What do publishers want from developers?

Not so long ago, a small scandal broke out in Runet. The reason for it was the appearance of an anonymous Google document in which unknown people unflatteringly went through all domestic and not only mobile game publishers. The comments themselves would hardly be worth a separate material (six or seven years ago, similar “stuffing” already appeared, only in them developers wrote about domestic publishers of retail, not mobile products), if not for a huge thread “based on” on dtf.ru .

To the question of Dmitry Nozhnin, currently working on the mobile geolocation game Dusk Rift, “what do you want from the publisher”, a long discussion unfolded, once again in a public form exposing the gulf of misunderstanding between publishers and developers. 

Wanting to somehow reduce it, we decided to write this material, which, we hope, fully reflects the publishers’ expectations of a modern mobile game.

We understand that the things mentioned below have long been the truisms of mobile development. However, discussions in Runet on this topic indicate that they are often forgotten. 

The fact that publishers are only interested in farms is a myth, it’s just well known how to monetize such projects

So, what do publishers want from the game that they are offered. We bend our fingers:

1. Free-2-play

Often the meaning of this concept is expanded. In fact, this is one of three possible distribution methods. Let’s remember all three. 

Paid – the user spends money for the opportunity to download the distribution;

Freemium – the user downloads a distribution kit with limited/blocked content and functionality for free. If the player likes the free version of the product, he buys the full version; 

Hiddens like Dark Parables from Blue Tea Games and Big Fish are distributed as Freemium

Free-2-Play is a free application in which the user can access all the functionality and content for free.

Why do publishers today only want Free-2-Play projects?

The reason is simple – most users do not want to pay for games if there is an opportunity to download them for free. This is a fact, there is no point in arguing with it. 

It’s hard to resist free oranges

Imagine that you are in the market. There are three trays in front of you. On the first, oranges for a ruble, on the second, you can try an orange, but in order to eat it whole, you need to pay the same ruble. On the third, oranges can be taken and eaten right away, and everything is absolutely free. 

Any sane person, all other things being equal, of course, will choose the third tray. 

2. Game service

Often, when it comes to F2P, it is assumed that the conversation is about a free game service right away. But in fact, a game-service can also be a paid project. 

Regular updates and the availability of IAP can also be found in the paid product

What is a game service?

In short, this is a project that continues to develop (to be filled with content, functionality, in general, to improve) after the release.

There is no additional charge for access to updates. Innovations, as a rule, occur with an eye to user behavior on a regular basis.

The conduct of any event in MARVEL War of Heroes is monitored and analyzed

Accordingly, when a developer applies to a publisher with a project, the first one should already have not only a clear vision of how and what the project will “grow in the future” and a willingness to support the project after the start, but also there should be a place for this development in the existing version (so that, for example, it does not turn out later that to maintain the balance, it is necessary to add another resource or radically change the “technology tree”).

We have already written more than once that many still, unfortunately, do not understand that the current market and users are not interested in the final product. That is, it should not be like this: I spent two years of my life, handed over the project and am waiting for money. There will be no money. The main work on the project begins after the release. The publisher, in case of a successful start, will support traffic, money, servers, and other self-evident things, but work on the project should be constantly continued by the developer himself. 

The release is just the beginning

3. A well-developed monetization model 

Monetizing paid and freemium is much easier than f2p. In the first case, roughly speaking, a price tag is simply put with an eye on the market situation (there are pitfalls here, but, as a rule, everything rests on the length of the game itself, the quality of the content, the presence / absence of a high-profile brand, how much similar projects cost in the store). 

In the second case, the main thing is to work through the first game stages so that the player gets hooked and wants to buy the full version of the game. 

But with free-2-play, everything is much more complicated. Simply putting a price tag on a part of the game content, to put it mildly, is not enough.

There are hundreds of items in Love and Dragons. The success of the project depends partly on their pricing

The in-game balance in the game should be built so that the user is faced with a small challenge all the time. So the player has two possibilities at once: either solve the difficulty on their own (wait until the resource accumulates / the building is rebuilt, try another strategy in battle, try to pass the level again), or just pay. 

Moreover, the balance should be built in such a way that at the beginning of the game the challenge was minimal, and then gradually increased to a certain maximum, allowing you to play without injections, but requiring a certain patience or great skill from the gamer.

This requires a lot of calculations and careful testing, even in the early stages.

4. Accurate execution 

You can’t put an equal bet between expensive graphics and beautiful graphics, between a huge budget spent on the UI and the final implementation of the interface. 

The publisher does not expect stunning effects, three-dimensional graphics, hundreds of animation frames for each character and a “start” button drawn by a dozen artists. But this does not mean that you can use Arial as a font for the name, or make sure that the text does not fit into any place reserved for it. And it also does not mean that you can do without an artist who has an idea at least about the theory of color, perspective and composition.

Puzzle & Dragons is hardly an outstanding project from a graphical point of view

Puzzle & Dragons, for example, does not differ even in the beautiful art of maps, as, indeed, Kingdoms of Camelot graphics. But in these projects, if I may say so, everything is adjusted to the very best.

All the things written just above are banal. But publishers, unfortunately, face dozens of projects every day whose developers forget that a mobile game should be a free service with thoughtful monetization and neat visual execution.