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[slakinov]

So I made a Flash game in my spare time over the last 11 months (

), had lots of great comments from players and fellow developers, and I've taken criticism and gone through several rounds of improvements and polish.

The game has been up on FlashGameLicense with an inital rating of 7.5 for a couple of months, but I've only had a few low bids so far. The most irksome thing about this experience is that you can see how long the sponsors and other developers spend viewing the game.

Developers tend to play the game for about 15 minutes to an hour, and a couple of them keep coming back and playing it for more than 2 hours a time!  Whereas the big sponsors play it for no more than 2 minutes, which is barely enough to get beyond the ufkcing title screen! I told this to a successful Flash game developer friend of mine who said:

A long time ago we learned that if you don't give the player a boner in the first 30 seconds they are probably going to quit. Sad but true. Typical flash gamer.

Based on my experience with my other flash games so far this sounds about right, but there are exceptions, big, massively successful exceptions. Samorost, Sonny, Gemcraft and many other games with views in the multi-millions have extremely long playtimes and deeply engage the player.

So what do I do? There must be a better way to be repaid for my hard work without resorting to making ultra-casual games.

(Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic ultra-casual Flash games out there, it's just not a genre of game I'm interested in making).

My fellow developer friend suggested that I release a limited demo version of the game into the wild with mindjolt / mochi ads, and then make the full version available for around $2, bundled with the soundtrack. Could this become a preferred route for Flash game devs to go?

Even better, could there be a gap in the market for a platform that enables Flash game developers to easily use this model?

After all, the iPhone App Store has proved that people are actually willing to pay small amounts of money for good games rather than be raped through the eyeballs by a ton of ads.

Anyway. Thoughts?

BTW you can play the game here with a developer account if you're interested.

[synapse]

You just have to think of it from the user's perspective.  The market for reflex/arcade type Flash games has become really saturated.  Deep, strategic flash games that are persistent and multiplayer are few and far between.  You are a LOT more likely to be able to draw users into this experience.  Unless you have a reasonably large art budget, you will find it very hard to create a compelling game that stands out to the player.  We have a top-performing MMO on Kongregate that has reached almost 2.5m plays in under two months, and our daily users is only growing.

A lot of developers here tend to be a little stubborn about their game design, which is of course fine if your goal is just to make the game you want to play.  If your goal is to make a game that reaches a lot of players, you have to take them into consideration as well.

[slakinov]

Well I guess that's the ultimate dream isn't it - to make money from making the games you want to play yourself.  I like to believe people make their best stuff when their heart is truly in it*.  Next time maybe I'll compromise a bit more and see what happens.

I'm just frustrated because I know this game will be at least reasonably popular once it's released, but without sponsorship even if I'm lucky enough to get millions of views I'll only earn pocket change in ad revenue.

* = I'm not suggesting that all popular games are without heart, but a lot of them clearly are these days.

[Christian223]

Well, what I have learned is that if you want to sell your game to a sponsor, then you have to know what the sponsor is looking for. Sponsors do not think like gamers or developers, they have their own specific opinions and tastes, so before making a game, make sure you know exactly what the sponsors like, then make a game that aims at those tastes.

Even if a lot of gamers and devs think your game is good and fun, sponsors might think differently, and they won't buy your game because of that.

I'm in the same situation as you, I just made the game I wanted to make, and I only got 9 sponsor views in 1 month, but with very good opinions from fellow gamers and devs, and just recently got 1 bid of 70$ which I won't accept for 1 month of work.

This is the game I made:

[moi]

So what do I do? There must be a better way to be repaid for my hard work without resorting to making ultra-casual games.

Right now you should try porting to android and playbook via air, first thing.
It should be a pretty fast job.

[Triplefox]

Sponsors seem to be particularly allergic of games that look like classic game clones, which yours obviously does, especially if you only play for a few minutes. They put a lot of stock in things that you throw together at the end of development, like the game's icon and one-liner marketing hook, because those things drive initial traffic. If you have some nice art and a distinctive character design you will probably get a lot farther with them.

But I think you'll do better trying to promote the game mainly as an indie game instead of a Flash game. You won't ever make enough off of ads, but the game could be a promotional tool, it could be extended to monetize in additional ways, or you could do a smartphone version. Farbs has made a living with a similar-looking-and-playing series of games, which exist outside of the main Flash market and monetize directly.

[andy wolff]

This is absolutely wonderful. Best game I've played in a while
It gets pretty hard, too, which is good.

I don't have any advice for you, since I'm having similar problems.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

I've had a look at the video, and I'm impressed with what I see. It looks like there's a lot of fresh and original ideas in there, and it looks like it's been put together with real care and attention.

My personal feeling is that FlashGameLicense is the wrong approach for this game. There's a lot of fish out there for sponsors to choose from, and there's little guarantee that the big sponsors will have time to spend getting into yours. The 30-second-boner rule is very true... but only for the sponsorship route!

