There's an entire separate hall to queue in at PAX

Two weeks ago I was able to attend my first ever PAX, which is a massive and beloved consumer gaming show. The kind that attracts real gaming fans who will happily give up their weekend, pay for tickets, and queue in their thousands to be the first ones into the show. The kind that sells out of tickets on a regular basis. Just attending would have been extremely interesting to me but I had the opportunity to do something even more incredible: I was able to showcase the game I'm working on to thousands of potential fans. WOW. Read on for my full postmortem.

How did we get to exhibit at PAX anyway?

As we recently announced we have now signed with Versus Evil to publish our first game Guild of Dungeoneering. One of the main reasons I partnered with a publisher was to be able to bring the game to big consumer shows like PAX. And VS Evil certainly delivered on that promise. Within days of signing I was flying to Texas to help showcase Guild of Dungeoneering in their booth. It was also a great opportunity to meet the VS Evil team in person at last – the entire deal had been done over Skype and email!

Dungeoneering never looked better

I flew in on Thursday evening with the show floor opening to the public on Friday morning. This is not something you can normally do if you are exhibiting at a big show like PAX. Setting up your own booth usually means weeks of organising and days of work before the show starts. So it was wonderful to be able to simply turn up in person and have the entire thing already set up for me! Score one for going with a publisher!

The Versus Evil booth

I was really impressed by the booth Versus Evil had set up for the event. It was very professional looking with large amounts of branding dedicated to the games (rather than themselves). It was set up to allow folks to wander right into it with PCs at standing height with various VS-published games available to play. Guild of Dungeoneering had four PCs taking up one entire side of their booth. As a bonus this was the side that faced towards the show entrance, and the VS Evil booth itself was in a great spot: right in the main corridor from the entrance just after the really massive booths (like Twitch). This meant a huge amount of people saw the game as they wandered into the show.

Their setup & location meant that for basically all three days there were four people playing the game at once, with a few people watching (and sometimes a big crowd of people watching). We actually have a special ATTRACT MODE built into our build of the game for shows like this where if you idle on the title screen for two minutes the game starts playing itself (like an arcade game). For three eight-hour days I barely saw it happen at all – there was basically someone playing at all four machines at all times.

Our side of the booth was like this for eight hours a day

I would generally hang out nearby and watch people play. Occasionally we had a crash bug in the demo we had people playing so I'd have to restart the game if that happened. When folks were waiting I'd chat to them about the game. If I saw people play for a long time (like a half hour+) I'd approach them when they finished to ask them for feedback. Feedback itself was incredibly positive. People loved the aesthetic, really liked the concept, and generally really enjoyed playing the demo we had brought. That last bit surprised me as I guess I see all the negatives of it (it's not deeply fun yet!). I guess since it was people's first exposure to the game everything was new and interesting and they didn't quite get stuck in enough to see the problematic parts. Also it's a bit awkward giving negative feedback to one of the makers of a game in person! No need to be so polite when your feedback is real, folks!

Now in totally sweet HD

We were showcasing the game in 1920×1080 resolution for the first time and it looks totally hot. A lot of passersby were drawn to folks playing just because it looks so wonderful. This was something we had always intended for the game but had only put together for the first time the week before PAX.

Click for massive

We were also showcasing our battle mode for the first time. No more autofighting; now you choose an attack move each turn. This first attempt was ready just in time for PAX, but it needs a lot of work. We've now reworked it to be MUCH more interesting (less like a paper/rock/scissors guessathon) while still retaining the essential idea: you gain attack moves from your equipment, thus building your character depending on what loot you place for them.

Click for massive

Overall I was very happy with the build we were showing, even though we were already working on improving the game for our next event.

Press & Influencers

Now there were lots of potential fans at the show and it was really great to meet them and hopefully they will see the game when it comes out on Steam and be that little more likely to try it out. But the real win for us at a show like this was reaching some press and other influencers. For example check out this tweet:

I'm going to print out this tweet and stick it on my wall

Yep that's Randy Pitchford the president of Gearbox randomly checking out our game and telling his 288K followers that it's cool. Eh.. thanks!

We also had Dodger and Jesse Cox drop by the booth and play the game. They both seem to really like it: see this video. That's two youtubers with really big followings. Hopefully when we finish the game they'll be streaming it.

This video has over 400K views already!

Finally all this attention got us some great new press articles. Firstly from TouchArcade (we plan on going to tablets after the PC launch), with whom I got to have a little chat while the writer was playing the game. Secondly from Rock Paper Shotgun, who I don't think were even at PAX but must have been reminded of us because of it.

Nice!

Is PAX worth it?

So what did we really get out of being at a big game show like PAX? Was it worth it? One of the problems with this kind of game marketing is you really cannot quantify exactly what it does for your game. I will say it was incredibly interesting to see what spending the big bucks on promoting your game can get you: immediate attention from gamers and influencers that I had serious trouble reaching on my lonesome. I still think every lone-wolf indie dev should spend around half their time on marketing and outreach without spending anything, but you should also seriously consider what partnering with a publisher could do for your game.

