Making Money From Your Game

Edit March 23, 2008 It's amazing how much can change in a few short months! ;) I've just made an major update to "FlashGameSponsorship.com":http://www.flashgamesponsorship.com/ and of course "FlashGameLicense.com":http://www.flashgamelicense.com/ is still going strong! Let us know what you think of the new content! ----------- Edit 8-31-2007 I've spent a tremendous amount of time over these past months researching sponsorships and other ways to capitalize on your game. I still have a LOT more work to do but I believe it has reached a point where it will have value to other developers. So I wanted to release it now and start getting additional input from people as I more forward. In addition to my thoughts I also have a writeup from John at CrazyMonkeyGames and Greg from Kongregate. There is also a article from Simon at Ezone.com (a succesful independent game company) that will try to convince you that a sponsorship is not the best approach. Please let me know what you think of the site! "Flash Game Sponsorship":http://www.flashgamesponsorship.com ---------- There has been a bit of discussion in the past about making money from your game. While I agree this is not “Programming” I think this is a forum that is focused purely on developers while the other ones have multiple purposes. Currently Kongregate advertising rates are low but that should improve as the site gets more popular. I know I've made about $.08 so far from my 10 year old Director4 games. :) Recently in the "small games required" thread dXOne posted link to a great article about Desktop Tower Defense. http://gigaom.com/2007/05/27/desktop-tower-defense/ In short the author of that game estimates he will make close to 100k/year at his current pace. Obviously that is NOT a normal occurrence with an average “casual flash game” I also understand that there are not any hard and fixed rules and there is only so much that you would *want* to share even if you did know *everything*. Never the less, I’m eagerly interested in whatever anyone *will* share. :) For example over say a 2-year time frame how much could a game like Papa Louie bring in? You could compare it to say “Castle Wars” (vastly less development/art time) but has multiplayer. And even say “Red” which likely came together very fast if Ivory had the idea will defined in his head. I’ve notice a large number of games have the Armor Games splash screens on them but they seem to be made by an independent developer. Is Armor buying the games from the developer? Giving them money for permission to put it on their site or just to attach the splash screen? I’ve been working on my game (www.lazybox.com) which is still very FAR from being completed. I doubt I will ever make more from the game then I would if I would have spent my time doing “regular” work but it would be awesome to recoup some of it. It is certainly 50x more FUN then my “regular” work. My current plan is to build the game and upload it to Kongregate and my own site. Assuming the game is good and well liked I was thinking that I would be contacted by other sites (Armor Games, MiniClip, etc…) that would be interested in licensing the game. My motivation for creating a game was/is not to make a ton of money… it is more to get back to my roots of what caused me to enter this “programming” profession. It will be great fun to compare “This is what I could do then” to “This is what I can do now!”. (At least I hope that is the end result). :) However the idea of slowly building a mostly-passive income source is very intriguing to me. I’m greatly interested in any advice or knowledge that others are willing share to help me (and others) maximize our opportunity. Thank you very much for your time! Adam Schroeder

Thanks for starting the topic. About sponsors like Armor Games or Crazy Monkey Games, they pay you up to $1000 to put their logo and links in your game. They get to distribute it on any site they want, but they can’t modify or claim authorship of your game. And of course you can’t sell it to anyone else afterward, but you can still make money off ad revenue, either on your own site if you have one, or on places like Kongregate.

If you are hoping to get your game sponsored, I recommend you contact a sponsor before you release the game. Sponsors rarely will buy a game that has already been on the web. Good luck. :)

Thanks Axcho!

Here an article I found. Has the basics down pretty good. How can we expand upon them?

Flash Games – 10 Ways to Make Money From Creating Them

I develope games and have my own website. Sometimes I have asked multiple sponsors if they wanted to sponsor a game that I hadn’t yet completed, and I would usually get offers for that.

Other times I just enter the games into competitions, this is risky in that you might not win, but it still ‘puts a game out there’ to get linked back to my site where I get about $100 a month from ad revenue.

There’s also been times when sponsors have asked me after a game has been released if they could sponsor it.

Other than that, I recently got accepted to use mochiads, haven’t use it yet but I believe you’re allowed outside sponsorship as well as this. My latest game, Angry Faic, won a monthly comp on newgrounds which any game submitted is eligible for.

In the past 2 years I’ve been making games for, I’ve earnt about $2000, $1000 of that being purely from Angry Faic, plus I’m improving heaps now so I expect to earn more with future games.

Anyway I suppose they’re the main ways of making with simple online games, what it comes down to is how addictive the game is as you can see from desktop tower defence.

Very interesting! Thanks so much for sharing Kabomb.

Angry Faic is fun!
:)

Here is an interesting thread I found on flashkit.
Licensing vs. Sponsorhsip

I imagine a good step once you are finished with your game is to invite EVERY portal to make an offer for sponsorship or some form of licensing. I’ve discovered that most of the contracts forbid the disclosure of terms so until you have made a game(s) and are “in the know” it is going to be hard to gauge the value.

