Hey all, I've been wondering how to best market and advertise a game I'm developing, and the 2 websites i've mostly been looking at are download.com and realarcade.com. They look pretty good so far, but I am wondering if anyone here has used them, and if so, did they help you sell your game and make a little cash, or was it just a big hassle? Also, what other websites would you recommend putting a game on? I'm looking to get my name out there... Thanks a bunch --Nathan

Those two solutions you mentioned are completely different altogether.

First off, download.com is more of a hosting site. Its a way for your consumers to find your software, but they do little to no marketing for you. It costs some money to host and listed, but im pretty sure in most cases, you recieve every penny of the purchase price. Other sites that offer the service of listing your download include tucows and shareware.com

RealArcade on the other hand, is a publisher. These people are going to take the majority of the money off your game. Anywhere from 70-90%. On the other hand, they market your game, they expose you to hundereds of thousands of potential customers that would likely not find your game otherwise, etc. They also are a little more picky and choosy when it comes to your game. Remember you are dealing with a publisher and they want top notch games on their site (they dont want their reputation tarnished by terriable games). If you get on there, you are pretty much guarenteed sales, maybe even a good chunk upfront, but remember they are taking so much off each sale that 1 copy you sold on your own would be like 10 copies they sell. Thats not to say it isnt worth its while though. Other publishing companies you might be interested in include popcap and garagegames.

Hopefully this helps,
Richard

ALSO,

While this is just my opinion from reading (I have no practical experiance with this), if you are looking to go the publisher route. Ive heard its actualy sometimes best not to work with RealArcade directly. Places like PopCap will many times get you listed on RealArcade aswell, and as publisher->publisher they work out special deals between themselves. This gets you on more sites then a nonexclusive contract with RealArcade would get you, for pretty much the same royalty numbers. Not to mention, places like popcap tend to get you on the discount racks at walmart if your game excels... :). This wont get you much money at all per game (expect $0.50 or less per game shipped) BUT it will get your name out there. If you can somehow get away with a nonexclusive license, then somehow get onto the discount shelves, you could make some really decent money with a sequal in which you run your own marketing campagn.

Richard

Thanks Paul, however...when I went onto realarcade's submit a game section, the FAQ said 30% royalty rate, does that mean I only get 30% or they get 30%? when I first looked at it I had the impression it meant they keep 30% and I get 70%. But now that I read your post, I have the feeling it's the other way around unfortunately :(

Also, since I am very short on money, what would you recommend about copyrights/trademarks? I was thinking to just copyright my game since that is the cheapest, and that protects me from people stealing it (yes I know they can still steal the name). Would copyrighting the game protect me if someone just changed the textures in the game and sold it that way?

Thanks,
--Nathan

1. You don't need to register copyrights or trademarks, they just exist.
2. If you have the cash you can register both/either in order to gain extra protection.
3. Copyright and trademark law only provides protection if you can afford to pay a lawyer to take someone to court. Given the high cost of this is probably isn't worth worrying about when in your situation.

Have a legal screen after the loading page/title screen/your logo screen. Put
"[game name] copyright 2007 [your name] all rights reserved"
You could put a trademark notice as well but you need to do a trademark search first to ensure someone doesn't already use the name.

Quote: Original post by BFMVfavorite
Would copyrighting the game protect me if someone just changed the textures in the game and sold it that way?

As Obscure said, anything that is copyrightable is automatically copyrighted (you don't need to apply for it), but it helps to tell people (such as on a splash screen).

The textures/binary code/sounds/documentation/etc are all covered by copyright.
So if someone simply replaces the textures with their own, but are still using your code, then they are illegally infringing your copyright. Same goes if someone takes your textures and modifies them slightly for use in their own game. If any part of your game is copied at all without your permission (except under fair use - such as taking screen-shots for a review) then the copiers are breaking copyright law. If anyone in the US is hosting an illegal copy of your work, you can make them remove it pronto by simply sending them a DMCA take-down notice (there are web-pages that can create these notices for you).

Also, bear in mind, that majority of sales through RealArcade comes through their monthly game program which charges the player about $7, but they`re free to choose whatever game they wish. Thus, you`d get 30% of $7.
But royalty is not the final amount you get. I`m not sure if RealArcade deducts something even after those 70%, but many portals deduct fees for credit-card processing, hosting the demo file, copy protection and features like that. Thus a portal (generally) that promotes 50% royalty rate can deduct additional $5 per copy on above mentioned features, thereby raising the cut to 75%.
But frankly, that`s your least problem. You first have to make the portal accept your game and hope for first two weeks of great sales that shall keep the game in top-ten thus making other new players try it (i.e. multiplication effect).

As for RealArcade, they`re also doing 50% sales each week, which means that you`ll receive the royalty from $10. But the quantities are far from those that you could ever reach alone on your site through advertising. Last I heard, if the game stayed few weeks in top ten it should get you few tens of thousands in royalties. Hits on RealArcade sell over 100.000 copies. But that`s like 5 games out of 200.

As for Download.com, you should set aside $200-$300 at a beginning as a marketing budget and try to see what it brings. But generally, you should spend much much more on marketing, since you must somehow bring the players to your site. And it costs money.

If you can get the game on any portal, just use the money it brings as a marketing budget (Download.com, google adwords, ads...) to promote your own site.


And that`s assuming you already finished the game, went through their lengthy application process, implemented all the additional features they wanted before they distribute it and managed to fix all bugs.

Thank you guys for those great responses,
so you're saying you don't specify the price for the game, realArcade does. Is it possible to just put it on RealArcade for free, or do they charge for everything? I was thinking it would be more useful to make the first couple of games free for publicity and get people interested and visiting my website, then come out with a nice game to sell. I'm guessing RealArcade would want nothing to do with a freeware game? What are some sites that are good for posting a freeware game on?

Thanks,
--Nathan

Correct, like I said they want quality games that THEY can make money on. They wont charge you money for hosting or promoting your game though (at least not upfront). Thats part of the reason they are recieving the royalties. They are assuming risk (well.. they would like to think they are assuming that much risk anyways ;)) Admittingly games that crash or are horriable will tarnish their reputation a bit. But for them a freeware game means $0 for them, so why promote it? Your particular studios marketing strategy doesent exactly fit theirs. And yes, that would mean that they take 70% and you take 30%, and thats out of what they deem as PROFITS from your game.

Nathan wrote:
>What are some sites that are good for posting a freeware game on?

You can find such sites by looking at these two sites:
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/article60.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=freeware+games