Also it's really nice to bask in the positive potential of your game in the hearts and minds of your fans for once, rather than being mired in the day-to-day problems of making your special snowflake of a game happen. And for that, I thank you, PAX South.

Nowadays with digital distribution one of the main reasons to need a traditional publisher is gone but there are other things they can help with like PR, advertising and marketing budgets around launch, getting you onto marketplaces like Steam, etc. Sometimes this could be more of a partnership than a publishing deal.

I've just started talks with a few indie-friendly publishers for Guild of Dungeoneering so I thought I would share my list for others considering this approach. Some of these are full-on publishers with a focus on indie games, some are actual indie developers who also publish other dev's games, and some are marketing specialists.

• Indie Fund - http://indie-fund.com
• Devolver Digital - http://www.devolverdigital.com
• Double Fine Presents - http://www.doublefine.com
• Paradox Interactive - https://www.paradoxplaza.com
• Team 17 - http://www.team17.com
• Midnight City - http://www.midnight-city.com
• Adult Swim - http://games.adultswim.com
• Curve Digital - http://www.curve-studios.com
• Chucklefish - http://www.chucklefish.org
• Finji - http://www.finjigames.com
• Versus Evil - http://vsevil.net
• nkidu - http://www.nkidu.com
• Reverb - http://reverbinc.com/triplexp
• Mastertronic - http://www.mastertronic.com
• Positech - http://positech.co.uk
• Square Enix Collective - http://collective.square-enix.com
• Surprise Attack – http://surpriseattackgames.com
• Headup Games - http://www.headupgames.com
• Wadjet Eye Games - http://www.wadjeteyegames.com
• tinyBuild Games - http://tinybuild.com
• Digital Tribe Games - http://digitaltribegames.com/
• Evolve PR - http://www.evolve-pr.com
• STEAKSTEAK - http://steaksteak.com
• Whippering - http://whippering.com/
• Indie Wolverine - http://indiewolverine.com/

I'm focused primarily on PC, as is most of the above list, but if you are looking for help with a mobile game I'd recommend looking through this twitter list as quite a few of the list are mobile-focused.

Thanks to the Indie Game Developers facebook group, @kristruitt, @LukeD and /r/gamedev for helping me put this list together. If you have any suggestions to add to this list feel free to leave a comment!

Independent of being paid, that is!

Indie can be hard to define and is definitely a bit too overloaded these days, but it explains quite well what I'm trying to do. I'll be mostly working by myself making games. I like to compare myself to a writer who has decided to give up the day job and focus entirely on finishing that first novel.

A wild TRAILER appeared!

So this has been in the works for a couple of months. Fred (who is doing all the art for Guild of Dungeoneering) came up with the script, the jokes, did all the animation, picked the music and even did the voiceover for it!! Talented fellow! Have a look yourself:

We released this last Wednesday at the same time as a big press blitz I coordinated which has led to quite a few people writing about us, which is fantastic! I'll write up a longer post about the experience later on.

For Your Consideration

We also launched on Steam Greenlight at the same time, to try and maximise any press exposure we got for the trailer and convert as much of it as possible into Greenlight votes and attention.

So far this is going well, though not quite the rocketship to the top I was hoping for. As of this writing we are 42% of the way to the top 100 with 2,910 yes votes. Sadly a massive proportion of visits to the page has been from within Greenlight itself, so despite getting some big numbers to the main game page in the last few days they haven't quite translated into Greenlight traffic. That said, I'm sure anyone who's looking at the game page and clicks through to greenlight is pretty likely to throw down a yes vote.

I do have some more ideas to get extra traffic onto greenlight so more on that when it's ready. I'll also write up a much longer post on the whole experience once we're through. Oh and if you've voted for the game - Thanks! It's really appreciated!

Then buy one dollar's worth of cocaine and PARTY

I have recently been finishing a lot of smaller games thanks to game jams and One Game a Month. This is a great feeling and absolutely every wannabe game developer should start by finishing something. However there is another side to becoming a successful independent game developer, namely marketing your game so more than two people hear about it and polishing your game so that those you reach are willing to throw you some cash.

Join me as I outline my plan to polish, market & release a simple game within a month.

Give Yourself a Boost

First of all don't try and make a complete game from scratch all in one month. It is much safer to pick a gamejam game or playable demo you have previously put together and start from there. If you are anything like me you will have had loads of good ideas to make your previous games even better that you just didn't have time to implement last time you were working on them.

Built in 12 hours for a gamejam… this could be polished into something I call RIDICULOUS FISHING! Oh wait..

