Desktop HTML5 games publishers

[umatheusg]

Hello there! I'm an aspiring HTML5 games developer and I'm currently working on a single-player RTS for desktops. The only publisher out there that I know that'd buy games like that is Armor Games. There will be probably about 7 missions, involving getting resources, defending from enemy waves, exploring, trading and attacking enemy tribes. Looks like that so far:

https://i.imgur.com/2x7mOzS.gif

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I'd like to know from you, more experienced developers, if that could get some love from publishers and if there's any other publisher looking for desktop games. I couldn't find anyone. Also, I see that most games have vector graphics and another game of mine got rejected by a publisher because they wanted games with "high quality graphics". I'm not really sure if that was a problem for them, they just sent a list of things they were looking for in a game and it was an item. So, do you think I can stick with what I can do or just hire someone to make swf sprites?

Thanks in advance!

[mattstyles]

Hi, I can't speak for publishers but those graphics look great, I love that style and you've absolutely nailed it. That short clip shows the game is really responsive, and looks great.

If I'm being cynical then I'd say publishers don't actually care about quality, they'd rather a game made them money (which means that, at least as a by-product, some level of quality is required). You could make a terrific game, better than 99% of others out there, but if its niche, or if the publishers don't think it'll get too many plays (i.e. make them money) then you'll have to shop around for someone to publish it for you or publish it yourself.

Personally I love that style and I wish there were more games out there like this.

Some other things though that strike me re. RTS genre: how long are your missions? can they be completed in five mins? if so you need quite a few more of them, if no then have you got offline/online support for saving progress? I imagine games for your average publisher need to be consumed in very small chunks and that doesn't really lend it to the RTS genre so I wonder, have you tackled that issue?

[umatheusg]

4 hours ago, mattstyles said:

Hi, I can't speak for publishers but those graphics look great, I love that style and you've absolutely nailed it. That short clip shows the game is really responsive, and looks great.

Oh, thank you very much, I appreciate that!

 

4 hours ago, mattstyles said:

If I'm being cynical then I'd say publishers don't actually care about quality, they'd rather a game made them money (which means that, at least as a by-product, some level of quality is required). You could make a terrific game, better than 99% of others out there, but if its niche, or if the publishers don't think it'll get too many plays (i.e. make them money) then you'll have to shop around for someone to publish it for you or publish it yourself.

That's another thing I'd like to ask. Should I add ads to the game myself? Because I don't think it'd work well for a RTS, unless they showed up in the mission select scene. I've seen some html5 games with no in-game ads at all and I'd like to do the same.

 

4 hours ago, mattstyles said:

how long are your missions?

Well, I haven't made the missions yet, but it will probably take 10-20 minutes to finish them. If things are going too fast, I could just reduce units speed and work rate.

 

4 hours ago, mattstyles said:

if no then have you got offline/online support for saving progress?

Even though the missions are not very long, I do plan to let the players save the game while in a mission. Offline, though. The save file would rest in your AppData.

 

4 hours ago, mattstyles said:

I imagine games for your average publisher need to be consumed in very small chunks and that doesn't really lend it to the RTS genre so I wonder, have you tackled that issue?

I haven't ever thought of this. Maybe quicker and harder missions, and not being able to save while playing would be an interesting approach.

Btw, I'm trying to get it to work in mobile devices but it's very hard to get it to work properly (not the controls, but resolution and scaling).

Thank you very much for the input!

[mattstyles]

Yeah I wonder what publishers make of desktop-only games, or games that don't work very well on mobile. Certainly for an RTS I imagine its a non-trivial task to scale it down for mobile and touch to work nicely.

Let me know when I can play the game, I enjoy an RTS but have very little time to play a big RTS game so something with smaller missions (10-20 mins sounds great) sounds like a great spin on a big RTS.