Tim Bender From Hooded Horse Gave Another Piece of Advice to Independent Devs Looking for Publisher
Manor Lords' publisher warns developers not to be guided by the companies' conduct toward their big hits when choosing a partner, but by how they treat less successful projects.
Tim Bender has another piece of advice for small developers. The head of Hooded Horse advised independent studios not to judge publishers based on their greatest hits - for instance Manor Lords in the case of his company.
In an interview for GameDeveloper (the first part of which was published almost two weeks ago), the American stated that many independent developers "unfairly" evaluate Hooded Horse in the context of the great success of the Polish city builder. In his opinion, this is a mistake, because looking at publishers through the prism of how they treat the devs of their big hits can make these companies appear more positive than they should.
When I talk to [developers] I tell them it's a little unfair to judge us by Manor Lords--in the way that you're being way too favorable towards us. Publishers shouldn't be judged by their biggest hit. In the end, I think the best way to judge a publisher is by the spread of all of their games. How they treat their games that went badly.
Bender recommends that developers looking for a publisher check how the publisher behaves when a game from its catalog does "badly." It particularly warns against "predatory or opportunistic" practices, which are said to be "way too common."
It's about situations where a company - as the head of Hooded Horse put it - releases 5 games, 4 of which are "flops," so they put all their effort only into the devs of this one hit, completely forgetting about the other creators. This, according to the American, may lead to premature abandonment of promising titles and teams.
Bender also mentioned that Gamalytic - a website "helping indie developers with market research and marketing," can be a big help for studios, including: by providing them with visibility into publisher revenue data from games released on Steam.
In theory, it's an amateur project (or "hobbyist," as the creator of Gamalytic put it), but Bender deemed the provided data "highly accurate." There occur occasional irregularities, but the praise for this service from the CEO of one of the companies releasing games on Valve's platform speaks volumes.
The American advises that developers should pay attention to the "performance median" (not the average - this can be inflated by big hits). This enables an initial assessment of how the publisher is managing all of their titles, including those that haven't performed well.