Share Early, Share Often

Clearly you are going to have no marketing budget to speak of, and a 1-month deadline to build the entire game AND sell it is going to be tight. So you need to make the most of your time. It is incredibly important not to get stuck in head-down development of your game all month long. You will not be able to just drop your game onto your marketplace of choice on the last day of the month and announce it with a single tweet. Well, maybe if you are @notch. Instead make it your mission to share everything you do. Start spreading the word from the beginning. Hit up every social network you have after every day's work you do. At a minimum you want to be sharing on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Google+ and whichever online forums you already use.

Have a Game Plan

Spend your first day choosing which game you want to extend & polish. Which of your existing projects was the most fun to play? Which one got shared the most on social networks? Which one could you see yourself buying with just a little more polish? Which one is the most interesting & exciting to explain to a stranger?

Futility RPG. Hilarious to plan & create. Not so fun to play.

Now sketch out some ideas that you think will improve on what you had built before. The key here is to make it good enough that someone is willing to pay for it in some way – even just $1. At this point I'll refer you to this superb guide from 1GAM super champ @McFunkypants. Read that and embrace it. It's a great way to stay focused on what will be important in the month ahead.

A Name and Your First Marketing

At this point you shouldn't actually do any coding yet! Instead it is time to pick a name for your game. Names are important, but don't stress about it too much. What you really want is to pick it early and stick with it. You are going to use this constantly, everywhere, every time you share what you are working on. And you are going to be sharing constantly.

Once you have your shortlist of possible features and a name it is time to write your elevator pitch. This means being able to explain your entire finished game in a single paragraph or less. You want to be able to read this to a friend or stranger and have them be excited about the game.

Romance. Strategy. A* Pathfinding. SECURE THE MOVIE RIGHTS PEOPLE

Doing this early on is going to be extremely helpful. Plus, if all you can say is that it's going to be a game about clicking a cow every 6 hours then maybe you can go back to the last step and look into some more exciting features. Or maybe not!

Moo. That'll be $20 please.

And now share your elevator pitch. Tweet about it. Post it up on the 1GAM and Ludum Dare subreddits. Don't forget to include your game name! It's exciting and motivational to get people to comment on it at this early stage (hopefully with excitement!) – that's your target. Also reinforcement. By the time you release this baby the drooling masses your lovely customers won't even know why they want it so bad.

Min Viable Product

Time to get coding! You should aim to get a MVP version of your feature list in about your first two weeks of the month. This means aggressive cutting. Start by prioritising your features and work on the 'must-haves' first. Since you started with a working game you should continue to keep it in this state. At the end of every day if at all possible your game should be playable. Things can be incomplete, slightly buggy or downright missing, but the whole game should never be in such a mess that it won't even compile. And every day it will get better & better. At the end of every day share something. You should be hitting up #screenshotsaturday on Twitter, updating a devlog on Tigsource, and everywhere else you hit up earlier.

Playable yes. Polished… perhaps not!

Now is also a great time to start asking your friends, family & fellow gamedevs to playtest early versions of your game. Ask for feedback like 'Is this fun yet?' and 'Would you buy this yet?'.

Identify Your Marketplace

Take some time out from building (and sharing! SHARE IT) your game and identify the marketplace you will release on. I would suggest picking just one to be on by the end of the month. You can always add more later on. Check out the excellent Resources & Opportunities page for some ideas. If your game is for mobile the marketplace is pretty easy, or you can go for sponsorship for a flash or html5 game, or even a paypal button on your website to sell direct. Hey, even your granny can set up a paypal button these days so no excuses!

Grandma keeps sharing her gamedev progress and it's better than mine *SOB*

Build A One Page Landing Site

Another thing to take a day out of coding to do is to build a page on your website dedicated to your game. You can use presskit() to make this process painless but it is very important. Your page should include your game's name, the elevator pitch you created earlier, some screenshots (complete work in progress ones are completely fine at this stage), your email address and links to your Twitter account etc. You can also include any feedback you received during your earlier sharing. Any random tweets or reddit responses will do here! You can always go for hilarity, plus you can replace them later with Actual Press Quotes ..

The first comment my Futility RPG game got from /r/DND

Now you have a destination for your game. Any time anyone has questions or expresses interest in your game, or you are sharing anything as you work, include this link. Massive bonus points if you can set up a pre-ordering system or even an 'email-me-when-its-done' widget on this page.

Polish, Polish, Polish

The later stages of development (say the last week) should be 100% dedicated to polish. That means ironing out bugs, improving your interface, building a proper main menu and tutorial, etc etc. You want your game to have the very best chance of winning over a prospect who happens to glance at a screenshot after reading the first few words of your elevator pitch. Because that's all the attention you will get before they move onto that hilarious cat video. Thanks, Internet!

Polish that right up!

Now that your game is really starting to be feature complete and starting to look a little better too, it would be a great idea to make a video trailer. This isn't something I've done yet – so anyone with some good advice here would be welcome! It does make for a fantastic asset to sell your game with however. Put it into your destination page (right up top), and share that bad boy.

