Some Questions

What’s the average amount that game developers take in from Kongregate? Also the game plays numbers I see on the games, is that calculated monthly, or all-time? Also, badges are chosen by Greg right?

Developer Revenue is a statistic that Kongregate chooses not to reveal due to privacy issues. Game Play Numbers are all time. Greg is responsible for the badges.

^^

Is there any approximate range of income.. Maybe some devs wanna share what they make.. Im just wondering if its worth posting a game here.

I can’t tell you what the average is, but I can tell you that whatever it is, it isn’t very much. There’ve been threads about this before, I like this one

Bear in mind though, that Kong. management have recently stated that they hope to increase advertising revenues in the near future.

So after looking at the topic, you are pretty much giving Kongregate your games, so they can make money, and insult you with their few pennies every monthÉ

You aren’t ‘giving’ kongregate your games. You are letting them host it in exchange for ad revenue, contest winnings, and the click-throughs to your own website. I don’t see the down side to it.

Stats on that sort of thing would only lead to disappointment. Here’s why:

The people that earn the most (the top earners) are very few (isn’t it always the case) and therefore the average is going to be raised by these few people, meaning that although it is the average, actually the majority of us will earn less.

The max share you can get of the game revenue is 50%. So you can make just as much (or just as little) as Kong. If you want more money you could host it yourself, or try and get sponsorship. Your optimum strategy depends on how many people want to play your game, and how many times.

Well, when you say just as much as Kong, that is not quite right is it? Kong are getting at least 50% of the revenue generated by 2,288 games, where as your average dev is getting up to 50% of the revenue from 3-5 games (and that would be a lot of games – it was a guesstimate). So Kong are in effect earning probably 1000x what any single developer is earning.

You won’t make a living on Kongregate alone, but in almost all instances (barring exclusive and possibly non-exclusive licensing), the exposure and prize and ad money Kongregate offer serve as a no-strings-attached bonus to whatever else you earn through other means (sponsorship, MochiAds, ads on your own site).

Well, seeing as I rarely click-through to someone’s site, I don’t see much upside to Kongregate. Basically, they are getting you’re games for free and making thousands a month, if not more, and you get nothing. They bill themselves as the “Youtube of Games” and the saviour’s of casual games but really, they are just as bad as the rest of them.

You still own the games, you can take them off if you want to, the games are yours to keep. Kong just hosts them for you, and if if you get many hits you get ad revenue. If your the highest rated for a week of its release or a month of its release, you get money as a prize for winning a contest of theres. You can put your game on other sites, you can have it sponsored by other sites. But, if you want, you can have Kongregate sponsor it ,and later, you will be able to make premium games if there good enough. That way you can get micro-transaction money. I don’t see the downside to Kong. In fact Kong’s opportunities are greater than most other sites.

Oh and…

...and making thousands a month

The staff was just now able to get a regular salaries.

Do you know much about kong, they have over 5 mil in funding! All this bs about staff not getting regular paychecks. First of all why do you need so many people, they site is slow like anything, and they have added features in who knows how long. It’s just jim and emily’s way to get rich off of your content!

It’s just jim and emily’s way to get rich off of your content!

Gasp, you mean people actually want to make money by hosting websites?

• Exposure as a developer
• Thousands of hits, which will convert into click-throughs (whether you click yourself or not, it does happen, or this would be a dead industry)
• A share of Kong’s own advertising revenue
• Possible contest winnings

• Nothing

Most people see that as an opportunity, but if all you see is exploitation, I think you’re maybe too paranoid for this industry.

Well, if you put it like that, yes, they are getting my game for free – assuming it doesn’t win any awards. I, on the other hand, am getting my game hosted and served for free. Most games sites pay nothing royalty-wise. They sponsor games to drive traffic, and/or host games sponsored by others to give people something else to play.

If you don’t like Kongregates arrangement, there is noone forcing you to take it. By all means, design your own website and pay for the bandwidth to host your games.

Honestly, I suspect that Kong is losing money at the moment, when salaries and awards are factored in. Most of those 2288 (or ~9, now) games are doing pretty much nothing¹. The ones on the main page seem to do ok while they’re there, and there are probably a few which are consistent favourites for a minority of people, while not having a high rating by the majority. Kong. has received a lot of venture capital, OK. But my suspicion is that it isn’t making it back yet. This is is to be expected at the start of any business.

[1] Of course there are a load of games with ratings less than 2 which are not counted. I don’t think these affect the hit-count very much.

I’m not saying they are turning a profit, I know they aren’t, but still they hardly pay anything, and you don’t get click-through traffic whatsoever!

to tell you the truth wan2play…goto newgrounds…do you get anything? You only get somthing if you happen to win a contest.

PS: usually if theres a contest on NG. They ussualy only accept movies because they have a side by side cotest with amor games.

Either way Kongregate has better oppetunities than other sites. Now then wan2play. please list all that you see is wrong with kongregate. I can settle each paranoid thought of yours.

Wan2Play, do you know anything about the Flash game “industry”? Or even the video game industry as a whole? Have you done any research at all before you just started bemoaning the problems of the industry? Your complaints are really infuriating, largely because you just have no idea what you are talking about.

