Mobile Game Publishing 101: How to Get Your Game Published

I think some of the more hardcore uh genres like you know proper RPG or or Forex strategy and you know sometimes these games have much lower day one retention like I've seen some games that have like 25 to 30% day one but they've got like a 15% day 30 you know so like I was saying it's kind of about the retention curve and the shape of the curve rather than the early stage age metrics, but day one and day three does not have any real weight anymore. You could have 55% day one. [Music] Welcome to another episode of Tangent AOY 111. I'm Roman from Tangent and I'm joined today by John Wright. Hi John. Hey Roman, thanks for the invite. Always always always a pleasure. Um today's topic is uh publishing and I couldn't find a

better guest. So John, maybe a few words about yourself. Yeah, cool. Um so if you're not familiar with me guys, I'm basically um someone who's been in the gaming space in one way or another for the last about 15 years. You know, started off my career in effectively performance marketing, user acquisition, monetization within the game space. So working at companies like like Iron Source and and Unity and um you know during that time you know I was very fortunate to work with some of the biggest gaming companies in the world and you know essentially help the strategic uh deployment of of billions of dollars in spend for clients and and some of the biggest names in games. And the last couple of years I pivoted to uh you know my my area of that of passion which is actually working on the games themselves. So I was uh vice president of mobile games at Quali you know working with a team of 200 people

developing games publishing games and and uh yeah that was my last big position. the last couple of months I I com, you know, went to the dark side and now I'm officially an independent consultant working with studios and game tech providers to improve their businesses, grow their games and all in all I love what I do and it's an amazing job. Awesome. And uh John posted like a series of posts on LinkedIn about publishing and not only publishing I think all all sort of stuff like right right there were like 10 posts also he has done a video uh on almost each of them and I thought like okay let's add a special AOI 101 twist to it. So, we've designed those slides and now we'll jump into them and have a conversation about this topic. Yeah, exactly. So, we're just going to talk over some of the things that publishers

are looking for, what the developers need to do to get published and ultimately receive investment. And we're just going to have some fun going over some really interesting talking points. And Roman's going to try and keep me on my toes and ask some hard questions hopefully. So yeah, look, without further ado, I'll share my screen. We'll get the slides up and then we'll hopefully create a good talking point for for the people watching. So let's see. Yeah, I initially called it how to evaluate if your game ID is ready for publishing. And that would be like very interesting if you find any difference uh between a developer pitching their game to a publisher versus a game developer starting to self-publish. So that would be an interesting Yeah. So so look the the there is definitely differences and and

I'm a big uh fan of self-publishing if you can do it. Um the issue with today's market is so much more difficult to launch a game and the the publishers Roman have the resources, the money, the expertise, the tech. You know, solo devs and and small devs can be successful, but you know, I would say it's easier for a solo dev to be successful on Steam than it is mobile. Um but we we can talk about that, you know, a bit more as we go through some of the slides. And yeah, but it's it's an interesting point. I think ultimately, you know, I would say if you had an amazing game and the metrics were fantastic and you had the accessibility to cash flow to do your own UA, like that would be the priority because you as the developer would earn so much more money rather than establishing a publishing partnership where you have to give away a a big red rev share. But like I said, I think in the hyper casual era that was possible and there was

loads of companies that really sort of like found themselves and found success during that that hyper casual boom. But post, you know, those companies have become few and far between. And and very sadly, Roman, it feels like the big guys and the big publishers are the ones that are winning, right? There seems to be if you look at the top 100 games in the market and if you remove you know let's say like the strategy RPG the hardcore games by 10 cent like Honor of Kings and and you know uh Namco Bandai Dragon Ball Z Dhan and these guys that you know who self-publish um the the new names are becoming fewer and the the density and that sort of um consolidation is becoming thicker. Right. So sadly, it's not as um competitive, I would say, from a new game or a new studio perspective as it was a couple of years ago. Like when

