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[JasonPickering]

So I have been wondering lately, what are some good ways to fund the development of Flash games which you want to continually update. I had some ideas like

1. Ad supported.
2. Donation Supported
3. Micro transaction
4. Supplement with IOs or Android version then update both.
5. export as an Air app and sell the actually game.

Does anyone have any good advice or experience with this or anything I might have forgot.

[tergem]

From what I know on these things

1.) Most ad networks require many, many views/plays before you are sustainable.
2.) Not that good, only about ~1%-0.25% donate anything.
3.) Great, many success stories.
4.) Ditto. However the cost of porting to both might be more time consuming than you would care to get into.
5.) Works fine, but I don't have much information on it.

[JasonPickering]

Right now I am developing it so porting to android would be super easy. I can also easily do microtransactions and an adobe air app.

[moi]

Unless you are a big cat, or have a VERY popular game on a network, freemium (ads) is a joke.
You should try microtransaction or selling direct IMHO.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about ads. I made one game and didn't even make enough to get a check sent out. so I guess that narrows down my options a bit, which is good. so maybe I need to start looking into what I really want to do with this game.

[knight]

If your an American you could always try Kickstarter.

[initials]

I wrote an article about using a game as a "virtual business card" rather than using any of the above methods.

http://initialscommand.com/main/?p=513

The short version is instead of ruining your game with garish advertisements, use it to gain contract employment to subsidize your income.

Take the band The Offspring. They put out an album called Smash on an independent label. They tour. They get their name out there. By making the album they wanted to make and doing what they loved, they have been able to make a living off it.
Whether you like, don't like or have never heard of the Offspring, it's the way I'm looking at my next game.
No ads. No plea for funds or donations. Just a solid game.
Then use that game to say "Hey look what I can do! Wanna pay me to do more?"

Obviously, it's not going to work in every case. Many of us have full time jobs that wouldn't allow for contract work.
But it's a different way to look at things.

[Moczan]

Sponsorship 70$? Ads 5$/month? Those stats are really small, good games earn few or tens of thousands in sponsorship and ads AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU MAKE LIVING FROM WHAT YOU LOVE, NOT SOME CHORE FOR AD AGENCY

[beastly]

1. Ad supported.

An eCPM rate of $0.30 - $0.50 means you'll be earning $300 - $500 dollars per MILLION impressions. It's simply not a realistic way to make money.

 
2. Donation Supported

Another weak option. It won't make you much. Players simply don't donate. Flash games are a simple distractions for most people and as far as these players are concerned, flash game authors are interchangeable and faceless. Unless you've been making games for a while and have a very dedicated fan base, begging simply won't work.

 
3. Micro transactions

SteamBirds and SAS Zombie Assault are successful examples that come to mind. This only works if your game is good enough to make people want to buy from it however. Make sure it has lots of replay value with content that takes many plays (aka. several hours) to unlock. You also have to strike a delicate balance between offering content worth paying for while making non-paying users feel like they are still getting a full game.  If you screw this up audiences will react poorly and your capacity for viral distribution will suffer.


4. Supplement with IOs or Android version then update both.

SteamBirds also did this. Shift and Canabalt are two other examples I can think of. This can be lucrative since it can give you a serious edge in the crowded app markets. Your game has to be really good however. Make sure you encourage fans of your game to sign up for a mailing list or have some way to contact them. You need to be able to let them know when you release your game for iOS or Android otherwise your sales will suffer. Your game also needs to translate well to a mobile platform. You should also include some token new content (at the very least) to justify making players pay for your game.


5. Export as an Air app and sell the actual game.

Swords and Sandals, Captain Forever and VVVVVV are good examples of this working. Similar to selling on iOS or Android: make sure your game is good enough to sell. Have a plan. Utilize a free distributable version as a marketing tool. Make sure it's good enough to be a stand alone game or it won't get spread virally.

[bateleur]

good ways to fund the development of Flash games which you want to continually update

By update do you mean you're going to produce new episodes or just add features? If the former then the usual sponsorship model might work fine since new episodes will attract at least as much traffic as the original if the game's a success. (See, for example, something like the Flagstaff series.)

