Making Money From Your Game page 3

@Adam

I think so too. After all, I’m getting better at flash (or so I like to think), earning more money then I could have hoped for a year ago, and plus, it IS fun (most of it anyway – who likes debugging?).

i likes debugging!

I just wanted to make a note. I started up with mochiads, and I’m not amazingly happy with it. The best you’re going to get for an average game (mine was “Blue”) is a few dollars a day. Now, if you did a LOT of games and each one make a dollar a day, it might work, but how long does a single game last on the market, you know?

Basically, you have to get an exorbitant amount of hits to make job-worthy money.

hey – look at DTD

@ DXrules
You serious?!!

>but how long does a single game last on the market, you know?

For a normal quality game it could only last about 1~2 months.

This is my example :

I released Electric Bar on February 4th.

Then it got spread on various sites in the middle of February.

And now (since April?)……only few (or even none) people play it everyday.

Does anyone know any sites where you can dounload public domain music – can’t use NG portal with mochiads. :(

I purchased the music for AR3 from http://www.shockwave-sound.com/ (good prices). I also paid Case (author of Red & Orange) to do a few custom sound effects which turned out great.

You can get a nice music track for $30 that is Royalty free… and relatively unique (compared to the most common Newgrounds clips that appear over and over).

Somehow, I thik I’ll be happier with something free.

So, again; do you know any sites with public domain music?

I don’t. I’m sure if you googled you might find something.

Keep in mind that if you find the “right” music for your game instead of the “free” music… you may get considerably more in your sponsorship $$$ or advertising revenue then paid to acquire the music.

True.

But don’t forget to consider that the games I make are relatively small. Look at my profile. The time it takes to beat any of these games ranges from two to twenty minutes. Obviousely, the amount I recieve for then is also small (350$ was my record). So it really isn’t worth making custom music just for my games.

Plus, I like classics (to an extent).

yrydoy, I don’t know of any sites with public domain music, but you can probably find things if you Google around. Pretty much all music before 1900 is public domain, so you have a ton of orchestrated music to work with. Some later music too, but it gets a bit hazy after 1900 or so.

I am not sorry to bring the thread back up to the top. :)

Soon I will have a great resource available to help people capitalize on their games.

For now here is another good article future growth of gaming and $$:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2007/id20070813_756874.htm

Another one – http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/08/16/mtv-investing-over-500-million-in-video-games.htm

holy crap thats alot of money

Yeah, I just wanted to add another site to the sponsorship list.

www.albinoblacksheep.com

I know the person who runs the site – he’s a nice guy, and unlike most portals, he’ll answer if you send him an email.

Double post sorry.

Gamasutra Q&A: Kongregate’s Greer On Funding The Flash Renaissance

Jim about what Kong is gonna do with $5M and Chris Pasley. plus some interesting stats about Kong’s growth

ps: sorry if everybody was there

Here is another nice article:

Flash is Back

Hi guys – just picked up on this thread. I’ve been making browser games since 1996 when I started up Ezone.com with my brother Jamie. In 1998 we both quit our ‘real’ jobs and have been full-time making web games since. We always do non-exclusive license deals and host the games on our own site — the ‘Papa Louie’ guys have the right idea.

In my opinion sponsorships are the worst deal going. Sponsorships are basically a backdoor way to take advantage of young developers and get a cheap exclusive license. Don’t fall for it. I can tell you now those sites make 10-100 times what they are paying you. They make it sound like they are helping you out, but they are really ripping you off. If they were really on your side they would give you a share of the ongoing ad revenue.

The major problem is that you are limiting your earning potential. Once you have done a sponsorship deal, if a major game site contacts you to license your game, you can’t, because those sites won’t allow a sponsor logo in your game.

For example, we released a game last year called Sling and a site offered to sponsor it for $750. We passed on their offer and instead have licensed non-exclusively to a few of the major game sites (miniclip and shockwave) and run ads on our own site. So far we have made more than $20,000, and the game continues to bring in revenue.

Never do a deal that limits your future earning from a game. Make sure you always retain the full license for your games.

At the end of the day if you’ve made a good game, just put some ads around it, launch it on your site, get it Dugg or StumbledUpon and then make sure you have a good deal on bandwidth so you can keep your server running! The licensing deals will then come to you.

BTW – Adam – Your Asteroids Revenge III game is fantastic and very marketable to sites like miniclip and shockwave, I just hope you haven’t cut off your foot by going with a sponsorship deal (I only know of one sponsored game – Fancy Pants Adventure – being licensed to shockwave)

Thanks for sharing you thoughts ezone. I just filled out the contact form on your website to see if I might be able to pick your brain further. :)

I’m not convinced that sponsorships are always a bad deal. Not all developers are capable of marketing their game or building a site around it. There are lots of games that get sponsors that I don’t think would do well on their own.

