Publishing 101: What Game to Build, Why, and Which Publisher is Right for You by John Wright

Speaker 1 Would impact the metrics, which in turn would then, as part of the due diligence process, would fail anyway. So it's very important.

Speaker 1 And then my advice for you right now is if you can bake some form of meta-progression into the game at this stage, I know that's adding more complexity to the game, but it just shows the potential and direction.

Speaker 1 And publishers like to see that. So if you can do it, great.

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Speaker 1 Hello, everyone. My name is John Wright, and I'm an independent games consultant specializing in publishing and marketing within mobile games.

Speaker 1 So this is the first part of a 14-part series where I am going to go through and ask some of the big important questions that you are all dying to know about publishing.

Speaker 1 I think there is some really, really good and positive sentiment around publishing in the current market.

Speaker 1 There are still some people that have some concerns and some negative sentiment, but publishing in general, I think, is a very strong strategy and way that developers can superpower their games and utilize you know big companies expertise and all of the other benefits including funding and whatever else is needed right now.

Speaker 1 So, today, I'm going to answer a very simple question: which is, what is the current state of publishing within mobile games today?

Speaker 1 Right now, the current state of publishing for mobile is actually in a very good place. And, you know, we saw some really standout successes from the likes of Lion

Speaker 1 with Hexasault. and Rolik with Twisted Angle.

Speaker 1 There was a lot of screw games and a lot of other very interesting sort of block blast-esque games that came to market, bus jam, and all of this other stuff that really,

Speaker 1 from a casual and hybrid casual perspective, really started defining, or for the first time started defining what truly what hybrid casual would be. So it was a very interesting year.

Speaker 1 We saw a lot of growth in companies that specialized in this type of publishing. And

Speaker 1 yeah, I think overall it was very positive. We saw growth in the area, which is great.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but to clarify I think publishing is growing and it's taking off and why it's so important in today's market, I've listed three main points and focuses that I want to talk about today.

Speaker 1 So the first one is talking about the absence of funding. Right.
So if we recall, you know, a couple of years ago, there was accessibility to funds was much higher. You know, gaming VCs

Speaker 1 were much were investing much more money than they are today. And if you look at the first image in the comment section, you'll see the most recent gaming VC funding graph from Convoy.

Speaker 1 And what we can easily see here is a couple of things. So the first thing is that it's a five-year low in terms of investment into games.
Okay, which means that, yeah, there is less money around.

Speaker 1 And if there is less money being deployed by VCs, that means developers

Speaker 1 or do not have the accessibility funds they need to correctly build games and then launch games so the inaccessibility of to to money makes teams have to focus even more whereas a few years ago like if we look at 2021 there was about 10 billion deployed in 2024 there was less than two billion deployed it was a fifth of the amount of money.

Speaker 1 And if we also look at the stages of the cash deployment, it was predominantly early stage.

Speaker 1 And what we look at in terms of early stage is effectively VC is running money to help developers build prototypes, MVPs, or early stage projects.

Speaker 1 That in turn means that there is not enough money there for teams to start doing things like marketing, influencers, UA in general.

Speaker 1 So very simply, the funding aspect of things.

Speaker 1 means that developers will need someone who can help them with other parts of getting their game launched and making it a successful business. So, again, this is not me trash talking VCs.

Speaker 1 This is me saying the VCs are investing in one aspect or one point of the game's evolution, and working with a publisher will allow you to take the game to market.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's the first point. The second point is actually a follow-on of the first point, which is lean teams need to focus on what they do best.

Speaker 1 So, as a developer, what I advise people to do now is stay lean and focus on the core facts of game development.

Speaker 1 So, that is have a strong, strong founding team, you know, product, engineering, and obviously CEO, business type guy, and then having the bulk of your focus on engineering and effectively building the best sort of prototype or MVP you possibly can.

Speaker 1 Then you can utilize the publisher's very wide range of expertise and funding for user acquisition and getting the game to market. So, yeah, third point.

Speaker 1 Again, just touched on it briefly, but publishers, you know, bring an invaluable expertise and technology. So, what does that mean?