Keep in mind that if someone is offering you $X for your game it is likely they will make more then that from your game… otherwise they would not buy it. So then then the questions is can YOU make more from your game (over some length of time) by retaining the ownership.

Step 1:

Submit your game to potential sponsors to get a feel for what it might be worth. There are A LOT of game portals.

Here are a few. If you find others please post them here so we can have one easy list.

Kongregate (thanks Emily!)

GameGecko

Crazy Monkey Games

Flash Portal

ArmorGames

Free Online Games

2D Play

Flash Games 247

FlashGem

Arcade Street

Game Brew

Games 2 Web

XGenStudios

Shockwave.com

Blitz Gamer (thanks Badim)

Step 2:

Try to determine how much you could make if you retained ownership of your game. This part is a lot harder and craving “vague” advice from veterans that would not violate any previous agreements.

A.) Host the game on your site and put up banner ads (Google? or another game specific company?)

B.) Put your game here on Kongregate… maybe win a contest they share the ad revenue with you.

C.) Put your game up on GAMEgum (seems similar to Kongregate with revenue sharing). I haven’t looked any deeper yet. Are there other sites like this?

D.) Get setup with Mochiads I don’t know much about this other then what their website says and bits I’ve read on various sites and blogs. I’ve signed up a few days ago but haven’t heard anything back from them. Of course they may wait until a developer has a finished game to show them before they approve an account.

E.) Contests (Maybe compile a list of sites that routinely offer them?)

F.) Any other ideas?

Step 3

??

Step 4

Sweet delicious profit!

Don’t forget to offer your game to Kongregate to sponsor. Not only do we sponsor, we up ad rev share % for those games, too. And you’re still eligible for contest prizes. If you have a game you’d like considered submit it to feedback@kongregate.com or directly to greg@kongregate.com

Has any of you out there given the idea af a monthly subscription fee? This is the best way to get continual revenue for your games as well as not giving up any rights. I woek for a social networking website that wants you to upload your games and offer them to our users for a monthly subscription that you determine. If you have any questions at all, IM me @ csw1756@hotmail.com.

I am really only interested in flash games and applications, mainly because we are looking at publishing them on other social networks as well.

Good luck out there!

CW

Article on cloning casual games

Notable piece of info… investing 5-6K to clone a popular game can yield 30-40K.

Casual Game Blogs

This is an aggregation of several casual an indie game blogs. Lots of great info here… only a small portion dealing with the financial side of things.

Hopefully some people are finding this helpful… maybe jut a little bit. :)

Here is another interesting source of information (not all directly related to money)

http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG

I have found it very difficult to find information about breaking into the web/casual game space. This thread is really delivering some usful info on monetizing web only games! Here are some links to resources I have found. Additionally, I have read that the casual game industry is currently in a state of flux as publishers and portals are just now becoming more accepting of web only games.

Hope these links help!

Casual Game Association

http://www.casualgamesassociation.org/

CGA Magazine

http://www.casualgamesassociation.org/research_magazine.php

Casual Games SIG

http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG

Creating Casual Games for Profit and Fun

by Allen Partridge

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creating-Casual-Profit-Charles-Development/dp/1584505192/ref=sr_1_1/202-6741065-9903867?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181655252&sr=8-1

Basically I need to make a TD game if I want to earn the big bucks…

Thanks for chiming in. That was a great thread Indi. I haven’t looked through your links yet Merciless.

I did hear back from MochiAds today and I’m anxious to see how how their system works.

Also, here is a great thread on their forum dealing with game portals and different licensing agreements.
http://www.mochiads.com/forum-pub/comments.php?DiscussionID=66&page=1#Item_0

Heh, hallpass just sponsored me for my game coming out this weekend for $1350 :)

Thats awesome crushy!

Congratulations and thanks for sharing!!

Here is another great resource on “Flash Rights” by John Cooney (lots of great games on Kongregate created by him)

http://flashrights.com/

So Adam (or anyone else). About how long did it take for MochiAds to get back to you? Did you have to do anything other than sign up to hear back from them? I signed up about a month ago and still haven’t heard anything.

Me 2.

>About how long did it take for MochiAds to get back to you? Did you have to do anything other than sign up to hear back from them? I signed up about a month ago and still haven’t heard anything.

I signed up at Mochiads and got the reply on the 2nd day (Can access the dashboard and set up the game.)

And you can only get money if your games have generated more than 100USD.

I got my response from MochiAds about a week after I submitted it. I’m not sure what they use as criteria to determine who (and when) they select.

I might be able to offer some advice or answer some questions if you have them. I’m still very new at this but I feel I am learning a lot.

Yrudoy, I would need to read through the terms again but I imagine you would need to be 18 to sign up with them. Perhaps one of your parents could try creating an account for you?

