Hi,

I'm just curious, I've noticed that publishers seem to be divided into those who pay royalties or those who buy your game outright. I'm wondering what experiences people here have had on either side of the equation? No hard numbers needed, just your thoughts ;)

"Royalty share" publishers seem to be everywhere, does anyone know of publishers who practice the "buyout" business style? I've heard people claim they exist but every agreement I've seen (which are few, I admit) seem to be traditional royalty share. I'm tempted to look into producing games for buyout just for the simplicity of it, if I can find a reputable distributor.

Also, I'm have an extreme love-hate relationship with web development. My latest idea has been to just use a single low-quality JPEG for my page. It's been a dream to keep updated compared to my previous designs but I'm curious how people find the load times to be. The pages are mostly < 40kb so they should load in a few seconds (theorietically) even on a dialup connection.

If anyone has the time and can give me feedback on their access speeds it would help with my current overhaul.

http://www.canceriannewmedia.com

Thanks!

On a 45Kb connection, none of your pages took longer than 8 seconds to load for me. So, not lightning fast, but not intolerable either.

Well with most publishers royalty share IS for all practical purposes a lump sum. In some cases you get an advance; technically your royalties go toward paying this back first, but since most games never make enough to pay it back the advance is effectively a lump sum. Similar to this I've talked with a couple publishers which offer a (small) guaranteed minimum run so that basically you get royalties in addition to a small lump sum (the difference being that you don't get the money until after the game is released.)

The only publisher I've talked with so far which does the lump sum approach is Idigicon. Their distribution is pretty much local to the UK.

I'm curious what you mean by buying "outright." There are different specifics for almost every deal. For example, the deal may or may not include rights to sequels, provisions to pursue other publishers for other markets, etc.

Originally posted by jhocking
Well with most publishers royalty share IS for all practical purposes a lump sum. In some cases you get an advance; technically your royalties go toward paying this back first, but since most games never make enough to pay it back the advance is effectively a lump sum. Similar to this I've talked with a couple publishers which offer a (small) guaranteed minimum run so that basically you get royalties in addition to a small lump sum (the difference being that you don't get the money until after the game is released.)

The only publisher I've talked with so far which does the lump sum approach is Idigicon. Their distribution is pretty much local to the UK.

I'm curious what you mean by buying "outright." There are different specifics for almost every deal. For example, the deal may or may not include rights to sequels, provisions to pursue other publishers for other markets, etc.

I think he means a flat fee. So in that case the publisher is the owner of the game.

Originally posted by KNau
Also, I'm have an extreme love-hate relationship with web development. My latest idea has been to just use a single low-quality JPEG for my page. It's been a dream to keep updated compared to my previous designs but I'm curious how people find the load times to be. The pages are mostly < 40kb so they should load in a few seconds (theorietically) even on a dialup connection. I recently had to use a few dial-up providers while I was without cable access and, in my personal experience using a 33.6 modem, 40-60k image took no less than 15 seconds to load, and often took much longer along with the rest of the website content. That said, most of the websites I went to during that time were horrendously slow at that speed, and as such I don't think it's something you need to worry about. Modem users are, to be sure, quite used to the World Wide Wait. Of all the sites I went to (including here), the fastest to load on a regular basis was gamedev.net.. which was pretty amusing somehow... :)

- Air

Originally posted by KNau
"Royalty share" publishers seem to be everywhere, does anyone know of publishers who practice the "buyout" business style? I've heard people claim they exist but every agreement I've seen (which are few, I admit) seem to be traditional royalty share. I'm tempted to look into producing games for buyout just for the simplicity of it, if I can find a reputable distributor.

As I formulate my business plan, I have been thinking of including publishing titles as well as building them. In my research for publishing, I have been considering that the "buyout" business style (as you put it) is more attractive to me than trying to keep track of royalties and deal with developers and producers who are not interested in the business-side of the coin.

I even asked a question similar about a week ago in this thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=438).

My plan (as it currently stands) will be to make a list of software genres (not just games) that I will begin researching for titles. Then I will compile EVERY shareware/freeware title I can find for each genre -- which could potentially be huge. As I identify titles, I will rank them according to their perceived popularity on a scale of 1-5 (1==most popular, 5==unknown). I will then sort the entire list into two piles, based on whether or not I'm interested (from a business perspective) in the title. At some point in the process, I will begin a dialog with the owner of the title... to get a feel for the buyability. Any authors who refuse outright (and early) will get their titles moved to a lower priority. I will also evaluate the titles for usability, marketability, and enhancement potential (upside).

