real income from Flash games?

[Pyabo]

We had a long discussion the other day about Flash vs. downloadable games. It primarily centered around whether these advertising revenue sites were a "threat" to the downloadable space, and which direction new developers should take.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized something important... I have not seen any sort of revenue report for Flash games geared toward ad revenue generation. I've seen dozens of unit sales reports for downloadable games (which I love, by the way). Where is the other side of the coin?

Can anyone point me to some online resources? Or pony up some data of their own? Brian?

What is the revenue split like on a Flash games aggregator site?

The original poster of this other thread seemed to imply that there were *developers* existing off this revenue stream... Can anyone name some? I have to think that contract Flash development is generating a lot more income for most of these people.

[Dan MacDonald]

We made about 35k from HeliAttack 3, could have made more if we had played our cards a little better. Not amazing money but nothing to sneeze at either. The money was all made in licensing deals, nothing to do with revenue sharing of advertisements on the back end.

[AlexN]

We made about 35k from HeliAttack 3, could have made more if we had played our cards a little better. Not amazing money but nothing to sneeze at either. The money was all made in licensing deals, nothing to do with revenue sharing of advertisements on the back end.

Wow, you're the one who made HeliAttack 3? I love that game.

Since HeliAttact 3 doesn't have a downloadable PC version, and I've only played on miniclip.com, did they pay you that money, and license the game to put on their site?

[arcadetown]

And HA3 was one of the bigger Flash game licensing stories just to frame expectations.

A few sites are known to pay license fees for freebie Flash games such as ArcadeTown, Miniclip, Mousebreaker, etc. There are a very select handful that may do a revenue share such as Shockwave. Problem is there's litterally a zillion Flash game sites most of which won't pay a dime as there's far too many Flash games freely available. The real money seems to be in making advergames for corporate clients with big budgets or making your own games that promote your own site.

[lakibuk]

...or making your own games that promote your own site.

How does this work? Sites like Miniclip sure don't allow a link to one's site in the game?

[zoombapup]

I think he meant create flash games to put up on your own site to drive interest and hope to cross sell from there.

[lakibuk]

Ok. This option doesn't sound like a great way to pull traffic to your site though.
Are there sites you can get your own flash games (with links) featured?
Something like an equivalent to download sites for your game demo.

[KNau]

Most of the smaller sponsorship websites (smaller than Miniclip, anyways) like ArcadeTown, Crazy Monkey Games, Armor Games, etc. will let you keep your link and logo in the game. Same goes for Newgrounds, which sees a tremendous amount of traffic.

[LilGames]

Most of the smaller sponsorship websites ... will let you keep your link and logo in the game. Same goes for Newgrounds, which sees a tremendous amount of traffic.

I can attest that unless your game is crazy-popular, it won't bring in traffic to your linked site.

[KNau]

That's true. Like anything you need to stand out from the pack and "the pack" is friggin' huge! Just the presence of a logo isn't enough for people to want jump to that website.

[Pyabo]

Thanks, Dan. 35K... definitely nothing to sneeze at. A shame that that seems to be the high-end of the market though. I would certainly hope for more from a downloadable game that had similar depth and polish to Heli Attack 3. I guess that answers the question of whether Flash is a "threat" to our market.

[KNau]

Keep it in perspective, downloadable games that make 35k are in the extreme minority as well. Even the "impressive" sales totals posted on Gameproducer.net are much less so when you realize they are aggregated over years, with the average income per game being more like $5,000 - $10,000 annually.

When you figure most devs release 1 to 2 games a year tops, you'd do better working at McDonald's.

[Andy]

When you figure most devs release 1 to 2 games a year tops, you'd do better working at McDonald's.

Kyle do you mean Dan's one?

[arcadetown]

Technically I started ArcadeTown with the Realspace series which drew in modest traffic and license revenue but quickly abandoned that model. Good examples of developers would be MoFunZone with their kick butt Sinjid games or XGenStudios with Stick Arena who spread their games around the net and able to grab attention because they stand out from the crowd of 5 zillion other freebie Flash games. More the exception than the rule. Most sites mentioned above license/sponsor developer content and fees paid to developers won't exactly knock anyone's socks off.