when companies like Rollic and Homer and Voodoo really came to market, they were the small guys. Now they're the big guys. But again, it feels like there's less variety of names on that that list. If you look at if you go to Sensor Tower and you look at the top hundred, you know, you're not you're not seeing as many uh variety of names as you were a couple of years ago. Um because of the unit economics got so much more difficult for studios. So, but we again we can talk about this particular topic all day. This goes into the deck and and go from there. But look, so first things first, when you are evaluating either your own game or you're you're thinking about working with a publisher, the first and most important thing is the prototype of the game itself. And you know, depending on terminology, some people could call this an MVP, so minimal viable product. Some people call it a prototype. Some people can call it a vertical slice or or a build. It

doesn't really matter. It's all the same thing. It's an early stage project where people are starting to evaluate the the important things and and the most important thing for the prototype is the core loop itself. Is it sticky? Is it engaging? Do we feel like perhaps we're on to something here? Right? And and this could be something that is either innovation and innovation is something completely new, right? Like uh looking at last year, we saw Rollic with twisted tangle and this whole rope mechanic, right? And screw jam and we saw these you new sort of innovationy types uh physics metric um physics models which which allowed these new new styles. Um and then you also see like plus one and the plus one is taking something that already exists and changing it slightly to create a new game. Right? So it's not a copycat.

There is change and there is evolution, but it's different to something completely new, right? Um, and you could argue, you know, match 3D is an evolution of match free, right? And and that's the sort of plus one strategy. But again, the from a prototype perspective, the really important things are what's the core loop? Is it engaging? Do we feel like we've got something here? And then ultimately the art style and the design show the character of the game. And the combination of those things should give you a USP, a unique selling point. And the same as you know uh going to a VC or a private equity, you're looking for something that grabs people that has some sort of uniqueness that people think that we can invest in. Right? It's the it's the initial experience, the feeling you get when you have it. So yeah, really important that you know

your prototype sings these things because it's 2025. I need to ask AI question to you. Sure. No problem, dude. Ask away. So yeah, I can imagine now someone like what's the term wipe coding? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wipe code a prototype. Maybe you've already seen something like that or do you see if that's a f Oh, you did. I have. I dude I I I saw it last week with a company who basically had um if they didn't have a CTO, they don't have someone who could write code and they had a really good idea for a for an app. And they decided that you know using a combination of chat GPT midjourney cursor they they kind of put together like it wasn't a greatl looking prototype but it was a prototype right like it was something that worked and it showed you the design. So there's going

to be a whole new element of creativity coming from non-technical people which will help establish prototypes and we're probably going to see more prototypes now in the future because of how easy it is to create by these sort of AI tools. Um but the the issue with that is quantity does not always build quality, right? So, my my opinion very simply is people can vibe code, but like if you feel like you've got something and you're on to something, you're still going to need like an amazing Unity engineer or an Unreal 5 person to to build it, right? You're not going to be able to create a a a marketleading product that's going to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, in this way, but still good enough for prototype. good enough for prototype. I completely agree with you that dude and and I like I said I'm starting to see it. You know pe people who never in the past were able to build

a prototype but again some some good ideas people are not technical people right some people can come up with an idea but previously they were restrained by not having the technical ability to to to to put what's in their head into a prototype. And now that's changing. So I think it's something it's definitely a trend that I think we're seeing at the beginning, but it's going to by the end of the year I think uh everyone is going to be via coding prototypes and and looking to do that as part of a process to get money from a publisher or a VC etc. And on the other side, poor publishers. They'll have so many prototypes now and it that be completely different ball game to find anything good. Yeah. Look, the number of tests you're going to have to do is going to go up, which means that, you know, publishers are going to spend more money

um to validate and do due diligence. And uh look, the publishers are going to have to have better infrastructures and processes to be able to to handle this. Um but that's look these sort of industry events force people to become better, stronger, more efficient, faster. It's not a bad thing. It's how our industry continues to evolve and grow. So, you know, publishers will have to adapt, but they they always do. And uh and if you again if you would go back to the hyper casual days, we had loads more prototypes during the hyper casual boom than we do today. So even if the increase in volume by vibe coding goes up, it probably still will be less than what we had during hyper casual. The difference is the um quality of the games and the robustness of the games is much they're much bigger now than the hyper casual stage. So that means every game takes more time to review because there's more to it. So but yeah, it's good. It's a