My goal is to identify about a half-dozen titles (+/- 50%) that are purchasable. The purchase of each title will likely be sweat or angel funded, so ROI is going to be a big factor in choosing the titles. Ultimately, I'm looking for the following:

Genres that appear to support an untapped market
Authors not interested in maintaining their own titles
Titles that are not rough around the edges, but have room for improvement/enhancement
Titles that are marketable (features, name, UI, size, price, etc).


I'm not going to rush out and start this tomorrow (well, probably not) but if I do decide to go the publishing-route, I will be considering this as a very strong option...

-daniel

I recently noticed this at download.com. It appears that a company called Trek Eight is buying games outright, packaging them with spyware/adware, and posting them on download.com. Obviously these games are rated very poorly by users due to the spy ware/adware.

Whats really interesting is that Trek Eight is only giving $100 for each game they buy. On top of that, they are Sponsoring the games on download.com. Last time I checked it cost quite a bit to do this. Does this company actually expect to make money this way? It doesn't seem very viable to me. But, since the games are sponsored they are getting fairly high downloads counts.

Thought I'd put up a few links to help people along:
http://www.trek8games.com/make_money.php
http://download.com.com/3150-2111-0.html?tag=dir
http://download.com.com/3000-2111-10184153.html

Wow. $100 is a lot of money, but spread out over a whole year? To make a $100 buyout worth my time, I'd have to code, art up, and test the entire game in just under 3 hours ;)

Ya, I especially like this quote from their site:

"Trek 8 Games pays you $100.00 USD per game that we accept. Occasionally we have somebody submit a game that is so much better than our typical submission that we will pay slightly more, but this rarely happens and the game must be far superior to what we see each day. "

I wonder why "this rarely happens"? Maybe because anyone with a decent game wouldn't even consider selling it for a measly $100. So, if a quality game was submitted they'd pay "slightly more" . . . so maybe $125? They must get some really crappy game submissions!

Originally posted by BioDeathWalker
I recently noticed this at download.com. It appears that a company called Trek Eight is buying games outright, packaging them with spyware/adware, and posting them on download.com. Obviously these games are rated very poorly by users due to the spy ware/adware.


It gets even better. First, these guys are buying games for $100, then putting tons of spyware/advertisements in the game, then buying elite listings at download.com (which cost multiple thousands of dollars per month) to push them and get their spyware distributed.

But that's not all. When I read this, I knew I'd heard of these guys before. I did a search through my email and found an email from them dated Feb. 3.

The email was asking me to become an affiliate to sell Trek8's product SpywareNuker from spywarenuker dot com (note if you try to go there - it tries to install itself if you just visit their web site).

So they are also selling a program that claims to clean off the spyware that they themselves install! Somehow, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of their spyware cleaner.

This is likely going to turn out to be really bad news for download.com. I don't like paying thousands of dollars per month to be listed next to a bunch of spyware sleaze, and download.com is going to hear about it.

Wow, that should be illegal (if it isn't). That's like a security company breaking into your house to get you to buy a security system. Sheesh, some people have no ethics at all.

Wow, sounds like someone has a history in the police radar/radar detector industry :D

From their web site: "SpyWare Nuker will scan your PC Absolutely FREE and let you know if you have any files that are infecting your PC!". Yeah, I would love to let this program install on a clean, isolated PC and see just what it "finds".

SCUM!

Here I am trying to develop a real business plan and Trek8 does this "$100/game and dork the customer"-bit.

<cynicism>
Maybe life would get easier if I started looking out for number one and started pushing others down into number two.
</cynicism>

The only true grace is that, as a believer in Karma, someday those who deserve will get what they least expect.

:D

-daniel

I just thought to search download.com for their company name. It seems that they have 17 such games already posted and ALL of them are sponsored. Man, thats a lot of money. Do they get somekind of bulk discount?

This company Trek8, seems to be a front for an advertising/data mining company.

