Intelligent Flash/Flex games

[AlexWeldon]

So, I have one small Flex game finished, one larger one that just needs more levels and sound effects, and a third, more polished one in the works.

The original idea with these games was that I was going to launch my own site in the spring, and set up some sort of micropayment/unlockable content structure to create a middleground between free, crappy Flash games, and 20$ downloadables.

At some point, the whole thing started to seem to daunting, and I chickened out and decided that I was going to just get a sponsor for the finished game, stick some Mochiads in it, and see how that did. I ran into some issues detailed in this thread, and it has me thinking about my long-term plans again. The sort of money people talk about when discussing Flash sponsorships and Mochiads isn't enough to make a living off of, unless you're releasing a game every two weeks, so going that route is more like a way of cutting my losses and quitting than it is a viable business plan. In any case, the sort of games I want to make aren't really ideal for the typical Newgrounds user, since they take a little while to get into and reward dedicated play.

People's first reaction to my original plan was probably right, that it's naive to think that I'm going to convince people to pay anything for my web games simply on the grounds that they're infinitely better than all the free, crappy ones out there.

Instead, I think I have to refine the micropayment idea and move to a three-tiered system for each game, like so:

1) A free, public version, available both to guests on my own site and on the portals like Newgrounds, Kongregate, etc. This one advertises my own site, and tells you what lovely features you'll have available in tier 2, which is:

2) A members-only version, available only on my site, once you've registered (which is free). This will have features like saving your progress, global daily/weekly/all-time high scores, and achievements/awards for in-game performance. So far, I know this sounds a lot like Kongregate, but the achievements are particularly important, as they also earn you site credits, which you can spend on 3:

3) Features you must unlock with credits. Extra levels, higher difficulty modes, multiplayer support, customized site avatars, entry to tournaments, etc. Theoretically, you can earn enough free credits by playing the games in free-membership mode to unlock a few third-tier features, but you'll never be able to get everything you want that way - just enough to convince you that the third-tier features are worth it, and that it's easier just to buy 1000 credits for 10 bucks than to earn them 5 or 10 credits at a time by going for achievements.

I can also provide other ways of earning credits. Users will be able to "tip" each other a few credits for particularly insightful forum posts. They can give me feedback on the games and earn credits based on how useful the feedback is. Users can create levels, skins, etc. for certain games and sell that content to others. And so on.

I may eventually have a store as well, where people can buy physical merchandise for either site credits or cash... T-shirts, stickers, etc. with my artwork (both art from the games and otherwise) and physical versions of my board & card games, if and when that happens.

Once it got going a little, I would of course welcome other like-minded devs to put games on the site, so long as they adopt the three-tier system and are making intelligent games with reasonable graphics and replay value that extends beyond the 15 minute mark.

Does this sound remotely reasonable? The other, more boring possibility is to expand and polish my games further, change them from browser to Adobe AIR, and use Shu to wrap them as EXEs so that I can join the 20$ download club. Or to try to port them to iPhone or something. I'm not sure either of those is the ideal setting for my games, though... browser-based is perfect, if I can make money at it somehow.

[Maupin]

Even though I'm far from an expert on Flash games and Flash portals, I think your three-tiered idea is very good. The backend sounds like it might be quite daunting to develop, and the biggest challenge, but if it worked like you described and your games are suffiently popular enough, I think it would work.

I know I recently visited Ninjakiwi's site just to try out some additional maps in Bloons Tower Defence 3. They weren't enough to keep me on the site, but the idea behind your first tier works.

Fostering a community (your second tier) is definitely the way to go when creating a portal, and maybe an "intelligent" flash games portal is a niche waiting to be filled.

[andrew]

The problem is that, until your game is released "into the wild", you don't have any idea whether it's going to be a "hit" or not. And talking about microtransactions/etc is premature until you know you can amass the large (i.e millions) of plays needed to drive traffic to your site, make real money with ads, etc. Tiers 2 and 3 will quickly fail if the game doesn't appeal to enough people. Flash players are weird and fickle, and high-quality production values do not guarantee that a game will be popular.