Speaker 1 So, not only is the publisher someone who could effectively spend millions of dollars on user acquisition and handle the growth loop side of things, so monetization and user acquisition, and creating positive profit-driven games, but if you are developing an early stage product and you have a core loop,

Speaker 1 an original mechanic,

Speaker 1 that's amazing, right? That's something unique and that's innovation. And that's what people want to see.
But taking something from the ideation stage to hard launch is something completely different.

Speaker 1 This requires... a much wider range of skill set.

Speaker 1 You need product people, you need producers, you need designers, you need artists, you need PMM, you need user acquisition, you need monetization, you need a wide, wide range of skills.

Speaker 1 And, you know, one of my favorite quotes is, you know, it takes a village to raise a baby, but it takes an army to build a game.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I really believe in that a publisher will, again, bring so much more additional value with the additional expertise. But equally, they have some of the best technology in the market has to offer.

Speaker 1 And this technology, these third-party partnerships or internally built technology, is very expensive. And developers generally don't have the accessibility of funds to do such a thing.

Speaker 1 So working with a publisher gives you the financial support you need. It gives you the marketing support you need, again, which is additional funds.

Speaker 1 It gives you additional expertise in terms of people and the disciplines that they have.

Speaker 1 And it gives you the accessibility to technology that you would never be able to afford without it.

Speaker 1 That is why I believe right now,

Speaker 1 if you want to maximize your chances as a small developer without having a big amount of money behind you from potentially a big raise from a VC, that working with a publisher will solve a lot of your problems.

Speaker 1 And ultimately, what I want more than anything is to see growth in gaming this year. And to do that, there has to be a combination of developers and publishers putting more games out.

Speaker 1 And yeah, that's what I really hope for our industry this year.

Speaker 1 And we're going to talk about another very big subject, which is what game to build, why, and what publisher is right for you.

Speaker 1 So just before we start, I really want to make sure that everyone understands what I mean by VC thesis and publishing thesis.

Speaker 1 So a lot of people are not aware of this, but you know, if you're an amazing studio with an incredible game and you're looking to raise money through a VC,

Speaker 1 A lot of the time, if your game is not in line with their strategy, i.e. their thesis, they will not invest money into the studio.
Why?

Speaker 1 This is because where the funders raise the money from, LPs and such, they've done it on the basis of telling these people, we are investing in these games, these projects, these type of companies.

Speaker 1 And that means that even if your game is fantastic, if you pick the wrong VC, you still won't go after it. And it's very similar to publishing.
And I think a lot of people are not aware of this.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to go into a bit more detail today around this. So yeah, three points that I think are really important when coming down to what game to build why and which publisher to choose.
Is

Speaker 1 there's, in my opinion, there's two

Speaker 1 big, big types of strategies. And there's multiple, you know, smaller strategies, but overall,

Speaker 1 if we go to the top level, there's two main ones. So, the first one is what I refer to as true innovation.
True innovation is when you come up with something completely new.

Speaker 1 This is, you know, Roblox or Minecraft or, you know, something that is defining in every way. You've never seen it before.
Fortnite when it came out. You know, these are the big ones.

Speaker 1 So the upside to these are very simple. It's if you manage to do it and you crack it, it's an entirely new area where

Speaker 1 if the market responds well to it, you're going to get huge amounts of users and you're going to make tons of money. right

Speaker 1 so that is one one part of it the downside however is nearly all of them fail because the market's not ready for it. The market reception's

Speaker 1 not there. So yeah, look, you can start with point one, you know, going after true innovation, but it's very, very difficult.
Or the second one, which is what I refer to as the plus one strategy.

Speaker 1 So a plus one strategy effectively is

Speaker 1 take an existing game. And this could be, you know, I give the example here about a match free going to match 3D, right?

Speaker 1 So this could be you're looking at a lot of match 3 games you know they're very dominant in the market and you say to yourself what can i do to change this to bring this into a new light where i can add an element of innovation rather than you know building complete innovation and you know match 3d hit the market and this was just an evolution of match 3 right this is instead of doing you know moving three pieces into a line within a board it was adding a 3d element so there were pieces on top of each other not just next to each other so this is this is you know traditionally what a plus-one strategy is.

