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GameMakerGames News: Competition Time

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:30:45 -0500

We have started a new mini-competition. The deadline is August 1st. For information, go here: http://www.gamemakergames.com/forum/index.php?topic=39936.0

GameMaker Blog: Mike Deroche’s DLLs

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:30:25 -0500

We haven’t mentioned any sites offering Game Maker resources for a long time as the vast majority of these projects are mediocre at best and quickly turn into a collection of broken links to a puny amount of files. Once in a while I stumble across a real gem though. Mike Deroche’s personal site is one of them.

Mike makes available for download the 24 DLLs he has created for use with Game Maker on a beautifully designed yet entirely functional website. You may struggle to find a use for some of them such as a DLL that controls the keyboard lights for Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock but others are far more practical including the OnTop DLL which forces the game window to the top of the window order and the NetRead DLL which makes it easy to retrieve data from the Internet.

Classic Gaming: Empire Earth Becomes a Good Old Game

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:25:14 -0500

For a mere $5.99, you can download Empire Earth (Gold Edition) from Good Old Games Control the destiny of a fledgling civilization through as many as...

Classic Gaming: From The Vault: Classic RPG Box Art

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:04:55 -0500

Game Informer is milking its collection of old game boxes by taking a look at some classic roleplaying games For the past few weeks, weve dug through...

Classic Gaming: All Your Antiquated Memories Are Belong to Us

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:55:57 -0500

Games Radar counted down the top 40 most repeated game quotes ever Film and television quotes are so entangled with our language that their origins...

GameMaker Blog: Competition: Twenty Dollar Explosions

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:46:12 -0500

Game Maker community website GameCog.net [site|launch] is holding its third game development competition with a theme of “Explosions“.

A total of $40 of prizes are available with $20 being awarded by a team of judges and a further $20 GameMold Choice Award. Games must be submitted by August 29th.

GameMaker Blog: YoYo Games set to reveal Monetization plans for Game Developers

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:25:15 -0500

Hopefully it won't be Monopoly Money

It looks like we can expect some exciting announcements from YoYo Games in the near future.

“The C++ Runner was not written to make GM faster, but to make it possible to write games on the PC (or Mac) and then run them on OTHER DEVICES. More on that quite soon.
…
We crave ACCESSIBILITY…giving you (…) the chance to PLAY, MAKE and SHARE games. I have a strong feeling that the “MAKE” part can also mean the best developers can MAKE MONEY from 2D games..more coming soon”
-YYG blog (today)

When asked about YoYo’s aims for the future at the end of last year Sandy suggested that some of the best games uploaded could be sold and a few months later hinted at an advertising revenue share model.

“Our ultimate goal is to publish the best of the games that get uploaded to the site. We will of course only do that with the permission of the developer of the game. If we achieve our goals, then the most
successful developers could earn hundreds of thousands of dollars…maybe even more. We’re working hard behind the scenes on making this a reality, but it takes time and money to make this happen and we don’t (sadly) have unlimited resources. The first people to earn money (we’ll share our revenues with the developers of course) will be doing so before the end of 2009, maybe sooner.”
-GMTech issue 14 (Dec 2008)

So far no details of YoYo’s current proposals have been released.

Photo by Flickr user mellyjean. Released under a CreativeCommons license.

GameMaker Blog: Book Review: Getting Started with Game Maker by Jerry Lee Ford

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:16:12 -0500

There are several different ways you could choose to get started with Game Maker. You could download tutorials, fiddle around with examples, buy a book or play around in the IDE. When I started using Game Maker there were no English-language books devoted to introducing the software so I was more limited in my options. It is therefore interesting to see how I could have been introduced to Game Maker if I were to stumble across it for the first time today.

The recently published Getting Started with Game Maker by Jerry Lee Ford [read our interview with Jerry] aims to introduce Game Maker and teach basic game development and programming principles.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first Ford provides an overview of the Game Maker IDE to help the reader get a feel for the software they will be using. The second part of the book teaches development using Game Maker’s drag-and-drop functionality through the creation of four games, whilst the final section introduces coding in Game Maker Language culminating in the production of a space invaders clone.

Written for use with Game Maker 7 Getting Started with Game Maker positions itself at a level prior to The Game Maker’s Apprentice with the book Mark Overmars co-authored being recommended as “a good next step for beginning Game Maker developers”.

The book is written assuming the reader has no prior game making knowledge and emphasises the ability to be able to create games without having to learn a programming language heavily in the opening chapter.

The vast majority of examples can be completed with the free (Lite) version of Game Maker although Pro is needed for some of the topics covered towards the end of the book. Ford says upgrading is “well worth” $20 (the current upgrade cost is actually $25).

