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Comments

  • I think you will have to prove that you can market the game better than the developer can do by themselves.

    You will also have to prove you are capable to supporting the developer's interactions with the press, users and delivery platforms; which means your spelling and grammar have to greatly improve (to judge from the content of your post).

    Primarily, you have to have the money to attend all the international game development conventions just as GDC, Gamescon, PAX, etc; and before you get there arrange meetings with all the distributors and other publishers that are going to the event. Your meetings should discuss how to smooth the process of getting games onto the distributors platform, discounts on the cost and ability to get the games highlighted on the platform.
  • Hi :)

    I'm not sure what you think a publisher is. It sounds like you're not willing to put in the time and effort that's needed to market and sell a game - which is what a publisher does. A publisher takes a game, and makes it sell via whatever means. Whether it's:
    > Money into marketing and advertising
    > Via connections with press
    > Getting the game into sales channels like AppStore, Steam, Pick n Pay, Incredible Connection, whatever
    > etc etc etc.

    The Publisher usually takes a big slice of the sales profit from the game sales, because if done properly, publishing both costs a lot of money AND amplifies sales by A LOT. So Publishers generate more possibility of sales, and the money they put in sees return, if they do it right.

    In analogue games (boardgames), the game creator only usually takes 5% of the revenue because the rest of the cost to publish/market/sell is so big.

    What are your impressions of what a publisher does?
  • Well, if you know for a fact that travelling somewhere wouldn't benefit a game, of course don't go. But the fact is that conventions are a big HUGE part of getting publicity and therefore sales or channels for games. Team Free Lives (Broforce) and QCF (Desktop Dungeons) are overseas at conventions now. They certainly aren't there for a fat holiday - it's work!
  • edited
    I smell a troll :(
  • Well then that's just obvious :) How do you evaluate if something is beneficial or not? Because what @fengol said in the beginning (that thing that you said you didn't want to do) is beneficial. So I could only have made the assumption that you didn't want to do it.

    But anyway that doesn't matter. So just be open to anything, first understand it before dismissing it :)
  • @critic - please don't get me started bro. If you don't have anything to say.just shut up.
    This kind of comment will likely turn out to be a very bad move on your part. Attacking people personally in a small community (which you want to turn into customers too) is not the way to go about things.
  • edited
    Your approach is a bit unorthodox @Mr_Moyo_ , I haven't been a part of this community for a long time, but I really doubt that anybody here can give you the advice that you seek. People do degrees in marketing and publishing and still don't have an answer to your question. EA executives probably don't have the answer that you want.

    Also your grammar and topic raise suspicion, it's like titling a thread "I will leern you Englich spellingz in this threed".

    Anyway I wish you luck in your business, maybe with some connections, you can make it big.
  • critic said:
    Also your grammar and topic raise suspicion, it's like titling a thread "I will leern you Englich spellingz in this threed".
    Seriously?
  • farsicon said:

    Seriously?
    My troll filter too sensitive?

  • @Mr_Moyo_ communication is an essential part of being a publisher. One of your main purposes will be communicating what the game is and why people should be playing it.

    It is quite apparent that English is not your first language, so as a member of the community it is quite easy to look past spelling and grammatical errors. But you are saying you want to be a publisher, as I said above one of the key things you will be doing is communicating. So are going to be judged for that.

    And while @critic was, well errr, critical of your posts, and probably more harshly than needed. As a publisher you cannot simply yell at people and tell them that they should be nice to you. You have to look at why they are making those posts and address their concerns. Also you have to roll with the blows: the internet is full of trolls and other denigrates who will go out of their way to actually grieve you. You have to be able to deal with that.

    ---

    But ultimate there is a singular question that you need to answer if you intend you be a publisher: What can you offer to do for local developers that they cannot simply do for themselves?

    Most of here are already capable of promoting and selling games. It's not some kind of secret how to do that.

    So how is working with you going to be beneficial to the developer? What can you do for them that they can't? And how are you going be better than them at things they already can?
    Thanked by 1dammit
  • God be with you Sir. And thank you for your advice. I will change my approach.
    See...now that is a much better approach. I was merely trying to point out that you could have responded with something like: "Thanks you for your concern, but I can assure you that I am not trolling" would have been better than the immediate, "Shut up" response. Saying that, I also do not condone @critic's immediate approach, but could see how he did mistake you for a troll, as trolls usually have such bad grammar in their posts. You should really proof read what you typed before hitting the "post comment" button.