[Pyabo]

Keep it in perspective, downloadable games that make 35k are in the extreme minority as well.

This statement may be true in a sense... but you could easily find at least 100 games that have eclipsed this mark in the last three or four years. Compare that to the number of Flash games which have done the same... that is more the point I was making.

My research into this area the past few days has supported my original hypothesis... the only decent money is made by the aggregators, not the Flash developers. Of course, the same has been the case for downloadable games recently also.

[soniCron]

Compare that to the number of Flash games which have done the same...

What is that number?

[arcadetown]

If your conclusion is can a developer make a lot of money from licensing or sponsorship of their Flash game then probably right. However a select few developers do extremely well with their uber popular Flash games driving traffic to their mini-portal / developer site where they sell advertising. It's not easy to make an uber popular Flash game but some seem to have the right knack for it. Similar to how some try/buy developers have the knack.

I love how there's so many bogus "conclusions" made on these forums. There's simply so much bad or mis-information here it sometimes makes me sick!

[Escapee]

This flash game brought in 15 million hits in just two weeks. It's perfectly understandable as i got sucked in playing the game for like hours and recommending it to friends . If the webmaster places google ad on the site it would probably equal to > 20K google cash for that 2 weeks.

News source : Gamezebo

[lakibuk]

However a select few developers do extremely well with their uber popular Flash games driving traffic to their mini-portal / developer site where they sell advertising.

But how do they get their games known when the flash sites don't feature them (with in-game links) ?

I love how there's so many bogus "conclusions" made on these forums. There's simply so much bad or mis-information here it sometimes makes me sick!

Word!

[Escapee]

There're thousand of arcade game sites like mine at nobleflash.com who host or frame other flash sites' content. I do not get tons of traffic with my little flash site but game sites like smashingame, heavygames, jarkey and etc that received half a million above of visits/mth do host, direct link and frame other website content with developer home link featured (eg : play more games button ) for traffic exchange purpose.

[lakibuk]

Thanks,Escapee.

[Dan MacDonald]

For the record, I don't think we could have made much more from it. And to be totally honest HA3 was a big brand in the flash game segment. HA2 had been quite successful winning Miniclips game of the year and there was a lot of anticipation around the sequel. It had a proven record of driving traffic and as a result it was in demand. Still with the man hours invested in both coding and art we might have made better money working at a McJob. All the work was done using spare time between other paying projects and it was largely done out of the passion for creating cool games (and the crys of a loyal fanbase).

From a business (profit based) perspective, making flash games like HA3 isn't really an effective use of your time. We spent way too much time making it for it to be really profitable or sustainable in anyway to do it full time. Maybe if you could leverage that success to get onto consoles (a-la the behemoth) it could pay off but it's not the holy land for independent developers by any means.

[ab9003]

You have to keep in mind though, a talented designer can make a simple and addictive flash game with a good concept and reasonable graphics in a week if they spend hours everyday working on it. If they could take each of their games and make 1 - 2 grand from them from sponsors and what not they would be making decent income. Also keep in mind there are ways to put advertisements in flash games (AKA: Mochiads). So if you know what your doing you can make a decent income off flash games, you have to be really talented though and have some original ideas.

[LilGames]

You have to keep in mind though, a talented designer can make a simple and addictive flash game with a good concept and reasonable graphics in a week if they spend hours everyday working on it. If they could take each of their games and make 1 - 2 grand from them from sponsors and what not they would be making decent income. Also keep in mind there are ways to put advertisements in flash games (AKA: Mochiads). So if you know what your doing you can make a decent income off flash games, you have to be really talented though and have some original ideas.

Just to put your statements into perspective there...

1. Not every game pumped out in a week will get "$1000-$2000" in sponsorship. $50-$250 is a more realistic figure to expect from that route, with the odd exception getting higher than that.

2. MochiAds is still in private beta so there's NO data on how successful that program is and how much one can expect to earn. It will depend heavily on the amount and quality of advertisers that join the network. I expect one problem they will encounter is that since Flash games can get copied to all sorts of sites all over the planet, advertisers will not pay top dollar if they can't be targeted (ie: An advertiser aiming for US eyeballs will not want to pay for millions of impressions on a website in China).