I'd say I might be average.  That said I do flash games so I've never sold a game to players just to sponsors.  Here's my timeline

In college studying computer science.  I've made games as a hobby for a while.  I made a text adventure game in freshman year of highschool and a bunch of unfinished other games.  Then in college I made a game for a compitetion here called angry balloon 3000 in java + slick.  After that I learned flash and pumped out a bunch of smallish games.

Senior year I got more busy for a bit and did a couple 1 hour games.

I graduated and did nothing for a summer.  Then I did what I've always wanted to do and started making flash games.  I was really slow when I should have been coding much harder but I spent a bunch of time learning cooking so that's not bad .  I really like finishing stuff so all my stuff is pretty small but I got a game out in a couple weeks but it didn't sell.  Then I made a game that I thought was interesting in 3 days or so in a couple hours.  It was a simple avoider where you had to live 60 seconds but it had a bunch of interesting facts about things that happen every 60 seconds.  You can play it here...

http://www.kongregate.com/games/nitsud/every-60-seconds?acomplete=every+60+seconds

It made me a couple hundred in ads (which another game had also done) but more importantly I sold a sitelock for it.  This gave me confidence that my games could be sponsored.  I made 2 more games each in ~ 1 week.  Each of these sold for ~$200.  This was still not enough for me to live off of but I had started to gain experience and confidence.

With that in mind I started work on a slightly longer game.  This one I playtested a lot and found some fun.  After a couple of weeks of work (could have been 2 probably but a lot of other stuff was happening in my life as well and now I could do it in 1 week) I made a game and put it up.  This was my first game to receive multiple bids on and I ended up getting $1500 for it.  Since then it has earned me ~$500 in other revenue also.  WIth this game I had made enough to support me while I worked on it.

Then I made the decision that I could do this.

I made one really bad game that didn't sell at all.

I had a brief break while christmas happened and I moved but then I made three games each in a little over a week.  I put these up but sadly got no bids.  This was super depressing.  I emailed a bunch of sponsors with the three games and eventually sold all three for a total of $3000.  That was again enough for me to break even so I was happy.

Since then I've made 6 more games and am still alive and eating food/living under a roof so yeah.  I'm doing ok.  I don't spend any money really but I also don't work super crazy hours or anything.  I'm never going to make as much at this as I would at a normal job but I don't really care.  I don't need money for much and I really like making games and have a flexible schedule.

Good Luck!

uploading the flash game to portals is going to get you a ton more hits at first and there's no reason not to do it (you will have to if you get it sponsored).  However it's better for you the more people play the game on your site as that traffic is easy to get money from advertising or micro-transactions from.  Also if your going to be updating it continuously people will want a place to go to find out whats coming up, when the new version is out,etc.

I would say nitrome is way way better then McDonalds

VVVVVV is a standalone projector. If you run an swf it gives you the option in the menu bar to create a projector exe that does not require an installation of Flash. This is why AIR is bad.

This is interesting and I didn't know this.

That said, you should always look into advertising, building a relationship with advertisers is what gets you the big bucks later.

Yeah as the scope of your game gets bigger advertising will get more and more important.  I am mainly suggesting sponsorship at first since the game seems pretty normal flash game sized at the moment and it would give you a chunk of cash while letting you get your name/the games name out there.

oh sorry. I meant should I just update the original flash game. or release new stuff as a completely different game on the web.

Oh so like after releasing the first one should you just update it or update it and release it again?  I would have to say release it again for sure.  Just make the updates kinda big and ~once a month or so and it shouldn't be a problem.  After you get big enough that people are coming to your site looking for updates that's when I'd switch to just updating the original game but as long as your counting on the game being played on other portals mainly (as apposed to your site) none of those are really set up to deal with games being updated after release.

and I didn't know 5x3 was a good mobile size.  Seems like the screens are all so different it's hard to make one good general size.

mana + abilities is better then leveling for sure I think.  Making them 1 time use would possibly also be good though but I think you should  keep them in.