So, why not get some of these games on the portals, now? If you have something "finished", then use FGL and try to get a sponsorship if you desire, or just start putting it on Newgrounds/Kongregate/etc. The user reviews will tell you everything you need to know, even within a few hours. If you're hitting top-rated lists, or the Kongregate weekly/monthly top 10, then you should start getting lots of traffic back to your site, etc. If the game gets mediocre ratings and doesn't make front-pages, then you'll have to refine the game concept anyhow -- best to know that now, rather than later.

As for microtransactions/etc -- do you really want to build your own e-commerce backend? There are existing solutions like Whirled which may be useful. Also, keep in mind that you need to soft-pedal the unlockable/paid content, people will heavily downrate your game if they feel it's a "demo" (especially on Kongregate)

The usefulness of sponsorships, besides the money (which, granted is usually only in the 4-figure range), is guaranteed traffic. I sold a site-lock to Addicting Games recently and it has been giving me 100K+ hits per day. Assuming even a 1% clickthrough to your own site, that's a lot of traffic you wouldn't have normally gotten, and can try to monetize.

- andrew

[AlexWeldon]

The usefulness of sponsorships, besides the money (which, granted is usually only in the 4-figure range), is guaranteed traffic. I sold a site-lock to Addicting Games recently and it has been giving me 100K+ hits per day. Assuming even a 1% clickthrough to your own site, that's a lot of traffic you wouldn't have normally gotten, and can try to monetize.

Hm. From what I've heard, though, the traffic generated by Flash games tails off extremely quickly, no? And don't the more lucrative sponsorships require you to remove links to your own site? I suppose instead of putting it up for bidding I could just put it in the "no-hassle games shop" and specify that I'm only interested in deals that allow me to leave links back to my own site.

If I'm wrong about those two facts, maybe sponsorship now is not incompatible with promoting my site later... but at the moment I'm operating under the assumption that I'll want to hoard my games until I'm ready to launch a site, and then release them in fairly rapid succession, like one or two per week, plus send out tons of press releases etc. to try to get the initial traffic boom the site will need to take off. Maybe give out a few hundred free credits to everyone who signs up in the first week.

There's also the fact that the people who frequent the Flash portals (especially Kongregate, as you say) are decidedly not my target market. Using the first impressions system on FGL, the most common comment I got about Tepiiku, which I consider to be about as simple as a game can get while still requiring your neurons to fire, is that it's a lot of fun once you learn to play, but most people won't get through the tutorial (even though it takes about two or three minutes, tops). Judging by the majority of Flash games I see - and the comments about them - I don't doubt it.

The question is how to reach my actual target market, since it's a bit of an odd niche I'd like to carve out for myself. I think if I succeeded, I'd have to get a lot of people like: a) other game designers, b) board gamers who can't find anyone to play Settlers of Catan with that evening, c) math teachers who are too tired from teaching unruly teenagers to play something as mentally taxing as Go or chess, but who can't bring themselves to stoop as low as a casual game or "normal" Flash game and d) people who liked Sudoku until everyone else started liking it.

I'd probably want to advertise in places like Games magazine, on boardgamegeek.com... pray that "Tycho" from Penny Arcade likes my games enough to plug me, like he did Fairway Solitaire (not entirely inconceivable, since he and I have very similar tastes), and so forth.

As for microtransactions/etc -- do you really want to build your own e-commerce backend? There are existing solutions like Whirled which may be useful.

Well, I was thinking that I'd go with one of the normal e-commerce providers like BMTMicro or Plimus or whoever... just instead of emailing a registration key to someone when payment is received, the credits in their account go up. Credits would be non-refundable (since you can get them other ways than purchasing them), so it wouldn't be that complicated, would it? You'd just have to keep track of each user's credits, and what features they'd unlocked.