Release Day

Time to get your game up on your marketplace and into the hands of your brainwashed eager fans. Allow at least a day for any integration issues, and definitely make sure you have an account on the service ready weeks in advance if you aren't selling direct. Also do things like update your screenshots on your destination page with the latest build, and add a link to your marketplace there. When it is possible for someone to buy it is time to Announce Your Game. Hit up every social space you've been sharing on for a massive push. Contact some actual journalists. Tell your mom! Surely she's good for a dollar (insert your mom joke here). 

Your ideal customer

And finally and importantly it is time to give yourself a massive pat on the back, Champ. You did it!

Earlier this year, Tim Schafer (of Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango fame among others), launched a funding drive on Kickstarter. His studio, Double Fine Productions, was hoping to raise $400,000 from their loyal fans to create a new game and create an access-all-areas documentary of the game production process. After their 45 day campaign had ended, they had raised more than $3,300,000 — eight times the target amount.

Looking at the facts, it made for very impressive reading: until very recently, it was the most funded project ever on Kickstarter, more than 87,000 people had reached into their wallet and pledged millions of dollars in real cash, and the project had received coverage from BBC World News to the Sydney Morning Herald.

There was something less obvious — and potentially more important — about this success however. What had all these people actually purchased? In the vast majority of cases, they had pre-ordered the game, but virtually no details of the game actually existed — no concept art, no story outlines, not even a title. The only detail that was disclosed was that the game was going to be classic point-and-click adventure. That's it.

A parallel universe exists where Tim Schafer and Double Fine are trying to get this game funded through conventional means. They're drawing up the concept art right now, fleshing out the story line, coding up the game demo and putting together the kick ass presentation to show to potential publishers.

The publishers don't like it. The game's theme is too dark. Who's going to buy a game about a suicidal monkey? They don't like the title. The concept art? The less said the better. Sorry Tim, better luck next time.

Power and Freedom

This is the power of Kickstarter. It's complete freedom — freedom to make the decisions that are right for the game, to set the right price, to publish through the channels that make the most sense and to push the release date past Christmas because you need that extra time. It's also about ownership and independence. Your backers on Kickstarter are merely consumers with an extremely early pre-order of your game. They haven't taken gross points or stock options. Any profit you generate is yours to keep.

Kickstarter is not the right platform for everyone however. Did you know that you have to be an American citizen to start a project on Kickstarter? Did you know that there are similar platforms to Kickstarter that actually let you keep the money even if you don't reach your funding target?

Funding Platforms

I've collated some of the best avenues to explore if you're looking to get your game funded.

It seems like the obvious choice to start with Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a consumer democracy. Businesses and individuals pitch their ideas and those ideas live and die by the consumers' vote.

John Gruber described Kickstarter like so:

Kickstarter is one of the most amazing, inspiring, empowering things I’ve ever seen.

However, I think Kevin Dent summed it up best when he said:

I love Kickstarter, I want to marry Kickstarter and I want to curl it up and eat it. The problem is that the pitches range from fantastic to dog shit.

To launch a project with Kickstarter, you must have an Amazon Payments merchant account. To open one of these, you must be an American citizen with a bank account based in the United States.

Once you have set up your Amazon account and your Kickstarter account, you can begin to put your idea pitch together. All you really need is an idea at just about any level of realisation (from concept to physical product), an amount you want to raise and a series of awards for users who will be backing your project.

Kickstarter's funding is all or nothing, so if you set a goal of $100,000 and you raise $99,000, you get nothing. The target must be met or exceeded. If you are lucky enough to meet your target, make sure you have budgeted for the fees that you'll incur. Kickstarter takes 5% of the final amount and Amazon take 2.9% + 30¢ per pledge. Double Fine's bill would have been $289,715.91 for example.

Kickstarter isn't all love, fun, happiness and rainbows however. There are examples of games looking for far less funding that would be required to actually build a successful game, and there has been at least one example of a more insidious side where developers have ripped off other games and posed them as their own creations.

Exercise caution as a backer, and do everything you can to prove you've thought about your project and the process involved in seeing it to reality as a project owner.

IndieGoGo is a similar platform to Kickstarter — you post a project and people back it for specific rewards. There are two critical differences however:

1. You are allowed to create projects that receive all money pledged regardless of whether the target funding has been met or not.
2. You don't have to be a U.S. citizen to create a campaign.

Financially speaking, IndieGoGo take 4% of the final amount if you reach your goal, and 9% if you don't meet your goal. There are also third party payment processor fees and currency conversion fees, but these varies depending on who you choose (PayPal or similar).

IndieGoGo certainly doesn't have the audience of Kickstarter but they do still receive millions in pledges across all projects each month. You also receive the money immediately, whereas there is a delay in receiving funds from Kickstarter.

