Game Attorney: Nintendo’s Indie Liaison Explains How to Get Games Approved

One of our favorite game development websites, Gamasutra, has a great interview with Dan Adleman, Nintendo’s liaison with independent developers. Adleman is best known for bringing World of Goo and the Bit.Trip series to the Nintendo Wii’s WiiWare. Adleman wants to convey the following to independent game developers:

1. No PR campaign is needed to publish a game on the eShop service;
2. To publish on the eShop service, you must be a licensed Nintendo developer;
3. Though Nintendo used to require independent developers to have an office outside of the home, Nintendo has now eliminated that requirement;
4. In order to publish an independent game within a specific territory, the developer does not need an address within that territory;
5. Developers set their own prices and have full authority to release updates to their games;
6. Nintendo is trying to make game development easier by partnering with Unity and rolling out new HTML5 and Javascript tools;
7. Developers receive revenue even from the sale of one unit. Thresholds have been eliminated;
8. Nintendo is increasing its responsiveness to indie developers; and
9. In determining which games are prominently featured on the eShop store, Nintendo looks at reviews, user ratings, and Miiverse activity.

Based on Nintendo’s outreach, it appears that the company understands the importance of engaging the indie community. It will be interesting to see how the eShop store grows with this new strategy.