Make Money From Games
Introduction
Making money off a web game is quite doable if you put your mind to it. With a Flash game, there are clear, established ways to make money, and for certain kinds of games, you can generate more revenue than going through a mobile App Store.
Besides creating games to make money whether it be for a living or for profit, it forces you to put more effort into what you’re doing. Creating a finished product and shipping it - the “last 10%” is something that can only be taught by doing it.
You’ll learn how to market your game, how to roll it out to testers, how to think from the user’s perspective, how to negotiate and get that sense of independence from knowing what you’re doing, which opens the doors to bigger and better opportunities.
Ads
Ads are a default way to make money, but unless your game is wildly popular or has already been sponsored, you aren’t going to see very much.
The amount you get from your game can be measured either in CPM (how much you get for every 1000 views of the ad) or in CPC (how much you get from a clickthrough). CPM varies depending on the quality of the ad, which in turn is dictated by the quality and size of the audience. It's more common for games than CPC.
Roughly speaking, ads fall into 2 categories.
In-Game Ads
Portals (Revenue Share)
Mochi and CPMStar are the major players in the world of in-game advertising. Mochi tends to have lower CPMs than CPMStar, but Mochi's biggest asset is it's distribution network. They blast out new games to thousands of portals to aid in your distribution. CPMStar is an invite only network.
With Portals, your best bet is Kongregate, which shares between 25 - 50% of revenue (through banner ads and pre-game ads) depending how integrated your game is with their API and exclusivity to them. Their CPMs are decent because of the relatively high quality of the games on the site and the focused, gamer-centric audience.
Bottom Line: All in all, ads are at best, a supplementary form of revenue that can tack on a little extra to a game that’s popular or sponsored, but they are rarely a primary source.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships are in general, the best way to make money with Flash games.
Sponsors are game portals who purchase exclusive rights to market and distribute your game on their site and other portals. How do they make it back? Through attracting players back to their portal, which drives in ad revenue for them.
Sponsorships vary widely in payment styles and terms. Generally speaking, they fall into one of 3 categories.
Lump Sum
Performance-Based
Hybrid of Both
Lump Sum
In lump sum arrangement, the sponsor pays you a fixed amount to buy exclusivity to the game indefinitely or for an agreed upon period of time, before the game “unlocks” and can be distributed on other portals.
What’s the range? From as low as $100 all the way up into the $10,000+ range. The median is somewhere around $500 for the average sponsor. For higher end sponsors such as Armor Games, it's still possible to receive a couple thousand.
This all depends on your ability to negotiate, your prior portfolio, the terms, the sponsor, and of course, the quality and potential of the game.
Performance-Based
In a performance-based arrangement, you are paid per click back to the sponsor’s site or per plays on their site.
Hybrid
Put the two together, and you get a model where you get some upfront payment and payment upon reaching certain milestones. For example, Armor Games could offer you $3,000 base but $150 for every 100k plays on their site and $200 for hitting the front pages of Kongregate and Newgrounds - all milestones that our best games regularly hit.
In the very best circumstances, a well-performing game may receive an offer to port the game over to iOS. ArmorGames did this for Kingdom Rush, and it’s opened up a new frontier in the world of sponsored games.
How do you find a sponsorship in the first place?
Two ways.
FlashGameLicense
Contacts / Your Network
FlashGameLicense (FGL)
FGL is essentially an eBay for sponsored games. For a 10% cut, they practically guarantee that a decent game (by their definition - they rate you from 1 - 10, with 8 being the magic number) will receive bids from sponsors. Some developers have voiced concerns with FGL, but for most developers, it’s still a great way to get noticed for the first time.
My advice is this: do your research and make sure you’re not getting screwed by the sponsor. Don’t automatically accept the highest offer. Think it through and go with your gut instinct.
Networking
The second way to snag a sponsorship is through contacts and people you know. I can’t coach much on this because it’s a natural cycle - if you know good game developers or have prior contact with the owners of sites, it’s relatively easy to snag a sponsorship that way. Building a reputation for making great, well-performing games will land you in this spot over time.
Virtual Currency
Some API providers such as Mochi have created virtual currency platforms for providing microtransactions to end users. Although there are plenty of stories of runaway successes with this model, you should be realistic about your chances because those successes came about from particular kinds of games which differ a lot from the games that most Stencylers will be making.
It sounds enticing to be able to sell “level packs” for your game, but you’re often much better off with a sponsorship instead, something that sponsors and industry veterans I’ve talked to have echoed.
Bottom Line: In short, unless your game’s hugely popular, is a Facebook/social game or really fits the virtual currency model, stick to the other methods of generating revenue instead.
Note: This advice is specifically for web games.
