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[xiotex]

Thanks for the offer but the game is too far widespread now.

[bateleur]

Just as a kind of epilogue to my own thread: the bidding on my game did eventually kick off properly. My analysis of the reason for the slow start (might be wrong) is that smaller sites appear to conclude it's not worth their while bidding on a game which they know they can't win. All three of my early bidders later dropped out less than half way to the bid which looks like it's going to win. As such, in the early stages you're primarily waiting for the right sponsors to even see your game.

[davidp]

and how long did you have to wait to get the first bid?

[weasello]

I consider 1 month to be an appropriate time to wait for a good bid. Consider that many portals have monthly budgets and weekly routines; not to mention limited time. Perhaps that "one special" portal you are thinking of skipped their rounds this week because they bought a particularly expensive game last week?

Some FGL options don't even become available until your game has been bidding for 14 days, so the "officially suggested timeframe" is 2 weeks, probably.

e: to answer the question more directly, I've gotten my first bids within 2-3 days. They are usually LOL-small.

[bateleur]

and how long did you have to wait to get the first bid?

First bid was after about three days, but that was below 20% of (what looks like being) the winning bid.

[xiotex]

I ironically got a bid on a game that's been up there for a while but it was $200 for basically the whole game with no option of any further revenue for me. As you can imagine I said no (well, I actually said up the money considerably and I'll consider it).

[aeiowu]

Awhile ago i posted the bidding timeline for Fig. 8. http://mile222.com/2009/08/breaking-down-the-fig-8-bidding-timeline/

you'll notice i did a bunch of work to spread the word about the game. It's not enough to simply put your game on FGL and expect it to get attention. Sure it happens, but you need to do _some_ work to put it in front of sponsors.

[davidp]

thanks bateleur and bateleur.
interesting read, aeiowu  

how many plays did fig.8 get?

*Bonus included $1000 for 2.5 million plays after 5 months, $2000 for 4 million plays, $3000 for 5m, $4000 for 6m and $5000 for 7m.

on the side note: i have 222 for nickname on some other forum :D

[aeiowu]

As of today, Fig. 8 has ~1.7 million total plays across ~850 hosts. We knew that kind of bonus wasn't going to do us any good, which is why we didn't go with that bid.

RE: 222.

[xiotex]

The irony just gets better, I received a new bid on a game, the first since the disaster mentioned above and then what happens? FGL removed it because the sponsor had apparently exceeded their bidding ability.

Got to laugh.

[moi]

FGL is good if you are already famous or have sold games to the sponsors already.

[bateleur]

Actually, having wrapped my head around how stuff works there I have to say FGL is being pretty good for me right now. It's my first game and the bidding has ended up higher than the flat fee I would have been asking for if I had approached sponsors directly.

[MrScruffs]

Its such a mixed bag.
I've had some amazing experiences with FGL. One of my games started up a bidding war and ended up going for over 10k all up, which which was way better than I expected it to be. I had another that went for a single bid of about 3k.
It can be bad though, one of my friends put up a game which sold after a month to EA's Pogo, but he never got paid.
Looking back I think its pretty important to make sure the game has marketing value. Even if its a fantastic game sponsors won't pick it up if they think its going to just be swept under the rug within a couple of thousand views.
Its not the only thing you can do, but things including social things like leader boards, level sharing and engaging graphics helps it out if you can fit it into your game. Its too easy for people to pass off flash games without actually experiencing them.

Also, primary licenses are amazing, you can almost always end up making more money if you sell it through a primary as opposed to exclusive. Do recommend. 

[ch00se]

If someone doesn't pay you, definitely let us know!

And if you're looking to add community features I'd (biasedly) suggest checking out GamerSafe (GamerSafe.com)

[MrScruffs]

Yeah, it was EA Pogo that didn't pay him for the game Gate Crasher. There was a bunch of trouble with how many levels the payment had to be approved on and such and it just didn't end up going through. It's a bit late now, but if you want to follow it up you can send me an email.

I haven't tried out GamerSafe, I'll look into it! I just did a bunch of implementation on site specific API's like Newground's and Kongregate. It would be awesome having something global though. Sounds cool!

[aeiowu]

Yeah, it was EA Pogo that didn't pay him for the game Gate Crasher. There was a bunch of trouble with how many levels the payment had to be approved on and such and it just didn't end up going through. It's a bit late now, but if you want to follow it up you can send me an email.

I haven't tried out GamerSafe, I'll look into it! I just did a bunch of implementation on site specific API's like Newground's and Kongregate. It would be awesome having something global though. Sounds cool!

how long has it been since you were supposed to be paid? I know some large businesses have a net-30 or net-45 type thing (due to payroll), so it could be more than a couple months...

[MrScruffs]

Yeah, it was EA Pogo that didn't pay him for the game Gate Crasher. There was a bunch of trouble with how many levels the payment had to be approved on and such and it just didn't end up going through. It's a bit late now, but if you want to follow it up you can send me an email.

I haven't tried out GamerSafe, I'll look into it! I just did a bunch of implementation on site specific API's like Newground's and Kongregate. It would be awesome having something global though. Sounds cool!

how long has it been since you were supposed to be paid? I know some large businesses have a net-30 or net-45 type thing (due to payroll), so it could be more than a couple months...

Almost a year! We have pretty much given up on it. They sent through the forms and everything, just the payment never came through.
Aside from that, I've actually written up an article which describes some of my experience with FGL if anyone is still interested:
http://bitbattalion.com/2010/04/mr-runner-postmortem/

[weasello]

That's really too bad, MrScruffs. Report any and all activity like that, sponsors that behave that way get permabanned real quick (or the situation gets resolved).

[xiotex]

That's really too bad, MrScruffs. Report any and all activity like that, sponsors that behave that way get permabanned real quick (or the situation gets resolved).

Ha, that would be classic if EA got banned.

[migrafael]

Great thread, I've been wondering about working with FlashGameLicense for a while now.