Kongregate's Premium Games Announced page 4 (locked)

This is really exciting! Congratulations to all who were chosen – the games sound like they’ll be really cool. I can see all of them being as or more popular than DTD, so I’m not worried about any people getting “ripped off” by this arrangement. In fact, I am aspiring to make a Premium Game in the future, so I am eager to see this succeed. :)

Looking at the concept art and screen shots so far, I have one suggestion to make about Remnants of Skystone. I really like the idea of having three character types, kind of playing on archetypal elements like rock-paper-scissors, and I’d like to see them more strongly differentiated. I like the idea of having separate, complete cultures for each one, though it’s looking as if they might all coexist in one town with minimal differentiation between them. But I’d suggest that even so, it would be more appealing to give them strongly different looks and feel (in addition to their gameplay differences) maybe along the same lines as the character types in Dofus or World of Warcraft (think about colors, clothing, textures, silhouettes, movements). I would love this game so much more if it succeeded in doing that.

wow……..those look so addictting…especially the dino one…heh I cant wait to make them extinct OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Looks like Kongregate has some great flagship games to break through into the premium games section. Best of luck!

Does this mean other applications are turned down? If possible, I’d like a reply to my submission as soon as possible, as if (when? :P) it’s rejected I need to change my plans and continue working to my original deadline.

Kalinium,

No, we’re still looking to greenlight things. I hope to get caught up on the submission email soon.

Hiya everyone! Glad to see there’s quite a stir about the Premium Games.

As someone who’s done more traditional publishing deals before (in the casual games market), I have to say nothing approaches the generosity and coolness of what Kongregate is offering. Not only are the contract terms totally reasonable, we get unbridled creative freedom! I can’t imagine any publisher funding Lila Dreams, and I can’t imagine a better way to deploy it than as a Flash game. It’s a perfect alignment of fortune for us.

Microtransaction sales is a perfectly viable model. Habbo made something like $60m in 2006 from mostly microtransactions. Maple Story makes way more than that from mostly microtransactions. If you buy music with iTunes, if you buy ringtones, etc. then you’re already using microtransactions.

Anyway, I’m very happy to be a part of this, and I’m looking forward to getting to know the Kongregate community!

Cheers,
Jason

Yeah, iTunes is a great way to look at it. It’s only a matter of time before someone lets you buy individual levels of different games anyway…

Until I saw this I wasn’t planning on paying anything for flash games. These games? These are in a completely different league then what I was envisioning. I could see myself paying money for these games.

Looks cool.

And it’s important to note, for anyone who is feeling a little dicey on the whole new ‘microtransactions’ idea, that we’re committed to making these games free. Creating a great free product that everyone can enjoy comes first. Once everyone is having fun playing, then the people who can afford to spend money on it can do that if they want to, but no one will be expected to — or should ever feel like they have to spend money on these games.

…but we’d certainly appreciate if they did :P

As has already been noted, there are some great free games out there that millions of people play without paying a dime (Puzzle Pirates, Maple Story, Gunbound, Habbo, Runescape… the list goes on). These games still make plenty of money, and still keep their developers in business while being free for the majority of players. It’s a good model, and hopefully it will allow for maximum fun while keeping Kongregate employees fed (Greg’s a big boy, he needs more food than your average community manager).

So, it will be more Stormwinds than Runescape? As in, we pay for extra play if we want to, not we have to pay to get more than 10% of the gaming experience.

And my most anticipated one of these is Argue (About Everything). It will be more than exciting to see how it turns out.

There’s no specifics yet Smig, and I don’t want to say anything that could potentially turn out to be untrue. Obviously with games varying as much as Lila and Argue do… the model is not going to be exactly the same in every single case.

But all I want to say is that there is more value having 100,000 players with just 10% of them paying money for a game that they love, than having 100 players who can afford to play, and forcing all of them to fork over cash. I’m personally committed to making sure that everyone on the site enjoys these games, and no one should feel alienated by the name ‘premium’ or the idea that money will be associated with them in some way. My personal rule of thumb would be that if it isn’t fun for the people who are playing for free, it isn’t fun period.

We’d love to offer 100% of the gameplay experience for free for our game, but it’s tough to decide if that’s a good idea in the end or not. Maybe too many people would just play and not pay anything, which means the game wouldn’t make enough to be a good investment. Offering slightly less than that might entice more people to pay to get all the gameplay experience, but then you risk annoying the players that want all the gameplay for free. So you have to guess what amount of gameplay will make sure everyone has fun, while bringing in enough revenue to make the whole thing worth it for Kongregate. After all, the PDP should do well enough to become an established program. And how do you guess that, you know? Who knows what will happen. It’s a tough thing to decide.

Nice stuff, the games are looking awesome :)!

I hate getting in on the ends of 4 page threads like this, but here goes…

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback, we’re all excited about Dinowaurs and the entire line up. I think “Argue” is a really intriguing concept, and really like what I’ve seen from all the developers so far, it’ll be really exciting to see things unfold

As for the now-smoldering debate with the Canadian programmer, I’m going to side with Josh/torncanvas about the money. Game development is a powerful passion for all of us. To get paid full-time for it is simply icing on the cake, even if it means living with three room-mates and eating ready-made Matar Usal and minute rice for lunch. There’s a lot more to it though: The division of labor in large-scale development and the personal detachment that carries; The lack of personal vision and the freedom to innovate in an entry-level position; Not having a “boss.”

Just curious if these games are being created in AS2.0 or AS 3.0?

Mostly AS3, I think, but some AS2.

^Does that mean AS3 API is going to be released soon?

So I hear.

Didn’t anyone read the Programming pages :P. AS3 API is almost out soon, but there are still a few things left to be done.

wow, this looks really awesome and the games are extremely original. Especially Lilia Dreams. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all turns out.
And 36grand a year is more than me or a lot of people I know make.

I’m ansious to see this premium games here on Kong, but i’m concerned about the contests for the top game of the month. It would be unfair to a game without any investiment compete with this premium 100k dollars games.

But, anyway, I really expect this premium games, and i’m offering to be a beta tester of any of those. :P

but i’m concerned about the contests for the top game of the month. It would be unfair to a game without any investiment compete with this premium 100k dollars games.

I dunno how they are going to handle this really, but imho I think they should definitely have a chance at any reward money for any competitions. Just because you’ve worked a lot harder than usual to make a great game doesn’t mean you should be taken away any prize benefits. Everyone has a shot at developing a premium game, it’s just based on whether or not you’ve acquired the skills or put enough work into your game. Skill and determination both are two things which merit reward.

Mario is right, no one should be taken out of the competition, after all it’s about who has the best game, not who has the most time on their hands.

They’ll be in the contest leaderboard, but if they win, the prize money will go to the runner-up.