Super Pong game from Getting started with Game Maker

Whereas other books or tutorials may feature practical instructions from the offset Getting Started with Game Maker provides a thorough introduction to the different areas of Game Maker before commencing any game creation. This may be frustrating for those wanting to dive straight into making games but I believe this format is more beneficial allowing game development to progress more rapidly once the necessary basics have been explained.

After the first section each chapter starts by introducing new elements of Game Maker or a game design topic and culminates in the production of a game. For example in chapter 3 Ford discusses the merits of using power-ups and difficulty settings within your game to maintain user interest and the GML section includes an introduction to the areas of iteration and selection.

Working through the games taught threw up some unexpected problems as right from the very outset (a simple Bouncing Balls program) instructions were missing. In this instance it was the omission of a step to add a background image to the room but unfortunately this wasn’t a one off. Perhaps this could be overlooked had it of occurred later on in the book but in the opening chapters of a book aimed at total beginners this is likely to confuse and irritate readers.

Each game is created following a seemingly untouchable pattern. First import all resources used in the game, second create and program the objects and finally place objects in rooms. This is unrealistic particularly with the complete lack of mid-creation testing which should surely be encouraged and is only touched up on in the final chapter.

There are a few generalisations towards the start of the first section, such as stating that in Game Maker 30 steps equates to one second and that sprites have transparent backgrounds, however full explanations of these are given later on.

“Tricks” boxes throughout the book contain useful shortcuts which can make your programming more efficient and some of them were certainly new to me. The promised series of ‘challenges’ at the end of each chapter never materialised which I found disappointing.

Of the games taught three are two-player games presumably this is to make creation more interesting as you can play the finished games with a friend or family member. I was quite surprised however to see that neither a platform game or a maze game were included as these both leave lots of room for extension as opposed to the fairly narrow scope of the specific arcade games.

Throughout images are given for reference consisting mainly of clearly annotated screenshots of the Game Maker IDE but there are also a few diagrams to illustrate concepts and 7 pages of easy to use reference tables for all of Game Maker’s drag-and-drop actions.

Good naming practise is taught with all objects, scripts and sprites being given suitable prefixes to avoid confusion when coding and all Game Maker Language code is fully commented to explain the intended actions.

On a couple of occasions I spotted a younger sibling (who is aware of but does not use Game Maker) flicking through the book and he seemed pretty interested in the arcade style games taught throughout the book even though I beat him at them! The language used should ensure that the book is understood by children as all technical words are explained when they are introduced and there is also an online glossary.

As well as teaching game creation the book also explains how to use the YoYo Games website to distribute finished projects and an appendix provides details of websites providing further information about Game Maker.

The resources needed are either included with the Game Maker 7 download or are available from the publisher’s website [download here] where both the graphics required, the source code for the completed games and appendices can be found.

Verdict: A good all-round introduction to using Game Maker to create games from the basics of drag-and-drop through to GML. The topics covered at the start of each chapter can easily be transferred to programming in other languages. Seems a shame that the book was released when it was. A couple of months later and it could have been released for use with Game Maker 8 and would probably receive more attention as well as ensuring it is correct for the version most people will be using.
ISBN: 1-59863-882-3
Pages: 318. Black and white.

Buy it: Amazon.com (US) $26.49, Amazon.co.uk £18.99

Nice to see the successful GMTech getting a mention in an Appendix

GMTutorials Examples: block man electric attack

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:37:06 -0500

controles hold space to charge up the electric ball move with the arow keys hold x when ur traped

Classic Gaming: Yes, They Were Once Considered Hawt

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:34:24 -0500

Games Radar has a funny little feature up called The Ugly Polygon "Babes" of Yesteryear 3D games, as a rule, dont age well. The games of the...

Classic Gaming: Download Daggerfall For Free

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:40:16 -0500

To celebrate The Elder Scrolls' 15th birthday, Bethesda is offering you a chance to Download Daggerfall For Free Five years ago, to celebrate the...

GameMaker Blog: If one more person tells me about Game Maker on PSP…

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:26:09 -0500

From Flickr user ruminatrix. Released under a CreativeCommons license.

GameMaker Blog: Save the Planet claims $2,500 from 2BeeGames

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:10:26 -0500

A few months ago 2Bee Games launched a $10,000 Game Making Contest in which two Game Maker games, “Bumps” and “Save the Planet”, made the finals. Recently the results of this contest were announced with Edouard Mercure’s Game Maker game Save the Planet coming second in the community vote.

“We are proud to annouce [sic] that Auditorium has been awarded the 2Bee Games Grand Prize! This of course means that Cipher Prime will receive $10,000 in prize money, and start negotiations for a publishing deal!

Terence Lee, creator of Storm, has therefore received the Community Favorite Prize, which means that a cool $5,000 will be heading his way.

