Well, apologies if it came off as smug.  A lot of devs here know about (hate) virtual goods, but not a lot of people know how it actually works, how it can actually be good for players, or just how much it can actually help an indie business get off the ground.  I haven't seen a single thread on the topic here in ages, which is pretty silly considering how helpful its been in propelling a lot of indie developers into game development businesses.

Regardless of whether you do virtual goods or not, Kongregate is a very good platform.  They have decent advertising revenue and you don't have to worry about authentication or hosting or anything otherwise tricky.

For some of us the games come first, and in those cases "good business sense" is whatever is applicable to the game we intend to make, soulless microtransaction shit aside.

There's basically nobody talking about virtual goods on tig, so I figured it would might be useful for someone.  It's almost certainly the most reliable way to have a sustainable indie game business at the moment, and this IS the business section of an indie game forum.  I understand that many people here are hobbyists, and that's fine - they don't have to listen to this.

In addition: I don't really get all the virtual goods hate.  You are basically letting people pay whatever they want to pay, except they are getting an in-game bonus for it.  How is that soulless?  It's like a version of 'pay-what-you-want' except basically everybody wins.  It's almost like some developers think they need to be starving to be 'truly indie'.

Kongregate is awesome.

I guess I don't understand - what do you mean virtual good distribution?  Do you mean platforms for games that support virtual goods?  Payment providers?  What kinds of features work best to monetize?

Yeah, virtual goods games on both Kongregate and Facebook.  The most recent one we've done is a CCG called Tyrant.  Happy to answer questions about REAL monetization with flash

Again, why bother when you can easily make a couple hundred bucks a day with virtual goods?  Focus on what actually makes good business sense.

Even 'good' advertising will be like 5-10% of what virtual goods brings

Go with Flash + virtual goods   Advertising revenue is terrible.

We were able to get Tyrant to be the #1 MMO on Kongregate.  Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you for the feedback.  The intro bugs have probably been added since the first release, and definitely is confusing for a new user - we'll try to fix that ASAP.

The game starts off easy (keep in mind this is for the Facebook audience which is very light on the strategy at the moment) but definitely gets harder.  Side missions come up later that are not required and are relatively difficult.  A full list of the cards can be seen on the Profile page, to give an idea of the scope of the skills.

Did you feel at all incentivized to share the game with a friend?  What multiplayer features would make you want to play a friend in the game?

Yeah, it seems like this would be a fun meetup.  Someone with organizational skills should organize it!

Are you guys all programmers?  What languages do you use?

  Online CCG 

http://apps.facebook.com/tyrantgame/?source=tig

So...bourbon races at O'Hare?

I'm still kicking around if we wanna gather something sweet.  What do you guys do?

What's the business model?

Why go console if it has good online play?  Console has the highest startup costs of any platform - the web has the lowest.  Host your own site or put it on Facebook.  If virtual goods works as a model, do it.

Hell yes it's a good idea.  Throw your webgame up, give users incentives to invite other people (send email => get 100 game buxx or a free item, etc), get on Facebook, wear a chicken suit and hand out fliers.  Just make a sweet webgame (animations NOT required) and get it out there.  You will surprise yourself.

The only thing bad about it is calling it long-term.  You can make a profitable web-game business from scratch within a month.  Profitable meaning you make $11 in a single day, but it grows from there

People here seem to ignore genuine business questions and instead get caught up in ridiculous debates  

Yes, I would go with Flash.  Make a totally new Flash game from scratch every 2-4 weeks.  Your first several games will suck a lot, but you'll learn the ropes.  Then you'll restart and figure out a better way to architect your game each time.  (The worst thing is to get too attached to your first pile of crap and keep trying to refactor it.  No - just start a new project.  Real designers have ADHD anyway, and like 20 awesome game ideas.)

C/C++ games take too long to make.  Flash games can make a shocking amount of money (no, think about 100x more than you're thinking now) and take a lot less time.


Edit: Yeah, scrap the Tetris ripoff.  Don't clone a 26 year old game  

Hint: Clone a 27 year old game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.

Flash developers are in extremely, extremely high demand right now.  Higher demand than C/C++ 'traditional game' developers.  You should definitely start with Flash.

Do you have any hard data that backs up this idea?  I know Introversion was boosted a lot because of.. interesting.. PR tactics, but I haven't really heard much else.  I'd be interested.