It’s a good thing I updated the About Us with a phone number because you guys really like reaching out via WhatsApp. One of the latest topic requests I got was from a future champ named Wannes and he asked me about working with Mobile Game Publishers. And in this article we’re going to do just that. Here’s what it’s like to work with multiple mobile game publishers.
Your Answer Upfront:
- Don’t expect valuable feedback in terms of Game Design and Development
- You’re not going to learn Game Design from publishers that published thousands of games without making the games themselves
- Don’t expect the publisher to be right and opinions vary from assigned handler.
- You’re not going to work with the experts or publishing company owners directly. You’re going to work with one of many people hired to handle various projects. And between them? Their experience varies.
- One handler can say something and the next one can say something else completely.
- When working with a publisher with whom you have a good collaboration and your views are aligned and they have “your best interest at heart” don’t bet on the game being successful. It’s a money driven market and even the best publisher cannot predict the market.
- Read your contracts! And have a lawyer and a knowledgeable person go over them as well.
In this article we’re going to talk about the relationship between a game developer and a (mobile) game’s publisher. This isn’t a definitive guide on how to approach a publisher or how to work with one. It’s written from my own experience in dealing with them as well as working under a publisher as their in-house game designer.
We’ll start out by talking a bit about my background, so you’ll know where I’m coming from. Feel free to skip the first section if it’s not your cup of tea. After that we’ll move onto my experience with mobile game publishers. I’ll give you 3 examples or stories from my dealings with them and two horror stories and lessons learned from this experience. By the end of the article you’ll have a pretty good idea what to look out for when dealing with a publisher for your games.
My Background As a Game Designer
I started making games somewhere around 2006 and I released my first game in 2007 on one of my old blogs (the domain expired, someone else purchased it and that game is lost forever). However, I still have access to some videos from 2009 and onwards. This is the earliest video I have of a game I made:
It was a 2D Shoot ’em up made for a Game Jam. I think it was done in 48 hours but I’m not completely sure of the timeline. I released for Windows it and got about 300-400 downloads in total (this was before itch.io was even a thing). Getting 400 downloads in a few days literary sealed the deal for me and got me to pursue a game development career. So I did.
In late 2009 I applied and joined Gameloft, initially in QA because there were no open Game Design positions. I asked if I could apply internally and they said yes, so for around 6 months I worked as Quality Assurance tester. By mid 2010 they started hiring Game Designers and I officially became a Game Designer in the eyes of the world.
At Gameloft, as a Designer, I worked on quite a few games with the ones closest to my heart being N.O.V.A 3 and The Dark Knight Rises.
While at Gameloft I learned what it means to work in this industry, in a team with higher ups, on another continent or at least a few thousand miles away, calling the shots and giving input on my design. That was soul crushing, having your design criticized by someone who wasn’t a designer. In retrospect, they were right about everything and I was a newbie and I’m glad I listened to them.
However, their feedback and critique was nothing compared to getting feedback from publishers (more on this in the next section).
My Experience as an Indie Game Designer
I left Gameloft due to health issues in my family and I wanted to be closer to them. I moved back home and freelanced for a while as a programmer and designer.
Some of the things I worked on in this time (the more notable ones):
- I helped bring Hacker Evolution: Duality to the market.
- I launched my first mobile indie game called Mutant Gangland (together with the amazing Thomas Noppers)
- Released a fashionable indie game titled “Pimps vs Vampires“
Back In The Mobile Gaming Industry
After my period as a freelancer and indie Game dev I went on to work for Disney for a few years at a studio in Iasi, Romania, called Mobility Games. That’s where I worked on games such as Frozen: Free Fall, making levels and designing powerups, abilities and game modes.
And a lovely little experimental turn based strategy game called Beastopia that I did with the team @ Mobility Games.
While at Mobility Games the team got tired of just working on Frozen. It was extremely profitable but so many years of working on the same game took a toll on the team. We asked the studio owner for our chance in the spotlight, 1 year to make our own games, and he agreed. I can’t stress how important it was for us that the head of Mobility Games had our back.
And this killed the studio. We handed over the reigns of Frozen to another studio and 6 months into the process of making our own games we got shut down because our then publisher didn’t need us anymore. And without funding and Frozen raking in all the money, that was it.
My Own Studio
I then started my own company Bearded Giant Games that I still run today. And with Bearded Giant Games I took on many many contracting, freelancing and porting projects. I released a few games on my own that did well for me but 90% of my contracts were in the mobile gaming space.
One of the contracts I took was a 2 years contract as an in-house designer for a big publisher in the adult mobile gaming industry and I saw how things are done from the publishing side of things.
