Recent posts by Bronsoner on Kongregate

Topic: Collaborations / Let's Make Awesome games together as a team, Earn money, get equity!

Originally posted by damnsmiley:

Ok

So if you are interested or have any questions, feel free to comment below or PM me.

Thanks
Smiley

After nearly 2 months and 2 games nearly complete I can tell you that this market is a bit too infant for a ‘just manager’. While marketing helps it’s not mandatory to succeed and some skill in art or as3 programming is very helpful, as serious people will not work on % basis and much else equity with anyone who they can live without. This can of course be skipped if you are already committed and have enough capital to go to paying people for their work and taking all risk yourself. For a strict managerial role you can expect 5-15% of game revenue if your good at negotiation and finding the right people. Not worth the work needed to start and manage a project like that at all, unless you are thinking very long term and there is no way of learning art or programming AND you are willing to lose money for some time (like a year or two).
So think carefully what you can bring to the table and how much that adds to the final product. I settled for doing art and am glad I took that route. If you got any questions feel free to ask.

Topic: Collaborations / Let's Make Awesome games together as a team, Earn money, get equity!

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by OminousCyborg:

Originally posted by Bronsoner:

Originally posted by Badger_burrow:

Hi, I was just wondering if you may need a QA tester. I’m starting in the industry and would like as much experience as I can get. Thanks. Matt

We’re doing final bugfixes to the stable, playable version. Will let you know once we have it online.

Not sure if you saw my post. Any spots open for me?

Unfortunately not at the moment. Will let you know when a spot becomes available.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by Badger_burrow:

Hi, I was just wondering if you may need a QA tester. I’m starting in the industry and would like as much experience as I can get. Thanks. Matt

We’re doing final bugfixes to the stable, playable version. Will let you know once we have it online.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by HensHouse:

I am a relatively decent AS3 programmer. You can check out some of my games in my profile. I’ll be honest, I’m not very creative, suck at graphics, am decent at design, and am not ambitious (when working by myself). However, when with a team, I always complete my task my a deadline and can usually take on most programming challenges. I also have a list of game concepts, mostly mechanics, that I can roll out if need be.

Also, I’m a bit unclear as to what/when will be happening. You (Bronsoner) will be in charge of funding/all things marketing? Together a team of ??? people will be working on a few small games or one big small game? Also is there a timeline for when this will all start/conclude?

Sent you a PM.

Topic: Technical Support / Mail disappearing

Originally posted by adv0catus:

When a message is deleted, it’s deleted for both people. So, whoever you had messaged, they simply deleted the conversation. :)

Thank you for clarifying it to me.

Topic: Technical Support / Mail disappearing

I noticed my an etire conversation through Kongregate mail disappear – that is confusing at least. That concerns mails sent and mails received from one particular user.
Did I get blocked? Is it normal? Or is it a bug?

Topic: Game Programming / My first game

Originally posted by DannyDaNinja:

What the hell did I just play ಠ_ಠ

It’s a new genere: shut up game.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by Amibtious:

I have a bookmark somewhere….hang on.

http://kaitol.com/income/

From someone who apparently didn’t ever use microtransactions, bet they’re kicking themselves.

Another fantastic source! Thank you!

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by Amibtious:

I think you may find a lot of interest here
http://developers.kongregate.com/news

This for example
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84728657/GDC-2012-Core-Games-Real-Numbers-Final

That is a huge help – I watched some Kongregate presentation already, but since they all look the same and they use same data often it’s hard to track them. This one however seems most valuable so far.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by UnknownGuardian:

That is pretty hard to find data and pretty unreliable. Ad revenue varies per game based on success and the time of season. Sponsorship varies on how much a sponsor thinks your game is worth. Same with microtransactions. It all depends on how you market your game to your players and how well you take advantage of different opportunities.

That is why I’m looking for examples not recipies (also context is very important here).

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by UnknownGuardian:

Specific examples of what exactly?

There are plenty of people looking for contract work. (Collabs thread of FGL, freelancer, odesk, etc)
Plenty of portals do sponsorship (FGL is a great place to hook up with one, or email).
Not a whole lot of contests out there that are regular besides kongregate’s.
There are a few services that do in-game advertisements, such as MochiAds, CPMStar, Epic Game Ads
There are a few services that do microtransactions like GamerSafe, not mochi anymore.
You probably hook up with a sponsor or publisher to run a paid application.