Speaker 1 And the upside is very simple: it's it's lower risk, it's faster to validate.

Speaker 1 You've got examples in market which you can compare to, and people often you know adopt it much easier because it's familiar, it's not completely new.

Speaker 1 The downside is obviously the saturation and you know, lots of potentially other ones in the market.

Speaker 1 Um, so you one, you need to be quick, and two, you need to make the innovation enough so it differentiates from the rest of the pack.

Speaker 1 So two, do your market research. And I can't stress this enough, but

Speaker 1 you can't build in a vacuum. You have to build

Speaker 1 something that the market is responding well to. You can't just make something up.
You have to look at the signals.

Speaker 1 And my advice here is to use all the data tools you can. So I use Sensor Tower because I have access to it, but it's, you know, it is expensive.

Speaker 1 There's other platforms out there like AppMagic and Nuzu and other free tools which you can get data. Please do do it.
If you don't have premium tools, then just scrape the store.

Speaker 1 Find what's in the charts.

Speaker 1 Find trends.

Speaker 1 Like I said, last year, at one point, I remember there was seven or eight screw games in the top 100. So you can see them, you can find them, take your shot, innovate, and then see what happens.

Speaker 1 And sometimes you can knock the king off the castle

Speaker 1 and then last point industry reports there's loads and loads of stuff there stuff out there by apps flyer by invest game all of these companies go and do it

Speaker 1 third point find the right publisher finding the right publisher is extremely important because you know you could submit one of the best games ever but again if it doesn't align with with their thesis then it could be an instant rejection you need to be aware of that and you need to do research into the publishers to make sure

Speaker 1 that that is right for them, okay? So, this is why publishing is a partnership, it has to match on both sides, right?

Speaker 1 So, don't be downhearted if you do get rejected first because it does happen and it could be out of your control. So,

Speaker 1 so yeah, like I said, I'm going to give an example here.

Speaker 1 If you're making a $10 million MOBA and you pitch it to a publisher that's doing hybrid casual with a 500K budget, then even if it's the best MOBA in the world, it won't get signed because it doesn't match what they're looking for.

Speaker 1 So, you can ask them this: like you can reach out to people and say, What is your publishing thesis? What is the deal size? What is you know, what is driving you right now?

Speaker 1 And a couple of uh points I say here that I think would be good is check out their portfolios and look at the app store under their account, see what type of games they're working on, and see if your game is in line with what they've done previously.

Speaker 1 That's a really good thing to start.

Speaker 1 Google the names of their execs, find their VP of publishing. Find their CEO.
Find interviews in Pocket Gamer in TechCrunch. Look at interviews on Deconstructure of Fun.

Speaker 1 Find what they're talking about and how they're positioned in it. It's really important.
And then also, guys, don't just blanket send pitches and decks.

Speaker 1 I saw hundreds and hundreds of decks over my time at Kuali.

Speaker 1 And I would have wished if people would have tailored the decks a bit more, then more of them would have probably got through to the green light stage.

Speaker 1 And I'll cover green light and due diligence in a future podcast. But yeah, final thought.

Speaker 1 Success isn't always about building a great game. It's about building the right game for the right reasons and pitching it to the right publisher.
You can't just do a scattergun approach.

Speaker 1 You need to be highly strategic, picking the right people,

Speaker 1 and then your chances of success go up dramatically.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to answer another big question, which is how do publishers find and sign new games?

Speaker 1 I think it's really important for the developers out there to understand the processes that the publishers take to find games.

Speaker 1 Because ultimately, being discoverable is very important for you if you eventually want to work with a publisher, get signed by a publisher, launch a game using the publisher's

Speaker 1 extensive means.

Speaker 1 The first point I want to go over today is around the people behind the game discovery. So who is it, whose job is it to actually find the games? So, there's two sort of major ways of looking at this.

Speaker 1 So, one

Speaker 1 is there's a biz dev team or a sourcing team. So, essentially, these are the same things.
Sourcing is normally what we refer to in PCC, BizDev is really what we refer to in mobile.