good point, dude. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for answering. Cool. So look, yeah, going into the next stage very simply after you've built a prototype, the next milestone that you know the publisher or or you as an individual studio want to look at is the quality. And normally it goes in like a one two process. So firstly you focus on the retention and the earlier stage retention and then the more you work on the project and and the more the retention as an early indicator of success is looking good there is a direct correlation to monetization right if the session length is higher that's more ads shown if uh and and and subsequently this impacts LTV and ARP DAO etc etc but let's let's let's break it down so me I I've gone through the prototype stage. I feel like we've got a great game, but in an early stage, and

we need to start adding content, right? We need to start working on what the game is going to look like as a finished product rather than just an idea. Um, is that adding meta game? Is that adding community aspects? Is it building out a P versus P system, you know, or using quantum photon or something like that? Like these are all the things that you as a team have to figure out, right? uh what is the road map of the game and each part of that road map is broken down to those different milestones and again if we say the first milestone is the retention build the major focuses very simply are increasing the retention to as much as possible right so more people playing the game and staying around equals a higher likelihood of creating a monetization success because again the higher the session the more ads shown the more people coming back, more opportunities to do inapp purchases, more ads shown, you know, all this whole combination. But yeah, if I was if I was looking at a retention

build, I would look at three things really. The first thing is a day one retention above 35%. I would look at a session length of 20 minutes or above and I would look at a CPI of probably under $150. And these are like the first indications of that the game has some potential. And if you can hit those three things, that's when you know that you you're progressing forward. And again, you're adding that additional content. Things like meta is so important in today's market because it gives the ability for users to come back for and gives them another reason to come back. It gives them a change of scenery. So it's not just about the core game which potentially could be could be become quite um you know boring after playing it so much you know like there's the opposite to this which is like match free is the

most simplistic type of mechanic in the world and yet people play it for thousands of levels right king has tens of thousands of levels in Candy Crush etc etc but yeah you're trying to create um drivers for users to come back for day three and day And again, once you've got like an LTV curve of like, you know, day one 35% or to above, right? So, normally by the time you're starting building out the more later stage retention and adding the content, you want the day one to go up to 40% plus. You want the day three to be, you know, 20% or above, and then you want the day seven to be, you know, 10% or above. Um and if you can do that your your up down and your financial metrics will be stronger and then it comes down to very simply it's the unit economics balancing of games it's is the CPI or CAC lower than the LTV and if the

LTV is above the CAC that means you have a profitable game and at that point is when you move to the next stage and you start thinking about soft launch. Um and soft launch is is relatively an an easy concept to understand. It's how much can we scale whilst keeping the balance of the unit economics in favor of profit rather than loss. So if at the end of the monetization tests you're making 50% margin that means you can scale i.e. increase the CPI to get volume on different networks, different countries, different channels. whilst also hitting your margin goal. But the the thing that everyone needs to remember is as soon as you start scaling, CPIs go up. So, you know, if if in the previous stage you had 20% margin and then you wanted to scale, you'll find yourself at a point where probably

you're going to cap out, right? And you can't scale anymore because you're not going to make profit. And then you have to reduce it. And that is what we call the glass ceiling. That is where your game hits where it can possibly go to and you can't scale it up unless you then start doing things like very rigorous creative optimization, right? And bringing the CPI down. But the balance of soft launch is very sim very simple. You test in limited markets. You validate more of the long-term metrics. You redefine your your UA strategy, your networks. Do you want to test apploving versus unity? Do you want to test US versus China? You know, duh. But you want to find that that buffer of profitability that says to you that the game has the ability to go to that next level of scale whilst maintaining money or the ability to generate money. And then finally, the thing that we all hope we get to, hard launch. And

what is what again? What is hard launch? Card launch very simply is removing the handcuffs of the performance marketing team and the growth team and saying yala go for it guys you know like spend in as many places as you possibly can iOS Android us global tier three markets apploving unity DSPs rewarded networks like go and spend as much money as you can as long as there's profit it. And years ago, it was it was a whole different strategy, Roman. It was, you know, it was like, okay, we we know that the game's going to be successful. Let's go live with as many things as possible all at once. And it was about getting the game into the top of the charts and the organics and, you know, all of this offset. You know, I remember doing um loss generating UA because I knew that there was a K factor of 30%. So, I was

