Basically I have a 2D rpg mobile phone game which should be finished around the end of July maybe earlier and I'd like to get it published. I've been advised to contact mobile game publishers directly but I can only find the generic contact address like contact@company.com and I haven't gotten any replies. Is there any advise you can give on how I could get my game published?

Hi Nam,
It's going to be a tough job getting those companies to take you seriously if you have only one game. So after you finish your RPG, you should get to work on the next one. You can keep on trying the way you've been trying, while you're working on the second game.

You might want to try a variety of genres. If your first game was an RPG maybe your 2nd one can be a badminton game, and your third one a space shuttle sim. After you have thoroughly researched your target publisher's offerings and identified genre gaps you can exploit, of course.

I wrote an article on the challenge of getting published (I wrote a lot of articles on a lot of aspects of the game biz). It's article 60 at http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html

Quote: Original post by namingway
Basically I have a 2D rpg mobile phone game .....

You didn't say what phone it is for. If it is iPhone you can self publish. If you really don't want to then phone the publishers instead of emailing them (or send me a PM).

If it is not the iPhone but a "regular" mobile then as Tom says you will have a tough time getting a publishers attention. Mobile games are an impulse purchase/commodity item. No one really reviews them, there are no free demos available.... people just buy them based on one screenshot and a couple of sentences of sales blurb. For this reason publishers want license based games or ports of successful console games like Tomb Raider. They do most of their development in-house or else they buy games in bulk from big developers or resellers - these are companies that buy up games from people like you who have just one game, then sell them in bulk to publishers.

Mobile phone development/publishing is really brutal. Even if you do get the game published most of the money goes to the publisher/resellers. A pal of mine made a mobile phone game that one a BAFTA interactive award and no one would publish it. Yea I know that BAFTA isn't an Oscar but it is still an award.

> I have a 2D rpg mobile phone game

I assume J2ME. What's the download size?

-cb

Yes it is J2ME and currently the download size is 426KB.

Quote: Original post by Obscure

Quote: Original post by namingway
Basically I have a 2D rpg mobile phone game .....

You didn't say what phone it is for. If it is iPhone you can self publish. If you really don't want to then phone the publishers instead of emailing them (or send me a PM).

If it is not the iPhone but a "regular" mobile then as Tom says you will have a tough time getting a publishers attention. Mobile games are an impulse purchase/commodity item. No one really reviews them, there are no free demos available.... people just buy them based on one screenshot and a couple of sentences of sales blurb. For this reason publishers want license based games or ports of successful console games like Tomb Raider. They do most of their development in-house or else they buy games in bulk from big developers or resellers - these are companies that buy up games from people like you who have just one game, then sell them in bulk to publishers.

Mobile phone development/publishing is really brutal. Even if you do get the game published most of the money goes to the publisher/resellers. A pal of mine made a mobile phone game that one a BAFTA interactive award and no one would publish it. Yea I know that BAFTA isn't an Oscar but it is still an award.

I agree i come from the industry as well and was fortunate to make meetings with a few large mobile companies. Some with promise others basically got shown the door. no matter what you have or who they are they can't afford it. The margins are too low to let them give you any percentage.(unless you have rights to IP) hence Obscure mentioning in house dev. They will however love to engage in contract work with your comapany if you do good stuff. That's a real good way into eventually releasing your own IP. The other route especially for iphone is to contact companies directly for IP, there's millions of them out there vs a handful of mobile publishers.