After that I went into the Hyper Casual industry (the type of games that Voodoo makes! I wrote a few articles on hyper casual games like this one that explains how Hyper Casual games get popular). I made over 100 casual and hyper casual mobile games for mobile game publishers like Supersonic, Kwalee and others.
And this is where I got all my experience and knowledge in working with Mobile Games Publishers. This background section is finally done but I wanted you to know where I’m coming from. I’ve made games for PC, for mobile and even consoles (but I can’t talk about that sadly). I’ve spent time working for mobile games publishers and with mobile games publishers.
So let’s talk about how it is to deal with them.
Dealing With a Mobile Game Publishers
In the previous section I mentioned how harsh it was to get feedback from higher ups who weren’t game designers (during my early Gameloft days). However, the feedback I got was spot on and they were right. I was just too fresh to see it, but I’m glad I listened to it.
Now I’m a bit of a veteran with hundreds of games under by belt. And working with the modern day game publisher is a complete reversal of the previous paragraph. The feedback is still harsh but most of the time it came from people without knowledge or experience.
All the feedback I got came from KPI (key performance indicators). It was completely data driven and in 80% of the case it did not apply to what I was doing or working on. Let me give you a practical example.
Mobile Game Publisher Feedback Example #1
I was supposed to work on a hyper casual game where the player had to feed fish, in a fish tank. By dropping food pellets the fish would swim to the food and color the aquarium grass. I set up to do a prototype with assigned artists and we sent them this:
The feedback we got from a publisher that keeps saying that “the game’s mechanics are the most important for success”?
- I don’t like the color of the background
- The purple color isn’t good make it more blue
- There’s no progress bar at the top of the screen I don’t know what level I’m on
- I can’t lose or win the game
My first reaction to getting this feedback was:
- It’s a prototype and we spent 4 hours making it
- You’re supposed to give us feedback on the mechanics
- Colors can be changed, that’s not important for now
- You can’t lose or win the game because, according to your guidelines, the mechanic must feel good before the game is implemented.
And this went on for a few hours filled of back and forth between what the publisher was publicly saying (which was what sold me in working with that publisher in the first place) vs what they were actually looking for.
So let’s break it down. Why did the publisher care so much about the colors and the progress bar at the top of the screen?
Because their approach is data driven. A lot of the people I interacted with in the publishing side of things weren’t game developers or designers that went up the ladder or side stepped into publishing. They weren’t even mobile gamers or experts in their field. Their entire approach was data driven. And their data said that:
- Most successful games in their portfolio have a specific hue or shade of blue for their backgrounds
- Ads displayed on Facebook seemed to have a lower CPI if purple wasn’t used
- People love seeing progression happening so a progress bar helps with that feeling.
And I agree with everything they said, the only caveat is that this wasn’t the feedback I was expecting to get after implementing a quick mechanic in 4 hours. This is the kind of feedback I would have expected to receive on a game that had a full prototype done and we were polishing for release.
Mobile Game Publisher Feedback Example #2
I worked on two games that we’re really close to the golden goose of publisher KPIs: A $0.20 CPI. Aka it would cost us around 20 cents to bring a user into the game on average (by paying for ads). I wrote a ton about this CPI and target goal in the article titled “How Do Free Mobile Games Earn Money” so you can read it if you’re interested in learning more.
The game itself was simple. You’re a classic hyper casual humanoid holding a paint roller. You walk forward and by swiping or dragging your finger across the screen the roller grows or shrinks. Here’s a video of an early prototype:
I had a big problem with this game’s concept from the beginning but the publisher was adamant this was amazing. My problem? It would be really hard to make interesting levels and gameplay sequences when the player is constantly stuck to the middle of the screen.
You wouldn’t be able to dodge or avoid stuff. What if the player just keeps the paint brush at the smallest size, just in the middle? You can’t place obstacles in the middle.
The publisher’s solution was to make winding levels and sections where the player would have to jump over. Add some diamonds and an end-game. They were paying me for it so I went their way. We ended up with this:
Of course, the usual feedback started with colors like in the previous section. But the most annoying one came regarding controls and gameplay. I wrestled hard with them to make them understand that level variations would come down to changing the level colors and putting diamonds to make the player extend the paint roll to collect it.
The game had really good KPIs for the first day. The problem was no one was playing the game on day 2 or 3. I think we made about 50 levels in total but people got bored after the 15th or so.
I would have used the same game concept but instead of controlling the roller size/width I would have controlled its position. By swiping or dragging your finger on the screen you would change the position of the roller from left to right and up to down.