willing to lose 10% on the on the UA, so spend 10% more than I should because I know that the K factor of 30% will still mean I hit a 20% margin. Right now, it's a very different landscape for for the for the growth teams. It's test, you know, step by step. Optimize the out of things, you know, like it's it's like, you know, you've got to really really double down on how on how success looks like in in the most individual of sources. Um, and then we also have like, you know, rorowass optimization as standard now, right? So apploving, unity, Facebook, all of these things have, you know, the ability to to target certain events if that's rorowass day seven, etc. So it's a lot more complex. Um, it's a lot more uh I would say longer, right? So it's, you know, it's not as easy as it once was to get to the top of the charts. It takes more work

um and fewer games launch because of it. But this is this is where everyone wants to get to. You know, you wanna we want to be hard launching games. Yeah. From your experience, like looking at this four steps, just a ballpark number of how many games went from prototype to the uh test, the retention test basically. Yeah. And then how many got to the soft launch and how many got to the hard? Oh, it's great. It's a great question, Roman. So, it really depends on the genre of game and the strategy that you're operating. Publishers have two main strategies, which is hunting and farming. Hunting is like your sourcing people are going out and finding the best quality games possible. Farming is having a submit your game on your website. So, it really depends on the strategy and the balance. But I would say if you're a big publisher, you're

you're operating both and you're probably getting anywhere between a couple of hundred games a month to potentially a thousand or above if you're a bigger publisher. And you know, if you're getting, let's say, let's keep it nice and easy, say, a thousand submissions. out of the thousand submissions, probably 98% are like just just not not looking good, right? And then you've got probably about 2% that have some some potential and you need to test properly rather than just doing some basic testing. And the the publisher a lot of the time will test most of the games as long as they fit a certain criteria. But there's very few that have the dis, you know, have the ability to go the distance. And you know, the questions you've got to ask yourself is like, is this going to make depending on the size of your publisher, is this going to make 25 million, 50 million, 100 million? Because you know publishing is also

um you know an a game of spreading many bets and each bet is costing certain amount of money right and you need same as the VC landscape you know most VCs invest in 20 g uh 20 companies to have one exit and that one exit pays for the other 19 investments. It's the same thing for publishing, right? Like, you know, I'm spending a lot of money testing a lot of different games and and some of them will, you know, you or there'll be um, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds of cost associated to them, covering the burn rate and um, you know, some of them will go all the way to soft launch and then die and some of them might cost millions of dollars to to get to the point of killing it, right? So, so yeah, look, if out of a thousand games, 1 to 2% will get through, you know, uh no more than point of a percentage will ever uh ever actually get to soft launch. And then,

you know, if you're talking, you know, 1,000 games a month, you if you're lucky, you're probably going to hard launch with about one to two games a quarter. So, you know, it's it's sub 1% is the is this is the um barrier of success. And yeah, this this is the nature of publishing, right? You're you're really trying to invest a lot of time and money into a lot of different people, but knowing that the funnel will only spit out one real contender, right? You know, in in a in a quarterly basis. Um, and again, you know, during the hyper casual age, you could launch a game once a week, you know, like were launching games 10 times a quarter, dude. You know, but things changed and this is where we are today. It's a lot harder. Gotcha. Cool. And then look again we spoke a

little bit around these like metrics earlier but I just want to just want to detail them a bit more because I think it's very important to show people what actually the publisher is looking for. So again your retention rates is all about your your LT or your retention curve. And what you don't want is in this day and age is to have 0% after day seven right? You need to show a more mellow curve over a longer period of time because the longer the curve, the more opportunities to make money and the better the monetization. So yeah, if I were you looking at 35 to 40% day one, 20 to 25% day three, 10 to 15% day 7, and anything kind of north of 5% for day 30 depending on your genre of game is a good indication, right? But in this day and age, no one wants to hear that the game is dead before a month, right? If you're seeing 100% of users drop off before 30 days, that's probably not

