Game development studio Quark Games and game marketing firm Tilting Point are teaming up to publish multiple smartphone and tablet games together.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Quark Games is best known for its Valor and Champs: Battlegrounds games that are part of a portfolio of iOS and Android games that have been downloaded more than 50 million times. It will continue to make mobile games in close partnership with Tilting Point. The deal is an example of the new ways that marketers and developers can team up in lieu of striking traditional developer-publisher relationships in a mobile market where anyone can publish titles on app stores.
And New York-based Tilting Point will provide funding, operational support, and market for Quark’s games. Quark is now the fifth developer to partner with Tilting Point, whose executive chairman is former EA Partners executive Tom Frisina.
“Quark is one of the few elite, independent developers in the world today with demonstrated experience and success on mobile, which makes them an idea partner for us,” Frisina said in a statement. “Our role is to provide our partners with the resources, support, and marketing muscle they need to succeed, while they focus on bringing their creative vision to life. This gives them the tools to compete with the biggest players in mobile games.”
The first partnership game is in production. They will target hardcore gamers on mobile devices with a focus on challenging, strategic, and social gameplay experiences.
“We believe in making mobile games that give players the ability to affect outcomes through skill and effort,” said Eric Peng, founder and CEO of Quark Games. “Choices and consequences are what lead to high-quality gameplay experiences and emotional impact to the player.”
Quark Games will retain control of its intellectual property. That’s a contrast to typical developer-publisher relationships in games. Quark was founded in 2008, and it has 22 employees. Tilting Point has been around since 2011, and it has 15 employees.
Tilting Point has no internal development studios, and it says it has no inherent conflicts of interest. The company funds big-budget games with a lot of potential, and it provides services such as public relations, product management, marketing, user acquisition, back-end technology, analytics, and production support.
Dan Sherman and Kevin Segalla founded Tilting Point and brought in Frisina as executive chairman. Sherman and Frisina both worked at EA Partners, which brought high-profile developers to Electronic Arts and published their titles in deals that allowed the developers to keep their IP. Other Tilting Point developer partners include Uber Entertainment, creator of the upcoming Toy Rush.