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Casual Connect, July 25, 2012.

Please excuse spelling mistakes and the rough nature of this post as our updates during the IGDA Summit and Casual Connect this week are pretty much liveblogged. This session just ended.

Speakers:

  • Michael Witz, Founder & CEO Mob Science, Inc.
  • David Kaye, Founder of Gaming Insiders

Should you do a publishing deal? Dependant on multiple factors

  • Traditional publishers were a response to limited physical shelf space
  • Today the limited resource is attention, not shelf space
  • Publishers can spend money on user acquisition that you can’t if you you’re a smalll developer
  • Line is blurred between platform holder and publisher now
  • Publisher has become an option, not a prerequisite

 How to get attention?

  • Free: platform promotion, social distribution, press/blog coverage, cross promo between games
  • Paid: traditional media, paid user acquisition
  • Getting “Apple love” is mysterious and difficult

Things They Do

  • Development funding
  • Development advice, assistance
  • Distroibution through own network
  • Advertising
  • Localization
  • QA

 Survey Conducted by Gaming Insiders

  • 17 participants: Atari, Sony, gamely, GREE, GSN, 6waves, peak games etc
  • Lots more publishing activity in the last 12 months
  • Strong mix across the board in platform coverage: mobile, social, PC/browser
  • Services they offer: not a strong focus in any one area (funding, cross promotion, community management, QA, lot, dev assistance, advertising etc)
  • Based on results, it appears that if you want to get into Russia, Asia, the middle east, work with a publisher from there
  • When do they want to speak with a developer? GDD and concept art stage or have working build, unreleased
  • If they provide funding, how much? Generally: mobile – $200-250k social – $200-250 browser $100-150k