Fun little game there Jesse, I think it suffers a bit from lack of graphical feedback but nonetheless it's easy to pickup and play, which is important. Personally, if you spent 15 hours on this I'd say another 15 hours might have the potential to make you 1K on the game, or perhaps even more. Though what you add to the game is really the question. Personally I think the game is missing some secondary goals, such as points, modifiers, bonuses and mini-challenges. Like say... if you gave people more points for finishing in just 1 try. That way you could implement high scores. Your game actually reminds me a lot of Pyro http://www.kongregate.com/games/damijin/pyro which was quite financially successful in the flash market. There are some touches there and a few more levels that ramp up the possibilities a bit more.

All that said though, It's really hard to tell, there are a lot of factors that go into getting a sponsorship and most of the time it's just the climate of the sponsor world. Whether the sponsors are biting, the other games offered at the time and so on. It's very possible that working another 15 hours on your game will show you no added value at all. :-/ I'd say, just wait it out if you get a better offer, you get a better offer but otherwise perhaps $250 is fine.

I am interested in hearing your side of things as far as how you see yourself as a dev, but perhaps you're still feeling that out. Snakey's advice is good though and it makes sense to break down how much your time is worth. It's a really crucial figure to have in your head and can help guide a lot of this business.

[On Flash...]

We're actually planning/hoping to release our next game, Liferaft, as shareware in flash. We're not thrilled with the sponsorship model so far mostly because it breeds such a disconnect with us and the customer/players. We'd rather have a direct relationship with the people that play our game for a number of reasons...

The main idea behind shareware for us is to leverage the power of the portals by offering up a portion of the game for free with a link back to our site to purchase the rest of the game, probably for like $5 or something. There's been some concern as far as the community on these portals rejecting attempts like: "OMG I have to pay?!!?! 0/5 this suxxxz!!!!!" and that may be the vocal minority but I don't think it will effect the success of the game _that_ much. We're not sure though, it's certainly an experiment. Frankly, flash is a great way for people to hear about our game and play it with little to no barrier to entry. If we get 100,000 plays across all portals and our conversion rate is something like 1% who buy the game then we'll make 5K on the game. We might have been able to make more on a sponsorship but 100K plays is hopefully on the low end... Or maybe the conversion rate is too low, or perhaps... too high. :-/

Other games like Fantastic Contraption have had a great deal of success with a modified shareware model in that they offer the level editor as a paid option rather than more content in the game. These sandbox games tend to be more of a catchall in terms of audience so having a paid level editor that can save levels for the hard-core side of it makes sense and ends up being mostly hidden from the majority of casual players who probably never really care anyway.

For Liferaft that won't be the case. You'll get to a certain point in the game and then we'll show a "pay $5 to get the rest of the game" has a much greater chance of frustrating a large portion of our players. But oh well, we're going to try it and we'll be sharing our experience on our blog and so on. It comes down to the fact that we are making the game we want to make and while a sandboxy type game with level editing/sharing may be the better, more tested route, it's not what we want to do.

On Flash...
You see the big problem with Flash in our eyes is that it doesn't make any monetary sense to spend more than a week on a flash game given all of the current models. Sure there are exceptions but this is generally true. Easily my most successful Flash game was made in like 4 days with Jiggmin, Effing Hail. It was fun to work on and I love the game and am proud of it and all, but sometimes we get the itch to sink into a game for awhile and make something special. When you start spending 2-3 months on a Flash game it really ends up losing you money really quickly. Though... working on a game for a couple months is fun and allows you to make a much better, deeper game. It's fun to make quickies but we want to make something bigger and the current Flash models don't support this kind of thing. So... this whole Liferaft experiment is really our last venture out into the world of Flash and what it can do for this size game. If shareware can give us a decent return on our months of investment then it makes sense, but I think for that to happen you've gotta think outside the box with Flash. What the portals and FGL have setup for you is a very narrow-minded business model that works really well for churning out games and even better for the portals themselves. The devs get the short end of the stick.

Of course there's plenty changing. Microtransactions and all that jazz can really benefit your game and are "thinking outside the box" as far as Flash is concerned. Again though, like with Fantastic Contraption, MicroTX games are very specific and either your game can fit really well into that model or you'll need to modify serious portions of your game to accommodate that system.

Looks pretty good to me, do you know the max amount of RAM you can stick in that mobo?

If anything, Landell is obfuscating the real issue by throwing out all these "I worked on 200 games!  I saved indies in the 80's!" claims.  I mean, if Alec and company tried to blackmail another indie company for just having the word "Ammo" or "Infinite" in the name of their game they'd be assholes just the same as Langdell.  A track record of "good" behavior like releasing awesome games and helping fellow indies doesn't excuse being a dick.  So even if he's telling the complete and entire truth about this stuff, it doesn't exonerate him.

I couldn't agree more; it's best to address the issue at hand as concisely as possible.

What about Jeff Lebowski for Tom? you're probably closer with George but this could really round it out.

