publishes the game to their own website.
That's usually ALL such a sponsor does however, and you are then left to your own devices in terms of publishing to other portals, marketing, etc. Your game's quality will be assessed for suitability, but this isn't really a QA process; they won't fix (or tell you to fix) usability problems, they just accept or reject.
I'm afraid I don't know of any HTML5 sponsors though, but hopefully clarifying the concept of sponsorship may help the discussion. :-)
That's usually ALL such a sponsor does however, and you are then left to your own devices in terms of publishing to other portals, marketing, etc. Your game's quality will be assessed for suitability, but this isn't really a QA process; they won't fix (or tell you to fix) usability problems, they just accept or reject.
I'm afraid I don't know of any HTML5 sponsors though, but hopefully clarifying the concept of sponsorship may help the discussion. :-)
"Sponsorship", in this usage is a special kind of publishing deal that has until recently been mostly attached to Flash-based games played in the web browser: see Armor Games as an example. A Flash sponsorship usually involves being paid a single fixed amount payment to display the sponsor's splash screen at the start of the game, and maybe their logo on the menu and/or in credits. The sponsor also usually publishes the game to their own website.
That's usually ALL such a sponsor does however, and you are then left to your own devices in terms of publishing to other portals, marketing, etc.
Great explanation! Thanks.
Edit: It appears that the difference between a sponsored game and an advergame, then, is that the advergame is designed with the product in mind, but with the sponsored game, it's just a matter of slapping on a splash screen, a logo, and a little text to a game that wasn't necessarily designed with the sponsor in mind.
Hey guys,
First off, this is my first post, so if I am posting in the wrong place, or breaking any rules of any sort, please forgive me. Anyways, I have a question regarding my mobile HTML5 game. I have recently finished my first, Turtle Soup, and am looking to commercialize it through sponsorships.
Hello, you may want to submit your game to the AppsFuel marketplace (http://developer.appsfuel.com). It's a marketplace for HTML5 mobile web apps and in case you want to monetize it on your own, it provides billing APIs.
Hi. Congrats on finishing your first html5 game - I hope it's 100% mobile compatible, because there is where the market is right now. Get it polished as much as you can (quality still counts for a lot, regardless of platform) and when you're ready I posted up an article about HTML5 Game Sponsorship just the other day to my site, which you may find useful: http://www.photonstorm.com/archives/3045/insert-coin-to-continue-the-html5-game-sponsorship-market/
Hi. Congrats on finishing your first html5 game - I hope it's 100% mobile compatible, because there is where the market is right now. Get it polished as much as you can (quality still counts for a lot, regardless of platform) and when you're ready I posted up an article about HTML5 Game Sponsorship just the other day to my site, which you may find useful: http://www.photonsto...sorship-market/
OP, congrats on finishing your game. That is more than I have ever done. ;) I have tested your game and have a few suggestions on how to polish it like photonstorm suggests:
- Your hearts are discreet units, suggesting they are lives I can lose before it is "Game over". I thought they indicated the number of turtles that escaped making me wonder why clicking those bubbles gave me more lives. A solid "progress" bar to indicate oxygen would be better, possibly engraved with hearts and maybe the text "O2" in front.
- Your background is nice, but making it animate would bring much more life to your game. Maybe animate your turtles too, though maybe not necessary.
- You don't necessarily need music, but sounds would be nice. Just make sure you can turn off sound since most people play without sound on hand held devices.
- I never read instructions, I never got the reason why your turtles had different colors, except maybe they moved at different speeds.
Oh a game ide too to make it even more interesting:
- After collecting 200 turtles I started wondering where they went. Maybe you can have a set number of traps, like 20 or something before you have to send them to the surface for a bonus or more oxygen or something to free more traps to capture more turtles?
- Are there disadvantages to miss turtles at all? How are they communicated? Can it add to the excitement to implement disadvantages?
These are just my opinions, someone else might disagree.
Great game by the way.
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