Tilting Point’s mobile game publishing strategy is paying off. Thanks to viral hits like Nukebox Studios’s Food Truck Chef, its Q4 revenue has increased fourfold year-over-year. It’s also shuffling around its leadership — COO Samir El Agili will become Tilting Point’s president. He’s taking over for cofounder Dan Sherman, who will stay on as a board member.
In the last few months, the mobile publisher added Edgeworks Entertainment’s space simulator TerraGenesis to its portfolio. The terraforming game is highly rated by players and currently ranks No. 82 in the strategy category on the Apple App Store, according to market analyst App Annie. Tilting Point publishes both Food Truck Chef and TerraGenesis under the umbrella of its Game Alliance user acquisition fund, which seeks to help indie developers grab players’ attention in the crowded mobile marketplace. To that end, it’s committed $18 million to Nukebox to help grow its user base, which exploded to over 3 million in just the first 10 days.
Tilting Point has been leveraging the strategy in other partnerships as well. It teamed up with social game giant Disruptor Beam to fund user acquisition for the mobile strategy title Star Trek: Timelines. Since establishing Game Alliance in late 2016, Tilting Point has been going strong on the user acquisition front. And in El Agili’s previous role as chief product officer, he focused on that aspect of the business along with others, such as business development and marketing.
“Tilting Point has found a winning formula with our unique combination of specialized UA funding and value-added publishing services,” said Sherman in a statement. “Having worked closely with Samir for over two years, I know he is the right person to drive forward our mission of reinventing publishing for the benefit of the world’s most talented game developers.”
User acquisition has been a core part of Tilting Point’s services, even before Game Alliance. in 2016, it worked with indie developer Third Time to increase the daily active users by 1,920 percent for its niche sports game Photo Finish Horse Racing. And in 2015, it helped fund and market the multiplayer racing game ReRunners in a partnership with Klang Games.