Gambitious (no relation) is a European based platform, aimed specifically at generating funding for games. The site has been live for only a couple of days at this point, but they already list a few projects on their site.

They don't work on a pledge / reward basis like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo — users will be able to actually invest in, and take a share of your game. The Gambitious founder, Korstiaan Zandvliet, described it like so:

"A developer decides what percentage of the required funding people can buy. Someone who invests money in a project, becomes a shareholder and is entitled to dividends."

You have to be a citizen of the European Union to invest and they offer two paths for people looking to invest in a game:

1. Donate. It's not clear if you receive rewards for your donations, though they are sometimes referenced as "prebuys" in the copy on the Gambitious site, so you may receive a copy of the game.
2. Invest. This is where it gets interesting — the developer offers up a percentage of their game and you can purchase a chunk of the game. This means that you will actually own a share in that game and receive dividends from time to time if it ends up being successful.

As a developer, it costs €250 to register a project to be considered for funding, and when funding is complete (and assuming you're successful), 5% is taken by Gambitious. They take the money immediately from investors, meaning that you should get paid very quickly after a successful fundraiser.

As an investor, the process seems a little unwieldy. Each share in a game is actually one unit of "electronic money" which must be purchased before investing in a game. One unit of electric money is worth €20, so, if you wanted to buy 100 shares in a game, that would cost you €2,000. A general administration cost of 2.5% is added to your investment. A VAT administration cost of 19% is applied to the administration cost (seriously), followed by a payment provider fee and VAT on the payment provider fee (totaling a flat rate of €1.19). This is also coupled with multiple agreements to terms and conditions along the way. Overall, a €2,000 investment would cost you €2,060.69 with fees.

If the project is successful, all investors become part of a newly formed legal entity, titled the Investor Cooperative. At this point Gambitious recommends that you consult taxation lawyers or the like to make sure all your tax affairs are in order should you receive dividends from the game.

Overall, it's unclear how this model will work in practice, but it should be an interesting one to keep an eye on. The process feels a little complex, and my fears are not allayed from reading the supporting documentation on the website. I also feel like they'll need to open the platform to US investment to really be successful, but let's wait and see.

AppStori is a launchpad specific for mobile applications. You must be developing an Android or iOS game to qualify for funding here.

They are virtually identical to Kickstarter — all-or-nothing funding, you must be a U.S. citizen to post a project (but not to back one) and users get rewards for pledges.

They are different on three fronts:

1. Project submissions are manully reviewed before being published. They will check to make sure that your project meets their mobile guidelines, and that it's not an obvious scam.
2. Your game must be a mobile application. Games for any other platform will be rejected. You could post a project to create a mobile version of a game that exists on another platform however.
3. They take a bigger slice of the pie: 7% of the final amount, plus the Amazon fees (2.9% + 30¢ per pledge).

You can't apply directly to the Indie Fund for cash, but I've included the Indie Fund here as they are a potential suitor to your game. They mention three ways to improve your chances of getting noticed on the website and they'll contact you if they're impressed by what you're doing. The fact that they take nothing more than a portion of your revenue also means that they are also a great deal for the developer.

The specific details of what kind of funding available from the Indie Fund is shrouded in secrecy, but the mechanics are freely available. The Indie Fund provide you with a sum of money. When you launch your game, all revenue goes towards paying that money back, until they've recouped 100% of the loan.

At this point, the Indie Fund will continue to take 25% of your revenue until they've either doubled their investment, or 2 years elapse from the launch date of your game.

After that, you're debt free.

Are you trying to make flash games for a living, but having a hard time making ends meet? Have you made an engaging & fun game, then spent months polishing and tweaking it to perfection before releasing it onto the world? Maybe you got it right and it's a hit – it's been played and enjoyed by literally millions of people! Well time to sit back and watch the pennies roll in, my friend, because that's all you're going to be getting. This may sound alarming, but it's what most flash game developers have experienced using what I call the 'Ad Model' of monetisation.

All this could be yours!

The Ad Model

Over the last few years Flash gaming has enjoyed a massive rise in both the quality and quantity of games on the market. What caused this? The online ad market boomed. It suddenly became (marginally) profitable to build a flash game, throw in some easily-included ads and set it free on the internet. A few well-documented hits made a relatively large amount of money, yet were often made by a single developer working in his spare time over the course of a few months (as previously flash simply couldn't fund an actual team of developers), and this caused a 'gold rush' effect of developers piling into the flash games space. Over time the ad model for flash games has matured into a market where developers can make money from various sources:

