next »

[jrjellybeans]

I think that people's impression of the flash market is now a little off.  It's just like the iPhone market in that there are some successes, but a lot more failures.

I suspect that people would be more successful if they did what the Nitrome team has does - produce A LOT of high quality games quickly.

[Laufman]

I think that people's impression of the flash market is now a little off.  It's just like the iPhone market in that there are some successes, but a lot more failures.

I suspect that people would be more successful if they did what the Nitrome team has does - produce A LOT of high quality games quickly.

You're completely right Jellybeans. I'm a victim of that as well. You read articles and do research but a lot of it paints a prettier picture then what it is. I also agree with your point about the Nitrome model. They are one of the companies that inspired us to get into the flash market.

[Melly]

So I'm about the finish Last Call (literally less than 3 hours from this post). In negotiations with a sponsor I was interested in, he agreed to up the price and lower some of his requirements, like exclusivity, if that would seal the deal, and personally I'm pretty happy with what he offered, and told him as much. But he hasn't placed a new bid yet and I'm afraid he won't have time to do so before Last Call ends.

I'm wondering if it would be problematic to accept a bid he placed lower than what we were discussing, while making sure to let him know I'm only accepting it if he maintains to the new terms. Since we were talking through FGL itself I refrained from placing a proxy bid.

EDIT: Nevermind. I've already accepted a winning bid and I'm working with the sponsor. I should have the game public sometime soon.

I was pretty satisfied with what I got, and I was also able to negotiate a better deal with the sponsor I was looking into working with. Another factor that helped decide which sponsor to go with was that Alexa showed one of them had a much higher internet traffic than the other.

I guess a tip I can give is that if a sponsor shows interest for your game but isn't giving you the ammount you think it's worth (after some time without counter-bids), you should give negotiating a better deal with them a shot. I'm pretty sure they're all used to this and you shouldn't be afraid of trying to get some more out of the deal if you don't think you're getting what your game's worth.

[mirosurabu]

Congratulations on your successful sale!

I'm really happy to see MochiMedia funding indie games like yours and JW's. (:

One thing I'd like to ask you though is if you are going to integrate MochiCoins with the game, unless that's confidential of course (though I don't see why it would be).

[Melly]

I'm not entirely sure how much I can say, but once the game's out there you'll be able to see for yourself. Right now I'm handling all the adaptations, and I'm having some technical difficulties I'm working with them on (apparently Flixel is pretty moody when it comes to handling stuff not built specifically for it).

[Radix]

If you have a moderately high market level on FGL right now then you have access to some more in-depth stats. I've rounded out the numbers here but the place this data came from should be public some time in the near future.

So far over 9000 games have been listed, of which slightly under 30% are sold. Average time for a sale is ~34 days. Average sale price is about $1800. Median is $800, mode is $500. Stdev ~$3000. Ads permitted 50% of the time.

In the last six months around 1800 games have been listed. 47% sold taking an average of 38 days. Average sale just under $2000, median $900, mode $500. Stdev ~$3300. Ads allowed 45% of the time.

By genre, last six months:

GENRE	PERCENT SOLD	AVERAGE DOSH/SALE
Action	49%	$2,270
Adventure	59%	$2,320
Arcade	48%	$1,720
Boys' games	36%	$1,220
*Casino	13%	$310
Defence	56%	$2,480
Driving	55%	$3,050
*Fighting	39%	$5,512
*Gadgets	48%	$1,250
Girls' games	34%	$1,000
*Multiplayer	25%	$950
*Physics	80%	$2,620
Platform	74%	$2,400
Puzzle	53%	$1,610
*Rhythm	36%	$820
*RPG	56%	$4,320
Shooter	48%	$2,350
*Simulation	63%	$3,490
Sports	39%	$2,410
Strategy	47%	$2,400
Other	40%	$1,370

Genres marked with an asterisk have fewer than 75 games in this period.

I went and typed this up because I had a suspicion that maybe people were selling masses of "girl games" or something for $300 and driving down the average but that's apparently not the case. It's just low.

[tametick]

Thanks Radix, that's very informative!

[Draknek]

Average sale price is about $1800. Median is $800, mean is $500.

Can you clarify this? What is that initial $1800 figure if it's not the mean average?

[Radix]

Shit, fixed. It's late; I meant mode of course.

[Zaratustra]

still no sponsor for me

[ch00se]

Hey everyone,

I really apologize for not being caught up on this post.  Please always feel free to contact me directly or post on our forums if you have questions (I totally understand why you'd want to talk off-FGL, but for direct questions it is probably easier and quicker to get answers on FGL).

So, one thing I saw mentioned a few times that isn't totally correct is that our fees are mandatory no matter what.  The truth is that they are mandatory if our site brought you any benefit.  Every developer I've ever talked to seems to be OK with that.

