What a Game Portal Wants...
... besides your money or your eternal soul...

Joseph Lieberman (Indie game marketer turned head of business development for ArcadeTown - no relation to the politician by the same name) penned this article a few weeks ago, but I had forgotten about reading it until now. If you haven't had a clue, or if you do but want to know more (and I too often feel like I'm in the former camp), this is a pretty useful article, even if you aren't interested in selling your game on portals:

What Portals Want

A few notes:

Connecting to an external site, and in-game branding: These are frustrating requirements, although I understand the rationale from the portals' point-of-view. It's all about repeat business, and keeping customers. Still - to me, this is the principle reason why an indie game developer SHOULD NOT rely upon portals as their exclusive (or even principle) source of distribution for their games. Doing so risks commoditization. You are helping someone else gain and keep customers, while you are simply hoping to curry favor of the portals.

I should note that at this point, two portals that don't seem to do this (last I saw) was GarageGames and Manifesto Games. To my limited knowledge, neither of them are big (or even - though I'd love to be wrong) or even "upper middle-tier" portals. Yet. And maybe their lack of this requirement could be stunting their growth. I don't know. But those are two of the most "developer friendly" sites out there that I have encountered.

In my opinion, I agree with Joe - portals aren't evil. And I think they are a valuable part of any indie game developer's strategy. But my feeling is that even if they are your principle source of your game revenue, they shouldn't be the principle part of your strategy. Remember - even though the portals may commoditize your game, since most have non-exclusive distribution agreements, you can commoditize them as well. It goes both ways. The portals understand that, and are defining their own role to best take advantage of that. So should you.

"When a game goes on a major portal and does well it is almost always coupled with an increase in direct sales on the developer’s site as well." This has been borne out by game developers as well. I don't have first-hand experience with this, but I've heard it more than once. Its funny how success in one portal will cause something of a chain reaction across all distribution channels (including your own). This is a good thing. And one more reason why you shouldn't ignore portals as part of your overall strategy.

Professionalism, A Good Name, Polish --- whether you are going to be taking your game to the portals or not, these are big factors to consider. Joe mentions these because time and time again, these are factors in whether or not a game sells. Now while the deciding factor between a "cute" game and a "gory" game might be more audience-specific... remember that there are lots of mainstream AAA games out there serving the gamers who want lots of blood, gore, guts, and gibs in their games.

And less-than-stellar graphics and a somewhat arcane name aren't necessarily the kiss of death if the game is marketed correctly. Case in point: The Shivah has become one of Manifesto's top-selling titles (in fact, as I write this, it's still sitting in the #1 position). Partly because of the price, partly because of the marketing effort Manifesto put into the thing. Apparently it did squat before Costikyan & company decided to make it something of a mascot for the early days of Manifesto. Its premise and principle character (a rabbi in a crisis of faith solving a murder mystery) are just so offbeat yet interesting that they become the focus (and something of a rallying cry for the type of audience Manifesto is attempting to attract).

But it's an exception to the rule. From what I understand (Dave, if you are reading this, correct me if I'm wrong), it pretty much did squat before then. Manifesto had the right audience, and put it on the map. I still don't expect it will enjoy the kind of success of Virtual Villagers 2, which is currently at the top of ArcadeTown's chart. And though Manifesto might have a different audience than Big Fish or ArcadeTown, I think most of the rest of the points would still apply.

Anyway - it's good stuff to think about. Thanks, Joe, for the article.

Labels: Biz

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