Speaker 1 But essentially, these are people tasked with one job, which is

Speaker 1 going out there and finding new exciting games. And by the way, it doesn't always have to be early projects either.

Speaker 1 Some strategies from certain publishers will look for games that are nearer completion because that is part of their publishing thesis.

Speaker 1 And I've gone over that quite a lot over the last couple of days. So I think hopefully this will start to sink in about strategy around publishers and what they're looking for.

Speaker 1 But yeah, or... The other

Speaker 1 point too is a publishing manager. So a publishing manager effectively encompasses not only the business development parts and finding the game, but they also encompass the sort of

Speaker 1 developer management of the game. So they find the game, they sign the game, and then they retain the developer relationship from a commercial strategy and point

Speaker 1 perspective.

Speaker 1 This could mean that, you know, in years to come, there would be other games, other launches, and that person already holds the relationship to be able to utilize that to ensure that those second, third, fourth projects eventually, you know, come back to the publisher because we have established a partnership.

Speaker 1 And we're going to talk about partnerships in publishing between developers and publishers later in the series, but it's something that's really, really important.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the next part of this is ultimately, how do people find the games? So you know who's looking for the games now. You know the titles.

Speaker 1 You can find them quite easily by searching LinkedIn and marrying them up to the different publishers that... that you want to.
So, you know, this is how you find the people you need to speak to.

Speaker 1 But how do they actually find the games?

Speaker 1 It's a tough question, right? Each company has slightly different strategy, tools, ways, and all of that. But ultimately, there's a couple of points here that really highlight the basics.

Speaker 1 So they're looking at the App Store a hell of a lot. So they're trying to find new game submissions and seeing what's looking good by playing them

Speaker 1 through the store, like downloading, playing. They're analyzing the market.
So they're using Sense Tower, App Magic, et cetera, to find again new games that look like they've got good

Speaker 1 sort of metrics or whatever metrics they can find from the data platforms. They're checking platforms like itch, so it's just great for early stage prototypes and coming up with new concepts.

Speaker 1 I think it's a bit of an unsung hero in our industry, if I'm honest.

Speaker 1 They use internal systems, so taxonomies, scrapers, and you know, some people even get day-to-day reports of all new games submitted.

Speaker 1 And again, taxonomy, so what type of game they are, who's the studio, all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 And then a big one, and maybe not an obvious one to some developers because they're not outgoing is attending industry events talks you know panels all of this kind of stuff so it's really important to get out there and meet the publishers so i put together five ways for you to improve your chances of getting signed So the first one, again, this could be just a little bit of common sense, but you'll be surprised at how many people put games out before they're ready, is make sure your game is ready to be played.

Speaker 1 So, what I mean by that is it doesn't need a huge amount of content, one to two hours worth of content.

Speaker 1 It's completely acceptable, but it needs to be enough content to show the true vision of the game and then the core mechanic and everything else.

Speaker 1 But also, make sure you've tested it and there's no bugs.

Speaker 1 Because if a publisher looks at the game and there's bugs, they'll just say, No, this doesn't work, or it would impact the metrics, which in turn would then, as part of the due diligence process, would fail anyway.

Speaker 1 So, it's very important.

Speaker 1 And then my advice for you right now is if you can bake some form of metaprogression into the game at this stage, I know that's adding more

Speaker 1 complexity to the game, but it just shows the potential and direction and publishers like to see that. So if you can do it, great.

Speaker 1 Second point, again, I just spoke about leverage industry events.

Speaker 1 They are a gold mine for you because every publisher will send different people under the guise of we need to sign new games so these people are literally there for one reason only it's a great way to grab their attention the idea of events is not to you know get something signed there and then but it's to create a bond a relationship a connection with someone in the biz tef sourcing team etc and then establish okay next week we'll have a follow-up or the week after we'll have a follow-up and and to kick the can you know down that road um

Speaker 1 again all major publishers send people it's really important when you could end up meeting 10, 15 different publishers within a couple of days, and it can be a massive impact to

Speaker 1 your potential chances to get signed. Build a strong relationship with publishers.