Tread softly compatriots. The Dude rests 'neath hallowed grounds... 

Coming from a very small town in Iowa, the city and its nightlife is still a very frightening scene for me.

I live in Iowa, whereabouts are you from?

Mocean said it well during his presentation. Maybe it’s already to0 late. Maybe all this work is futile and the end is unavoidably impending. But if the proverbiable feces does in fact hit the proverbial fan, do you want to be standing in dying world, alone in a cubicle inside of a cubicle inside of a bigger cubicle...

...or do you want to be standing in a dying world inside a circle of friends inside a circle of friends inside of a bigger circle of friends, clutching their sweaty hands and dancing with the dignity we were all born with.

Here’s to the royal filly and another splendid year of warm chai and warm hearts.

yo jesse, it's hard to say what a game is worth. Do you have a link to your game up on FGL?

personally, without any knowledge of anything about your game other than the time spent making it, i'd say hold out until it expires at the very least. From the looks of it, you have 55 days...

But yea, give us some more info on your game as well as some more info on you as a dev. Is $250 a lot of money for you? Are you trying/wanting to do this full time?

Looking awesome theo.

as for the font, why not just use a simple 8px pixel font? http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php Those are free, if you're doing the fonts some other way, i'd recommend just going from these designs if you're new to making your own typography. No need to reinvent the wheel here. If you're looking for something special, maybe download the font that fits that specialness and pixel it yourself. Like maybe you want something more handwritten: http://www.dafont.com/angelina.font so you take that, size it down and generalize it into crisp pixels...

hahaha oh man, the remake is amazing! thanks for that.

I like the idea of having an official troll. Maybe someone can give SJ a custom title so that other trolls who come here will realize we have already filled that position and that their services are not required?

haha awesome idea.

cool, good to hear. i'm looking forward to it.

good luck to all involved!   

[the]

thanks for sharing that Ninomojo. Also to David for sharing on Gamasutra, you're both clearly speaking the truth and from the heart. When you guys release the newly named game I'm hoping the community will rally behind whatever you do and try and push the game to the top of the charts by any means we have.

Ya know another thing that sickens me about this whole thing is the deal with Tom Buscaglia and how he has put himself forward as one of the guys that's here to defend us, the little guy, from this kind of bullshit. Then he goes and defends this kind of lechery. Tom is the person to come in on this situation and give mobigames some council and perhaps file a countersuit pro-bono. Sure, this can't happen for 99% of these disputes, but this is a high profile case that could be a real victory for Mobigames and put this kind of thing on centerstage for all the other bottomfeeders to take notice. Maybe it wouldn't change much, but at least we'd have some faith in "the game attorney" and maybe in turn, the IGDA. I dunno... I just want some justice damnit. This aggression will not stand, man.

HE RESPONDED! 

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/StephenJacobs/20090601/1615/Class_Acts_Or_Not_The_IGDA_Langdell_Capps_and_quotPolicingquot_the_Board.php#comments

Been working on the logo/title screen stuff. Here's a couple failures that i quit mid-way through:



Thinking about going with something a lot simpler/straightforward.

Damn, i hope he responds, but i highly doubt he will.

it's popcorn time.

Interesting. I've posted a small piece responding to Buscaglia's comment about how this supposedly has nothing to do with the IGDA. Among the highlights: I share what I found when I started searching trademarks databases for things registered to Edge games. :D

Nice post Craig.

[What has the IGDA really done for game developers?]

I've been a member of the IGDA for a few years/terms in college and beyond with some black spots in between. I've never really seen anything from from it other than a discount on my GDC passes which deduct the cost of the pass. Though, i've never lived in an area with an active chapter, however if that's the big pull I'm not sure that's anything special. Though an undertaking like the IGDA is nothing to scoff at, they are huge and have spent loads on getting their name out there as a part of the industry.

Derek was asking about this in the original Mobigames thread and I'm interested too.

Can someone who is familiar with the IGDA's history (preferably a member or former member) highlight the positive things that the IGDA has done for game developers since it was created?  I mean concrete things, e.g. protecting a developer from legal abuse, raising the quality of life for developers at a particular big company, etc.

I'm not asking rhetorically, I want to know.  It's not obvious from their website or the Wikipedia entry what they have done or what tangible benefits they provide to their members.

So...
What has the IGDA really done for game developers?
What should it do?

I know there's got to be some things out there that have helped, but I'd like to tackle this question as a case study to learn what the real value of an umbrella organization like this is. Does it serve as more of a union organization? A guild? Setting standards? Protecting the little guys?

I'm not outwardly suggesting that we start TIGAssocation or anything because it could easily be redundant, unnecessary/unrealistic, or most likely not in the spirit of what we're about; but perhaps it could work, who knows. Just want to get the discussion going, maybe something positive will come of all this.

[EDGE!]

Yo Derek, hope you didn't buy your PC™ yet. This hot little number will fulfill all your PCing needs.



GET THE EDGE!™

Kotaku.

awesome, and it looks like Owen didn't pull any punches.