And i get the feeling that you’re going to come back at me with some sort of “I’m a professional programmer! I know things!” type of comment, and all I can say is that if you have done any research into flash games at all you would realize that kongregate is a good deal.

I would go into all the intricate details of how kong plans on making money, and how their deal is fair for dev’s, but I really don’t know how much detail to go into because you seem to have no idea how any of this stuff works.

To put as simply as possible, the best almost any flash developer will ever get for his/her game is about $1000. And that’s for a sponsorship from armor games, monkey games, etc… That’s not enough for most people to live on, at least in the western world. The problem stems from the fact that we are relying on ad revenue for payment, because 99.9% of flash games are free to play. And unless your website gets millions of hits per day, ad revenue is total crap, ever since the internet bubble burst, no one gets any money for ads. I know one person who can get by on ads, and he has a blog that he works on about 80 hours a week and is one of the hardest working guys I know, and I know plenty of tech people. And that’s the real crux of the problem, there’s very little money to be had on the net when you aren’t selling a product.

Kong has gotten 5 million in venture capital, and they are spending a very generous amount of that to get games like Dinowaurs and the other premium games on their site. That’s what they’re using for hosting costs, which i’m sure are huge, for bandwidth, which is probably huger, and their staff of around 13. Supporting an operation like this is a huge undertaking, and calling them greedy is ridiculous. They are doing for the love of the job, the love of the industry and the games. You do them a disservice by slandering them like this, and I really wish you would do some research before talking. Thanks.

Well said, Fucrate.

To put as simply as possible, the best almost any flash developer will ever get for his/her game is about $1000.

Not quite true. I know as one example, AdamSchroeder made upward of $4,000 off of Asteroids Revenge III, so it’s possible to get that much or more from a Flash game.

Sounds like Wan2Play is just trying to find another excuse to hate on Kongregate, when it’s really one of the few sites out there that even tries to share their ad revenue with developers. I’ll be happy to share what I’ve made so far in ad revenue… it’s about $10-15 dollars so far. Hey not too bad, considering it’s extra on top of sponsorhips and contest winnings.

Kong is a great site, run by great people, and the more people support it, the more money we all can make.

What I see in Kongregate is not the ad revenue.

One of the major problems most flash games suffer from is age. New games get tons of hits, but once people start finding new games in this very densely populated industry, older games tend to get shoved to the back of the bookmark list.

Some notable differences are DTD, which has regular updates , and a multiplayer variant as well.

Why do I see Kongregate having the 1-up? Mostly because the badges are there, and there will probably always be badge collectors who will want to try the games. So make a good game, have a badge associated with it, and there will always be someone playing your game.

Furthermore, you not clicking through to their site does not mean someone else won’t click through to their site.

You wouldn’t have something to do with www DOT wan2play DOT ca now would you? Sounds like you’re trying to stir up dissent in the peasantry ^^ and then push members to your site. Underhanded, btw.

edit: Oooh I know, Kongregate can sponsor my first game for $1001 just to prove you wrong XD – nudges kong staff -

Kongregate shares the revenue. That means when they make money, you make money. When you dont, they dont. Where you are coming up with they make thousands a month and you make nothing/pennies beats me.

i only know two sites that give you any money for uploading your game on to it this one and gamegum (not good at all only 1 game has over 100 000 hits and it was uploaded a year ago). i’ve made 76 cents but look at my games they suck i got 76 cents but if i didn’t know about kong i wouldn’t have that money, now i’m a bad example because again my games suck but take DTD1.5 for instance i bet thats made lots of money and all that money he wouldn’t have gotten if he didn’t put it on here, and now… what did he lose absolutly nothing.

To put as simply as possible, the best almost any flash developer will ever get for his/her game is about $1000.

I beg to differ.

Making money from flash games seems a lot like making money from blogging.

There are people (such as Steve Pavlina of StevePavlina.com) who make well over six figures per year with blogging. There are others (such as the hoard of random bloggers on the net) that bring in maybe a few dollars from blogging (or maybe less!).

I think that if you want to make money from flash games, like blogging, you have to be providing something of value. You can’t just make another game that is like the thousands of others that are out there. Frankly, nobody cares, and you won’t make squat because of it.

This isn’t a new trend, either. There are TONS of examples of this everywhere. Examples of people trying to make money doing something but failing because they aren’t really doing something that is suited to their strengths or they simply are trying to effectively give the ocean more water (ie. give people something they are already swimming in). The ocean doesn’t need more water – it has enough!

To make money you need to make the God of War 2 of flash games. Games like that will draw an income if you manage them intelligently (ie. effective marketing, monetising, etc).

Unfortunately out of all the flash games I’ve seen so far, none of them are really very good. They aren’t bad, but none of them feel like they’ve had a decent amount of work put in. And by a decent amount, I mean perhaps months spent on working on the design of the game to make sure it’s damn good.

I have a theory that too many flash devs focus on process (ie. making the game in flash, etc) instead of design. Design is effectively what makes a game. You can get everything else wrong, but if the design is solid, you’ll still probably do ok (of course, it still helps to get other aspects right).

- Bruce