Eduoard Mercure, the creator of Save the Planet has received the Community Favorite Runner up Prize, and the $2,500 that goes with it.”

-2BeeGames

Biotech Gaming: Yes, we're still here!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:52:28 -0500

I know it's been a while since we've posted anything, but hang tight, there's some great new stuff coming very soon. At the moment our main focus is the game design contest over on BZP. Here's a bit of promo artwork for our entry:

Rather interesting no? That game will be up for download within the next few days, and then we'll get right back to finishing off the achievement system for The Insurgent.

GameMaker Blog: 2009 Predictions: 6 months on

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:32:58 -0500

At the start of the year we asked readers of this blog to predict whether or not certain events would happen this year. Now six months on how have the predictions fared?

55% of you thought that the mac version of Game Maker would be released. At the end of last year we had just seen the release of the first closed beta. Recently we showed you some exclusive screenshots and videos of a more up-to-date version and the second beta has since been sent to testers. We still do not know whether YoYo Games intend to release Game Maker 7 for Mac or will jump straight to Game Maker 8 Mac. The current version however is Game Maker 7.

The same percentage of you thought that Game Maker 8.0 would be published. This should happen with the recent release of a public beta and the latest word from Mark Overmars being that a launch is planned “during or after the summer”.

55% of you also thought that YoYo Games would reach 50,000 hosted games. In the six months from then approximately 7,000 games have been uploaded which is well short of the target. If uploads continue at the same rate there will be 43,000 games by the start of 2010. The slow-down in the rate of uploads can partly be explained by the lack of a YoYo Games contest (although we should see one when Game Maker 8 is released).

Just over a quarter of respondents to our poll believed that one or more of the well-established Game Maker magazines would stop producing this year. GMWeekly has gone and its KwikLook reincarnation has been turned into a blog. MarkUp has not released an issue so far this year.

23% of readers thought that we would see a battle between the two rival video services GMTV and GMVision. Although we have seen the first release from GMVision GMTV repositioned themselves to aim for shorter more frequent episodes however have not produced any new shows since GMVision began.

I am unsure of any reliable ways of measuring the number of active Game Maker users so whether or not Game Maker loses market share will remain a mystery.

Classic Gaming: Old LucasArts Games Get Steamed

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:36:44 -0500

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill! It turns out that LucasArts' big announcement is that it is bringing its back catalog of games to...

Classic Gaming: Your Last Chance to Become a Pinball Wizard

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:43:04 -0500

You have until Midnight to either turn into a pumpkin or save 20% on all of GoG.com's classic pinball games collection During this weekend, until...

Classic Gaming: LucasArts Announcing A New Old Game

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:21:03 -0500

It looks like LucasArts will be announcing a remake of a golden oldie tomorrow "Amazing news coming Monday! Super excited! You have no idea how...

Lost Garden: Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:40:00 -0500

Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

Hello Flash game developer,

Over the past couple months, I've spent a bit of time looking at Flash gaming on web portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds. There are over 14,000 games spread across 30,000 portals with hundreds of new games coming out every month. The output alone is amazing.

Let me cut to the chase. I think that you, Flash game developers, are some of the most talented and inspirational people working today in game development. Your passion for building games burns so incredibly brightly. Your ability to quickly make and distribute games is second to none. You hold immense potential to transform the future of games.

Let me tally your blessings:

Cheap and effective distribution: Your platform reaches over 350 million players, more than all home consoles combined. A poor college student can release a half decent game and within a month, a million people will play it. Such reach is unheard of on almost any other platform.
Robust technology: Graphics, animation, sound, video, physics and networking technology is freely available and works surprisingly well. You are building on one of the most accessible and robust multimedia platforms that has ever existed in the history of the world. Where other teams waste man months just getting a black triangle showing on the screen, you can have a working game up and running in hours.
World class creative tools: Flash is fed by an art pipeline familiar to millions of artists that has been polished and tested over the past decade.
Thousands of developers making stuff just for you: With a few simple API calls, you have the entire power of the web at your finger tips. Want to send emails, suck in friend lists from Facebook, access payment systems, or let people buy underpants emblazoned with your logo? It is all there waiting for you to piggyback atop.
Immense creative opportunities: Flash is uniquely positioned to create social games, mobile games, location-based games, games that suck in databases, games that use video, games that use real-time audio, games that connect millions. The number of radical new game genres is primed to explode like no other time since the 80's. And you have all the tools necessary to drive the wave of game play innovation forward.
Freedom: You can make whatever you want. Unlike developers of other platforms, there is minimal interference from traditional gate keepers such as big company politics, retailers or publishers. The Man doesn't own you, at least not yet.

Such riches! Your platform of choice contains almost everything you need to radically transform gaming as we know it.

