Would you be interested in...

I have established a couple facts over the course of my career.

1. I stink at coming up with my own game ideas
2. I am just a programmer and nothing else
3. I like working solo contracts for other game devs

That being said, I am evaluating my options for the future.

I was wondering if a profit share porting service would be of interest to anyone.

In a nutshell, I would take your project that isn't on mobile, assess if it is possible/worth porting it to mobile.
If I think it is, I would make a contract with you. This would mainly be a code conversion, I wouldn't be redoing art assets to shave 100k tris off of everything.

I port and publish your game, and in return I receive a share of the profits from the platforms I port too. This would be a slow longer term type of porting, not a quick port.
I would give you a timeline of months, not weeks. If the user interface would be quirky on a touch screen, I would create a new one instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
I wouldn't publish it until both sides of the contract was happy with the results.

So basically this would be a porting option for devs who are not really interested in doing the work to support another platform, but the extra revenue would be nice if that crazy Allen from RichCodes ever finishes it.

This is NOT a post asking for work, this is a survey for the future.
Would you be interested?

 

You do realise that this is almost a none offer as Unity makes it very easy to port a game to Mobile, you only need to ensure it supports the device's resolutions and input systems.

Although you do ideally need device hardware to test and in the case of IOS build to the new platform, or you used to as I think Unity cloud build might even have that covered?

 

Its not quite as automatic as you think. Unity also does none of the setting up the store pages, or converting UI's that are mouse/keyboard friendly.

If it is as easy as you think, why are so many people not doing it?

The answer I think, is because they don't want to be bothered with it.

(Obviously some games are not suited for mobile. I'm not expecting The Division to show up anytime soon)

 

if people aren't going to port their games themselves they will likely want to do it for a flat fee, not for profit share. I can't think of any situation where someone rather do the port via a profit share.

Also you say you are just a programmer, in my experience it takes more than just some programmers to port a large game a lot of the per platform optimizations that have to take place are the job of a tech artist. Especially if the platform you are porting to is less powerful. Last game i had to port i spent more time simplify shaders, creating lod models, downrising textures, overhauling the whole foliage system to reduce overdraw, then i ever spent doing anything on the programming and production side of things.

 

Keep in mind a lot of us use "one license per seat" assets that you would also need to own to do this. You would probably only be able to work with people who have the same Unity license you have as well.

 

Exactly. The reason doesn't necessarily have to be the effort of porting the game though. Chances are you simply won't make anywhere near the cost it would take to port your game and it isn't just reworking the UI either in many cases. A quick port to a platform will often only result in a really bad experience for the player.

 

Definitely not.

I wouldn't be interested in such service, unless you can do something like testing the game on every hardware device in existence.

Basically, I wouldn't need someone else to port things elsewhere. But testing it on a very large range of mobile devices is not something I can do easily.

@passerbycmc makes a good point about profit shares as well. For a profit share you'd need to provide continuous support for as long as the project exists.

That's how I see it anyway.

 

Honestly, if you aren't designing a game for mobile from the get go, it's not likely that the game will ever be a good fit for mobile. A console porting service could be useful, but there would have to be some actual money involved in it.

 

Projects that require large amounts of asset creation/modification would definitely be off the table.

This would not be a quick dollar, it would be a long, highly tested quality port.

Don't get me wrong, I have no interest in quick schemes or sleazy ports.

It would be the projects that could easily be on Android or iOS but for some reason the developer doesn't want to do it themselves. There is a surprising amount of games that are Android or iOS only, and not both.

With all the tools Unity gives you, it's a surprise that any mobile game wouldn't be on both, if not Windows phones as well.

I actually make more money off windows universal than Android at the moment.

 

the reason behind that is mostly due to people not having the devices or hardware to test on both. Also even when it comes to porting on mobile you still have to sometimes deal with totally different api's. Say the game has leaderboards or a turn based multiplayer component. If you want to target android and IOS that pretty much means having write a lot of code for both GameCenter and for Google Play Games.

I still have to question your idea of doing it for profit shares and not just doing it for a flat rate, or working out a SOW and a hourly rate.

 

Yeah why not. If you have some old games and you want to port to android and windows why not.

 

People are questioning your strat because you have nothing to show for it. Make a few successful ports where the devs massively increase their sales from your (good) services and you'll get people to consider profit share. Until you have something to show, you can expect people to question everything you do.

 

This is actually what I do for a number of clients now. Mainly flat rate. IAPS is another thing that ends up being a little different between platforms.

@AntoineDesbiens the whole point of this post and poll was to get the idea questioned and get feedback on it. You do have a pretty fair assessment of me as well though, I don't do much of my own stuff and I rarely show off things I make for others. I tend to just use word of mouth to get work instead. Makes for a pretty wimpy post count!

 

Bringing profit sharing into the discussion tends to result in that too.

How often are outside developers allowed to mention they've worked on a project? He may have an extensive list of games but if none of the developers want him mentioning them he can't really present them as proof.

 

I understand, but if you're offering any kind of service, it's usually good to have something to show your potential clients as proof of your achievements.

Since that's a priority, perhaps it's wise to begin with finding a few projects where you are able to negotiate the right to disclose your involvement.

I was simply trying to say that if you can show proof of your success, clients will come. And yes, I think that even with profit sharing, success is possible.

 

Its a viable business model. Several local studios I know focus exclusively on mobile ports.

I would suggest offering a full service. Any decent PC game needs far more then programming to make it to mobile, it also need significant design work, as well as major art work modifications.

 

There's more than just the porting to consider, too. What will be the impact on ongoing support of the property? There's the software, which there's presumably now a fork of (and thus workflow consideration for future updates), then there's also support for new devices, distribution channels and people. There may also be security questions (though personally I'm not so concerned with that for small game projects).

Maybe I could be convinced otherwise but, generally speaking, I think there'd be enough effort in a good port that I'd want to hand it to a well established studio with a specialty in the desired platforms or I'd want to do it in-house and retain full control. If it's worth doing then I think I'd be concerned with quality rather than effort.

 

Are many people not doing it? Have you seen what goes on on Google Play?

 

Yes, to both questions.

* Wow Lost Echo looks awesome, right down my alley as a player! Kudos