going to go the distance. Would you say that's universal or is there um like of course benchmarks per genre, but what what what would you would be your Yeah, look, it's a really good question, dude. I think some of the more hardcore uh genres like you know proper RPG or or forex strategy and you know sometimes these games have much lower day one retention like I've seen some games that have like 25 to 30% day one but they've got like a 15% day 30 you know so like I was saying it's kind of about the retention curve and the shape of the curve rather than the early stage metrics but day one and day three does not have any real weight anymore. You could have 55% day one, but if you're day 70, it doesn't matter, right? So, it's about the shape of the curve rather than having like an outstanding early

metric, which a lot of people still to this day just don't understand. You know, people are like, "Oh my god, we've got 50% day one. We're going to make loads of money." And then the publisher says, "Sorry guys, like we're not going to sign this." because it was it was how years ago people validated things, right? It was like if the day one's good, then we're in business. It's not the same anymore. And then yeah, if I was looking at monetization metrics, I think depending on the genre and the geo, anything between 0.3 and 0.5, DA with a good retention curve means that your LTV will be anywhere above $2. And again, what we're trying to do here is the CPI below 150, the LTV above $2, and that 50 50 cents is our margin, right? And the idea is that over time, the product team will continue adding content, more features, and the LTV will go up, but equally the CPI will probably go up because, you know, competitiveness and the more scale, the more the CPI

goes up. And it's very much about balancing this unit economics. Um, and then conversion rates to to paying users extremely important in a hybrid monetization world that we live in now, right? It's not just all about ads. It's about what percentage or ratio is your IAP revenue and really important that you have a decent percentage to converting users that that power that I app revenue because the the app revenue is more secure than the ad revenue. The ad revenue can change at any moment, right? So really important you give yourself that security from the IO revenue. You just stole my question. I I just wanted to ask about ZP down and the value of inner purchases versus your answer. It's really important, dude. Look, if if you the the what people really want is like a 50/50. I can tell you now I've probably seen only a handful of games that actually um actually succeeded 50/50. But if you

know sometimes it will be 60/40, sometimes it'll be 40 60, but I think if you're getting more than 25 30% of inapp purchases as as the revenue breakdown, you're in a good place. Got it. And then look, the engagement and performance stuff is is really simple. Like you want as many daily sessions as possible. You want as high as uh total session, you know, as possible. also session length times frequency equal total session. And then you want like a good ratio of about 20% of your Dow to your M. So you know you want people coming back and playing the game again, but you also want, you know, as many um variety of people coming back as well. But if you can get 20 25% of people playing consistently, then it's a good good metric that the game has enough to keep people and that replayability and coming back, you know, time and time

again. And then yeah, so in terms of the second rule that I'm looking at, it's like, you know, strong metrics lead to stronger publisher confidence and ultimately higher levels of investment for you as a developer. And that that confidence comes from, you know, creating a relationship and a rapport and and creating a belief system that, you know, the publisher and you are working together. Um, if you try and take the publisher relationship as just an ability to get money and they are just a check, it's never going to work, dude. Like the publisher is investing not just money into this, but they're investing so much resources. And remember the individuals in the publisher like the producers and the product managers and the UA people they're invested in this personally right they want to also say to their friends and other people in the industry that they're launching successful games using their expertise and experience

like so it's really important that you know you go into this process knowing that and and look there's a couple of good tips here but setting realistic goals it doesn't help anyone to to basically overshoot and create an environment or where people are going to fail rather than succeed. So discussing this on both sides and giving input is so important. Obviously leverage the in-game metrics as much as you can. So if you're a developer and you're going to a publisher and you want the best deal possible, like the better the game metrics, the more desirable the project, the more power you have to negotiate. So sometimes it's smarter to wait a little bit longer and invest a bit more of your own money to get the metrics in a better position because then you'll create competition and you you know what you want is a couple of publishers all wanting to to sign the game. Play testing is something that is so underrated and you you wouldn't be so surprised how people are not actually