The mystery

So...where are the great world changing Flash games? They appear to be missing.

What we'll cover

Flash games are currently the ghetto of the game development industry. Compared to the number of players it serves, the Flash game ecosystem makes little money, launches few careers, and sustains few developer owned businesses. Despite the vast potential of the ecosystem, Flash games contribute surprisingly little to the advancement of game design as an art or a craft.

In order to understand why this promising game platform is such a surprising dissapointment, we'll look at Flash games from three perspectives:

Chapter 2 - Making money: How do Flash developers currently make money.
Chapter 3 - Generating value: How Flash developers currently create 'valuable' game for their players?
Chapter 4 - Reaching customers: How developers currently reach their players.
Chapter 5 - Premium Flash games as a service: A mental model for understanding the new world of web gaming.

For each step, I'll cover alternative techniques that give you, the game developer, make even better games.

Chapter 2 - Making Money

Money makes the world go round. It pays salaries and gives developers the time and space to create creative products. Yet, Flash game developers don't seem to be making much cash.

Flash gaming's Achilles heel

I took a look at the Flash ecosystem to see if I could spot the fatal flaw.

The red flows are where people pay out money and the green items are places where people earn money. Here are the common money sources for the developer:

Direct: The game developer sells ads from a generic ad service on their personal website or portal.
Game specific ad service: An ad service such as Mochi collects Flash ads that are typically placed in front of a game during loading.
Site licenses: A portal pays a developer a fixed fee for a customized site locked version they hope will increase player retention.
Sponsorship: A company pays a developer a fixed fee in order to direct customers from other portal to their portal in the hopes of capture those customer's lifetime ad revenue.

There is one obvious fact: the entire flash ecosystem is driven by low quality advertising. Piddling amounts of ad money flows into the developer's pocket through a variety of obfuscated middlemen.

Ads are a really crappy revenue source

For a recent game my friend Andre released, 2 million unique users yields around $650 from MochiAds. This yields an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of only $0.000325 per user. Even when you back in the money that sponsors will pay, I still only get an ARPU of $0.0028 per user. In comparison, a MMO like Puzzle Pirates makes about $0.21 per user that reaches the landing page (and $4.20 per user that registers)

What this tells me is that other business models involving selling games on the Internet are several orders of magnitude more effective at making money from an equivalent number of customers. When your means of making money is 1/100th as efficient as money making techniques used by other developers, maybe you've found one big reason why developers starve when they make Flash games.

The effect of 1/100th as much money

Due to the low quality revenue streams, even great games make beer money, not rent money. A good game will make $1000 and a great game might earn $5000-7000. A rule of thumb is that you need to release 10 good Flash games a year to convince your girlfriend's father you are not a bum.

10 games a year may not seems like such a big deal to some, but there is a hidden one-two punch that knocks most developers into bankruptcy

Most Flash game developers have little financial cushion and live paycheck to paycheck.
Flash game revenue is highly bursty due to a reliance on landing sponsorships upon release of their latest game.

It is common for a developer to release several games in a row and get sponsorships or licenses for each one. But the inevitable randomness of game development results a month or two delay on your next project. It only takes missing one or two of those 10 games to force a professional Flash developer into ever waiting arms of endless soul sucking contract jobs. It is surprisingly hard to change the world when you are stuck re-skinning the latest Mountain Dew advergame.

Only cockroaches survive without money.

It doesn't matter much raw talent you possess. With the right support, you could be the next Miyamoto. Sorry, not important. All that really matters is that you possess what I call the 'cockroach gene'. Can you churn out 'good enough games' and survive if your games repeatedly fail to make money?

The following are survival strategies employed by successful Flash developers:

Be a full time student: This is the dominant category of Flash developers.
Live in a socialist country: I'm looking at you, Scandinavians.
Have (rich) family that will support you: I've met folks that do this but it is uncommon.
Starve for your art: The Jason Rohrers of the world are also rather rare.

If any of these fit, congratulations. You are in the small percentage of developers that have the financial support necessary to be a Flash game developer. Everyone else, thousands upon thousands of talented developers, fall in a category called 'churn'. They can't even survive on ramen and passion. So they move on to richer markets or leave game development behind forever.

Such a loss. Such an incredible waste. I'd guess we are losing 95% of our best Flash games because the people with the talent to make great games find the Flash market financially untenable.

Solution: Players as a revenue source

Ads are a good secondary source of revenue, but surely there are richer sources of revenue? There is an obvious one, used for decades by all other game industries...why not ask the players for money?

Here's the theory behind asking for money for a game.