If you look here

https://secure.trekblue.com/bluehavenmedia.com/signup/?7

It looks like they pay 7 cents for every instance of their spyware they get installed in the US.

Heres an example of their sales pitch

http://robotfindskitten.org/pipermail/rfk-dev/2002-December/000255.html

Stay away, stay far away from these fools.

But this brings up another point. People in their youth don't understand money = time and time = limited. Obviously there are people that think 3-6 months of work is worth $100. What we need to do is try to educate people about the realities of money and commerce. If you don't think your app is that good, do NOT give it away to a spyware company, at least open source it or throw it away. Why are young hobbyists so naive.

Well if you look at the quality of the games, they probably are worth $100. Anyone download any? But I can't imagine how fun they can be for $100. What comes to mind is mostly very simple flash games.

I read some reviews, and most everyone who downloaded their games has given a negative review and people in general hate spyware..etc. So as soon as the average joe catches on, Trek Eight will be out of business.

The way they conduct their business reminds me of advergaming, or an "evil" version of advergaming :).

I think Trek 8 would be more successful if they removed their spyware and just did advergames for free download where the game help market other companies products.

Advergaming is one thing i'm looking into and it sounds very intresting.

John

I've seen the term 'ROI' used a few times... Anyone mind enlightening me to what it is, exactly?

I hope no one that spent three to six months or so developing a game would sell it off for a mere hundred. Still, I know there are many people who would probably do that...

So they are mostly simple flash games? I was wondering what the standards are on them. Don't want to download any, I value my privacy a bit... Not to mention I have had spyware with nasty effects on my comp, mostly slowdown, a couple crashes.

A company like that probably wouldn't mind something that someone did over the weekend, either way it still gets their stuff installed.

Also, I'm have an extreme love-hate relationship with web development. My latest idea has been to just use a single low-quality JPEG for my page. It's been a dream to keep updated compared to my previous designs but I'm curious how people find the load times to be. The pages are mostly < 40kb so they should load in a few seconds (theorietically) even on a dialup connection.

I think download time may be the least of your problems. If you use only images (and image maps for navigation) the there isn't much chance of making it into search engines. Most search engines highly value text content, and many aren't able to follow image maps. This means that even though you have text in your articles page most search engines won't make it that far because of the image maps used for navigation.

If you aren't in search engines then the only ways people will find your site are direct links from other sites, or typing in the URL.

That ease of maintenance comes with a price. :)

-Pat

Originally posted by CJustin
I've seen the term 'ROI' used a few times... Anyone mind enlightening me to what it is, exactly?
Return on Investment...in other words, how much value you got out of it compared to how much value (time, money, etc) you put into it.

Thanks for all the replies!

Yes, by "buyout" I was refering to a company that pays a flat fee for all the property rights to the game. $100 seems ludicrous for buying a game, I was thinking more along the lines of $2,000 and up.

It just seemed like a tempting business model. It's easier to say "I'm up to my eyeballs in debt, I'm gonna make a quick game and sell it for a few thousand" as opposed to "I'm going to make a game and wait for 3 months for royalties to start trickling in". I know you sacrifice a great deal of potential income and that, given how much a popular shareware game can make, $2,-5,000 is a steal. I was looking at it almost like writing for pulp-novels - a quick 200 pages over the course of a week and then cash your cheque for $500, don't expect any royalties. It's not glamorous and it's only a temporary stop-gap on the way to producing a "hit" game but I was hoping it was an option.

As for Idigicon, I recently contact them but haven't heard back yet. I was under the assumption that they are a Blitz-only publisher.

I'm glad my website isn't too much of a hog for download times. I've heard that search engines like pages with a lot of text and in the redesign I was going to try and strike a balance between text and graphics. I was also thinking of balancing it out by linking to and getting linked by a number of other sites, which I've heard also ranks you better in search engines. Although, at the moment I haven't bothered getting a listing at all.

Thanks again!

According to whois, trek8games appears to be a subsidiary (front?) for trekdata (see http://www.trekdata.com). And trekdata sure smells like a monster email spammer to me. Ick.

Not that I'm condoning what these people are doing, but the $100 they pay is for a *non-exclusive* license to your game. They do say they require you to remove any of your own logos, etc.. And I'd sure have the devil's own lawyer look over the contract before I signed it, were I that desperate.