Examples of money providers and games that successfully used certain method. Figures they made could be very valuable as well.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by Amibtious:

Liscensing.

Your game is exclusive to your own site, and mebe your sponsors site…..other portals want it, they pay for the right to have it for a year…or whatever terms.

Biggest potential earners are 5/6, but…2 can be 5 figure US$ for sequel to big game. Mebe 6 figures, haven’t heard of it…but figures are headed that way.

EDIT:to be clear, games in general AREN’T exclusive….ya want them spread around….but that’s the basis of licensing…probably for developers who are trying to drive traffic to their own site, so may have expanded version exclusive to themselves and self sponsor.

Could you provide examples as well? That would be much more valuable than the description of method alone.

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Originally posted by UnknownGuardian:

Nice thread title typo you got there. ;)

Hot to make money by making games?

I’ll fix that when I finish this post.

---

You’ve pretty much covered them all, though your wording limits them to specifics. More broad terminology would be something like:

1. Contract work
2. Sponsorship
3. Contests
4. Ad revenue
5. Microtransactions
6. Paid applications (no single word term that I can think of covers this)

In-directly, you might find

• Traffic trading
• Publisher shares of ad revenue, mtx, etc from in-game
• Publisher, ad revenue from web page
• Fan gear (real world items, sold in an online store relating to the game)

Relevant Game Design Thread I made

Didn’t see your thread before posting, but still I think we can make something useful out of this. How about we go from general (like what you just done), to a specific examples (the more different examples the better)?

Topic: Game Programming / How to make money by making games?

Intention of this thread is to talk about and share ideas and proven ways to make money by making games. I will keep updating this post to get all the data and ideas in one place.

Please share your information about ways and potential earnings. Also feel free to correct me if I’m wrong somewhere.

Ways to make money by making games:
1. Being hired by someone who needs a game or its part
2. Acquiring a sponsorship for your finished game (Kongregate, Armor Games, fgl.com)
3. Winning a game of the week or game of the month contest (Kongregate)
4. Getting a share of the ad revenue site makes from people playing your game (Kongregate)
5. Selling virtual goods (pretty much any mmo, Baloons TD5)
6. Selling your game to players for a set amount of money (pay for access)

Anything to add?

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by ShadowDragonTam:

Storytelling maniac and character designer are my main attributes, I put it on my CV. I’m a graduate Computer Games Designer and I am always looking to work on projects. I know your pain with not knowing much of programming and such, I am the exact same.

I want to work on projects of anything really and I know no one around me physically that is looking to do what your suggesting here. So if you want an eager and hardworking minion then I am your man, hopefully.

Sent you a PM.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by MyGreenFrog:

You said you are looking for a “Storytelling maniac”. That’s me, in a nutshell.
I’m a freelance journalist and writer from Germany. So, English is not my mother tongue, but I study German and English at university. I wrote my bachelor’s thesis about “Narrative Structures in Computer Games” last year. At the moment, I don’t have any practical experience in writing for games. But I write short stories and scripts, I published a short story anthology last year, and I write for a few small magazines and newspapers.
What I can contribute to your project: Helping in developing, designing and writing the story; writing dialogues and other on-screen texts; cross-reading and editing; and maybe even translating the whole thing into German.
I can send you some of my stuff, though most of it is in German, so I will have to translate it first. (But I’m working on getting to write for one or two American/English online magazines.)

Sent you a PM.

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

Originally posted by Sanchex:

At the end, what is essential, is to be good at either programming or graphic design (or both). The rest, like audio, game design, writing, marketing, business is all very secondary.

Please do not shy from describing more studios/groups – it is very valuable and the more the better.

Nevertheless I disagree with what you said about audio, game design, writing, marketing and business being ‘very secondary’. While it might be true in case you just want to make games you enjoy making and playing it’s not a good way to make games players will truly enjoy and you making profit.

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

Originally posted by Sanchex:

As you can see, it can be very simple, as long as you can show assets. Because if you want to find a programmer to collaborate with, the first thing you would normally ask the programmer is, do you have any example of your work? So I can see that you are good. But that is also the first thing he will want to know about you. ;)

Thank you! Thats exacly what I needed! Got any more examples of good game artist portfolios?