I'd probably just do the graphic design for the site, and whatever parts would be done in Flex (the forums, for instance) and hire a web designer friend to do the CSS/HTML markup and the PHP/SQL stuff on the back end.

[tfowers]

Hello - I generally think you have a good tiered plan. But as mentioned, getting sponsorship + links back to your site is tricky. We did something similar with Now Boarding. Tiered free version, but the other part for us was we had a full downloadable demo / purchase on our site.(Free version took 45 days to make, downloadable took 7 months) We were able to get a sponsorship, alot of traffic, and sales of the download version. My belief is that it's important to have something to sell when you release your free version, not later as attention fades quickly on the internets.

As seen by Casual Collective, it can be hard to build a destination site and community, even with great games. Also flash portals may hate on you if they see you as another portal, many of them are trying to build a community too. It might be better to build a "brand" first.

One point is that Kongregate seems to be the best audience for heavier strategy flash games. But Kong also has demo rage. They will hate you if they think you are a demo. We survived with an OK rating, but it's rough.

I think there is large audience for strategy flash games. Now Boarding was a mildly complex game, and alot of people figured it out. I think it's important to do your best to teach core game quickly, then fill in details, options and special cases later, through other tutorials or tips. Interface in also really important to make simple and intuitive. Also: players never read.

[Qitsune]

Also, maybe if a user has more than xxx credits in his account, or if they have spent more than xxx credits in the last month they can see the site ad free? So that gives them even more incentive to get credits while monetizing the other users with ads.

[AlexWeldon]

My belief is that it's important to have something to sell when you release your free version, not later as attention fades quickly on the internets.

Yes, that's part of why I pulled Tepiiku off FGL instead of just changing the name. I want to have as least four games (Halls of the Deepfathers, Tepiiku, my current project, and one more) on the site, and at least one thing to be purchased with credits (level sets for Halls, and maybe multiplayer support for Tepiiku) before I try to get any exposure.

It might be better to build a "brand" first.

That's the flip side. If I sit on my games until I launch the site, I have zero name recognition. I do have a bit of a branding strategy, though... I designed a fairly neutral, functional options bar for Halls of the Deepfathers, so that the controls to control volume and toggle sound, music and animation are always available, instead of requiring the user to go to a menu. I decided that I would include an identical-looking bar (adjusted only for width and the actual options available) in all subsequent games. More than any logo (which people are bombarded with all the time), I think that sort of thing will become familiar to someone who's played more than one of my games, so they'll instantly know that subsequent games are from the same guy.

One point is that Kongregate seems to be the best audience for heavier strategy flash games. But Kong also has demo rage.

That's the problem... I quite dislike the culture of Newgrounds, but Kongregate I can't even stand to visit. The stupid thing is that these Flash junkies only ever play a given game for 15 minutes anyway. Why do they even care that something is a demo? I know, they're all teenagers with anarchist ideology who think that everything should always be free, since they've never had to earn a living themselves.

The sites have managed to cultivate a user-base that consists mostly of complete parasites. They're not even valuable to the advertisers, since I think they're usually pretty committed to "their" site, and would never pay money for anything anyway. And yet, they hold the power over what does and doesn't get on the front page.

I think there is large audience for strategy flash games. Now Boarding was a mildly complex game, and alot of people figured it out. I think it's important to do your best to teach core game quickly, then fill in details, options and special cases later, through other tutorials or tips. Interface in also really important to make simple and intuitive. Also: players never read.

Yeah, this is the problem with Tepiiku... it's not that it's complicated, it's just that it's a dice game, so it's abstract and therefore hard to explain without a little bit of reading, at least. Getting the die values across visually wouldn't be that hard, but the way ties are handled sort of requires a verbal explanation.

My current project will be much more "pick-up-and-play," since it's based on an old mechanic (though significantly spruced up) and the new features are named in pretty obvious ways.