Players have access to lots of games. Most of which are free. This is the reality of the market.
However, at a certain point, they start playing your game.
If you've created a great game, some players will fall in love. They will be in the thrall of your reward system and your in game value structures. At this point, they don't care that there are other games. They don't care that they are playing on a portal. All they care about is your game. Games create value through play.
When a player is in love, money is no object. If you ask the player for cash in exchange for more value, they will often agree. It is a good exchange in their eyes: They give you a small bit of change and in return, they get proven, addictive experience that they love.

Ask for the money

When game developers ask for money, they are usually pleasantly surprised. Their customers give them money; in some cases, substantial amounts. I witnessed this early in my career making shareware games at Epic in the 90s and I'm seeing the same basic principles are in play with high end Flash games. Fantastic Contraption, for example, pulled in low 6 figures after only a few months on the market. That's about 100x better than a typical flash game and in-line with many shareware or downloadable titles.

Here are the four steps you need to follow in order to successfully ask for money from your players:

Offer: Offer premium content
Tell: Tell players about what they get if they pay you.
Repeat: Repeat the first two steps until it clicks with the player.
Accept payment: Get the money in your bank account.

Step 1 - Offer

Offer the player something valuable. Take a careful look at what players find valuable about your game and try dividing it up into two buckets: Introductory content and Premium content. Give away gameplay in the Introductory bucket, but sell the content in the Premium bucket. Many Flash developers insist on giving away everything for free. Stop devaluing your work and start creating a premium offer. Below are some ways of creating premium buckets.

Time gates	Players can play for some period of time and then they are locked out until until they pay. For example, players could play for 45 minutes - 1 hour (effective free trial times in the casual space) and then pay to play longer.
Content gate	Players play an initial teaser portion of the game for free and then pay to unlock access to additional content. For example, players could pay to unlock all the levels in a game. This is how many shareware titles worked.
Aesthetic items	Players purchase non-gameplay additions that increase their identity or status. For example, players could pay to give their character a cool outfit that they can show off to their friends.
Abilities	Sell unique abilities that let players experience the game in a new way. For example, players could purchase new jumping boots that let them fly through levels in a way that let's them re-experience the game all over again.
Bundles	Virtual items can be bundled together to create additional value. For example, if people love buying food for their virtual pet, let them buy a 10 pack of food for a 30% discount.
Consumables	Some abilities can expire after a period of time or after a number of uses. For example, you could buy a potion that increases your strength, but you can drink from it 3 times. Also known as "item rentals."
Subscriptions	If certain abilities or bonus are a valuable long term, consider charging a reoccurring fee. For example, you could offer extra storage for advanced players, but charge a monthly fee.
Stackable subscriptions	If certain abilities are additive(such as an experience or currencies multiplier), let players buy multiples of the same thing.
Rare items	Limit the number of items available so that players feel special when they purchase it.
Time limited items	Offer some items for short periods of time so that players feels that they lucked out finding the product in time.
Sale items	Set a standard pricing system for items and then offer some items for sale. This works great with time limited offers. Again, players love to get deals.
Gifts	Players seek to maintain social bonds by gifting other players with items or abilities.
Accelerators	Many games have a 'grind' that artificially lengthens the game. Players with little time are willing to purchase items that let them reduce or eliminate the time consuming activities in the game.
Physical goods	T-shirts and other branded items

Examples of premium content bucketing techniques

There is no need to limit yourself to any single one revenue stream. There are lots of different types of players and each player values something differently. Some players may be willing to buy a t-shirt. Others may want 5 stackable subscriptions. Others may just want a pretty new character with a panda head. When you restrict your game to a single revenue source, you miss out on gaining money from all the different types of customers that would have paid you if you had just given them the right offer.
When you design your game, pick three or four revenue streams and build them into your game. Here are some categories of users that you may want keep covered.
People who don't want to pay: Advertising is a good option to keep around. A few hundred bucks is still money in the bank.
People who are interested in more of the same: Once you've established the value of your game, some players want more. Give them more levels, more puzzles, more enemies in exchange for cash.
People who are interested in status or identity improvements: Some people see games as means of expression and identity. Give them items that let them express themselves or customize their experience.
People who have limited time: Some people live busy lives and want to consume your game when they desire and how they desire. Cheat codes, experience multipliers and other systems that bypass the typical progression all help satisfying this customer need.

Step 2 - Ask

Tell the player what they are going to receive in return for their money. If people don't understand the promise of what they are buying, they won't pay.

