Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the role of publishers in mobile gaming in 2015. When the App Store was in its infancy, it seemed like signing with a publisher made a lot of sense. It’s how Chillingo and many similar companies got so huge, anyway. Back in 2009-ish you could still easily sell premium priced games, and publishers provided loads of guidance in a blossoming market filled with people excited to make games, but who might not know the specifics of how the App Store works, what things in their games they should think about tweaking, and often didn’t have any kind of cross-promotion network among the many other things publishers brought to the table. The price for their expertise was a hefty cut of the game’s revenue, listing your game up under their App Store listing, and potentially even locking up your game’s IP for the duration of whatever contract a developer signed with their publisher.
Two billion app releases later, and Apple’s App Store is a very different place. It’s hard to even sell an app with a price tag associated with it, and it’s pretty easy (particularly if you follow the various indie dev communities) to find tons of publisher horror stories. More importantly though, with the massive shift to free to play, who publishes your game doesn’t feel anywhere near as important as things like your user acquisition strategies, how you’re going to monetize, and how you’re going to be supporting your game and its community. Additionally, I’m not really even sure if App Store customers look for the brand name publishers bring to the table anymore as much as they’re just downloading whatever is charting or whatever their friends are playing (likely for free).
This has resulted in what feels like a new evolution of iOS “publishers," in that they’re not really publishers at all as much as they’re just companies filled with people who have the experience and relationships to do everything in their power to make your game’s launch as successful as it can possibly be, then it’s sort of up to you to deal with. Mobile Game Partners is the latest outfit that fits this description with a press release that hit my inbox, and there’s got to be others out there doing similar things.
When you think about it, there’s nothing more important for the overall success of your game than how the actual launch goes. If you don’t get featured or get that initial boost to get chart placement, that’s super difficult to come back from, unless you’re just holding out for some Flappy Bird-like viral luck which doesn’t seem like that great of an idea. So, with the focus of your success of your game being exclusively on how well it launches, does it still make sense to sign up with a publisher for the life of your game when all you need is a push out the door? I’m really not sure anymore.
One thing is for sure- The App Store has gotten so huge that there’s all sorts of people trying to carve their niche out of it, with a whole lot of those people not even making games themselves but instead offering services to developers with new or existing games. We get a lot of press releases from these different outfits, and they rarely make that much sense. Breaking away from the traditional publishing model in mobile, comparatively, is starting to feel like it makes a lot of sense.
So, I figured I’d pitch it to our commenters- As the App Store has mutated into what it is in 2015, are you more or less likely to download a game if it’s from a publisher you recognize? Are you more or less likely to pay for a game if it’s from a publisher you recognize? As a gamer, what kind of value do you think a publisher brings to the table? Also, flipping that question around, if any developers feel like responding, as the App Store has changed do you still see value in publishers or have you shifted to providing the services a publisher brought to the table internally? Does signing on with a consulting firm that exclusively is helping you launch the game seem more or less appealing than signing up for the traditional publisher model?