    If you do exceed and make your dream of becoming a publisher a reality, you will need a community like this to support you, and throwing around insults and personal attacks will not get you that support. Don't crap where you eat kind of thing.

    As for your questions, I cannot give much advice, but the comments made by @Fengol and @Tuism seems like sound advice. I think the big thing they are trying to tell you that it takes time, money and some know-how. Maybe try contacting actual publishers and ask them for advise. Most guys here are okay with marketing themselves, or the ones with a good enough product will look for a more established publisher to sell their game. I think what you want to do is REALLY hard. Maybe starting smaller will help, like working at a publisher till you pick up the tricks of the trade. Hope that helps.
  • I seriously though this guy had some beef with the community, found some random twitter account and came here to play Mr Troll...

    I'll zip it.
  • edited
    You can take into consideration everything Danny (@dislekcia) and myself told you over Twitter, for starters. Expect developers to ask you how you can help them, and expect that they will not be happy with just being told 'great marketing'. That's not enough. As has already been mentioned, you have to have contacts. You have to be able to factually sell yourself as a publisher. Some pertinent snippets from emails from distributors who have contacted us, for you to get an idea of how you should promote yourself as a publisher:
    ...will certainly bring in some fantastic sales and huge amount of exposure for your title as our reach has over a million unique visitors per month and with over 1 Million+ registered customers on our mail out lists and also another 600K+ on our Facebook, Twitter and Steam community pages.
    Our online store is the biggest electronic entertainment provider in Poland. We have over 5000 products (games, ebooks, movies and audiobooks) from approximately 140 publishers including Ubisoft, EA, Disney and more. It would be great to discuss business opportunities with you.
    · Over 8 million page views served in July 2014
    · Over 1.7 million regular touch points with our customers
    · We are one of the most visited PC gaming websites in the world!
    · Featured direct promotions to email subscribers (clean database, all double opt-in)
    · Extensive social media reach, including over 955k Facebook fans
    · Worldwide promotion and visibility (gamers and games media) via our PR and social media campaigns
    · Competitive revenue share to you
    · Long term revenue opportunities (we are not a one-shot opportunity)
    · Fast monthly reports and even faster payments to you
    As a game developer, this is what I can see that you have right now;

    36 Twitter followers on the OneMoyo account, 128 followers on your own account, 19 likes on your Facebook page, and a website that was broken the last time I checked (but the URL seems to have been removed from your profile now). According to Facebook, your company has existed since 2010 and yet you've only amassed 19 Facebook likes and 36 Twitter followers. Social media is a HUGE contributing factor to marketing. Our ScrewyLightbulb Twitter account has been active for roughly a year and with next to no work done on it, has 200+ followers. Our Facebook page, also with pretty much zero promotion, has 177 likes. My own personal Twitter account that's been active since 2009 has almost 4,000 followers. I've done community management work on Twitter feeds for communities before that have over 100,000 followers and have managed communities that have several hundred thousand followers - my own indie game community has 15,000 members. What I'm looking for in a publisher is someone who can reach more people than I can, who has more contacts and ties than I do - and right now you're looking woefully inadequate. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but you HAVE to put in the ground work and build up a decent base that will attract developers to you. Unless you're not sharing some pertinent information, it looks like the only people you can currently reach are your 150-odd Twitter followers and 19 Facebook followers.

    Further, as I mentioned on Twitter - you say you 'do your research' but you asked me and @warpgate9 several times for our game and company information AFTER I linked you to the Steam page for our game. Our Steam page shows you exactly what kind of game it is, what platforms it's on, and links to our website, where you can find even more info about our company ScrewyLightbulb. You were also talking to me on Twitter, and my Twitter profile has a link to our game, had you taken a second to have a look. But despite asking me after I'd already sent you the information, it's not something you should be asking your clients to tell you. You need to find your clients, find their information and evaluate yourself whether they're appropriate for you to contact. Every single distributor contact we've had has been from someone who knows our game, knows what the game is, knows what platforms it's on, knows everything about us that we've shared. You don't contact someone and say 'hey I'm a publisher, what kind of game do you make?' - you contact them and say 'hey, I'm a publisher, and I've been looking at your game. It looks great, I want to publish it, here are some very detailed reasons why you should consider my services'.
  • People mention English skills because if you're communicating with a predominantly English audience, your competence at communicating in English is very important - if you're communicating with potential clients via written English and your skills at written English are poor, then you will appear unprofessional - something you deeply want to avoid when running a business. Respectfully, the level of English you're using in your posts above do give you an unprofessional appearance, however much that might not be the case in reality - how you present yourself is very *very* important to how people will perceive you.

