quote:Original post by borngamer
A few months ago they had this whole site buzzing with grand publishing opportunities and mention of a number of great titles being submitted. I''ve been routinely going to their site just to see any mention of these games. So far nothing, but it could be just too early in the process to mention a game.

I would hope that sometime in the future a publisher of budget titles will step up and openly make information available to the community of developers. Some of the information that would put me at ease would be:

1. For each game on a site, show the number of downloads vs. the number of sales (and in Dexterity''s case, the number of returns).

2. Either give contact information of previous developers or allow previous published developers the ability to post comments on the publisher''s site documenting how well or poor their game is doing.

I''m sure most if not all publishers would laugh at this and totally ignore the message. For the few that take it to heart, I think you could really help establish good publisher-developer relations which would greatly improve the submissions you recieve. I myself would gladly turn over my games (when they are complete) to a publisher I trust rather than spending

We have a pretty extensive Developer FAQ at dexterity.com/developer that explains how our publishing model works, including a basic outline of the whole process for developers who work with us. We''re continuing to add to the FAQ every week or two, since we want developers to have a clear picture of what to expect.

We currently have five new games in our QA queue right now ... i.e. five signed publishing contracts with five separate indie developers. We''re very picky about solid QA, since we expect each game to sell for many years. Even though this process can take several weeks, we''ve been finding that the developers appreciate this. I think one puzzle game we''re testing has around 150 levels, and we test every single level. We''ll be pacing out the launching of new games, but it shouldn''t be long before the next title ships... a few weeks perhaps. It really depends on how long it takes the developers to finish the bug fixes and for us to verify the fixes. Some games have 50+ bugs. In our QA reports we also include many suggestions for minor interface improvements, gameplay improvements, etc. All bugs must be fixed before launching, but change requests are at the developers'' discretion. Some developers agree with our suggestions and take the extra time to make additional improvements to the game.

As mentioned in our Developer FAQ, we won''t publicly reveal developers'' sales figures, although the developers are certainly free to reveal that information if they choose. We consider this a simple issue of privacy -- it should be up to the developer to decide if they want their sales figures made public.

Our return rate was about 0.2% last time I checked (two returns out of every thousand sales). Last month (April) we had zero returns. We offer a 60-day unconditional money back guarantee for every game we sell. The most common reason we get for returns is that our puzzle games (Dweep Gold and Fitznik) are too cerebral for some people.

The idea of listing contact info for developers who are currently working with us on our web site is interesting. I''ll discuss this with our developers and see if they like this idea. I can see that this would help new developers reduce their risk of working with us (which I''m all for), but I''m not sure our current developers would want to get lots of "How do you like working with Dexterity?" emails. Thanks for the suggestion.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote:Original post by Mark Tanner
I think Xtreme uses a confusing publishing scheme. What happens is this: you license your game to Xtreme, Xtreme pays you 50% of what THEY get from a publisher. Since they sell collections of games, you get a very small royalty percentage, several cents per copy sold if that.

We also provide this service with our Platinum (exclusive) publishing deals. We call it relicensing. We''ll publish each game ourselves and establish a good base of direct sales. Then we''ll also seek out relicensing opportunities. The developer gets 35% of the retail price on direct sales, and any licensing revenue we generate is split 50-50 with the developer.

For instance, we''ve been selling copies of Fitznik every day since October 2001 through our direct sales, and earlier this year we also relicensed it to another publisher, who has already launched their version. So this adds another stream to the developer''s monthly royalties.

This is a good situation for developers who just want to focus on developing games while letting us exploit their intellectual property as fully as we can, both by publishing it ourselves and relicensing it to other publishers. For developers who feel comfortable negotiating their own deals with multiple licensees, we offer Gold and Silver (nonexclusive) deals, and for those deals we don''t do any relicensing. Which option is best is entirely up to the developer.

If all we did was the relicensing, we wouldn''t be a publisher -- we''d be an agent. Typical agent fees are 8-15%. We used an agent from around 1996-1998 to help place our games with publishers, but we really weren''t happy with that approach because the agent''s agenda was in conflict with our long-term strategy.

When relicensing we tend to avoid the mega-bundling deals where 20 or more games are placed on a single CD. These generate so little money for each developer, and that isn''t consistent with our strategy. We do, however, get our free demo versions placed on many of these compilations, and this generates some decent sales of the full versions (for which the developers receive royalties). We''ve been getting our demos on these compilations since around 1995-96. I think Fitznik''s demo is on the 100 Windows XP Games compilation, and we''ve seen many sales from this.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com