Ensure the user sees the offer: Screenshots, feature lists, and evocative language should be placed clearly in front of the user. You want convey to the player the value, both practical and emotional that they will experience if they were to gain access to the premium content.
Tie your offer of premium value to an explicit request for money. We live in a capitalist society so people understand the concept of buying something. Don't ask for a donation. Don't ask players to "give you what they feel like giving." People will think you are a charity case and in my experience your revenues will drop by 90% or more. Give the offer a specific price, be it $10 or 200 gold in your favorite virtual currency.
Time the appearance of the offer. You can ask for money when players are caught up in the emotional moment of play. Which is more valuable to the player? A Pirates of the Caribbean T-shirt at the mall or a Pirates of the Caribbean T-shirt right after you walk off the Disney ride and are flush with excitement? Both your odds of buy the shirt and your pleasure in owning the shirt are greater when you buy it after the ride. Use game design to make players fall in love and in their moment of game playing passion, they will be willing to spend money.

Step 3 - Repeat

Repeat telling and asking several times until the value of your offer sinks in. Players need to see the offer multiple times before they'll commit to making a purchase. One technique that works well is to put the offer in the natural flow of playing the game.

Prominently place the offer in high traffic areas of the game such as entry, save, in game store and exit screens.
Email the user periodically to let them know about specials or sales. By asking them to read an email, you are costing them time, so make sure that what you offer is valuable and delightful or else you'll end up with angry customers.

You can risk annoying the user if you do this too much, but in my experience coaching indie and Flash game developers, they err on the side of being hiding their offers. I've seen offer screen buried in option menus, guaranteeing that less than 1% of users will ever see them. I've seen offers that appear only if you click a tiny button. Users see it once and then never see it again. Don't be embarrassed. As long as your offer is clear, professional and doesn't attempt to trick or overwhelm the user, most players will see your purchase button as just another useful, functional part of the UI.

Step 4 - Get the money into your bank account

Use a payment service to process their order. The good news is that there are dozens of 3rd party payment systems on the market. The bad news is that they all have subtle differences that have a huge effect on both your short term and long term revenue.

The many layers of payment middlemen, each taking their cut.

(Margins are approximate and will vary depending on the service)

Some things to consider:

Margin: How much does the payment service take? The payment company is providing you with a service and deserves to be paid. However, you'll find that some companies take 10% and others take upwards of 75%. Companies pitch various bundled services such as storage or fraud protection as justification for their increased fees. Some companies will also share some of the margin with portals in return for them carrying the games. Shop around and be honest with the trade off you are making. Remember you'd need to get 5 times as much traffic to makes the same amount of money if you pick a service with a 50% margin vs a 10% margin.
Processing fees: Most Flash payment systems are simply a repackaging of non-Flash payment services with a pretty UI and a bigger margin tacked on top. The existing payment services already takes a chunk of the user's money in the form of 'processing fees' Ask if the advertised payment company margin is inclusive or additional to the existing 'processing fees'. A 30% margin seems reasonable, until you realize that it is on top of an existing 50% margin for a mobile provider. I like to ask "If the customer pays $10 on their credit card or phone, how much cash ends up in my bank account?"
White box or branded?: Some services like Super Rewards can be reskinned so that they are transparent to the end user. Until the player enters into the actual payment portion of the process, they feel like the stores and such are part of the game. Services like Noboba and MochiCoins are heavily branded with the payment company's logo. Their goal is to get the customer to invest their trust in them, the payment provider. The downside is that customers don't invest as much trust in you, the game developer.
Customer registration?: In order to track customers and their purchases, you'll want a secure login system. Some payment services let you build your own. Others require you to use theirs so that they can control the primary relationship with the customer. Often these services will not release customer lists to the developer. This becomes a problem long term if you release multiple games and want to run cross promotions.
Storage support: Once players purchase an item or feature, they'll want to have access to their stuff when they sign back in. This means your game will need online storage and a server back end. Some payment services offer this as part of the package, which is great for the common situation where the developer doesn't know much about back end programming.
Lock-in: Do you have the ability to easily switch to another payment service? In general, the more comprehensive solutions with customer make it more difficult to switch. With some comprehensive services, capturing customers is more valuable than your money. You only provide cash for a single game, but a customer can be sold and resold dozens of times to dozens of games. Run far, far away from such companies since their best business interests are not aligned with your best interests.

We are in the early stages of the Flash payment market. Often new game developers will unthinkingly jump on the first service that they happen across. In this low information environment, payment services can charge unreasonably high margins and very few developers will complain. Many will be excited to give away 50% of their money because they weren't earning any money previously.

A payment provider should be a reliable commodity service, not a major business partner. Over time, I predict we'll see more transparency and competition which should drive down prices. The ideal payment service is one with low margins, low switching costs, no branding and APIs that let you cheaply and easily tie into generic, developer controlled login and storage services. This will come about as a competitive market works its magic, but until then the opportunists are out in full force and Flash developers will pay a premium for their ignorance. By asking, comparing, and publicly publishing information about margins, developers can encourage payment providers to compete openly and honestly.

