At 5/6/10 06:15 AM, Jimp wrote:
Yeah this is what I have quickly come to realize in the past year or so. To make money, all a Flash game really needs is some kind of unique gameplay element, some appealing design and to be delivered at a fairly high standard. Its kind of a sad fact, but sponsors really don't seem to care about deep gameplay, high levels of polish, and those extra finishing touches that take time but really make a game shine.
Duh. You don't make money selling to people who are only visiting one web page - you're limited by the adverts you can sell that way! You ideally want games that take up thirty seconds of someone's attention before they click to navigate to a similar game on your website, allowing for more adverts to be viewed.
Any game that takes more than five minutes to play is a waste for sponsors - repeat views and unique attractions are one thing, but no sponsor is ever going to sponsor, oh, I dunno a well done 4X game for more money than a bejeweled clone just because it's a deeper game - there'd be limited appeal, limited pageviews, and it'd cannibalise the other stable of games for people that visit the site.
Fortunately, on the same token, less sponsors will sponsor recycled trash, since no one wants to visit a site with a billion copies of tic-tac-toe. Sponsors also know there's a chance that the game's going to be featured on a big name blog site like Kotaku or IndieGames if it's an actual diamond of a game and the artist has done the leg work of getting a gaggle of people to promote it for them, so might pay out a little extra for exclusivity.
In practice for every other game however, returns on investment really do look like a bell curve of time against cash.