• In-Game Ads: in-game ads such as MochiAds, usually shown once while the game is loading
• Around-Game Ads: site ads like Google AdSense shown around the flash game either on the developer's own site, or on a site like Kongregate or Newgrounds which offers revenue share to developers
• Sponsorship: this is where a portal pays the developer to 'tag' their game with the portal's branding (and usually a 'more games' link), effectively paying for traffic delivered to the portal as the game is distributed around the internet. FlashGameLicense was set up to help developers find sponsors for their games, and it has proven to be very effective.
• Licensing: this is where a portal or site pays a developer for a one-off license to use their game; generally they pay a fixed fee to be able to use the game without the sponsor logo, in-game ads, links to the developer's site, etc on their own site; multiple licenses can be sold alongside a sponsorship

Generally speaking you can, and should, use all these options at once as Ada Chen advised in a talk she gave at Casual Connect in 2008. This model is working for some developers, the ones who can efficiently make engaging, short flash games and keep churning them out, but it's really only been a success for very few. Most flash game developers are still relying on other sources than ad-funded games to keep going full-time (for example, making games on contract for third parties).

Not Enough To Go Around

The problem with the ad model is that all the money is coming from one limited pool: advertising. You might find that sponsorship and licensing get you significantly more than in-game ads, but the money from those things comes from that same pool. Portals buy traffic from you (via sponsorship/licensing) with the money they earn from .. advertising! The amount of money in the advertising pool is limited, plus needs to be shared out amongst a whole load of middlemen before it trickles through to developers. No one has explained this better than Dan Cook in his recent Flash Love Letter, Part 1:

Image by Dan Cook, used with permission

A Better Model

Luckily there's a better way to fund game development than scrounging for ad-pennies. It's been proven in almost every form of consumer entertainment ever made, from theatre to music to cinema and yes, even games: ask the consumer of the entertainment to pay you for providing it. That's it. Asking the players to fund game development takes away the dilution effect of trying to get ads to pay everyone's cut, and directly rewards the developer regardless of the size of their 'aggregated traffic-power'. It works for all those other kinds of entertainment, and it certainly works for the rest of the gaming industry.

And it can work for flash games too. Several developers have been successfully charging players for full versions of their free flash games, by integrating a payment processor such as PayPal. This method (often called a "demo", write that down) is so proven that almost no console or PC game doesn't use it. Others have tried splitting out the purchase into smaller bundles using a microtransaction/virtual currency provider, and are charging for decorative things like a fancy hat or small upgrades like level packs and new weapons instead of selling the whole game in one go. In fact recently launched providers such as MochiCoins, GamerSafe and Heyzap have made it easier than ever for flash developers to take payments from players. One advantage of the idea of using virtual items, temporary powerups, or other small purchases is that you aren't putting a cap on how much your biggest fans are able to spend on your game. Generally speaking selling virtual items works best in a persistant-world / MMO style of game, where you can put all kinds of social and economic effects into play to really leverage the idea – just look at this breakdown.

Regardless of how you are charging players, or what they are paying for, the fact that you are charging at all means you are using what I call the 'Premium Flash Game' revenue model.

Premium Games Need To Be Frickin' Sweet

One downside to charging money upfront is that you need to make players fall in love with your game before they will pull out the credit card, and that means spending a lot more time polishing the gameplay and expanding the content before release. The quality level of today's (and yesterday's!) flash games is definitely high enough to convince players to pay – developers just need to focus on expanding the experience; make "long form games" instead of focusing on quick, throw-away games. Again no one's explained this better than Dan Cook, so make sure to read his Flash Love Letter, Part 2 – you can do it right now if you like, we'll pause this part of the internet until you come back.

And Now For Some Examples

Lets have a look at some real-world examples of revenue made by flash developers using the Ad Model, and compare them to ones using the Premium Model. I'm going to use 'Gross eCPM', a term I just made up, as the baseline stat to compare these ad-based apples versus premium oranges. If you aren't familiar with it, eCPM is an advertiser's term and stands for effective cost-per-mille – or how much an advertiser has to pay out per 1,000 impressions of their ad on average. As the payee, you can think of it as how much revenue you made per thousand plays of your ad-enabled game. What I call Gross eCPM is calculated by taking the total amount of plays of a game, and dividing it by the total revenue made from them (whether it be from ads, sponsorship, microtransactions or full game purchases). This handily lets us compare two very different ways of monetising with a single comparative number.

First up let's look at the numbers for some flash games using the traditional Ad Model to generate revenue:

Desktop Tower Defense (play)
One of the original 'break out hits' of modern free flash games, created by a single developer, and supported by ads inside & around the game.

Total Plays: 15 million in the first few months
Gross Revenue: ~$12,000 in that same time frame
Gross eCPM: ~$0.80
[source]

Mytheria (play)
A fairly typical successful flash game, though not a massive hit in terms of plays

Total Plays: 3.7 million plays to date
Gross Revenue: ~$8,200 to date
Gross eCPM: ~$2.22
[source: email interview]

Armor Wars (play)
Another game by the same developer as Mytheria (Diffusion Games), released afterwards to stronger interest from sponsors

Total Plays: 2.2 million plays to date
Gross Revenue: ~$9,300 to date
Gross eCPM: ~$4.23
[source: email interview]

Chronotron (play)
Another game created by a single developer, and supported largely by revenue share on ads on Kongregate.