The good new is that some generic payment systems are cheap to hook up to your Flash game and allow for experimentation. On one project, we used SuperRewards and reskinned their front end to it fit nicely into our game. They charge 20% margin on all purchases, but we can now transparently swap in primary payment provider for credit cards, mobile etc. By mixing and matching we can build a payment front end that makes us more money. We own our own virtual currency and we own our customer data.

This was accomplished with one programmer in 2 weeks of work and can be reused across multiple games. Such a path isn't for everyone, especially if you lack web programming skills. However, with a little elbow grease, you can tap existing, proven, generic payment services to roll your own with very little downside.

Execution matters

Most Flash game developers are ignoring all of these steps. A few are doing a couple steps poorly, failing and then running about screaming that you can't make money off charging for premium content. Instead of jumping to ill formed conclusions, try executing with vigor some of the basic business lessons learned in the past 2000 years of capitalism. Just going through the motions isn't enough.

Here's an example of a good idea poorly executed. Dan Hoelck is the very talented developer behind the polished Flash game Drunken Masters, a game that attempts to charge for premium content. He created a content gate, displayed his offer to the player and integrated a payment service. Unfortunately, the resulting sales process is torpedoed by multiple fatal flaws. As a result his conversion rates are miserable: 0.01% of users purchase his offer. You'd hope to see numbers closer to 0.1 - 1%.

The call to action isn't clear. The offer is labled 'cheats' (not a positive connotation) and then crams lots of little detail in a tiny font at the bottom of the screen. I'm looking for a big 'buy now' button and some pretty pictures telling me all the lovely things I'll get. This is nowhere to be seen.
The value of the offer is questionable. He gives 90+% of the game away for free, and lets you purchase a few miscellaneous features that most people don't need. A good rule of thumb when using a content gate is that your premium content should be seen as twice as valuable as the demo experience.
Making purchasing difficult: In order to purchase, you need to manually type in a URL, find the right link to click on and then purchase. Is this necessary? Every step of the pipeline, you are going to lose large numbers of users. As much of the purchase flow should be within the game as possible.
Charging too little. Dan charges $1.50 for his game and this is likely too little. Beware your natural tendency to undercharge. People who love your game are surprisingly price insensitive. For example, in the microtransaction-based MMO Domain of Heroes, prices range from "$0.99 to $349.99 and about 80% of the revenue comes from purchases at the $19.99 pricepoint." With a little price experimentation I suspect Dan could have increased his price to $5 or $10 and increased his overall revenues substancially.

It is okay to fail. The basic system Dan made took him ~40 hours to implement and it is obvious he has learned a lot of lessons from the experiment. Building an effective sales pipeline is just as much a craft as making a great game. As a game developer you need to approach the task as a new skill to master that you likely aren't going to get right the first time. Put in the basics, measure your results and apply what you've learned to your next project.

But people will hate me if I charge money!

Some developers I've talked with worry that they'll alienate others by charging directly for their game. Here are some common concerns:

Bad reputation: Many Flash game developers are not in it for the money, but to be part of the indie community. The threat of a poor reputation can be frightening. The truth is that modest, self effacing developers that find financial success are worshiped like heroes. Just ask Colin of Fantastic Contraption how he was received at GDC. If you are worried about your reputation, stop starving yourself into hipness. Instead create great games and be generous to others. A good reputation follows naturally.
Players complaining: So what if you end up being hated by a few kids that feel entitled to free stuff? It isn't the end of the world. Usually the money and thanks from delighted customers more than make up for a few sour grapes tossed about on dark and skanky corners of the Internet.
Bad rankings: It is true that players will occasionally mark down paid games out of ignorance and spite. Luckily there is a solution. If you offer real value to customers in love with your game, your fan's rapturous applause will drown out whiners. Players, in aggregate, tend to forgive great games, even if they need to pay for them.
Sponsors: Sponsors don't want the game they serve competing directly with their primary source of revenue, ads. If you can promote that your premium game results in better player engagement and repeat plays, most portals will happily take their cuts of the resulting ad revenue and leave you to monetize your customers. A smaller number will worry that your premium content will pollute their 'free' label. An even smaller number will be greedy and ask for a cut of your hard earned customer revenue. In the short term, you can ignore demanding portals. The market is highly fragmented (30,000 portals!) and no portal owns more than 5% of the players. At this point in the market, developers have the ability to walk away from the greedy minority. Suggest reasonable terms where portal keep their existing ad revenue and you keep all in game revenue. If they balk, leave the bastards to rot.

If you make a great game played for hours on end by millions of people, you deserve to be paid. Stop worrying about how people 'might' react. Ask a fair price for the value that you provide.

