Prototypes, publishing, pitching, oh my! 2

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter, which you can subscribe to now, is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

As we saunter even closer to the ‘holiday season’, it’s time to return to the ol’ faithful GameDiscoverCo newsletter - to see what’s been geysering up in terms of game discovery and platform news.

And BTW, are you all having fun with your new ‘video game systems’? (I, too, have bought the latest advanced hardware. That’s what you’re all playing, right?) Anyhow, let’s get on with this edition of the newsletter:

Publisher pitching tips and percentages?

There’s a couple of notable articles/threads this week trying to get deeper into what publishers need or want from developers nowadays.

Firstly, Xsolla’s Justin Berenbaum has a GamesBeat guest post on pitching your game which I found full of useful and actionable information. It’s great to see another no-nonsense take on the basic information you need to pitch. (Some devs still have a temptation to make too many slides, often involving story synopses or concept art!)

I found it notable that Justin said this so pointedly: “Developers: Do not sign deals with “publishers or investors” when they are not committing money toward the development, marketing, or PR of your game. The promise of “Well, you finish your game and we’ll market it” in exchange for 50% of the revenue (or more) isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on!”

I largely agree with this, especially if publishers are offering no-advance cuts as high as 50%. (This is out of the ordinary - remember folks, Kellen Voyer’s recent survey gives you a good idea of the deals currently being signed, %-wise.)

IMO, deals with a lower cut to publisher (25-30%) and no advance can be fine - as long as they are employing staff to directly work on your game. And I’d like to throw in a caveat in the opposite direction. Beware publishers who put a $250k marketing spend in the publishing package that they recoup against the game’s net revenue, and then blow it all on poor-ROI advertising. (That happens too.)

Elsewhere in the piece, I nodded at Justin’s mea culpa on behalf of publishers as to why their ‘yay/nay’ publishing answers come sooo slowwwly: “There are many stakeholders in the decision-making process, and one dissenting voice may be the nail in the coffin for funding for your game. On top of that, getting timely feedback from every stakeholder is often an exercise in herding cats.”

BTW, Justin’s article is the second in a series. Here’s the first, which includes the following interesting graph I hadn’t seen before (not sure exactly how it was extrapolated):

Cosmic genre/pitch graphs? It’s groovy, man!

Wanted to highlight a long/complex but interesting Twitter thread by Kyle Kukshtel (Cantata). Kyle has put together an interesting visualization around pitching your game to publishers, focusing on where certain genres fit (cost vs. complexity) for making prototypes.

Here’s one of his master graphs, which is absolutely not taken from a Scientology induction seminar (there’s no axis for Thetans, for starters!) or a radical conspiracy theory subReddit:

The graph’s focus is based around finding the ‘pitching sweet spot’ in terms of ‘% of uncompensated work done on the prototype’, vs. the ‘% of the game’s budget you’re asking for’.

Kyle notes: “The thesis of this chart is that, despite what publishers say, there IS an ideal time to pitch your game. However the developer really bears the blunt end of that decision.” It’s an innovative visualization approach to what is a fundamental dev problem if you want funding for your game - what genre, how much prototype?

His conclusion - which relates directly to the problem of prototype funding for game devs we talked about before: “The economics of this are F*CKED! It forces development to consolidate around the middle genres, and deviating outside of that means taking a bigger financial risk just to make something that you can effectively demo.”

The game discovery news round-up..

Finishing up, there’s an irritatingly substantial amount of things going on in the world of game platforms and discovery right now. And that’s in addition to the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X, which are firmly ensconced in the ‘hella sold out for early adopters, we’ll find out actual long-term demand in a few months’ camp. So let’s go go:

Finally, bonus link-wise, I really enjoyed this mini-documentary from Sam Sutherland that touches on social gaming and user-generated content in some heartwarming ways:

[This newsletter is handcrafted by GameDiscoverCo, a new agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your premium PC or console game. Exciting announcement coming later this week!]