Total Plays: 7 million at time of this article
Gross Revenue: ~$15,000 in that same time frame
Gross eCPM: ~$2.14
[source]

Now let's have a look at some games using the Premium Model by selling full games:

Fantastic Contraption (play)
A free-to-play flash game, hosted on it's own site plus some portals, with a premium unlock for $10 that let you make your own levels and play other people's custom levels. Included solution-sharing via unique URL that helped it spread virally.

Total Plays: "over 3.5M unique users in the first 3 or so months"
Gross Revenue: "for every unique site visitor, he converts 0.5% to a paid version [at $10]" = ~$175,000
Gross eCPM: ~$50.00
[source]

Now Boarding (play)
A free-to-play flash game hosted on various portals that had an upsell to a downloadable for-sale version (at ~$15)

Total Plays: 4.2M – 6.2M plays (some portals made it impossible to track this, hence the range) over the last year
Gross Revenue: 10,500 sales so far x $15 = ~$155,000
Gross eCPM: ~$25.00-36.90, depending on above
[source: phone interview]

And some games using the Premium Model by using microtransactions:

Twin Shot (play)
A free-to-play flash game by Nitrome with various virtual currency unlocks, including a level pack and cheats

Total Plays: "over 10 million plays"
Gross Revenue: unspecified (but calculations from the eCPM they gave says it would be about $25,000 at the time of the Q&A)
Gross eCPM: ~$2.50 but up to around $5.00 in english speaking territories (based on 60% developer cut of Mochi Coins revenue alone)
[source]

SAS: Zombie Assault 2 (play)
A free-to-play flash game by Ninja Kiwi with various virtual currency unlocks

Total Plays: "about 5.7M plays and 700k plays from the expansion pack" = 6.4M plays
Gross Revenue: ~$22,400
Gross eCPM: ~$3.50 but up to over $11.00 in english speaking territories (based on 60% developer cut of Mochi Coin revenue alone)
[source]

Minions On Ice (play)
A free-to-play multiplayer flash game by the Casual Collective where you could pay to get bonuses and access to extra vehicles quicker than normal

Total Plays: n/a
Gross Revenue: n/a
Gross eCPM: an ARPU of $0.40 was mentioned by the developer, which means $0.40 revenue per unique player. My Gross eCPM counts total plays rather than unique plays, but if we ignore that we would get a Gross eCPM of $400; if we had the 'total plays' number this would be lower – but not all that much lower.
[source]

That's a massive, orders-of-magnitude difference between the revenue rate for ad-funded flash games and premium flash games. And once you start charging the players instead of hoping for ad money, the sky's the limit. Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO run by Three Rings revealed last year that they make make an ARPU of ~$1.50 per player, per month – which would give a comparative Gross eCPM of ~$1,500. Yep.

Edit: Daniel James (Three Rings CEO) left a comment giving me a much better way to calculate a comparable 'Gross eCPM' for Puzzle Pirates. He says for every 1,000 new visitors to the site they get about 100 who actually download & play, leading to a lifetime value of about $200-$500; so a better 'Gross eCPM' for Puzzle Pirates (over many months) is ~$200-500.

Set Phasers To Premium

I hope this has convinced you, the flash game developer, to seriously consider moving away from the Ad Model and moving into Premium Flash Games. It's the future – embrace it.

PS- Many thanks to all the flash developers who have shared their revenue numbers with the rest of the industry. We too will be doing this as we work on our first game.

This post has also been published on the Mochi Land blog. Thanks Mochi!

Itsa Money!

We want to build up this part-time game development gig into a successful business, so we have to think about how to make this profitable from the beginning! Here's how we are going to monetise the games we are working on – if you are a game developer (or thinking of becoming one) this should be very helpful to you too!

Casual Flash Game

The first game we are building is a casual flash game: playable within a browser without a powerful gaming PC and immediately ready to play without a big download. There is a huge, huge market for flash games with literally hundreds of millions of people playing them every day – in fact more people play games online than on consoles! The downside is that while console gamers are used to shelling out giant wads of cash for games (or even measly extra controllers), online punters have gotten used to getting things for free. Despite this there are still opportunities to make some serious cash:

Advertising

Wherever there are eyeballs looking at something, there are brands paying to advertise to them. Online gaming is a natural fit for this. One way of ad-enabling your casual game is to add in-game advertising (companies like MochiAds, GameJacket or CPMStar make this very easy), while another good way is to host the game on your own site and serve ads beside it using Google AdSense. Both ways will make you good money, but only if you can get millions of people to play your game. The most popular games have made tens of thousands of dollars from advertising alone – some of which were games made by a single developer in a couple of months! Have a look at these examples of cash made from ads in casual games:

• Bloons (2 developers) making $30,000 a month
• MochiAds forum thread about revenue totals
• 1 developer, over $4,500 in 1 year
• 1 developer, over $1,700 in 1 month

If you do make a super-popular hit you can make a lot of money this way, however it's not easy and the payout for less popular games is hardly enough to make you quit your day job! Have a read of Ryan of Untold Entertainment's excellent Pimp My Game series of articles where he puts a game he made in 48 hours through the various ways of making money – I think it's up to $17 of sweet, sweet profit so far.