independently play testing their games. People end up play testing their own games and there is an unnatural sense of bias which is my game's amazing, it's super easy, everyone gets it and then you do an independent play test with like play test cloud and you see the results are far different through what your what your catchment audience or your your ideal customer profile or user profile is versus what your developers who built the game are doing. And so like please please play test your c your your game independently. Go use game uh play test cloud. They're a fantastic company with an amazing service. Iteration is also super important. You know in this day and age you need to like don't work on the same project for two years cuz you'll just run out of money and die. Like be be open to pivot like take on feedback. Understand that maybe the project in its current capacity will not be the one that goes to market. So that that feedback, that honesty, that that's

where the publisher comes in because the publisher is looking holistically across loads of genres, loads of games, loads of studios. So listen to your publisher when he's talking about iteration and changing things because trust me, he's doing it for a reason. It's not because he doesn't like your game. It's because he's seen something that indicates that if you do it, you're probably going to have more success. And then communication is at the forefront of everything. Like if you know that something's going wrong, i.e. someone's resigned, someone's going to get married or has been sick or something's wrong with the code, like don't hold that back from the publisher. Be transparent and create that relationship because trust me, when you run out of time, and you will run out of time, the publisher has the ability to terminate the contract based on a breach of the milestone. So don't think holding this back is going to help you. It won't. It will really hurt you. So, if something's going wrong, tell them. Be transparent. It's

really important. John, I really need some anonymous horror story about working with a publisher or working with a specific Oh, man. A unanimous horror story. Uh, I'm trying to think of something like a something that has gone wrong majorly. Um, oh god, I'm trying to think of something that is that will actually like be educationary for the audience rather than just a random crazy story. I once had to put a clause in a contract um when the war in Ukraine kicked off that I was working with a developer in um in Ukraine and they basically said like look we're really sorry but we have to do an addendum to to you know update this to so that if a missile hits the office that we're not going to be sued for not finishing the game and and honestly Roman at the time I was like

this what what is he talking about this is you know like this can't actually happen like this is not this sounds like something out of a movie. And we actually did end up updating the contract and honoring it because of the war. And so that was that was probably the most crazy thing that I ever happened. But that's again if if you're Ukrainian, that's that could that's you know something that you've had to deal with for the last couple of years. So apart from that, I would say, dude, there's there's always a lot of people that oversell and, you know, say they're going to build the best thing ever and eventually, you know, they try and kick the can down the road and and make things look good and they miss the deadlines and eventually they're like, "Oh, it's okay. We've been doing this long enough that the publisher is going to just put up with it." And the publisher won't. the publisher again is dealing with so many different um projects that if your project's not going well, they'll kill it to have more time for other ones that are going well. So, this is where the the communication piece is so important.

Gotcha. Um, cool. And then, yeah, this is a little bit more maybe about what I just discussed, but you need to be agile. You need to make sure that you're being unbiased when it comes down to data and feedback. And it's just so important to maintain transparency on the project. And like I said, both sides, the publisher and the developer are are throwing time and money and resources to building the best game possible. And sometimes people just, you know, they've been working on this game for a couple of years. they they think it they just they they they believe that it's going to go the distance and and that's what kills the the game's ability to launch, right? And and this is why it's so important to ensure that you do listen to feedback and you do evolve the game to things that are currently performing well and the publishers seeing holistically and yeah, it's just it's just such an important thing. But like I

said, if we if we look at the the basics here, so you know, make sure you're listening because it will help you hit the soft launch KPIs. And if you hit the soft launch KPIs, then you're moving to hard launch. And look, no, no developer makes money outside of the burn coverage in soft launch, right? The way that the developer makes money through the revshare model is by scale. So, if you want to, you know, make a load of money so you can self-publish next time, right? Listen to the publisher. Make sure you hit the soft launch metrics by any way. Okay? And then polish and optimize. Like I said, sometimes the the game in its current form will not be the final one. Sometimes you take a deviation on maybe not the core mechanic, but it could be the theme, right? Maybe you'll change it from a hotel themed game to a gym themed game or a a cafeteria themed game or a restaurant themed game or maybe it'll be