    You talk about publishing offline and that's fine, but marketing itself can still be handled digitally through social media as one significant potential outlet, regardless of whether the end product is digital or not - and since you're approaching people online, you have to have an online portfolio to show them. You say 'people who really buy things are offline' - increasingly, that's not true. South Africa might be late to the broadband party but it's a country that's increasingly connected, and distribution platforms like Steam are huge. That's not to say that there *isn't* a market for offline purchases, but I believe Danny has already told you that before trying to fill this gap, you should find out why the gap exists in the first place. Why is there a lack of physical games publishers in South Africa? If there were any, where did they go wrong, why did they decide not to publish physical games any more?
    Well best believe me when I say the ways of makerting my crew and I have are very great far much better than the ones you where approached about.
    You say that, but where's the evidence? Nobody is going to take your word for it. You have to have tangible proof. You're going to be talking to developers who want to make games as a livelihood - they're going to want more to go on than 'you'd best believe me' when they're deciding who's going to help them achieve their goals. This is why I say you need to demonstrate tangible evidence that you can do what you say you do. Do you have statistics? Do you have other sites citing your business and its scope? Can you provide details of partnerships or communications you have with other companies? Can you provide real, accurate figures of the potential market you can reach? How many local outlets have you been in communication with that have agreed to work with you? This is what I mean when I say you need to build a portfolio.

    I'm not underestimating you - I'm estimating your perceived worth from the information you've so far provided. If you feel that my estimations are severely undercutting what you can actually achieve, that's because you haven't adequately promoted yourself and your capabilities to me. Again, you CAN'T simply say 'my team has fantastic marketing capability'. Nobody will believe this without hard, demonstrable evidence.
  • You seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not asking you to convince me personally of why we should publish with you - we're not interested in having an offline publisher currently. The advice I'm giving you is global advice to consider when dealing with ANYONE - not me personally. You don't need to say 'this won't work for us' or 'you don't need us to publish for you' - this discussion isn't about you convincing me to publish through you. This discussion is about you asking for advice, and other people giving you advice. I've given you advice - not advice in dealing with me personally, but advice to consider in ALL your dealings with game developers.
    Thanked by 1FanieG
  • Mr Moyo, I think you definitely have the intention of being a good publisher. That's great.

    What does it take to be a good publisher?

    Good on you for trying to find out here. That's a good first step.

    You already have gotten A LOT of good input from various people who know.

    I don't see you saying that you'd like to take heed of any of those advice, but instead you keep saying "I will do it this way, my way will work". So... If you keep saying that, why are/were you asking for advice?

    Then also... If you don't have "proof" of being able to be a good publisher (based an existing track record - selling a t-shirt is REALLY not the same as selling game. Think it through carefully before saying otherwise), you'll have to generate some proof, otherwise, it's not really fair for anyone to put their trust in you. Would you? Look at it from the perspective of people here.

    Let's reverse the roles. If one of us went to you and said "We want to sell your stuff. Give me advice". What would you say, and what would your impression of that person be? Would you trust him with your livelihood? Potentially pay them?
  • edited
    Well, you're approaching people online - my initial contact with you came from you reaching out to the MGSA Twitter feed who tagged me in a response tweet. If you're establishing communications with people online, you can expect them to look for any profiles you have online to evaluate your credibility; the figures I pulled from your Twitter and Facebook profiles are figures that other people are going to see and use to evaluate in the same way. If your business is offline but you're contacting people online, you might want to think about getting a proper working website set up where people can read testimonials, portfolios, etc. Otherwise, they're going to do exactly what I did.

    (Not related, but my name is Del, and online friends call me Del or Pixie. I'm not royalty - I'd much prefer you didn't call me 'your queen'. ;) )
  • you where not giving advice.
    Yes, she was.
    its offline
    If you haven't noticed, the brick and mortar stores are not looking to good at the moment. Just look at Look & Listen, which are closing all their stores after 60 years of trading. And even if they were doing well, no SA game developer will be able to make a living from selling their games only in SA stores. Online IS where it is happening. Is there any South African publishers anyway? Who will your competition be?
    For now all I can say my Queen
    Very unprofessional making up pet names for people you do not know. Didn't see you call any of the guys "my King" when you were addressing them. Offensive and weird.

    I think @Tuism is right in that you are asking for advice, but then defending your point of view when that advice contradicts your view.
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