Tiga turns to games publishing

British games industry association is taking the plunge into games publishing in a landmark partnership with UK stronghold Jagex.

Tiga – which boasts over 160 members including Activision, Sony, Frontier and Kuju – is calling on small indie developers to submit their browser-based game prototypes to the association.

In turn, Tiga will evaluate and – if successful – Jagex will publish and promote the game.

Jagex announced it was opening an entire publishing division in January this year.

"This whole new endeavor, if you will, is really something we’re looking to gear up," Mark Gerhard told Develop at the time. "We’re looking to find more talented studios that are looking to get into the online space, and bring them to market."

It seems the studio is now in the second phase of that plan in its partnership with Tiga, named ‘Project Ignite’.

Profits from successful Project Ignite games will be shared between the developer and Jagex – though the numbers have not been revealed. Game IP will be retained by creators.

The service is exclusive to Tiga members, though that is set to expand as the association opens its doors to individual developers.

“Many developers have fantastic ideas and games but they struggle with distribution and marketing. At Jagex we already have an established user base of over 120 million people actively playing our games and giving us feedback,” said Gerhard.

“Building this community has taken a great deal of time and energy and it very difficult for small developers to build a network like this overnight. Our vision is that Jagex Game Studios will be a hub for original, creative browser based games from developers all over Europe and beyond. We are interested in hearing from any TIGA developers who have a great game they want to get in front of millions of potential customers.”

Tiga CEO Richard Wilson added: “We are delighted to be working with Jagex on Project Ignite on behalf of our members. TIGA’s role in Project Ignite is to assess games submissions based on criteria including creativity, originality, playability and market demand.

“For us the aim of the project is to provide another benefit to our members and to promote innovation, nurture fresh talent and allow developers to publish for their games while still retaining their origin IP and independence.”