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Joe from ArcadeTown

 

An Introduction:

Hey thanks for reading this :)  I’m Joe Lieberman.  Most of you reading this won’t know who I am (Because I am not “THAT” Joe Lieberman) – but some brief background is before joining the Arcade Town crew I created a company dedicated to helping indie developers, VGSmart.  I also published a book focusing on downloadable (not web based) games – www.indiegameguide.com. 

 

Shameless self plugs aside, it is my commitment that everyone who ever talks to me walks away either working with us OR at the very least saying “In the future I want to work with that guy.”   How do I do that?  Honesty, even in business.  I will always put my reputation, a very good reputation currently, on the line when dealing with people.

 

I still help indie developers, so I hope this brief article helps YOU make the right decision.

 

1.) What are you looking for in a game?

There are a lot of things I look at when sponsoring a game. I’ve included examples of games where NOT meeting my guidelines actually still resulted in a sponsorship.  If you meet all the guidelines your sponsoring life will be easier for sure.  They are as follows

How does the game look?

Hey, are we superficial?  You bet!  Hire a cheap artist at the very least.  Programmer art is something we try to avoid OR make a game that doesn’t require complex art!  Space Pilot, for instance.  http://www.arcadetown.com/spacepilot/game.asp

How does the game play?

Most people would say that a fun game is more important than a game that looks good.  I’d say that is mostly true.  We’ve sponsored games with “bad” art that were just too fantastic to pass up.  There are two ways to make a game fantastic

Make it so mind blowingly “smart” in design that we can’t say no. http://www.arcadetown.com/theidiottest/game.asp

Make it so much fun that the art is unimportant. http://www.arcadetown.com/disorientation/game.asp

Does it match our various CRITERIA?

Ok people, there are some ground rules for making flash games.

  1. Make it ONE FILE. (single .swf please!)
  2. Make it SMALL. (We prefer under 4MB – this is not a hard limit, just a rough idea of what small means to us).
  3. Make it WORK.  (Believe it or not I see quite a few submissions in Flash 9 or some new technology that doesn’t work with every browser.  Don’t be cutting edge.)
  4. Make it FLASH.  (Not the seizure inducing kind, Java applets are out… if you send me one expect a very low bid.  We DO buy java games still, but I haven’t paid more than 500 bucks for one.  Shockwave is also possible, but we REALLY prefer Flash.)
  5. Make it possible to ADD OUR LOGOS.  (I once worked with a game that had nowhere to put logos, ours or theirs.  No menu, no money.)

Are you flexible?

How willing are you to change things in the game?  It isn’t a requirement at all, but sometimes we are willing to pay more for a game if the developer is willing to go back and make some modifications.  We aren’t the type to boast, but we know our shit.  We’re pretty good at making minor changes to games that make big impacts in profit, popularity, or product.

 

 

2.) Why should someone sponsor a game with you (or someone else) instead of trying to capitalize on it an another way.

 

This is the real question right?  You have a game or game idea, how do you make money?  There’s already an opinion posted that says portals are bad and sponsorships are bad.  The real answer is, there’s no right or wrong answer here, only a series of decisions.

 

It comes down to this:  You CAN make more money on your game working for “yourself” than you can through sponsorship.  If we never made money on sponsoring games we wouldn’t do it.  Obviously we make money doing it so you COULD make more money doing it yourself.

 

When people ask me why then we should ever sponsor any games at all my answer is simple:  Are you a game developer or a website developer?  Some of you are lucky enough to be both.  Like Simon at Ezone who posted his opinion that sponsorships are not worth much to him.  Why?  Because he runs a pretty sizeable website and knows how to make money from and acquire more traffic.

 

Do you know how to do that?  If not, are you willing to take the time and effort to learn?

 

The simple reality is most of the developers we work with understand that principal and work with us because they know that WE know how to make money and acquire traffic.  In return we pay them very well.

 

We know how to make money, you know how to make good games.  We turn your games into money over the long term (most games we sponsor take nearly a year or so to provide us with profit).  In exchange you get a fairly sizeable chunk up front AND you don’t have to divide your focus between running a website and making good games.

 

So why Arcade Town over Portal Brand X? 

 

My best answer to that comes down to respect and reliability.

First of all, I will say we respect you as a developer.  You aren’t just “one more game” to add to our list.  We are interested in who you are, where you are from, and where you will be in a month or years time.  Why?  Because we prefer working with a stable developer who isn’t just a one – time deal… and guess what?  We’re willing to pay more now to ensure we keep you happy and working with us in the future.  Higher pay + more respect?  Why do you think I moved from my own business to work with us? :)

An example of this in action was recently the creator of the Submachine and Covert Front (both adventure game series 100% sponsored by Arcade Town) came to me and said he was a bit tired of adventure games.  He wanted to work on a platform game on the side.  Some portals would sway him away from such a course.  Platform games just don’t do very well… plus it means our next project with him may get delayed.

 

Within 30 minutes we had not only agreed to sponsor this upcoming game but also agreed on a price with nothing more than a 2 level demo.  Was it because I thought this game was going to be great?  Not at all!  The game is fine, but it was because I thought the DEVELOPER was great and if letting him get creative and test out new waters is what it takes to keep him happy and working with us – then a few thousand dollars is money well spent.

 

If THAT sounds like the kind of relationship you want, you may consider working with us over Portal X.  If not, just sell to the highest bidder!  It may be us anyway :)

 

A side note:  Arcade Town DOES allow you to sell site-locked versions to other sites.  It is exclusive for general distribution, but if you want to do the extra work and sell a site locked version to miniclip or shockwave go right ahead, we’ll support you making money 100%
 
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