[bart_the_13th]

for option 1 and 3, I would recommend social feature implemented in your game. You can choose to try facebook, which is already filled with a high budgeted games, or the brand new google+ API.

[Eclipse]

Sponsorship is the best and fastest way to get money out a flash game, you "sell" the game branding it and accepting to distribute online only the sponsor branded version, this is called primary sponsorship, and a good flash game can get few thousands $$$ out of it (Steambirds took around $20-25.000 if I remember well, while Atomic Super Boss got ~5.000).

After that you can sell "secondary sponsorships" aka "locked versions", those are re-branded versions of your game that works only if launched inside certain urls, usually the secondary sponsor site name. This way if someone take the swf and distribute it, the game will not work or will show the primary sponsors branding instead.

Secondary sponsors usually want you to add their scoreboard apis too, they're willing to pay few hundred bucks, but doing a secondary version of the game is one day work at best, so those are easy money too.


The most used place to get a sponsorship is http://www.flashgamelicense.com/
But you can also mail sites directly and ask for it.

Good luck!

[st33d]

1. Ad supported: This works for the company I work for and we have over 10 staff. You have to be big to make it work though.

2. Donation Supported: I'm skeptical about this.

3. Micro transaction: We've tried this ourselves with appalling results. Mochi Coins we found were constantly devalued by Mochi by them handing them out for free to players and denying us legitimate sales. Plus a true micro-transaction-game is a shop, not a game. It skews the entire game design around the micro-transaction shop. Personally I find micro transactions abhorrent, I don't play games with them in and thus it's impossible for me to make one with them in.

4. Supplement with IOs or Android version then update both: IOS Flash on CS5.5 is a reality. On CS5 it was broken. On CS5.5 it actually works. It's not perfect and we're trialling our first Flash-to-IOS project right now.

5. export as an Air app and sell the actually game: AIR must be installed on the client's computer. VVVVVV is not an AIR application and neither are any of the other popular flash games released for download. They are standalone projectors, not AIR. AIR offers no performance advantages and makes it harder for users to play your game (they have to install AIR beforehand).

*. Sponsorship and Licensing: This is the route our company went down before we had enough traffic to float on pure advertising (for scale: One of our distributed games received just under a million hits in one day last weekend). I'd strongly recommend this route to get your name out there.

[JasonPickering]

its an RPG/roguelike that I hope to continue adding in locations/monsters/content to keep people playing it.

I would like to add some social stuff, but not sure what. I currently have Google+ and it would be neat to add stuff in for that, but everyone has a Facebook. I could use Mochi they have a social API that encompasses everything I think.

st33d: what company do you work for? also was VVVVVV put out as just a regular SWF? the only reason I said AIR is because it can be placed on a desktop and then just clicked to launch, but if their is another way to do it without installing the Adobe AIR stuff I am all ears.

I will look into sponsorship. the only thing is how far should I take the game before I put it up for sponsorship?

[dustin]

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.

[JasonPickering]

this might actually help explain what kind of game it is

Rogueline

Premise: you are a hero sent out to defeat a monster. You travel ahead battling monsters and when enough are killed the Boss will attack, How strong will you become before you must face the boss?

Rogueline is a RPG that's based on the genre of card games like Munchkin and Thunderstone.

Give it a Try! (3.34MB)

the game will be expandable by adding new monsters, bosses, heroes, items, and locations.

[dustin]

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.

[JasonPickering]

thanks dustin. that's pretty helpful.

Right now I am only adding what content needs to be in the game. for example I need at least 4 heroes for the hero select screen, so I had to make another hero. My main goal now is to make the game more accessible and easier to understand the UI. Its very limited pixel wise so I am trying to do as much without text as possible. I thought about the text, but then I cant have that if you are using IOS or Android and right now the SWF can be output to web,IOS and Android without changing much.

would you suggest adding new content to a new game? or updating the current one I put out?

[dustin]

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.

[JasonPickering]

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


well I drew all the sprites a long time ago at that size and really liked working with the limited sprite size. so then I built the rest out from there. I can go bigger, but then that makes the sprites smaller on screen. also I am trying to keep it to a 5:3 pixel ratio for mobile. I guess I could enlarge it, but then that means that the characters will be smaller on screen.