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

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

Getting down to the bottom line, all sponsors want exposure for their brand and for the "more games" link back to their site. When viewing new games, sponsors have to wonder how much exposure they can expect to get, which often comes down to wondering how likely it is for the game to spread like wildfire across the internet.

When I look at new games, of course I'm looking at whether it's fun and easy to get into. But I'm also trying to visualize it on the front page of Digg, or Newgrounds, or with a nice little write-up from Jay is Games. Sponsorship offers can be very polarized in value depending on how easy it is to imagine this happening.

Graphics can help, of course, but they're not everything. "Red Ball" is an example of a great little game that got Kongregate a ton of exposure through Digg and Joystiq. We didn't actually sponsor the game (and our hit counter was broken when it started spreading), but it still stands as an example of how fun and creativity can trump production values when it comes to mass appeal. Having good spelling and grammar can help a lot too, since Digg users are notorious for frowning upon misuses of stuff like "your," "it's" and "loose."

When you send out your game, please understand that I usually assume it's very close to its final state, unless you explicitly explain exactly where it is in the development cycle and tell me what kind of features you plan to add, or what bugs you plan to fix. I've seen a lot of games that I've expressed interest in because they seemed like really promising starts, only to learn later that the developers don't really plan to put any more work into them. And even when a developer does put a lot more work into a game, the basic controls almost always stay the same. So if a game doesn't control very well, you should either put more work into it before sending your game out, or explain that it's an area you plan to work on. To be perfectly honest, the assumptions I've developed as a sponsor can be really unfair to developers who send out early versions of their games with legitimate plans to put in a ton more work. If you fit into this category, say so! And elaborate on what work you plan to add! You probably won't get many solid offers, but you can at least gauge interest a bit.

Finally, keep in mind that I just handle traditional sponsorships for Kongregate. We have another employee, Chris Pasley, who handles our premium web games. If you're planning to build a game so awesome that it borders on "downloadable" quality and you feel like you'd be justified in charging a few bucks for it, he's the one to talk to. You can read more about that in our interview on Gamasutra. You can get a quick summary here or read the full details on Kongregates site.

Also, regarding logistical stuff, John from Crazy Monkey covered the basics that I look for as well.

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

Why should it be a choice? We allow developers to clearly label themselves as the creators in their games and link back to their own websites. We also allow Mochi Ads and site-locked licensing deals. For Kongregate, distribution is left primarily to the developer.

I'm not going to say that everyone should always go to Kongregate for every game sponsorship. Rather, I encourage developers to talk to multiple portals at once, and take the best offer they can get. But I don't really see the advantage in not getting a sponsorship at all, assuming that your game is good enough for one.