My personal view is to put out a free demo, but put it out as a complete game. A cut down version of what you have, as long as it's concise and awesome, and call it "Space Rubbish" (i.e. not a "demo"). Don't use ads, as this will sour the experience for some players - this version is not your primary revenue source anyway, and ads rarely bring in enough revenue to be worth the effort.

Put the free version up in as many places as you can, and get it to link back to your website, so people can see more of your stuff. Spread the word by marketing your game as you would any other game - tell blogs and review sites about it, try to build up a community of fans, and just generally spread the word. Build up a buzz for this awesome free game!

Once you've got a large number of players who respect the quality of your work, you can announce "Space Rubbish Deluxe" or "Super Space Rubbish", or whatever you want to call it - a fully-featured version of the game for desktops. This could either be what you have right now, or an expanded version. As before, spread the word, market it in your own way, and sell it for a fixed price. Perhaps $5 minimum. To me, two dollars sounds way too low, and you want people to value your product. No need to sell yourself short

Concise version

This game looks fantastic, but I think sponsorship is completely the wrong approach for it! You already have enough under your belt to do a free browser version and a fixed-price desktop version, and this sounds way more viable as a strategy.

I'm sure there's plenty of other approaches, but this sounds the best one to me so far. Sorry about the great length of this post, but I hope it helps

[slakinov]

Nonono, don't apologise for the long post, it's great stuff! I'm definitely leaning towards the free demo and paid download route now. Thanks for the replies y'all.

I've put the game on 'last call' on FGL just to see what happens. If there are still no serious bids I'll give plan B a shot.  A developer friend has potentially found a great platform for selling games and their soundtracks bundled together... Feeling a bit more positive about all this again now.

[Trent]

A developer friend has potentially found a great platform for selling games and their soundtracks bundled together... Feeling a bit more positive about all this again now.

Keep us updated. As someone who enjoys more hardcore style games, I'll probably need a way to sell my Flash projects without FGL.

[Leroy Binks]

Whereas the big sponsors play it for no more than 2 minutes, which is barely enough to get beyond the ufkcing title screen! 

I would quit too if after 2 minutes I am not playing the game.

[slakinov]

Well I did say "barely" beyond the title screen. It takes about 2 seconds to start the game after it's finished loading (3mb). 

[Arts]

Have you thought about micropayments? Let people buy better spaceships or some unique levels

Arts

[slakinov]

Have decided to sell the game as a downloadable app bundled with the soundtrack, to be released in tandem with a promotional 'arcade mode' version for flash portals.

[I_smell]

I don't know what to say man, it looks like Asteroids!
It's gonna be on a site with a quadrillion other free games next to it, the sponsor wants it to grab their logo and take it all over the internet-- and your thumbnail's gonna look like Asteroids!
You need character, and somethin that stands out and makes everyone else look lazy. Look at Road of the Dead, look at Canabalt and Achievement Unlocked n how identifiable and singular the biggest games are.

Have decided to sell the game as a downloadable app bundled with the soundtrack, to be released in tandem with a promotional 'arcade mode' version for flash portals.

Great! I think that's a good idea. That's way smarter than me, I've bin brute-forcing Flash games through the market fr ages, hahah!

[tametick]

Good luck slakinov!

Keep us posted.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

to me, good games (games you spend years on rather than weeks) are what you sell yourself, not what you sell the rights to to sponsors. you can sell flash games yourself (vvvvvv, samorost, auditorium, etc.). i would never sell the rights to a good game to a sponsor, even if it's a flash game, because i know i could make far more money selling it to people directly, or even just putting it up on a site and having my own ads on it.

to me it's kind of incredibly crazy that someone would want to sell the rights to a game they spent nearly a year making for a few hundred dollars on a site like flashgamelicense

[mirosurabu]

Generally, sponsors don't buy IP rights. They buy distribution rights. This means that you can still sell your game directly to customers via any platform you choose.

Now, if you spend years on a game it's probably better to purchase customers rather than sponsors, but flash sponsorship plan doesn't need to be completely excluded from the overall business plan.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yes, but it's usually exclusive distribution rights, which are pretty major. you also usually have to alter your game to put someone's logo / link to their site in it. i also haven't really heard of a game that was sponsored *and* sold to customers, can you think of any examples? usually they only sponsor free games.

[I_smell]

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'good games are what you sell yourself', but I've sold plenty of my best games to sponsors. I spend a couple months on most of em. I know that I'm still learning all this and the game's I'll make tomorrow will make today's games look stupid. Like by the time I'm 25 I'll probably laugh at all the shit I'm doin right now.
But I still give it my all, and I still think they're my best games. I'm just not that scared to hand em over.

yes, but it's usually exclusive distribution rights, which are pretty major. you also usually have to alter your game to put someone's logo / link to their site in it. i also haven't really heard of a game that was sponsored *and* sold to customers, can you think of any examples? usually they only sponsor free games.

What I'm doing right now is taking a Flash game I got sponsored from ArcadeBomb.com, and making a big huge expanded version of it n sellin that directly to people. They own the rights to the web game, but not this version.

The common-sense reason why people don't get games sponsored AND sell em is because sponsored Flash games are free. EDIT-- Oh you already said that.