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[Casual42]

The title says it all. With the end of kong, is there still a platform where an indie browser game dev can make some bucks and get some feedback?
I know 'flash is dead', but browser games != flash games. HTML5 has taken over, but web platforms don't seem to be any better for it. Is there even a single good place to put your game?

[droqen]

None I'm aware of. Short games don't really seem to have a home anymore.

I know this isn't really what you're asking about, but a few people and I are releasing some short games together on Steam as an experiment to see if we can kinda work in that space (10mg) and there are other bundle-like things on Steam (like Dread X) that seem to be doing well...

but it's been a time since I heard of any kind of profitable browser platform, or really anyone using any browser platform at all. (maybe i'm just old though.)

I hadn't heard about Kongregate. That's pretty sad. flash != browser games, but I don't think anyone or anything has really gathered back around the idea of building up browser games. Not sure if that's because of flash or something else.


You should still be able to get feedback lots of places though. That's an entirely separate concern from making some bucks. You won't make much $ or get a lot of organic traffic on itch.io, but it's a great place to host web games and aggregate feedback.

[Casual42]

Thanks. I really don't get why browser games are not popular anymore. It's so convenient to play!
What I see nowadays is games that in the past would have been available for free on kongregate, now being sold 20$ on Steam (like Ring of Pain that I bought recently). I'm conflicted. Video games are generally too cheap and players have unrealistic expectations of playing a game that required 2 man*years to make for free. On the other hand I don't think that's indicative of prices trending upwards, only that a few lucky games get away with it.

[droqen]

Your conflict is interesting. Why did you pay $20 for it if it's the same quality as what you'd expect to get for free? I guess in particular you describe this as "getting away with it," but you don't seem bitter or anything about paying that much for that game. Was it worth it, or was it just getting away with it? Or could it be both?

[Casual42]

The thing is I don't expect to find this quality for free on PC anymore. I think most of the gamers are on mobile now, where they expect and get great games for free. But I'm not interested in playing on a minuscule screen with two fingers as a controller, so I have to pay more to get decent games on a decent screen.
I feel like this particular game was not worth 20$, but I knew what I was getting, and game devs are usually underpaid, so whatever.