FlashGameSponsorship.com - Is a sponsorship right for you? What is the best way to get one?

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1.) What is Gimme5games looking for?

Gimme5games is part of the Eidos Interactive family of studios, and the founders of the studio have been working in video game development since the late 80s on games like; Barbarian, Total NBA, Blast Radius, Command & Conquer, Silkworm and SWIV.

Exclusivity
Gimme5games is looking for games for exclusive sponsorship – this means the following;

Our logo is attached to the front end of your game
A link on your main menu points at our site
Where possible/prudent, you include our high score system
Where possible, you include our ad framework

Evaluation
When we evaluate a game we look at a number of items;

Is the game graphically appealing from the outset

A lot of the games we see fail at this very first, very important hurdle – the initial look of the game is what hooks the viewer, if it has poor graphics or presentation the chances are a lot higher of the player never even getting to the gameplay.

Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay

Is it a fun game, does it offer the end user a challenge without annoying them – does the game offer longevity? If it’s a multi-level game, do the early levels teach the player how to play the game, similarly, are level elements introduced slowly – are they introduced one at a time, not all in one level? If the game isn’t multi-level, does the game progression allow the user breathing room? Gameplay can be intense in some games, I do like to be able to blink occasionally.

Approachability

If the user needs to be told how to play the game they don’t have to read and understand all the rules in go – the games we dislike are ones that have a single instruction page that tries to cram all the information onto one screen. We much prefer it when gameplay elements unfold and are explained while the player is playing the game in as simple a form as possible.

Deals
Gimme5games has a number of deal structures, they depend very much on the type of game, how much we’ve put into the game, how much we pay for the game, and how much the game is likely to make. The deals break down something like;

Straight sponsorship - where a flat fee is paid for exclusivity (see above)
Rev Share - where an advance is paid to secure the exclusivity, against a split of revenue from the income on a game, this means that an amount of money is paid when the game is initially released. The income from the game is then split into two accounts, where the revenue earned in the developers favour earns out the advance. An example would be; the developer is paid $1,000 against a 50% revenue split – for every $10 of income from the game $5 pays off the advance – in this example, once $2,000 is made the advance is repaid and 50c in every $1 earned would then be paid to the developer – usually quarterly (every three months). Where a game is taken on a Rev Share basis, Gimme5games provides a framework that the game will need to fit into – this has some specific requirements and these will be discussed when we choose your game.
Work for hire - Gimme5games, and its parent, Eidos, have a large number of licensed properties that will require flash games to be developed over the coming months and years – these deals are arranged on an ad-hoc basis – we are always on the lookout for developers to make flash games based on licenses we hold, if you are a team with a track record in flash development please get some details to us.

One thing that’s important to remember is that with straight sponsorship and rev share deals we will NEVER want to own the intellectual property in the game, only the exclusive rights to distribute it online. Where we specify the game and development we will usually expect any IP to be transferred to us (because, usually in these cases, it’s out idea and game concept anyway).

Extension past Flash releases
One thing that Gimme5games can offer that (we believe) no other flash portal can offer is an opportunity to extend the game outside of Flash and into the world of console releases – the studio that runs Gimme5games, Morpheme Game Studios, has experience of this from the mobile games world – the game Prism: Light the Way that was recently released on DS, started life as a Mobile only game.
When we sponsor a game, we also evaluate the potential of taking that game to other formats – there are no promises as the criteria for a game to make the jump from flash to console release is incredibly stringent and the competition to get a game onto console is incredibly hot.

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