That said,I firmly believe that to reach the highest level of success you will either need to do it on your own or strike a custom deal with a sponsor. A properly positioned sponsor is always going to be able to make more from your game then you could alone… the issue is will the “share” you get be more then you could have made on your own.

As for Asteroids Revenge III, I’ve very happy with my sponsorship. I got a good deal of money and I’m still free to release sequels to the game how I wish (and I’m looking into a lot of different options).

I contacted MiniClip, ShockWave and many others and they were not interested in the game. A lot of other BIG gaming sites didn’t want the game since, Sci-Fi didn’t fit into their primary demographic (housewives).

Despite the great ratings and review on NewGrounds it never made the front page or earned a spot on a “game category”. Its effectively buried now… receiving only 30-40 hits a day (it was 1000’s/day in the top 5 game of week listing). I mention this because getting a the front page on new grounds is a great way to spread your game around if you are “doing it alone”.

I’ve submitted it to ugoplayer.com and flashportal.com but it hasn’t made it on either site yet.

You can look at the stats for Covert Front (sponsored by ArcadeTown) where is started at 80k plays a day and spiked to nearly 300K within a few days. The marketing muscle of ArcadeTown certainly played a large role in this.

Maybe the answer is to sponsor your first game to give it a lot of exposure and get a “name” for yourself. Then you will have a lot more resources and contacts available to explore better opportunities in the future?

I’ve had 600,000 plays so far. Nearly half of them coming directly from CrazyMonkeyGames.com, the plays have dropped off a lot recently but I’ve heard from AddictingGames.com that they will feature the game later this week. So hopefully that will revive things. :)

I’m surprised that Shockwave and Miniclip passed on ARIII — I would have thought that would be right up their alley: mouse control, multiple levels, easy to get started, but with lots of depth. Maybe the game mechanic was too ‘fresh’ for them.

I can see your point that if you have an average game going with a sponsor would help it get more gameplays. But if you’ve got a good game, like yours, people will find it — especially with sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Kongegrate around. I would always try launching the game on your own site first, then pitch to the miniclips and shockwaves (with the option to give them a time limited exclusive), then look to license to other sites, and as a last resort the dreaded sponsorship.

Apologies for those that already know, but I think we need to look at the difference between a license and a sponsorship.

When you license your game to a site you usually add the site’s logo and maybe a tie-in to their high score system (like shockwave or miniclip). If it is a non-exclusive license you are free to make more custom versions for other sites too, which means you can make more money. In my experience non-exclusive licenses range from $250-$3000 per site and depend a lot on the game.

A more expensive option is an exclusive license, which means that your game can only appear on one site. You can get more money for an exclusive, because sites know you can’t make additional money on the license if you are just offering it to one site. I wouldn’t do an exclusive license for less than $5000 (and again, this depends on the game).

With a sponsorship you add the sponsors logo, but then you are not allowed to make a version of the game available to any other sites without the sponsor’s logo in it. This is effectively an exclusive license, because other sites are not interested in licensing a game with another company’s logo and link locked into it. I’ve never done a sponsorship, but I hear they range from $250-$3000 — about the same as a non-exclusive license. So it really is a cheap, backdoor exclusive license.

Let’s have a closer look at Covert Front. I don’t think ArcadeTown sponsoring it made a huge difference in the number of plays – check out the host report . ArcadeTown only generated around 150,000 plays, where agame.com has generated almost 1 million. My guess is that the 300K peak is when the game was featured on AddictingGames.com (and kudos to you Adam for getting ARIII on addictinggames, as you’ll see a similar spike too). This game would have done well whether it was sponsored or not – Matesz is the master of the escape-the-room genre, and lots of people love these types of games.

So again, my advice is make a great game, and put it on your own site. Get a cheap server with lots of bandwidth from Dreamhost or 1-800-Hosting and sign up with Google AdSense. (I have also heard good reports from guys using Tribal Fusion, but I think you need a certain level of traffic before they sign you on.). Then get Stumbled or Dugg and collect your checks. Licensees will come to you, crank out a few versions for them, then after a year or two, release a the game to all sites with some embedded advertising and lots of links back to your site to promote your next hot game!

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 an 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

Good job,AdamSchroeder. :)

Well,I have a question……

>Next time you think about doing a sponsorship, ask them if they would be interested in a licensed version instead.

Is Kongregate interested in a licensed version Flash game?

Kongregate version of a sponsorship is very close to a non-exclusive license. You can read Greg’s writeup on the site. With Kongregate you get money up front, can still have mochiAds and you can also sell non-branded site-locked versions to other websites.

A pretty sweet deal if you ask me!