Speaker 1 So even if the game you have right now does not get signed, it doesn't mean that in the future the publisher won't be interested. So it's important to establish relationships and cultivate them.

Speaker 1 So if, for example, a publisher gives you some feedback, you know, and then you develop the, you know, you utilize that in the product and develop that.

Speaker 1 Then, after you've completed that, send them an update with a new build saying, hey, look, we really took on your feedback. Here's the new project with it applied.
What do you think?

Speaker 1 And just keep those conversations open because the relationships are very important.

Speaker 1 Because equally, you want to build advocacy internally because if you have a champion and that person is your champion in the publisher, that can sometimes push things through or people take

Speaker 1 a leap of faith on you. So, really, really important.

Speaker 1 Understand what publishers are looking for and i can't stress this enough over the last couple of days understand the publishing thesis the criteria the deal side the game preferences all of these things will help you get signed better or quicker okay so ask them questions don't let it all just be them asking you

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 yeah if the game doesn't fit their vision at least you know early and then you can start tailoring your approach to different publishers where it would be a fit very important

Speaker 1 um and then last point, again, which is, I think, underrated, is handle rejection with resilience. So, a no isn't all the time about your game or your studio.

Speaker 1 It could be the fact that the publisher has 10 projects in the works right now and doesn't have time or the ability or resources to get another project to market.

Speaker 1 So, you know, they want to, they won't be able to, even if they wanted to. It could be the deal size, it could be the portfolio fit.
It could be a bunch of different reasons.

Speaker 1 But collect the feedback, identify identify the trends, iterate your project, and work on the next game.

Speaker 1 And then again, when you have that next project, report back to the publisher and go from there. And yeah, keep the publisher updated.
It's really important.

Speaker 1 And final thought: publishing is a competitive space, but understand how the process works gives you an edge. So look, stay strategic.
Stay adaptable.

Speaker 1 Keep the relationships there. Continue to work on things,

Speaker 1 and I assure you, your likelihood to get signed and work with a publisher will go up dramatically. And

Speaker 1 learning about

Speaker 1 the publishing teams themselves and how they find games and their strategies as how they do so. So today we're going to talk about two predominant strategies.

Speaker 1 One is farming and one is hunting. And you may be familiar with these terms because they're very common terms in a lot of different types of companies and business development and sales in general.

Speaker 1 But the first one obviously being farming. So this is a come to us approach.
So this is the publisher is doing marketing, is doing PR, is building a platform that allows you to submit games.

Speaker 1 It's establishing automation so that you can test the games and they can get results at mass.

Speaker 1 This is very much a quantitative approach to publishing.

Speaker 1 And I think, you know, again, the differentiation between farming and hunting is one is quantitative and one is qualitative, but we'll go into more of that later.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, if you look at the biggest publishers in mobile today, voodoo, supersonic quality, etc.

Speaker 1 etc., you'll see a number of these guys have their own publishing portals or platforms associated to their website.

Speaker 1 So, this means that you know, if I wanted to submit my game to voodoo, I go to the website, click on publishing, and then there's a section that allows me to essentially put a bulk of information, a link to the game, and then getting someone at voodoo to renew it.

Speaker 1 Sorry, review it. And

Speaker 1 the idea is that, you know, these submissions get counted up at the end of every day.

Speaker 1 And then depending on the number of BD people they have internally, each one of them will go through 10, 20, 50, depending on how many you get a month.

Speaker 1 And then essentially they'll spend X amount of time reviewing each of these games and seeing which ones have the

Speaker 1 right amount of potential. And those ones would then be approved to go towards testing.
And as I explained, there is a lot of automation in these publishing platforms to date.

Speaker 1 So a lot of them will allow you to do, you know, upload creatives and basically go live on Facebook.

Speaker 1 And the publisher will spend $100, $200 testing your game to understand CPI and early safe retention and stuff like that. So it's very important

Speaker 1 to,

Speaker 1 you know, understand that this process, again, is very quantitative.

