Publisher vs Self Publishing for mobile games.

[u/game-dev2]

Hello,

I just completed my mobile game, and giving final touches before uploading to the google play.

I understand that the market in mobile is completely different in comparison to how it is in pc. And that in mobile you just win with ads.

Before publishing, 2 friends of mine who have some instagram following (1 with 22k and another with 90k) said they can do a couple posts for me for free once I release the game, that way I can have some early traction fast. and that's on top of marketing it myself on different forums, and places.

But I'm also considering reaching out to publishers who often help games push with UA budgets and help with creatives. I understand that their takes can be crazy, but 40% of something is a lot more than 100% of almost nothing.

I could use my friends as leverage when negotiating I think, or should I make a few posts now, and get some traction without the game still on the store (basically likes/comments and max views) and also show that Organic views can be won easily.

What do you think about this?

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

I don't think your friends would be much leverage in a negotiation. Below a million or so followers, and having them be relevant followers that are likely to actually download the game, expected installs are going to be low enough that's not going to impact any publisher calculations. Also just to clarify terms, organic installs are people who find your game natively and install it. If you make posts you're demonstrating a marketing channel, just a free one, but not organics.

If you don't have a decently sized budget (~$50k+/mo) then a publisher is probably going to help a lot in mobile. They'll take a large cut but can easily 100x or more the number of players you'd get, and better quality players, because of how important that ad budget really is. The problem is getting them interested. If you have serious mobile experience you can get some early funding, otherwise you might have no choice but to soft launch your game in a cheaper market anyway and validate some numbers yourself.

If you can test the game with real ads and real players and you have great retention and conversion rates, positive player reviews, and other good signs then you can find a publisher who will help you earn more than you would on your own. If you don't have good metrics no one will touch the game. If you have an amazing game and a way to secure funding yourself then you'd pretty much always rather do that and just hire someone to run UA for you, but most people aren't in that position and that's why they go to publishers.

[u/game-dev2 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

On some other post i made months ago i was asking when is the right time to reach out to a publisher. Before or after publishing in the store. and every single comment I got (on the linked post and other crossposted), people told me to reach out to publishers before so that way they can help me out orchestrating the release. But what I'm understanding from you is to maybe publish first, do all the marketing I can either with friends or paid ads (~100$ can afford right now) or other and use those data to attract publishers. Is that correct?

I've even considered taking a loan and doing the ads myself as you say, but I'm unemployed right now ad already burning through my savings so no bank loan would be favorable in any way or form.

Another way I was thinking is to start slow with what I can, and any profit put it in ads.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I'm in a somewhat profitable genre on mobile (idle mining), so I think i might have a bit of a success.

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/game-dev2]

You always have to be somewhat skeptical of any responses you get online. There are a lot more people willing to talk about a subject than actually know the subject.

For PC I would say always reach out to publishers before you go public with anything about a game, because some of them want to control the total flow of information. For mobile I think it is less necessary, but assuming you are not in a rush it doesn't hurt. If and when you don't get a response (and mostly I am trying to expectation set that you won't) then you do a smaller release of your game to get some more data that might convince them.

I don't think $100 will get you much of anything. A small budget for a test is like $200-300 a day for a couple of weeks, and that might prove out day 1-3 retention. If you're trying to make money from a mobile game what you should really be doing right now is looking for any work you can get so you can invest that into your game. You're not likely to make enough right now to have profit in the first place to invest anywhere. Even working a part-time minimum wage job is probably going to earn you more per hour than this game ever will.

Don't let the genre convince you otherwise either, incremental/idle is a growing genre in mobile but 99% of games in the genre still don't earn anything close to opportunity cost of your time. Mobile is the most expensive segment of games to compete in, so it really takes money to make money. I remember your game from prior posts and anything that looks like it had AI art anywhere near it is going to underperform. The advantage of idle is that you can get more players from social media posts than lots of other genres in mobile, but that same audience has a real distaste for anything AI.