This would have given the game the ability to make levels where you’d have obstacles in 3D space, the ability to paint walls and what not. By offering control of the brush on X, Y, Z we could have made interesting levels that didn’t boil down to: keep the size to the minimum and you win every time.
But hey, they published thousands of games and made millions from them. And, to be fair, they’re really good at it. But don’t expect that this also makes them good game designers. They have the benefit of hindsight. They finance 10.000 game prototypes and they publish 10 of them that work. And they can look back on the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t and gather some data:
- All the games that worked had a blue sky
- They all had an interesting mechanic that was easy to interact with
- Had at least 30 levels
- The featured a progress bar
Now here’s the kicker. When I mentioned changing the mechanic, putting the player on some roller-skates and having the player paint with the skates they said no. Because it was too similar to another game of theirs where the player skated.
At this point I was confused for a bit. You want original games that are nothing like games that already exist but at the same time you’re asking me to stick to things you already published and you know works. A bit of a conundrum.
Mobile Game Publisher Feedback Example #3
This game I really loved. It ended up really really fun and for a while it looked like it would end up with a publishing deal. Aka I would have gotten quite a bit of money out of it. It missed the mark by a little.
But this was a good publisher-developer collaboration in the mobile gaming space for the most part.
Their feedback was on point. The KPIs were not. We did a quick test and there wasn’t any interest in the game, from an advertising perspective. I think the CPI was around $1 originally, too high to scale fast and massively. We did some more tests with the advertisements and one of them was around $0.45. That was great.
When we tried to market it for real for one last test the CPI was over $3. The game did not change but the market did a bit. We cut our losses.
The game was pretty fun and it was their idea and it worked out well. The only takeaway form here is that even when both parties agree on something and the collaboration works well it doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful.
This was the type of game where you could go crazy with level design, set pieces and mechanics. The marketing was just not there for us.
How Does a Mobile Game Publisher Judge Success?
I’m still working with various mobile game publishers nowadays and I have quite a few contracts and prototypes to fulfil on my end. It pays well, really well, even when your games don’t succeed because the publisher fronts the cost and your time (at least in my case).
But how does a publisher define success?
Pretty simple. How much money does it cost the publisher to advertise the game and get installs VS how much money it makes from it. That’s it. That’s the rule.
That’s why I meant it’s a data driven industry and they only care about KPIs in the end and not about game design. Let’s drive the point home with a bit of data and simple math. Pretend you’re the publisher and I’m your developer.
I made a game for you and it has 30 levels. The mechanic doesn’t matter (in your eyes). We make some videos about the game and we advertise it on facebook.
- It costs you, on average, about $0.50 to advertise to 1000 users in order to get 1 user to click and install the game.
- The game displays an ad every 30 seconds (that’s how long a level lasts) and you make, on average $0.01 from every add view.
- If, on average, a person plays the game for 7 days straight, 5 times per day with a session at around 10 minutes you end up with:
- $0.01 * 20 (ads / session) * 5 (sessions / day) * 7 (days) = $7. That’s quite a bit of profit made form that user. You spend $0.5 to bring him in and it worked well.
- But not all users you bring in for $0.50 will play the game for 7 days at 6 sessions per day. Most of them will play it once and then never again. So let’s do the same math for a situation where, on average, users play the game for only 1 days at 3 sessions per day
- $0.01 * 20 (ads / session) * 3 (sessions / day) * 1 (days) = $0.6
Now let’s say you brought 100 users into the game. 93% of them only play for 1 day while 7% play the entire week. To bring 100 users you would have spent $50.
- 93 users would earn you = 93 * $0.6 = $55,8.
- The 7 users would earn you = 7 * $7 = $49
- In total you would have earned: $104,8 earning you a >100% of your money back. That’s great right?
Well the CPI is an average and it isn’t set in stone. Sometimes it’s lower than $0.5, other times it goes above $3. I saw CPIs as high as $20 and as low as $0.20. Take the above example and change the CPI from $0.50 to $3 like in my 3rd example with the axe game. The publishers wouldn’t have made a profit at all from it.
That’s why publishers put a ton of importance to a CPI being as constant and as lower as possible. If the CPI stays close to $0.20 that means that even if it starts swinging, if your retention is great (how long a user plays your game and how often) the publisher can withstand the swings.
What To Look Out For When Working With Mobile Publishers
- Don’t expect valuable feedback in terms of Game Design and Development
- You’re not going to learn Game Design from publishers that published thousands of games without making the games themselves
- Don’t expect the publisher to be right and opinions vary from assigned handler.
- You’re not going to work with the experts or publishing company owners directly. You’re going to work with one of many people hired to handle various projects. And between them? Their experience varies.