Also the battle damage effect is very helpful.

I think it'd be cool to have local based highscores.  This would bring back some arcade feel to me.  Global high scores are to hard to get on and highscores only on my phone are just all mine.  Letting me compete with others in my general area would be cool or even in specific areas like the airport or the train.

1. how does the game feel challenge wise?  Not very hard but still pretty fun.  I would just make it loop after killing a boss and it get's harder each time.  This would also encourage me to play through more often.

2. does any enemy feel to strong? nope

3. were you able to level up? yep and got somewhat close to doing it again another time

4. do the statuses make sense? they make sense but their symbols don't convey what they do.

5. did you beat it first try? yep and second try as well

6. what would keep you coming back? more content, like I said make it loop and get harder.  For content I'd like to see something that effects atk and more items.

7. are there to many enemies or not enough? do you just need more varieties in the statuses?  This seemed good
8. is the slow healing over time (shown by your little heart filling up) needed? I don't think it is.  I don't like it it didn't make sense to me but yeah it'd be good as a special ability.
9. did you notice the player getting critical hits. Not really
10. would you want to be able to pick your hero? yes
11. (assuming there is much more content) would you pay for this on an android phone? possibly 2 dollars? yes for sure

Not sure what you mean by the current one really but I'm going to assume that that's the one in the feedback thread.  If so I would just work on making that one more user friendly and releasing it.  It doesn't seem to be out in the wild anywhere and you'll still be making ui changes at least to it so there should be no problem getting that version sponsored.

I'm not sure exactly why you have restricted yourself to such a small size.  Even phones will have a larger screen then your current build uses.  But yeah the UI needs to be more understandable in addition to possibly having text instructions.  I would add things like showing how much damage you take/give when that happens and showing your healing.  Also I found the slowly gaining health effect unintuitive.  I kept thinking the fullness of the heart was how much life I had left.

I remember this game, it looks cool.

I would make no new content but make the game way more accessible.  I would probably just add a section on the bottom of the screen which explains whatever your mousing over at the moment.  and also make it so that it looped but slightly harder after beating the boss.  With this I would attempt to get a sponsorship somewhere in the $1000 range.

Once it's out this way you'll be able to gather a lot of feedback/information.  Change the game accordingly and add in your new content and release it as a sequel. (or new episode or whatever).  Keep doing this until you get a release that's pretty successful (has millions of plays) then release an iphone/android game along with the next version of the flash game.  It seems like it would work well as a mobile game and should be easy to port since speed isn't really an issue.

Yeah I would say if it's possible dividing it up and selling a sponsorship for each one is going to be easiest.  Ads are ok if you have a ton of viral distribution but that probably wouldn't happen with an rpg as easy as it would for some other genres.  RPGs do sponsor pretty well though and you'd always have the option of trying microtransactions out in a later installment.

i'm just going by my own experience, others' experience may differ.

I've only been doing games for about a year full time but I agree witht he 40%.  I do flash games and this seems true from both a selling standpoint as well as a how many hits it gets standpoint.

Thanks!

That's to bad about the brush size but it's what I expected.

So far I've just left smoothing at the default which is 50.  I'm a bit confused at what you mean by 20-20 as I only see one number.  I'm guessing you just meant 20?

I haven't tried the sketching thing but I will for my next game.  I'll also try turning off pressure sensitivity too.  Thanks for the help, that was exactly what I was looking for.

so I agreed with what Dustin said about chance being super clear, and I remembered an RPG called Mouse Guard, that used dice as a success/failure determiner. 1-3 fail and 4-6 success. so I started looking into different ways to use this in game and came across some ideas of weighted dice. so perhaps a green dice has a 4 in 6 chance of being a success, a yellow is 3 in 6 and a red is 2 in 6.

so an example

player  - 2 green 1 yellow
monster - 1 green 3 yellow

now we can see what the chances the player has and what the monster has. so I think the real strategy comes in before the roll. the player can look over the situation and then use different items to help this roll, maybe downgrade an enemy die, add a dice to themselves.