[andrew]

Hm. From what I've heard, though, the traffic generated by Flash games tails off extremely quickly, no? And don't the more lucrative sponsorships require you to remove links to your own site? I suppose instead of putting it up for bidding I could just put it in the "no-hassle games shop" and specify that I'm only interested in deals that allow me to leave links back to my own site.

It does tail off, but not entirely.. you can use Mochibot to analyze this, and I see games that are 6+ months old still getting 1500 plays/day or more. Many of the bigger portals will let you have links to your own site, usually in the main menu screen or in a splash screen before the game.

The sites have managed to cultivate a user-base that consists mostly of complete parasites. They're not even valuable to the advertisers, since I think they're usually pretty committed to "their" site, and would never pay money for anything anyway. And yet, they hold the power over what does and doesn't get on the front page.

Well, that might be a bit strong -- most of the advertising on those portals is for... you guessed it... other games. (Typically, MMO's). So, someone's finding the audience valuable enough to advertise to it. Kongregate also just did a deal with Scion, which is why you see their ads all over the site now.

In the end, even if you release multiple games, and have the website finished, and etc, your biggest problem is going to be traffic. Getting a game front-paged on a big portal can provide that, and it can be quite a bit easier than trying to get on Digg, Penny Arcade, Slashdot, etc

- andrew

[KNau]

Lately I'm seeing games like Dark Cut 3that have a "viral version" that is hosted everywhere and on those versions the loading screen says "more instruments / levels available at (official sponsor site)". Like any entertainment product or service the more tiers you can create the opportunities you have to get paid.

Theoretically you could have an official sponsor for your game (that gets bonus levels), a generic mochiads version to go viral with and a unique micro-transaction or mlutiplayer based version on your own website. Any feature that differentiates one version from another is an opportunity for a distinct release.

From what I've heard, though, the traffic generated by Flash games tails off extremely quickly, no? And don't the more lucrative sponsorships require you to remove links to your own site

You definitely do not have to remove links to your website and I've never even heard of a sponsor requesting that. You may be confusing with the download portals which do require you to strip out home links.

As for traffic, some developers have made mochibot stats publicly viewable so you can see for yourself it doesn't drop off that quickly.

In fact you'll see the peak/dropoff concept isn't really applicable here. The peaks are an ongoing event as it takes months for new sites to start hosting your game and the falloff generally flatlines to a consistent level, rather than dropping to nothing.

You can expect to remain >100,000 players per month for 12 to 18 months and that's for a moderately successful game. Of course you could hit one out of the park like Flash Element TD which has had more than 4 million players per month for a year now.

If you search around there are different communities of Flash games, much like downloadables. The JayIsGames visitor is the complete opposite of the Newgrounds visitor so you may find a more receptive audience there. AFAIK they don't do sponsorships, though.

[AlexWeldon]

Thanks for the information, guys. This is all great stuff... I think maybe what I'll do is, after finishing the current project, do some work on my personal website, which is quite pathetic at the moment. I'll update my portfolio, set up a blog, and provide information about these plans of mine. I'll probably use a different domain for the whole game/micropayment thing when the time comes.

Once that's done, I'll think about when and how to start launching games. The current project is one that will be completely free and only exist in the first two tiers - I don't foresee it having extra unlockable content... so maybe that's one I can try out on the sponsors and launch immediately to test the waters. Tepiiku probably won't do as well on Newgrounds, etc., and it lends itself to multiplayer (and thus the micropayment system), so maybe I'll hold it back until time comes to launch the real site.

Starting to feel cautiously optimistic about this whole thing... I'm really psyched about how the current project is going - it's amazing how much faster and better both my art and code are getting with each successive game. Here's a screenshot, though everything looks better animated, of course:

[Spore Man]

Is the 1990 "Mac Classic with color" style graphics final?

