Hey Folks!

I just wanted to write a short (hopefully short) article on looking at sponsorship for Narcissus (just in case it isn’t short, here’s a picture of a cat holding a duck I drew a couple of nights ago).

As a first timer publishing a game to the world, I originally planned to release Narcissus to the world willy nilly and see what people thought of it. The original name for the build online was Narcissus Demo. This doubled as a sign of development and as an indicator that the online build was just a sample of what the full game would be. The final game is currently being built for tablet and phone – check the other articles I’ve written for info on that kettle of fish!

But then I saw FGL….

This seemed a perfect opportunity to make quite a bit of money for something I was going to do anyway. Other people I knew about made a killing and in some cases even a living off of getting sponsors. So, I decided to stick my nose in and despite it being finished and ready, held the reins back on the release of Narcissus.

The website was pretty slick, had a bunch of cool features and the free testing they did for me was super cool, but the project had people viewing it at a painfully slow rate (Like 21 views over the space of a week slow!). At the same time, I’d been putting posts up on gamejolt and other sites stating that the game’s release was just around the corner. I was investing in a site that seemed to be showing very little interest in my project whilst communities that were actively requesting to play, I was holding back on. After finding the game listed on the “Lonely Games” category on FGL, I realised that I was going to need a reputation if sponsors were going to ever show an interest in my games.

After sitting down and having a damn good think, I drew up 3 options:

Option 1. Throw the web version out there - Plonk Narcissus on lots of developer and gaming websites and let interest grow and spread for the project. Quick and easy option but don’t really learn anything from the experience (for learning how to make a living).

Option 2. Look to get a sponsorship with the current build of Narcissus - this would mean retracting all existing copies of the game and using a website such as FGL to put the game’s web rights up for auction. From this I would be looking for a non exclusive or exclusive copies for portals to use. Amounts vary between $100 to $10,000.

Option 3. Do both - Throw the game out there, get some interest for the project and let interest grow, then offer the exclusive web rights for the 25 unreleased levels to a sponsor (game widely available but the extra content can be found exclusively on one site). For me this is the optimal choice but I’m not sure how having the game already released would effect the amount I’d get from the sponsorship.

Now in the situation I was in, Narcissus had been in development for just over 3 years, so to hold back release for that period of time with nothing to do but wait was absolutely killing me. To add to this, my main Stencyl build of Narcissus had been online for the equal amount of time and had amassed 4k views, so I was concerned that an exclusivity sponsorship would be down the toilet. After talking to a tonne of developers and folks from different portal sites, I decided that the best thing to do would be to release Narcissus for free without sponsorship because I had way too much investment and sentiment for the project.

From releasing it, I felt not only a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders but also the unexpected weight of people patting me on the back. To get featured on Newgrounds and Gamejolt was a genuine surprise that I spent most of the day dancing around the house from. Getting featured on the merits of the game felt a lot more genuine against getting featured knowing that it was in the best interests of the sponsor for their investment to do well.

It may be worth saying at this point that I believe that portals that provide sponsorship are fantastic, but for my first release getting Narcissus out for people to play took priority over exclusivity. I may still pursue option 3 but most likely I’ll be waiting for my next release to look for sponsors - projects with a little less sentimental value.