- One handler can say something and the next one can say something else completely.
- When working with a publisher and you love the collaboration and your views are aligned and they have “your best interest at heart”, don’t bank on the game being successful. It’s a money driven market and even the best publisher cannot predict the market.
- Read your contracts! And have a lawyer and a knowledgeable person go over them as well. You’ll see why in the next paragraphs.
I really mean it, read and understand the contracts. Have a lawyer take a loot at it or at least ask for other people’s opinion. I’ve been burned on contracts before with publishers or publishing houses. I’ll give you two stories. One that happened when I was working at a publishing company and one that happened to me.
Story 1: We recoup our investment from your cut
This happened when I was on the publisher’s side and a friend of mine who I’ve made games with was publishing a game with my client. The deal was good. The split would be 50%-50% after the platform gets its cut and after the publisher recouped its investment.
So if a publisher invested $100k on my friend the publisher would have to recover $100k from sales before the 50%-50% could happen. However, what my friend didn’t read and I didn’t know to advise him for was that the recoup was happening from his cut, not from the total. Aka the game would have had to earn $200k after the platform cut before the publisher recouped his investment.
This is a common practice and I only became aware when my friend called me up and told me. I was working there and I didn’t know or think about this. It’s true I was handling game design and analyzing submissions, but still. So read your contracts and ask questions when dealing with a publisher. Where does the recoup come from? The total sales? My cut? Your cut? Note that this was after the platform’s 30% commission so in total the game would have had to sell for much more than $200k.
Story 2: If we sell the game to a publisher you’ll get a big bonus
Here I was starting out in the hyper casual industry and I was collaborating with other developers to make prototypes for various publishers. We had a contract between us with a 3rd party that was handling publisher communication and they would take a cut from my earnings/prototype. The deal was this: I get paid $750 to make a prototype for a publisher.
If the game had great KPIs and the publisher wanted to publish it, I would get a $6.000 bonus. The contract stipulated that the game needed to be published by the publishers with the same name, icon and package.
What the publishing house did was, instead of handling the game out to the publisher they sold it in bits. One contract for the game’s art, one separate contract for the code and the final game got a name and icon change. Which meant I did not get to see a penny from that publishing bonus I was promised.
I quit that publishing house then and there for this. Of course the publisher that ended up with the game knew nothing about this. It was a move from the 3rd parties I was working with. I was lucky enough to have a publisher reach out to me directly later on to make games from them and I stopped relying on 3rd parties.
But this is another thing that I could have known HAD I READ THE CONTRACT in details and asked questions.
Conclusion
So what’s the takeaway? You’re starting out and you want to make games for mobile in this industry. That’s great and you’re going to learn, make and release a ton of games in a short time span. I did about 100 games in a year and a bit.
You’ll start slow, maybe 1 prototype/month. The publisher will ride you to get better and get 1 prototype out/week, even more.
The easiest way to deal with a publisher is to do exactly what they ask. I spent a lot of time fighting them and trying to educate them on Game Design and Mechanics and whatnot. In the end I wasted my breath and took longer to release games.
Things really ended up working for me when I started treating it as a business. You want X game with Y features? Whatever you ask. Just pump it out as they want it and move onto the next one.
If you’re doing mobile games for a hyper casual publisher you won’t be working on your mobile game masterpiece. But you’ll learn a ton about making games quickly. For me that first year of making hyper casual games was a bigger level up in skill and knowledge than then first 10 years combined.
But don’t expect to learn anything more than basic game design from it.
Ogh, and when publishers want market research they just mean “Try to come up with an original idea that we haven’t done before but that’s not to different from what’s successful”. It’s a veiled way of saying “We have no idea what to ask for so check out TikTok and Instagram for something that’s popular so we can get a new idea and we’ll see about adapting it to what works for us”.
Hope this was useful for Wannes (who originally asked me about my experience with mobile game publishers) and for you, the reader!
Where To Next?
I write extensively about the mobile gaming industry, their tactics and how greed influences a game’s design, subjects which were brought up in this post.
I believe that you might be interested in more articles on game monetization. So if you want to stick around, you can check out “How Do Free Mobile Games Make money“, “Why Do Mobile Games Have Fake Ads” and “Why Do Mobile Games Have In-App Purchases“.
If you’re wondering “Why Games Run Better On iOS” I have you covered with an article that explains this in great detail!
There’s also a monster post (about 4000 words) that answers the question: “How Hard Is It To Make A Mobile Game“. It goes in depth with actual examples on how Experience, Resources and Financials affect the difficulty of developing and releasing new mobile games!
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