[AlexWeldon]

Is the 1990 "Mac Classic with color" style graphics final?

Well, it is deliberately retro, yes. The game itself is a souped-up Daleks. It's also minimalist in order to keep development time down, since it is going to be free. At the moment, we're at 10 days since I drew the first pixel and about 6 since I wrote the first line of code. Probably another 8-12 days till a finished game.

[320x240]

You could maybe make the outlines two pixels thick instead of one, too get that 'modern' look. Otherwise it's got a clean and uncluttered look.

[AlexWeldon]

You could maybe make the outlines two pixels thick instead of one, too get that 'modern' look. Otherwise it's got a clean and uncluttered look.

Thanks for the tip. I tried two pixels, but it's far too thick on the straight sections for the size of the sprites. The basilisk's head, body and legs all get gummed up into a big brown blob. As a compromise, I tried doing diagonals as staircases instead of a single diagonal row, giving the following results.



The ones on the left are the new versions, following your suggestions. I'm inclined to agree that they do look better... the question, though, is if the improvement is sufficient to warrant making the changes to the 320 frames of animation I've done so far, when I'm trying to keep to a tight schedule. I'll poll my playtesters and see what they think, but even if I decide to keep the current sprites, it's something I'll keep in mind when I start work on the next project.

[cpasley]

That's the problem... I quite dislike the culture of Newgrounds, but Kongregate I can't even stand to visit. The stupid thing is that these Flash junkies only ever play a given game for 15 minutes anyway. Why do they even care that something is a demo? I know, they're all teenagers with anarchist ideology who think that everything should always be free, since they've never had to earn a living themselves.

The sites have managed to cultivate a user-base that consists mostly of complete parasites. They're not even valuable to the advertisers, since I think they're usually pretty committed to "their" site, and would never pay money for anything anyway. And yet, they hold the power over what does and doesn't get on the front page.

Hi! I'm the Director of Games for Kongregate. Our users tend to hate demos because they don't want to play a game, get to the end and realize that they have been playing a game for half an hour that they won't be allowed to finish without paying, and likely won't be able to save their progress toward even if they did. I can sympathize. Their time is valuable to them and they don't like feeling tricked.

I don't think our users are parasites in the least. We have no trouble with our advertisers. Our users are very loyal to the Kongregate community, true, but Kong is nothing if not a meritocracy. If the players don't like your game, then maybe they're the wrong audience for it. Denigrating the players for not selecting the games you think they should be going crazy for is no way to win them over.

They will pay for things if you offer them something they think is worth paying for. We recently rolled out our site currency, Kreds, and we've been surprised at how positively users have responded, even when the only purchases available so far are Kongai cards and the ability to tip developers. We'll soon start working with game developers to allow them to use our microtransaction system on-site as well, along with our funded games which will start launching before the end of the year.

At any rate, best of luck!

[Spore Man]

Tipping! That's a great idea! Will be very interesting to see how that plays out. wow.
(no that's not sarcasm... i'm genuinely interested!)

[AlexWeldon]

Hi! I'm the Director of Games for Kongregate. Our users tend to hate demos because they don't want to play a game, get to the end and realize that they have been playing a game for half an hour that they won't be allowed to finish without paying, and likely won't be able to save their progress toward even if they did. I can sympathize. Their time is valuable to them and they don't like feeling tricked.

So why do they aggressively downvote demos for high-quality games, even when it's clearly stated up front that they're demos?

Also, 30 minutes is a lot longer than you can play a normal, free Flash game before it gets boring... seen that way, a demo provides as much fun as the standard fare, but with the added option of paying to continue the enjoyment. Try getting them to see it that way, though.

Parasites was an overstatement, I'll admit. Most of them are teenagers, and thus don't have the ability to buy things online even if they wanted to. Still, there's an unmistakable similarity in tone between the slag reviews for demos and pro-piracy rants.