YeahI think this would be great fun if there were items to reroll, improve rolls etc.  It also sounds like it would make for very quick combat which I like with all the strategy coming in equiping charectors correctly etc.


I strongly disagree that randomness decreases fun and don't believe that choice and chance are enemies.  Here if combat had no die rolls your character would just have a number which would be either higher or lower then the enemies.  This makes it obvious what items you need to use removing choice (if I'm a +2 and the enemy is a +3 then of course I should use my potion of +2 there is no choice there). But if die rolls are involved there is a choice (I'm a +2 compared to the enemies +3 but maybe I'll get a better die roll then the enemy so I have to decide if I should risk it in order to save my potion for a harder enemy or use it now).

The use of dice (as opposed to standard computer random numbers) I think helps because everyone intuitively understands the statistics of dice.  If I say you have to roll a 6 to hit that's much more clear to someone then saying (as in pokemon) ((2A/5+2)*B*C)/D)/50)+2)*X)*Y/10)*Z)/255 is the damage you deal.

I do like some rock, paper, scissors combat styles but those seem to have chance in them also in that you won't know what your opponent will pick.  You can have a good idea of what they'll pick but I don't think I ever feel 100% sure therefore the choice feels like it has some element of chance in it.

I like chance but only if it's super clear.  Like a dice is rolled so I know my odds and can figure out what I want to do. In most games I just find it annoying because I have no idea how the chance is worked in.

So I've been making a lot of flash games recently.  At first I tried working with artists but I realized I like doing the art for games too.  I have a small tablet and have a lot of fun drawing stuff in flash and can see myself getting better which is way fun.  I do have a couple of things I feel like I can't really get down though...

I mostly use the paintbrush tool in flash with pressure sensitivity on with a bamboo tablet.  I like the smoothing it offers and since I'm doing cartoony type stuff anyway it works well.

Is there any way to increase the brush size past the largest size in the paint brush box in flash cs5?  I'm guessing no but it just seems so weird that I can't make it bigger.  It works fine most of the time but when I zoom in a ton even if I'm using the largest brush size when I zoom out the lines I drew super tiny.  Sometimes I want to be able to zoom in to get smoother lines but I can't because if I do my line sizes will all be much smaller because I can't get a bigger brush size.

Kinda in line with this what are peoples advice for getting smooth lines.  Is it just practice + zooming in?  These two things seem to be helping a lot but any other tips would also be great.  Does turning off pressure sensitivity help?

Thanks for the advice!

I sold one game that got a sitelock and not a primary although it maybe could have gotten a primary if I tried harder. 

I've sold a couple of sitelocks with primary licenses.  I find that usually if I get a good rating on kong and newgrounds I'll get contacted by someone and I can sometimes find someone else in addition to that so I probably sell 2 sitelocks for ~10% of the primary price on average.  but it seems to go up more then linearly with the quality of the game.

Should I spam sponsors directly? I have zero contacts in that industry so it would be completely cold-calling.

This worked pretty well for me, I wasn't really spamming them as I was picking sites that usually host my type of game and emailing them why I thought they would like it.  Anyway it increased my highest bid by quite a bit.

Hey I'm about to start a new flash game only I decided to do the art with a tablet.  I've never done one like this before and was wondering how people think it looks... feedback/criticism much appreciated...

From a programming standpoint We've got done...

Jetpack enemy
Helicopter enemy
gunship enemy
minigun enemy

still to do is

hovercraft
blimp
bosses

scrolling bg

We've also got a wave generator done and collision detection and all that jazz.

Powerups are all impelemented
Player missles are implemented

Enemy missles are not yet implemented but just a slight mod of the players missles

PM'ed

Waves of enemies working so now enemies come in nice orderly patterns made by peter instead of just one by one.

Enemies collide with player now.

Copters shoot out in 4 directions now.

Players health goes down when hit by bullet/enemy.

Tonight
maybe cool spiral shooting
maybe some power ups