ngmoco, ustwo and Wonderland chew the fat.
ustwo co-founder Mills, ngmoco VP of A&R Alan Yu and Wonderland CEO Matthew Wiggins took part in a panel session this afternoon on iPhone gaming, at the Develop conference in Brighton.
They talked about the importance of marketing and promotion, and the challenge of getting your games discovered on the App Store.
"A lot of developers think it's their right to have exposure and do well, but actually there's a lot of work that needs to go into that," said Mills.
On the marketing side, Yu said ngmoco does a lot of cross-promotion for its games, and then focuses on ensuring players keep coming back - thus allowing the company to make money from their activity, rather than just from one-off downloads.
ustwo has worked with partners - it got AdMob to sponsor its PositionApp chart analysis application - although Mills said that while this helped boost downloads (the app was free as a result of the sponsorship), it didn't open as many doors as ustwo was hoping.
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"Have the balls to try anything," he advised developers.
What role do publishers play on the App Store? Wiggins talked about Wonderland's experience, saying that there are two facets to its relationship with ngmoco on its GodFinger game.
One is the traditional publishing side of things, including QA, marketing and other tasks not suited to a creative developer.
"We have also benefited from the knowledge that they have from their other games," he said.
He admitted that there can be creative tensions where a developer and publisher disagree on, for example, new features for a game. "But unless you're a one-man band, you'll always have that within your own team," said Wiggins.
Yu added that ngmoco's publisher model is completely different to the console business. "We consider ourselves game-makers, not publishers," he said.
Mills said that ustwo has a different perspective: currently its apps and games are a way to get the studio's name out there, and to support the other work it does for big brands.
"The fact that we self-publish becomes quite a saleable asset to other people who want us to build their apps for them," he said.
Talk turned to business models, and ad-supported games in particular. Is that a lucrative model for developers to be looking into? ngmoco has ads in its games already, and Yu says the company is impressed by the 'cool' quality of Apple's new iAd format.
However, he pointed out that there are many different solutions on offer - "There's a world of difference between a quality ad and a shitty ad," he said. "It really is a numbers game," added Mills. "You've got to get the numbers up to make money from ads."
Wiggins says GodFinger does "pretty well" from its in-game ads, partly because they're not foisted on players at every opportunity. He also warned developers that they should constantly check what ads are being served to their players.
"The danger is that all of a sudden you'll see Adult FriendFinder!" he said, referring to the danger of ad networks serving lower quality ads to fill inventory.
The panel also discussed fragmentation - it's traditional during any conference session focusing on mobile games - and said they're not worried about Apple's iOS platform getting more fragmented, with iPhone 4 and iPad alongside the existing iPhone 3GS.
"The form factor fragmentation - I have an iPad or an iPhone, and in the future there'll probably be something else as well - is actually very cool," said Wiggins. "With the iPad, just the size of the screen means you can have a completely different UI. And when in the future when we have a third device - a big-screen experience, a handheld experience and a mobile experience..."
He specified that the big-screen experience "will probably be something to do with Apple TV", although he stressed that this is just speculation on his part.
The panel were asked about intellectual property protection - how are they preventing other developers and publishers from ripping off their games?
"I'll be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that," said Yu. But Wiggins said that "the lifeblood of the industry is innovating by building on the shoulders of games", so developers shouldn't be able to squash use of specific game mechanics through legal means.
The panel were also asked about how they track metrics, and Yu said that having games that are constantly connected - as ngmoco's social titles are - represents a huge change for the industry.
"For the first time in a long while, I can really see how my design affects my business," he said.
Wiggins said it's important that you're just measuring how people play your game, but not any data about the player and who they are. "It definitely is only a tool though," said Wiggins. "You hear some people talking about it as if it's a panacea."