Denigrating the players for not selecting the games you think they should be going crazy for is no way to win them over.

I'm not trying to win them over. I'm recognizing the fact ahead of time that my games are not going to be what they want, and looking for ways to cultivate a different customer base.

...and the ability to tip developers.

I, too, am interested to see how this plays out... it will certainly go a long way towards determining the true character of the user base. One of the common "gimme free stuff" arguments is that developers would be able to make enough money by asking for donations. That's one experiment that I've never seen succeed, but if you find that developers start making more from tips than they do from advertising, I'll be the first to admit that I had these people all wrong.

[defanual]

Yeah, I like the tipping feature (from what I've heard) thus far and a few devs at the mochi forums have already received some tips from the community:
https://www.mochiads.com/community/f...ongregate-tips

@cpasley: Talking of the mochi forums, I don't know if it's vindictive or valid as I haven't (yet) received or had any bad experiences at kongregate, but I thought since you addressed the feedback here, you may want to do the same for those on mochi who seem to have had bad experiences on there and some of the points might be useful for improvements etc.

https://www.mochiads.com/community/f...community-ever
(mainly complaints seem to be about devs being accused of stealing games and uploading them as their own, thus getting bad ratings and the comments system)

[cpasley]

So why do they aggressively downvote demos for high-quality games, even when it's clearly stated up front that they're demos?

My theory is that they are of a generation that doesn't like being sold to, and see demos as just big advertisements.

Also, 30 minutes is a lot longer than you can play a normal, free Flash game before it gets boring... seen that way, a demo provides as much fun as the standard fare, but with the added option of paying to continue the enjoyment. Try getting them to see it that way, though.

But the thing about Flash games is that if one gets boring, we've got nearly 10,000 others to dive into. Players don't quantify their experience by adding up play time. They come expecting a certain experience (free flash games) and are stymied when they get a different one. And also our time spent metrics show that players spend a lot longer on Flash games than you'd think, especially ones with badges in them. Platform Racing 2, for example, is actually going stronger now than it was just after its release almost a year ago.

Parasites was an overstatement, I'll admit. Most of them are teenagers, and thus don't have the ability to buy things online even if they wanted to. Still, there's an unmistakable similarity in tone between the slag reviews for demos and pro-piracy rants.

I'm not trying to win them over. I'm recognizing the fact ahead of time that my games are not going to be what they want, and looking for ways to cultivate a different customer base.

Our demographic has been fairly strongly 18-34 males. As I see it this is a fairly simple equation. The buyers (the players) want a product for free and are reluctant to pay. Telling them that they should want to pay isn't going to motivate them to do so. This is why I really feel like our model has some legs; free to play, a certain percentage will buy with microtransactions, shored up by ad revenue from the free-players. Finding a way to give them what they want and still make money off of it.

I, too, am interested to see how this plays out... it will certainly go a long way towards determining the true character of the user base. One of the common "gimme free stuff" arguments is that developers would be able to make enough money by asking for donations. That's one experiment that I've never seen succeed, but if you find that developers start making more from tips than they do from advertising, I'll be the first to admit that I had these people all wrong.

I'll tell you right now that that will never happen. I expect to see the usage of tips increase, especially when there are other things players can spend Kreds on and they have a few left over, but it'll never be a prime source of revenue. And never more than ad revenue, especially as our eCPM continues to improve. But you're right in that it definitely allows people to put their money where their mouth is as far as supporting free games. So far no one's made a whole lot, but it's early still.

@cpasley: Talking of the mochi forums, I don't know if it's vindictive or valid as I haven't (yet) received or had any bad experiences at kongregate, but I thought since you addressed the feedback here, you may want to do the same for those on mochi who seem to have had bad experiences on there and some of the points might be useful for improvements etc.

Yeah, I saw that. Our CEO, Jim Greer, often posts in there and has commented on the topic in another thread a little while ago. We have plans to try to help the situation. It's on our to-do list.