a jungle themed game, an arctic game, a penguin game. Like there's there's a million ways to reskin games and artwork to change the theme and the design whilst keeping the core mechanic true to the original origins. So that polish and optimize, you know, part of that is coming through through that stage, but ultimately it's just keep working on the game, making it the best experience for your users. And the better the quality, the better the results most of the time. Aligning with the publisher strategy again is really important. So understanding and asking questions about what the publisher is doing and why because then you can align what your company is doing to the same vision and that's how you create um culture a mutual culture between the developer and the publisher. So it's really really important and again that will help you lock down the partnership. What you want to create is a multi-game deal. You want to have security in your studios for years to come. And knowing that the publisher has your back and the

publisher knows that they're getting a amazing, highly quality assets from an incredible studio that they can one day perhaps purchase. That's what Voodoo was doing for years, right? Voodoo was like working with these studios and then saying to them, if you hit these metrics, we will acquire you for this amount of money. And then that's why Voodoo have um studios all over the world now, right? Turkey and and France, obviously France originally and and loads of other places. So it worked really well for them and a lot of other companies do the same thing. And then rule four again like data do decisions, policy execution and clear communication lead to smooth hard launch. And again, if if you think of it very simply, if you deliver on the milestones and you hit the metrics, then you're securing success from the start of the project to the end of the

project. And once once you're at hard launch, then comes live ops now, right? And that's a whole another thing that we haven't really spoken about, but you know, live operations is is vital in today's success because people don't want to create games that last for 6 months or a year. People want to create games that last for five to seven years. Like there was always this thing of evergreen games and now there's forever games and you know but but all of that like creating something iconic that lasts for years comes from these things and it's all about data. It's all about listening. It's all about execution and communication. And if you do all of that, you will be successful if the game has the potential, right? If you don't list, if the game has potential and you don't do these things, you will fail. So, it's just really important, Roman. So, for people to do all of that stuff. Um, and that's it. Yeah. I I have

a question like also on the topic of relationship between the developer and publisher. Yeah. Um especially the guys that just starting, they might be afraid to go to a publisher and saying like, "Oh, this is a genius idea. I don't want them to steal it." Yes. I mean look at the end of the day like you know publishers are businesses and they have like you know uh like strong legal frameworks in place so that things like IP theft cannot exist you know uh this is why we have things like NDAs and you know the developer you know if you're if you're concerned that you know perhaps you're speaking to a publisher and the publisher isn't isn't saying oh here's an NDA then it should come from you right you send the NDA to the publisher and that will give you the um legal support that you need if

anything goes wrong. I'm not going to sit here and say some publishers haven't copycatted a game in the past cuz that has obviously happened. We've seen court cases about it, but it probably I think a lot of people uh like would be shocked at just how um how rare it actually is. Um and again it's because of this like plus one strategy. You know there when Screw Jam came out there was about eight or nine other similar games in the market but each one of those copycats operated a plus one strategy. So all of them were slightly different right? Um and luckily for Screw Jam I think they were the first and the most successful. So there obviously is a benefit of of being the first to market with the concept and the idea and having the innovation. So but yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about that too much. Roman, it does happen, but as long as you you know your legal, you know, position and you you're doing things

like NDAs and ensuring that everything is reviewed by a lawyer, etc. Like normally you're okay. Gotcha. Um, so I leave our audience to ask more questions in the comments to this video. I'll ask John then, uh, reply to them. Uh, so please leave your comments. Um, John, uh, final chance to talk about yourself and how people can find you. Yeah, dude. Look, again, I'm a private consultant these days. is I'm helping studios and publishers to to improve their processes and grow and find more success and ultimately generate more money or I'm working with tech companies in the gaming space and and for the same reasons. Um I'm very active on LinkedIn so feel free to to message me and my addi is John Wright 1997. We will leave the

link in the description. Yeah, you can put the put the link in the description and but yeah, just just message me on LinkedIn. I'm I'm normally pretty active and get back to people and I'm all about just having conversations and and seeing if you know my experience can be applied and and if it can then great. Great. Then thanks so much for sharing the the insights and yeah, until next time. Thanks for inviting me again, Roman. It was a lot of fun. Take care everyone. Bye.