Pocket Gems to publish third party titles

Mobile game developer Pocket Gems is throwing their hat in the game publishing ring, announcing today that they are publishing three indie-developed games in the coming weeks.

The first three developers that Pocket Gems is partnering with are dreamfab, Twyngo, and we.R.play. Dreamfab’s runner genre title Chasing Yello will be the first game published by Pocket Gems to hit the market, launching next week on Google Play. Twyngo’s Lemmings-like puzzler Amazing Ants for iOS is set to release later this month and we.R.play’s robot action title RoboQuest in early 2013 on the Apple App Store.

Recently appointed Pocket Gems CEO Ben Liu said two concepts that make Pocket Gems different than other publishers is that it’s approaching publishing from a developer perspective and also customizing each partnership with a developer instead of with a one-size-fits-all solution.

“We really view ourselves as a developer first and foremost,” he says. “That will never change for us. Publishing is our way of deepening relationships between companies that we were already giving advice to and working with informally.”

Liu told Inside Mobile Apps that the San Francisco-headquartered development house had been approached by many publishers in their past already, but none were a good fit.

“One thing that we always felt was missing was people approaching [publishing] from a developer point of view,” says Liu. “One reason why we never went with any of the people that approached us was that it wasn’t a good fit for a pure developer.”

Pocket Gems, who’ve developed 19 games to date, will help the indie developers by providing customized advice, reviewing games with their QA team, building a launch plan, promoting the app to find loyal users, and continuously supporting the game after launch with data and analytics.

Twyngo founder Unni Narayanan was on hand at an event yesterday at Pocket Gems’ office. He told us that since Amazing Ants is the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s first game, they needed help with distribution. After exploring a number of different publisher options, Twyngo chose Pocket Gems.Angry Ants screenshot

“What attracted us to Pocket Gems is they have a very developer-centric view,” Narayanan says. “They weren’t just a publishing house collecting assets and pumping them out the door. They’ve developed successful apps. They are quite good at monetization and retention. Those we’re things that we wanted to get right as well as we could on our first release.”

Pocket Gems, which is coming out of its best quarter in terms of revenue and gross profit, received Series A funding in December 2010 from Sequoia Capital.

Applift_Thumbnail Sponsored Post

Read AppLift's 5 Steps to Successfully Market your Free-to-Play Game!

Tackle Free-to-Play's marketing and advertising challenges with AppLift's new eBook! Learn how to make the most out of all the distribution channels out there, both within and outside of the app stores, and acquire paying and loyal users for your game! Read Full Post.

Leave a Reply

6 Responses to “Pocket Gems to publish third party titles”

  1. This week’s headlines from across Inside Network says:

    [...] Pocket Gems to publish third party titles [...]

  2. Mobile app news roundup: ZeptoLab’s new game, new funding for Flit and a an app from Coca-Cola and (RED) says:

    [...] Gems launches first partner title Chasing Yello – Last week Pocket Gems announced that it will begin publishing third party titles. Now the first of these titles, dreamfab’s [...]

  3. Pocket Gems and W3i expand Android monetization partnership - W3i Blog says:

    [...] mobile monetization will probably make the former even more tempting for third-party developers to publish their games with. While the iOS versions of these games are clearly monetizing well, we regularly hear from [...]

  4. Pocket Gems publishing Amazing Ants on iOS says:

    [...] follows last month’s announcement about how Pocket Gems would publish third party developers’ games. Twyngo was one of the [...]

  5. Ruzzle, Amazing Ants, eBay and more on this week’s top free mobile apps says:

    [...] last week, landing at the No. 2 spot on this week’s top free iPad apps chart. Pocket Gems announced back in December 2012 that it was getting into game publishing, a new venture for the company, with [...]

  6. Amazing Ants surpasses 1M installs in one week, ranks in the top 5 on the top free iPad apps chart says:

    [...] game published under mobile game developer Pocket Gems, a new business venture that Pocket Gems announced it was pursuing back in December 2012. Developer dreamfab’s Chasing Yello for Android was the [...]

interested in advertising with inside mobile apps?

Social Media Jobs
of the Day

Web Developer

Mullen
Winston Salem, NC

Director of Social Media

Moosylvania
St. Louis, MO

Featured Company

Join leading companies like this one and recruit from the nation's top media job seekers on the Mediabistro Job Board. Every job post comes with our satisfaction guarantee. Learn More
 

Our Sponsors

Also from Inside Network:   AppData - Facebook & iOS Application Stats   PageData - Engagement Data on Facebook Pages   Facebook Marketing Bible   Inside Network Research
WebMediaBrands
Mediabistro | SemanticWeb | Inside Network
Jobs | Education | Research | Events | News
Advertise | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright 2012 WebMediaBrands Inc. All rights reserved.