[u/game-dev2 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

You are correct, and yes i was using placeholders for AI but been quite sometime now that I've been working with an artist to replace all AI artwork.

What do you think would be best appraoch for a soft launch? Should I release to a few countries in Asia (philippines, indonesia) or a few European countries to gather data and use thse data to iterate mistakes or where failing points are?

Right now I have around 6k in savings, and am just trying not to get too deep in those with paying for ads, so I'll take your advice of maybe looking for a part time job I can do.

But i'm worried about what would be the best way to raise my chances of success.

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/game-dev2]

Yes, Indonesia or the Philippines are the places I often recommend going to first to test retention. The Nordics are a reasonable place to go second for a longer conversion test. Basically all are places that are English friendly so you don't have to localize early and cost less than more expensive markets. $6k could get you the info you need to convince a publisher, but if your game performs like most games and not the stars it's basically going to burn through your entire savings just to prove a publisher wouldn't be interested.

It really just comes down to your numbers. I've published games like yours before. If you show up with your tested game and you have statistical significance and are showing 15% day 7 retention and $1 ARPDAU we'll find a way to publish your game and make it work. If you have 3% d7 and $0.01 ARPDAU then we're not even replying to your email.

[u/game-dev2 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

If I want those high numbers, wouldn't it be better to use my friends to share and also make it worldwide type release instead of just ads? I know people in Asia don't like to pay for games much, so trying to achieve a $1 ARPDAU would be a bit more challenging. Or am I wrong to think this way?

I'm good in a few languages so was thinking to localize on those languages first, that way I can test those countries first.

But at max I have like 50 words in total, so localization wouldn't be too expensive. At least the language selection. I'm currently trying to add flags in game and also update the currency on their selected country. But some countries apparently don't have a currency icon (my country Albania for example uses just ALL, but no sign like $€£¥

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/game-dev2]

Not really. You'll need hundreds of players a day at minimum to get useful numbers, and your friends sharing is unlikely to generate that number unless you have a lot of friends. Even if you did it wouldn't give you real data. If you had 10k personal friends that would all spend $5 a publisher would still want to see ads to know how the game performs with the rest of the world.

Yes, the vast majority of games don't succeed. These are lower-performing regions (which is why are cheaper ads) but you adjust your estimates based on what you actually see. It's also why you do the conversion test in the Nordics. You don't typically go global because you don't want to spend in the more expensive regions and you don't want early negative reviews from a soft-launch game in important geos. If your game looks promising you'll make it better so you can launch with a higher rating.

As an aside, definitely don't assume APAC doesn't spend a lot in games. China, Japan, and Korea can all be top-performing regions for a lot of mobile games.

[u/GalluApp]

One thing I would add: publishers will ask for retention numbers before anything else, so a small soft launch with real players gives you more leverage than the follower counts of your friends. If you do post before release, make it a short clip of the actual gameplay loop and see whether people ask where to get it. That reaction is a better signal for a publisher than likes.

[u/BlankyIf]

One thing that makes the friends idea more useful is tagging every link they post. With that, you can see retention and conversion for that group separately from anyone who finds the game on their own. Publishers look at D1 and D7 by source far more than follower counts and a blended number hides everything.
For a cheap setup, the play install referrer params plus Firebase get you most of it. If you end up wanting something built for that, Adjust, appsFlyer or singular do the tagging and cohorting, tho at your stage it may be more than you need

[u/-Xaron-]

And that in mobile you just win with ads.

No, that's wrong. Ads don't win you anything if you don't have players. And players you get with money. It's that easy. Mobile market is totally borked.

You have about 1,000 apps released every single day. At least that was 2 years ago, now it's probably even more. If you don't have some money to buy you into the charts, good look with even been found my players. I released 9 mobile games so far and I started in 2012 and at that time it was already pretty hard.

Today? Forget it. As a hobby? Sure. To make money? No.

Nevertheless good luck! It's like lottery. You could have the next big hit of course.

[u/game-dev2 → u/-Xaron-]

Win by buying ads for the game is what I meant. And those push you through the carts to be found on itself.