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[st33d]

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?

I work for Nitrome.

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.

[moi]

Nitrome is not really a standard case.
It's the leader in flash games right now(with adult swim). Its' business is very different from the large majority of flash devs, both in quality and income.

[st33d]

Granted Nitrome is the McDonalds of Flash games (kids love us, but we have many valid critics).

But I've had first hand experience of all the different revenue streams for Flash and the only one relevant to Nitrome's size is advertising.

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

Same for sponsors really, which is why we've worked well with Miniclip.

I'd personally advocate the iOS and Android route for Jason's game, and then branch out experimenting with the trickier task of advertising and sponsorship.

[moi]

Granted Nitrome is the McDonalds of Flash games (kids love us, but we have many valid critics).

I wasn't saying that your work wasn't of good quality, in the contrary. You produce better quality flash games than 99% of what's produced.

[dustin]

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.

[JasonPickering]

well I don't actually have a site. just a twitter account at the moment. Does sending people to a specific site, or uploading to flash portals work better?

[dustin]

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.

[Leroy Binks]

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).

What standalone projector was used/ recommended?

[splok]

Sponsorship is probably the way to go if you just want a one-time payoff for your game and then you move on to something else, but since you want to continually update it, that might not be a wise choice unless you get a really good performance bonus agreement in your sponsorship.

If it's going to be a major, ongoing project, I would consider how you want to distribute it first.  I think it would make sense for a constantly updated game to have a single presence on a site that you control.  You stay in 100% control of the game and your users, it makes updating easy, and you don't have to worry about keeping the filesize tiny for portals.  Of course, this makes it much harder to get users, but then, the users you get will be far more valuable.  You could then use on-page ads instead (or in addition) in-game ads for a much better per-player monetization.  (everyone keeps saying that you need to be successful before ads are worthwhile, but that's pretty much the case for any monetization strategy O.o ) If your game design lends itself to microtransactions, give it a try.  You could make far more money that way than through your ads.  You could also make a lite version that you distribute which points people back to the full game to help pull in users.

If you distribute the full game, then I think you're going to have difficulty keeping it updated without running into issues with all of the portals.  You could still point people back to a page you control of course, but they'll have less incentive to do so unless you add content/features to your version.  Also, adding microtransactions will limit the distribution to some degree since some portals aren't so happy about them.