[casual_games] RE: Casual_Games Digest, Vol 3, Issue 10

[Christopher Natsuume]

Most reputable distributors will have a clause in the contract that allows a
minimum of 1 record audit of the reporting a year at developer cost anyway.
So for this deal to be a "value add" to the developer, the cost should be
borne by the publisher. It's much cheaper for the publisher to do it anyway,
as they could aggregate all of the account reporting across all of their
games, where developers would have to pay individually to access the same
records over and over again (which would also be incredibly time-intrusive
to the publisher/distributor!).

Any publicly held company (Real, Shockwave, Sina, Oberon, Yahoo, Microsoft,
EA/Pogo etc.) already has an independent 3rd party audit of all accounting
done yearly by law. So making those records available annually should be at
no cost to anyone beyond the cost of actually distributing the information.
And most companies have this information processed by the same companies for
quarterly statements as well. The information is already there and already
verified.

But yes - making an annual/bi-annual/quarterly statement that is cleared by
an independent party would be terrifically useful as a bare minimum standard
of quality.


Also:
I would suggest that supplying a rough statement of the comparative success
of all titles for the channel broken down by genre monthly would also be
beneficial to distributors and developers, as it would indicate what areas
the biggest profitable opportunities are in, allowing developers to provide
the exact product the distributors want/need. It doesn't need to be real
numbers- just percentages of overall sales.

Another idea:
Every site has a "top ten" - this is usually generated by download volume.
What might be interesting is to have like a "critic's choice" list - which
includes the games with the highest sales turnover, regardless of download
volume. This would take cult-classic games with good gameplay and high
customer satisfaction but w/o high download volume, and push them to the
foreground. This is good for everyone, especially the distributor, because
it pushes potential revenue generators that are often lost in the shuffle.
For the publisher, this is essentially like getting a new sucessful game in
the lineup w/o actually signing a new game.  Have it so the "REAL" Top Ten
overrides the critical games - so they do not appear on both lists. If they
have huge download volume AND huge turnover - they go on the TOP TEN, and
not in the Critics Choice. 

I also agree: 
Amazon-style targeted advertising based on user's past downloads/purchases,
etc is an obvious next step, and I am genuinely surprised it is not more
common. As well as user-reviews and favorite lists, etc.


Thoughts?

PS: Incredibly useful mailing list. Thanks everyone!


-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Kim Pallister
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 12:14 AM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: [casual_games] RE: Casual_Games Digest, Vol 3, Issue 10

> From: Andrew Dick <trd22regts at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Portals: Room for improvement?

>> P.S. I really like your idea about sharing more
>> detailed stats with
>> developers. In a market where most portals STILL
>> don't offer real-time
>> sales reporting to developers, this is a step in the
>> right direction.

>Great! I am really aiming to have developers want to get the most they
can out of using our portal. So help me help you...what kind of stats
would be the most beneficial to you guys?

Given that this attitude (lack of trust in publishers) is pretty rampant
in the dev community, I'd say that a publisher (casual or not) could
gain a competitive advantage by offering the following to their
developers:

"Quarterly reports on your game title(s)' sales data, reported out via
an independent 3rd party auditing firm."

Alternatively, monthly reports (unaudited) followed up by a once or
twice a year audited report - again, from an independent, impartial, 3rd
party auditing firm.

I'll bet you could even bill it to the developers or split the
difference or something, and still have takers. 

If you've got nothing to hide, why not?

Kim


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