Speaker 1 there is tons of applications so you need to stand out and we'll talk about that at the end of the video so another very important thing that you need to understand is that from a farming strategy you normally get i would say anywhere between one in 300 to one in 500 going to launch so what this means is you know there's less than you know a percent of

Speaker 1 games being submitted through the portals that actually go to being signed and launched, and it's because the quality of the submissions isn't arguably always quite low.

Speaker 1 So, you do get some diamonds in the rough, and one of the best games I've ever worked on came through a submission.

Speaker 1 And you know, if you have it as established by your publishing process, then I definitely think it's a vital strategy. Hunting.

Speaker 1 So, the difference, and again, we covered this often a lot yesterday, talking about the BD team and what their role is within that, and you know, aim

Speaker 1 notably what they are there to do. So,

Speaker 1 the hunting strategy is a go-to-them strategy.

Speaker 1 so this is the bd team essentially are doing everything that i explained yesterday looking at you know the store pages looking at linkedin using tools internally to to see what games have been submitted and blah blah blah and you know they're effectively also looking at other publishers and seeing what other studios are being published by them and trying to talk to these people and it's about building our rapport on their site right because the better studios they sign the more games that launch and then notably their bonuses and stuff like financial incentives are normally linked to you know success.

Speaker 1 So, for the BD people and the publishing team, it's really important to make sure they're spending their right amount of time on the right people.

Speaker 1 Again, what you'll notice about them is they'll probably contact you on LinkedIn or email and they'll say, Hey, it would be great to talk about your game. Can we jump on a call?

Speaker 1 Here's my calendarly, etc., etc. And again, the focus is very much on quantity, so quality, not quantity.
So, the mix of farming farming and hunting gives both

Speaker 1 quantity and quality to the publisher and the BD team. But if I was going to say which one gets the higher priority, it's the hunting, not the farming, because hunting again has a

Speaker 1 much more targeted approach and the conversion to success is much higher. So, with hunting, it could be one in 20 or 1 in 50 compared to 1 in 300 or 1 in 500 with farming.

Speaker 1 So, really important to understand those two processes and how the BD teams in publishers work. So

Speaker 1 if I was going to give you three pieces of advice on how you can improve your likelihood to be detected,

Speaker 1 be remembered and everything else, I would say, and again, this might be common sense, but you'll be surprised how many people don't do it. Optimize your portal submission.

Speaker 1 Make sure you give as much data and as much information about the studio, the game, the design, again, any previous data from tests that you might have done with another publisher or that you've had internally.

Speaker 1 The more information, the better, because the more information provided, the better the BD teams can do in terms of making a decision.

Speaker 1 What you don't want to do is not put enough information and just be rejected because there was something vital missing and they have to move quickly on to the next thing.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, please make sure you do that. Two, proactively connect with the BD team.
So

Speaker 1 this can either be at events like what we spoke about yesterday or it can be through LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 So go to the LinkedIn page of the publisher, find the people in business development, publishing management or sourcing.

Speaker 1 You know, just drop them, one of them, an email or again a message on LinkedIn and say, hey, this is me. I submitted my game.
I really like what you do.

Speaker 1 And just try and keep it light and fresh and friendly. But the idea is that you're trying to establish a

Speaker 1 contact internally. You're trying to find that building an advocate in there, and building that rapport is very, very important.

Speaker 1 Third point, personalize your approach. And this is, again, something that I see time and time again, especially when you know for people both hunting and farming, actually.

Speaker 1 So, essentially, if someone, if you submit your game through the portal, make sure that again the submission is tailored to be in line with everything you know about the publisher.

Speaker 1 Or if it's someone has approached you and they've contacted you as part of a hunting strategy, then make sure you tailor any follow-up or deck with the publisher in mind.

Speaker 1 Because if you show that you're giving it the time and attention it deserves, you're more likely

Speaker 1 to eventually build out the relationship, get signed. And also remember, it's not always about the game you have now.
It could be the game in a year or the game in two years or the game

Speaker 1 five games down the line. It's about like once you've got that relationship, it's very easy to

Speaker 1 go back to that and and the industry is full of goodwill so look my final thought is whether the publisher is leveraging farming or hunting strategies it doesn't matter but knowing how they operate can make all of the difference in getting your game noticed thank you and have a good day