I do feel really bad for anyone who doesn't get a deal or a deal they are happy with.  We are constantly working to bring in more sponsors and increase the worth of games in general.  That was a big reason for creating GamerSafe as well.

I want to thank all of you who are posting good experiences too, though.  Often it is the people who have had bad experiences that want to vent (and understandably so) while the people with positive experiences are merely happy and don't feel a need to post about it.

I hope everyone remembers that we are just indie developers ourselves. We have no special power or control over the industry. We have no VC funding, we have no multi-million dollar parent company. Heck, some of us still have 'day' jobs. We try our hardest to push things in a positive direction though.  We love this community and this industry and we also truly believe it is destined to grow by leaps and bounds and we want to help that along as much as we can (and make sure developers are represented fairly during the expansion). So, basically, as much as we wish we were, we are not miracle workers.

As for the data posted above.  We weren't really wanting that out yet. We were hoping our top market level people would vet it a bit.  There may be mistakes and there may be certain bits of info that are not handled. The biggest issue, though, is that there is a huge disclaimer that is missing here.  This does not include some huge amounts of money that come from performance deals and bonuses.  It also does not include what terms are attached to the deal.  I do think it is a good indication of up front payments, but that is it.

Also, if you are interested, we have recently updated our sales statistics chart, which is public to everyone:

http://www.flashgamelicense.com/report_monthly_site_sales.php

The same disclaimers apply, of course

Thanks everyone.

[aeiowu]

ah, i'm sorry Chris. I didn't realize that was guarded. (I tweeted about 'er, which I have since deleted).

[ch00se]

No worries, Greg, I don't think there is anything here that is harmful.  I just wanted to add the disclaimer, mainly

Oh, also, since this is FGL related I wanted to point out we have a really cool package put together for those of you wanting to go to the Flash Gaming Summit or GDC in February.  Basically an entire weekend for $250 or less, and a chance to help build houses for people in need.  You can check it out here:

http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_thread.php?thread_id=22289

[Radix]

As for the data posted above.  We weren't really wanting that out yet.

Sorry dude, if youse guys had said that I wouldn't have posted it. Seemed like a good time to grab the information seeing as how there's an apparent intention of making the source less informative.

[ch00se]

Again, no worries.  We know that no harm was meant

[Uhfgood]

I realize it's almost a month since this thread has been active, but I'm looking into this kind of stuff.  I'm more worried about graphics quality issues.  I've heard a lot of things about games not getting sold because their art wasn't very good.  In fact there was one person I talked to who had put up their game for review, and got a bad graphics score (or rather would get a bad editor's review -- at least I think it was that) because of their game font.  (Each letter was basically composed of straight but non-anti-aliased lines that kept changing to give it a sort of sketchy look)  He got a comment to the effect that they didn't like "MS Paint" type of graphics.  To me the font looked unique and should have been kept in and yet he had to change his font to something more normal or else he would get a low rating.  Some of you may know of my little adventure game engine made to mimic the style of old adventure games of yore (think 1980's sierra online).  I was thinking it might be cool to put this on FGL when my game is actually done, however because of the issues I've heard about graphics, I'm thinking this won't be a good idea.  How retro can your game look before it will get a decent look on FGL?  An effective 160x200 resolution with 16 colors might be fairly unique considering all the graphics power we have nowadays, but I don't think it would fly on something like FGL.  (Maybe it's foolish to even consider monetizing something like this).  My main purpose for creating the adventure game engine is to sort of basically teach myself how to make adventure games "from the ground up" so-to-speak.  Kind of go through similar types of restrictions that they had, and as time goes on, improve the system until it's up to the latest standards (well as far as 2d is concerned that is).  My only second purpose was to monetize them, however mostly as a thought because of how much time I spent on the games.  That is I want to use this as a learning tool for myself, but at the same time I don't want all my work to go to waste.

Anyone's thoughts?

[bento_smile]

With graphics, I would think that the sense of design and polish is more important than the type of graphics used. Good art is important of course. 

[___]

text bomb

A game I had on there, depict1, had low res pixel art NESish graphics, and most of the reviews/comments I got on FGL were pretty unfavorable about it at times, with one person even saying that the game "had no graphics," but it still sold on FGL without a problem.  I wouldn't worry too much about it, I mean there's a difference between having a cohesive low resolution art style and having an ugly art style.

[mirosurabu]

@Uhfgood

You know JW, the guy who made Super Crate Box?

He has a cool, distinctive style made of sloppiness, low-res pixel art and MS Paint and yet has sold all games on FGL.

[Draknek]

I made a super low-res game (150x98 scaled up 3x) which I put on FGL on a whim last week. My full expectation is that the graphics will turn sponsors off, but it's difficult to separate that factor from the really steep difficulty curve.