Introduction
Making money off a web game is quite doable if you put your mind to it. With a Flash game, there are clear, established ways to make money, and for certain kinds of games, you can generate more revenue than going through a mobile App Store.
Besides creating games to make money whether it be for a living or for profit, it forces you to put more effort into what you’re doing. Creating a finished product and shipping it - the “last 10%” is something that can only be taught by doing it.
You’ll learn how to market your game, how to roll it out to testers, how to think from the user’s perspective, how to negotiate and get that sense of independence from knowing what you’re doing, which opens the doors to bigger and better opportunities.
Ads
Ads are a default way to make money, but unless your game is wildly popular or has already been sponsored, you aren’t going to see very much.
The amount you get from your game can be measured either in CPM (how much you get for every 1000 views of the ad) or in CPC (how much you get from a clickthrough). CPM varies depending on the quality of the ad, which in turn is dictated by the quality and size of the audience. It's more common for games than CPC.
Roughly speaking, ads fall into 2 categories.
In-Game Ads
Portals (Revenue Share)
Mochi and CPMStar are the major players in the world of in-game advertising. Mochi tends to have lower CPMs than CPMStar, but Mochi's biggest asset is it's distribution network. They blast out new games to thousands of portals to aid in your distribution. CPMStar is an invite only network.
With Portals, your best bet is Kongregate, which shares between 25 - 50% of revenue (through banner ads and pre-game ads) depending how integrated your game is with their API and exclusivity to them. Their CPMs are decent because of the relatively high quality of the games on the site and the focused, gamer-centric audience.
Bottom Line: All in all, ads are at best, a supplementary form of revenue that can tack on a little extra to a game that’s popular or sponsored, but they are rarely a primary source.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships are in general, the best way to make money with Flash games.
Sponsors are game portals who purchase exclusive rights to market and distribute your game on their site and other portals. How do they make it back? Through attracting players back to their portal, which drives in ad revenue for them.
Sponsorships vary widely in payment styles and terms. Generally speaking, they fall into one of 3 categories.
Lump Sum
Performance-Based
Hybrid of Both
Lump Sum
In lump sum arrangement, the sponsor pays you a fixed amount to buy exclusivity to the game indefinitely or for an agreed upon period of time, before the game “unlocks” and can be distributed on other portals.
What’s the range? From as low as $100 all the way up into the $10,000+ range. The median is somewhere around $500 for the average sponsor. For higher end sponsors such as Armor Games, it's still possible to receive a couple thousand.
This all depends on your ability to negotiate, your prior portfolio, the terms, the sponsor, and of course, the quality and potential of the game.
Performance-Based
In a performance-based arrangement, you are paid per click back to the sponsor’s site or per plays on their site.
Hybrid
Put the two together, and you get a model where you get some upfront payment and payment upon reaching certain milestones. For example, Armor Games could offer you $3,000 base but $150 for every 100k plays on their site and $200 for hitting the front pages of Kongregate and Newgrounds - all milestones that our best games regularly hit.
In the very best circumstances, a well-performing game may receive an offer to port the game over to iOS. ArmorGames did this for Kingdom Rush, and it’s opened up a new frontier in the world of sponsored games.
How do you find a sponsorship in the first place?
Two ways.
FlashGameLicense
Contacts / Your Network
FlashGameLicense (FGL)
FGL is essentially an eBay for sponsored games. For a 10% cut, they practically guarantee that a decent game (by their definition - they rate you from 1 - 10, with 8 being the magic number) will receive bids from sponsors. Some developers have voiced concerns with FGL, but for most developers, it’s still a great way to get noticed for the first time.
My advice is this: do your research and make sure you’re not getting screwed by the sponsor. Don’t automatically accept the highest offer. Think it through and go with your gut instinct.
Networking
The second way to snag a sponsorship is through contacts and people you know. I can’t coach much on this because it’s a natural cycle - if you know good game developers or have prior contact with the owners of sites, it’s relatively easy to snag a sponsorship that way. Building a reputation for making great, well-performing games will land you in this spot over time.
Virtual Currency
Some API providers such as Mochi have created virtual currency platforms for providing microtransactions to end users. Although there are plenty of stories of runaway successes with this model, you should be realistic about your chances because those successes came about from particular kinds of games which differ a lot from the games that most Stencylers will be making.
It sounds enticing to be able to sell “level packs” for your game, but you’re often much better off with a sponsorship instead, something that sponsors and industry veterans I’ve talked to have echoed.
Bottom Line: In short, unless your game’s hugely popular, is a Facebook/social game or really fits the virtual currency model, stick to the other methods of generating revenue instead.
Note: This advice is specifically for web games.
ReplyDeleteLove them all! Thank you for a wonderful share!!!
Code Human in Vijayawada