Topic: Game Programming / Cost of making a game

Originally posted by UnknownGuardian:

For portfolios, I’d just check a lot of the major game studios. Portfolios should just be a list of games for most people. Artists and musicians of course will have specific portfolios, maybe deviantart or soundcloud accounts.

http://www.juicybeast.com/
http://gameinabottle.com/
http://protectorworld.com/
http://sky9games.com/
http://www.iriysoft.ru/
http://togeproductions.com/ (offline for the past few days)
http://northwaygames.com/
http://www.highupstudio.com/ (Sanchex <3)
http://profusiongames.com/blog/ (mine)

Do you happen to know how those studios/companies/groups look like from the inside?

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by Ramos_emanuel:

first off appology for my bad english, its not my strong point.

heeeey, I played your game! I remember Awaken on AOG. Good job man!

Don’t worry about english – the fact that others can understand you is more important than grammar. It would help to put a text into a word or other text editor that will point out errors to you, you will improve quickly.

There are 5 of us now, with me taking the role of art designer and project manager. Will update the first post, so people dont have to read everything to know. Lets hook up on Skype.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by evan999333:

No emotional pain does count. It is really really hard to finish a game.

If you want to see proof watch this http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/

Well worth 10$ its a great movie.

Ok, so I watched the movie, and while being entertaining it provides little real value as to the process of creating a game. Unless I missed some value in which case it would be great if you could explain it to me.

I don’t agree with Edeslash – these guys are smart and passionate. A bit wierd too, but nobody is perfect.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by evan999333:

In your thread about this that you put in the programming section you said “I can do graphics just fine till some point and get us some nice sounds and music.”

I understand. Youre a person, who needs proof in order to act.

I really do not strive to be one man army game developer – sure it does make communications obsolete, reduces risk of misunderstanding to zero, but at the same time dooms you – just like you said – it may be hard to finish the project (For some basics in topic here is an article that you might find usefull http://regulargeek.com/2010/06/24/are-you-a-starter-a-finisher-or-an-implementer/ ) so having people of different types in a team – great. I’m a natural starter – I love to start things, gather people and resources and create. I learned the hard way the consequences of not finishing a project and while not being easy for me, I’ll force myself the last 10% if needed.

That being said – we are already working on a game. It took roughly 10h to organize people needed, now were working on the project. Will have someting to show for soon enough.

Thank you for the movie link, will look into it.

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by Something13:

Seems fair enough. :)So (to summarize what you said in my own words and/or offer a slight change) Edeslash and I are both considered composers for this group, but depending on the style of music needed for the game, either I would do it, Edeslash would do it, or we’d split the work. Is that a good summary?

Sounds good to me. Ideally you should contact and support one another. We’re not making any money now (and even if … it wont be big for some time), so it doesnt really matter if were just loose band of developers working on different projects. Right now – the more the merrier, if someone can contribute content of value ofcourse :D

Topic: Collaborations / Jojn a team, make a game, earn money, get equity

Originally posted by Something13:

I know you already sent Edeslash a PM, but I’m also a composer and I’d like to work with you. Here’s my website, and here’s a link to a game that is on kongregate that I did the music for: Turn off the light At this point in my career I do a little bit of every style of “classical” music. Some instrumental, some vocal, and some electronic (though Edeslash’s electronic stuff sounds a lot better than mine does). I’d also like to add that I am very reliable and have had about 6 developers tell me that they no longer have the energy to work on the project. I tell you this to let you know that I am very committed to projects and that I have a lot more experience in game design than my site makes it appear. (My sincere apologies about that. I’m in the process of upgrading to a new site so the old one is a little outdated). I also can normally write music very quickly. I’ll almost always get you a new track every week, and most of the time it only takes a day or two.

Good luck with your project! Sounds like you have the drive and the brains to be a successful game designer, now you just need to get a team assembled!

Something I least expected: abundance of great people to work with. Your Evil HQ – brilliant. Genre is much, much different than what Edeslash is doing so maybe you guys could split some work between two of you to take care of parts you love the most? It would be a shame not to work with both of you. Even if it turns out the amount of work is too little to split – Something13 you will definitely make top place on my reserve list.