Quick monetization check list

Are you asking users for money?
Are you telling users what they'll get if they pay you?
Have you hooked up a payment system before you launch your game?
Are you tapping multiple revenue streams that appeal to different types of users?
Are you basing your design decisions on the behavior of people who make you money?
Are you appropriately filtering the feedback of people who do not make you money?

Take care
Danc.

PS: Time for a short break! I'll follow up with the next few chapters in a couple of days.

References

Puzzle Pirates Metrics: http://www.slideshare.net/capncleaver/metrics-for-a-brave-new-whirled?type=presentation
Andy Moore interview on Fantastic Contraption: http://freelanceflashgames.com/news/2009/05/18/interview-with-andy-moore-manager-of-fantastic-contraption/
http://evolutionlive.blogspot.com/2009/06/ten-ways-to-monetize-your-flash-game.html
http://virtual-economy.org/blog/arpus_in_social_networks_and_s
Ways of monetizing Flash games: http://www.heyzap.com/developers/guide
http://www.flashgamesponsorship.com/advice/advice-from-industry-players/selling-premium-content-the-drunken-masters-experiment.html

GameMaker Blog: Upgrading Game Maker 8: Bye bye Softwrap?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:26:45 -0500

Compare and contrast:

Game Maker 7 registration/upgrade instructions:

You can also get to this form by choosing Upgrade from the Help menu. You can use this form to upgrade to the Pro Edition. There are a number of ways to do this.

The easiest way is to purchase the upgrade online. To this end press the button Purchase Online. You will be brought to a webpage were you can make you payment either by credit card or through PayPal. The payment will be handled by the company SoftWrap that is our authorized payment processor. Once you made the payment the software will immediately be upgraded to the Pro Edition without any further action from your side. Carefully save (and print) the confirmation you receive as it contains your purchase reference that you might need later if you want to reinstall the software.

If you purchased Game Maker before (and hence, have an activation code or a previous purchase reference) press the button Enter Activation Code. You will be brought to a webpage where you can either enter your activation code or your purchase reference from your previous payment. Here you can also retrieve your license if you lost it. After you filled in the correct information Game Maker will be upgraded to the Pro Edition. Note that you must have an Internet connection for activation.

-Game Maker 7 helpfile

Note that the price of Game Maker was subsequently increased to $25.

Game Maker 8 (beta) registration/upgrade instructions:

You can also get to this form by choosing Upgrade from the Help menu. You can use this form to upgrade to the Pro Edition. There are a number of ways to do this.

The easiest way is to purchase the upgrade online. To this end press the button Purchase Registration. You will be brought to a webpage were you can make you payment either by credit card or through PayPal. Once you made the payment a registration key will be shown on the website and will be emailed to you. You need to store this registration key carefully as you will need it again if you e.g. need to reinstall the software.

Once you purchased a registration key or got the registration key in a different (legal) way, press the button Enter Registration Key. You are asked to type in the registration key you obtained. Best use Copy and Paste. Note that the key only consists of digits (and the dash sign). After you typed in the key correctly Game Maker will be upgraded to the Pro Edition. Note that you must have an Internet connection for the key to be activated automatically. If it is not activated within 15 days Game Maker will revert back to the Lite Edition.

-Game Maker 8 beta helpfile

Wonder how many people will ’suddenly’ loose Pro after 15 days…

GameMaker Blog: Game Maker 8 Public Beta Released

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:17:55 -0500

When on Sunday we revealed that a beta of Game Maker 8 was “not far away” little did we know just how soon it would emerge.

Earlier today Mark Overmars posted details of how to obtain a copy of Game Maker 8 beta on the YoYo Games blog. To receive a copy of the beta you will need to register here which also gives you access to the bug reporting facility.

Features that will only be included in the Pro version are present but documentation states that the beta “will stop working at the end of August 2009. The same applies to all games created with this beta version.” Hopefully YoYo Games have put steps in action to ensure that this can not be abused.

Details on the new features included in Game Maker 8 can be found here.

YoYo Games Glog: Game Maker 8.0 Beta

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:01:53 -0500

The first beta of Game Maker 8.0 is now available for testing.

For this we will use our official Mantis bug reporting system. However, to make it possible for everybody to test the new version we created a special open version. You can access this at http://gm8.yoyogames.com.

To obtain the beta go to http://gm8.yoyogames.com, sign up for a new account, fill in the information, use the confirmation email you receive to activate the account, and log in. Now use the link Get Beta at the top left to obtain the beta. Install it and test.

Report all bugs through the Mantis system. We will not consider bugs reported in other ways. In particular don’t send us email. Also don’t post questions, only report bugs. Carefully follow the instructions provided on themain page. If you don’t you will give us a lot of extra work resulting in less bugs being solved.

For a list of the most important new features see the “What is New” page in the included help file. Note that the beta is not yet feature complete. We will still include some further (smaller) features.

Mark

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