Sponsorship

The most popular gaming sites (called portals) are making money hand over fist from advertising; so much so that they are willing to spend a pretty penny to sponsor games. A game sponsor will generally get their logo and a 'more games' link back to their portal inside your game, and in return will give you an up front cash payment (from $500-1000 for a very simple game to thousands or even 10k+ for something really good). If your game is popular they will get many more visitors, making their portal even more valuable to their advertisers.

Licensing

Portals need the games developers are building, particularly the good games that get players coming back again and again. So much so that many will license your game for their site, paying you a fixed fee to get to host your game (and sell ads around it). Between sponsorship and licensing many casual game developers have reported matching the earnings they see from in-game ads (all three methods can and should be done together). FlashGameSponsorship is a great site that explains in detail how sponsorship and licensing your game to portals can work for you. The same people have also built FlashGameLicense which lets you show off your game and invite sponsorship/licensing offers from game portals; I've heard great things about it and we will be using it when our casual game is ready.

Selling To Customers

The above revenue channels all rely on giving your game away; how about the traditional, proven method of asking gamers to buy your game? Some developers are doing just that. Naturally you need to make a pretty good game to justify the cost to a market of gamers used to getting things for nothing. How about the best-looking arcade game I've ever seen in Flash, RoboKill? They have a demo playable online and you can unlock the full version by paying $10. I'd love to know how successful this has been for RockSolidGames!

Be A Portal

If they are happily paying out large amounts in sponsorship for simple games you can bet your right arm they are making even more money themselves! So you could certainly try hosting other people's games w/ advertising and see how it pays – we may even try it down the line. MochiAds give you access to free games for your site as long as the developer gets to show their in-game MochiAds – this would be an excellent source for games if you wanted to try being a portal without spending too much up front.

Persistant Game World

Our long term plan is to build a multiplayer tactics game with persistent units hosted on our site. This will make for a much more compelling, exciting game – and it also gives us way more ways to earn money from our happy gamers:

Community

The game should be free to play for everyone as you need to grow a community around a multiplayer game or it will never get anywhere (particularly with our generous marketing budget of 2 shillings and an old shoe). You can use ads on the site to get a little bit of revenue, but practically speaking you will not get the millions of players you need to make you those fistfuls of hot, sweaty cash.

Subscriptions

You then offer an enhanced version of the game at a price for people who are really into the game. Enhanced can mean extra functionality, or new races/ingame stuff only available to subscribers, or even just cosmetic bonuses like getting an 'I Rock' badge on their profile.  One thing that is important to us is to totally avoid making players who don't subscribe be unable to compete on a fair playing field in the multiplayer game – we will never make it so you feel you have to pay to be able to do well. That said many online games do exactly that so it certainly is a (slimy) way to encourage subscriptions.

Sell In-Game Thingies

That's right, thingies. One very interesting alternative to subscription-based revenue is to use micro-transactions to directly sell in-game stuff to your players. This can be anything from enhanced items to the ludicrously popular cosmetic stuff- special pirate hats for your players, or a custom badge for your profile. This model of providing the game for free and then selling extras to enthusiasts can really scale up moneywise and there are a lot of examples of it doing extremely well. Just look at Maple Story which made over $30M in 2007 from selling in-game clothes and hair makeovers! We'll be thinking very carefully about this model vs subscriptions when we are getting ready to launch our persistant game.

Alternative Revenue Ideas

Those are the most obvious ways of earning money from your game, but that's not quite the end of the story.

Sell to Other Developers

Once you have a lovely, polished game engine you have the option of licensing this out to other developers for a tidy fee. You could also do this with smaller components, like a map editor or similar. Flex in particular doesn't have much in this space but must have a large amount of prospective customers. We may consider this, depending on just how lovely, extensible and useful our work ends up being!

Blog -> ???? -> Profit

Writing a blog can directly (eg ads) and indirectly (referrals to your game, free PR, getting 'noticed') make money for you. We don't intend to ever directly try and make money from this blog but it will be interesting to see what else comes up!

Sell The Company

You can't really plan for this one or count on it happening, but sometimes small independent game companies get bought out by bigger companies, making their founders filthy rich and smug to boot. I'll let you know if it happens to us!

Have any other ideas about this topic? Post a comment!