There is a $100 minimum for payment. For my asteroids game I’ve been getting between $.25 and $.35 cents per 1000 impressions. I believe this rate changes a lot both based on your game and the current advertisers. If we assume a $.50 per 1000 that would mean you need 200,000 impressions to collect your $100.

I’ve been doing a lot of research and talking with several sponsors for my Asteroids Revenge V3 – Crash to Survive game. I’ll make a little write-up about my experience with this (without revealing any specific details) in about 2 weeks… if everything goes as planned with the current schedule.

With my current (limited) understanding. I will say that the “type” of game is likely to have a big impact on if you would be better off with MochiAds or finding a sponsor for the game. This is mainly based on the “replay” value and length of time to complete the game. Most games will briefly hold someone’s interests. They may have a blast for 30 minutes… but they beat your game and there is nothing else to offer them so they don’t need to play it anymore. Simply having a high score system is not enough to get most people to replay your game. This type of game is best suited for a sponsorship. Someone plays the game, beats it (or is ready to move on) and then can click on the “Play more games” and check out the sponsor’s portal.

The other type of game is one that the player wants to come back again and again for. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better game… just a different type of game that is more suited to earning the developer ongoing ad revenue. Tower Defense games fall into this category, some puzzle games and games like “Caravaneer” which can require several separate “plays” to finish a single game and offers lots of different paths to play the game (wanting you to start again to try something else).

I will say that Mochi Ads is a lot of fun. Its very cool to refresh the page every few moments while the game is “hot” (prominently featured on a big portal or newgrounds) and see another nickel or dime roll into the bank. However, I don’t think the ad revenue for Asteroids Revenge will ever exceed (or come close) to what I could have received from a sponsorship. [I’ve made a penny while writing this post!]

One thing I will emphatically state is if you do want to get your game sponsored DO NOT release is publicly in any state that is close to what the “final” version will be. Axcho mentioned this above as well.

Asteroids Revenge V3… bears little resemblance to the current V2 version available on the web.

I’ve signed up for mochiads but have not yet produced a game. They responded within a day, for me.
You are allowed outside sponsorship plans with mochiads, I remember reading it on their forums or FAQ.

I’m also considering testing licensing. I know the code that can forbid sites from playing the game on their URL, so I could charge sites, idk, about $100 for permanent usage. It’s just that I don’t know how many sites are willing to license games, and if I do that few sites may want to license the game and I won’t earn much out of it.

Good point Kabomb.

MochiAds has no problem with you having a sponsor for your game. However, I have not run across any portals that will sponsor a game if it contains MochiAds. Kongregate is a notable exception to this in that they DO ALLOW you keep mochi ads. Which can be tremendous benefit letting you get that 1-time payment and lasting revenue from the game.

However, one thing that I did not realize (obvious in hind site) is that many large portals (who are ok listing games sponsored by other people) are not ok listing games with MochiAds. They are unwilling to give up that “control” over what ads are shown on their site.

So you will potentially give up some exposure by placing MochiAds on your game (in addition to limiting your sponsorship opportunities).

Of course MochiAds will also promote your game if you use them… so there are LOTS of different factors to consider.

>So you will potentially give up some exposure by placing MochiAds on your game (in addition to limiting your sponsorship opportunities).

I have a idea :

Use Mochiads for free license.

If a site want to put your game without Mochiads,then ask the site to pay you money first.

After you get the money from the site,give the no-ad & domain-locked version game to it.

Kannushi,

You can totally do that. In fact MochiAds has a built in way to turn off ads for certain domain names. So you could do this without having to even build a separate version for each site (although you still might want to).

The downside is that you now have to spend your time chasing these deals and as an unknown developer with an unknown game you may find it difficult to get the average portal to respond or pay attention to you.

I quickly became bored “releasing” my game to all the different websites. I did about 7 or 8… and I then I quit. I’d much rather be making games (or playing them) then filling out forms on websites and writing emails to the 10’s (or 100’s) of different portals. With a sponsor (a good one at least) they will have all these connections in place and can rapidly get your game out to lots of sites.

Or course the time you want to spend promoting your game is going to be relative to the time (and money) you have put into making it. I probably spent 15-20 hours or so on Asteroids Revenge v2. So I didn’t want to spend 8 hours trying to get deals. For Asteroids Revenge III with the development time likely to exceed 100 hours and my investments in graphics and sound I’m willing to spend a lot MORE time looking for the best opportunities for the game.

The more MochiAds grows the more they will be able to “publish” the game for you with their partners. And when you use MochiAds you are supporting this business model which if it was fully established would probably be more beneficial to the developer in the long run.

BTW… Kannushi, Electric Bar is a lot of fun! :)

So lots and lots of choices and things to consider.

Sorry for putting this back to the top :S

Say I spent months creating a game, customised tile engine, map maker, high-scores, uploads maps, story, training and arcade modes. Its a clone of Lemmings but with a secret (for now :D ) twist. I’m looking for about £600, is that achievable for what i’m offering.
Sponsorship (considering Licensing)