Getting Your Game to Players: Keela Robison, VP of GameHouse Distributions (Part 6)

Sramana: It sounds like you are a legitimate strategy for small studios that develop casual games for PCs and mobile environments and enable them to get a substantial reach into an audience.

Keela Robison: Absolutely. That is our core value proposition. We help smaller studios take their game to a large audience of customers who are interested in it.

Sramana: How do you find the studios, and how do the studios find you?

Keela Robison: We find each other through a combination of things. First, we have been around for a while and we have a reputation among casual game developers. They know our brand. Second, we participate in trade shows, and I will often speak at them or GameHouse will host a reception. Finally, we have a website, Partners.GameHouse.com, where we do marketing to attract the long tail of developers. We provide advice on marketing and provide strategies for success via app stores. We get leads through that mechanism as well.

Sramana: What technical platforms or environments are being used on the developer side?

Keela Robison: We are seeing a significant transition in this space. Studios that have been developing games for several years are moving off their proprietary systems. Over the years they had tended to develop something in-house which worked OK when you were publishing to one or two platforms. It breaks down quickly when you start publishing to different app stores which all have their own SDKs and cloud services. Add to that the different screen resolutions and operating systems, and the ecosystem has become much more sophisticated.

More and more we are seeing developers migrate to cross-platform game development platforms. The most popular right now are Unity and Marmalade although cocos2s and cocos2dx are getting a lot of adoption. You could add Adobe AIR in that mix as well.

Sramana: Is that a business that makes sense for you to be in as an extension of what you are already in?

Keela Robison: Over the years we have thought about areas that we may want to participate in. We are strong at systems, but we think that our value chain has different strengths on the consumer side dealing with acquisition, customer relationships management, engaging with consumers, and other high-touch areas. We do not create game development tools.

Through the years we have developed some tools, which is not uncommon for a shop that has developed games. I anticipate that the trend of studios relying on cross-platform game development platforms will only increase, and there are a lot of players in that space already. Our development efforts need to remain focused on our core competencies.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Getting Your Game to Players: Keela Robison, VP of GameHouse Distributions
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