FGL FlashGamingSummit and GDC news

FGS and GDC are fast approaching and we’d like to let you know of some things you should check out if you are planning on going.

Chris will be speaking on one of the panels at FGS: “Money in Flash: Next Gen Monetization of Flash Games”. This panel will be at 10am in the Robertson Auditorium.

FGL will be having a get together on Wednesday (the 10th) afternoon at 4:30pm. Location: Buca Di Beppo, 855 Howard Street, San Francisco. Anyone wishing to go, please email Chris to RSVP.  First round of drinks (possibly more!) and food are on us!

UPDATE: ALL FGS and GDC tickets that we had are now gone!

Announcing FGL Developer Competitions #5 and #6: Saturday, March 13th

It’s time for more competitions! This time we’re doing things a little differently. Normally we present you with a theme and then give you a certain amount of time to make a game. This time, we’re presenting you with a bundle of art assets and seeing what you can do with them! When the contest begins, we’ll provide a number of assets, and your task is to make a game from them. You can use your own graphics, too, of course, but like the theme competitions, your rating will depend on how well you use the graphics we provide. Competition #5 will be a 24-hour contest; Competition #6 is a one-month contest that begins at the same time as #5. (So theoretically you could participate in #5, and then keep improving your game for contest #6.)

These contests are tons of fun and the competitive nature is a great way to get motivated. Our previous contests have helped inspire the creation of dozens of great games that went on to find sponsors. Since we’re providing free art assets this time, hopefully it will be easier than ever to turn your contest entry into a financially successful product! Get all the details here.

New Preview-Player Accounts are Here!

The only way to make your game great is to get feedback, improve the game, and repeat. So we’ve created another way to help you get even more feedback. Preview Players are non-developers who are interested in playing and giving feedback. Players who join must:

• Be invited by someone else on FGL (like you!)
• Agree to an NDA, swearing them to secrecy about the things they see
• Be 18 or over (so that the NDA is applicable to them). If they are under 18 they need to get a parent or guardian to sign up for them.

So, what does this mean for you? We’d like to ask you to do two things today.

1. If you are comfortable letting preview players play and give feedback on your games, please go to your game settings and let them in! (It is under the “Preview Settings” button when you are viewing your game.)
2. If you would like to help us test the program, and know someone who can give good feedback, click here and invite them!

If you have other questions please ask away! The system is very simple right now; we’ll expand it as we see what works, what’s useful, and what isn’t.

GameTracker v1.1 Launched!

What is GameTracker? It’s a very simple API you add to your game. When the game is uploaded to FGL, the API activates and records details about every play session that happens on FGL. You can then view each play session in detail to see how far people got, what they did, etc.

GameTracker also works on First Impressions users. This makes First Impressions an incredible mine full of information! You can see exactly what level players reach in the first few minutes, where they die, what they don’t understand… and then fix it!

The GameTracker API is now officially in beta! This is a bug-fix update for the AS3 version. An AS2 version of GameTracker will be available soon (watch for it in the next newsletter). Get started with GameTracker right away!

Rate The Feedback You Get!

While you are viewing your feedback from fellow developers or preview players, you can now mark their posts as Great, Amazing, or Perfect. This earns them additional community points and helps everyone see what good feedback looks like! Please don’t misuse or abuse this system; we are counting on our developers’ professionality to allow the system to stay simple and easy-to-use. As a guideline, you should not give out more than one Perfect Post on a single game.

Zygna Job Opportunity

Zygna, the web gaming juggernauts behind Farmville, are looking for Flash/ActionScript 3 game developers who can demonstrate the following skills:

• Principles of vectors and collision detection
• Flash to server communication
• A working knowledge of the Flash display list

Zygna adds: “We have our own building in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco that has a high-energy buzz and yummy amenities (we provide lunch and dinner every day!). Find more information at our website, or follow us on Twitter.”

GamerSafe Updates

As always, we’ve been busy adding new and exciting features to GamerSafe, making GamerSafe even better for both developers and your players. This month has seen significant improvements to both the API and the website. Our biggest achievements are detailed below, but we don’t have the space to write about all of the great things we’ve been working on! Improvements include new features for the powerful LevelVault data storage API, the ability to fetch information about how a player performed in your other GamerSafe games, and many other improvements to the player interface and website. The Bridge API has now been fully rolled out and is live on every website, and we have many more features in the pipeline!

If you have any feature suggestions or feedback for GamerSafe, we’d love to hear from you! (You can just reply to this email with your thoughts or concerns.)

LevelVault Goes social!

LevelVault is the powerful feature of GamerSafe that lets you support user-generated content with no stress, no bandwidth costs, no hassle. And now LevelVault supports customized level-sharing links for your data. Your players can publish a share link to Facebook or Twitter with the click of a button. The share links will send players directly to your game; our API then allows you to handle the request in any way that you like. This new feature can be used for sharing levels, creating “Challenge” links, “Add friend” links, or viewing replays! Whatever you’re using LevelVault for, making your game go viral on Facebook and Twitter is now easier than ever!

Thanks again for using FGL, and we hope you’re having a great February! Wait, February is over already? That’s unpossible… oh, a “short month”? Uh… sorry for the late newsletter!

-The FGL Team

This news will be going out in our newsletter, hopefully later today, but since time is a-fleeting we thought we’d get this on our blog right now.

FGL FlashGamingSummit and GDC news
FGS and GDC are fast approaching and we’d like to let you know of some things you should check out if you are planning on going.

Chris will be speaking on one of the panels at FGS: “Money in Flash: Next Gen Monetization of Flash Games” This panel will be at 10am in the Robertson Auditorium

FGL will be having a get together on Wednesday (the 10th) afternoon at 4:30pm.  Location: Buca Di Beppo (http://www.bucadibeppo.com/locations/default.aspx?location=0502) 855 Howard street.  Anyone wishing to go please email chris@flashgamelicense.com to RSVP.

I’ve actually been thinking of this for some time now.  But I’ve been way too busy to write anything about it.  And I actually think it is ironic that at this time, probably the busiest time ever in my life, I feel it necessary to finally get my thoughts on this out.

Through the years I’ve read about how companies and products are slowly implementing gaming features so that users will be 1) more entertained and 2) more easily tracked/mined/advertised too/etc… And lately I’ve seen a video of a presentation at DICE by Jesse Schell titled “Design Outside the Box” garnering a lot of attention.  The presentation is a good one and here is one of the many sites you can view it at.

I agree with the core of what Jesse says.  It is unfortunate that most of his speech is either a comical recount of social gaming emergence in the past year or a satirical story of what we can expect in the future, but I do like his main point which is this: Gaming mechanics are finding their way into all aspects of life.  However, I wasn’t quite sure if Jesse had any call to action about what to do about this.  He had a very short bit at the end basically saying it is in our (the game designers’) hands, but I wish he would have gone into the meat of it more.  What are the ethical ramifications?  What leads us to believe we will be better people with these systems in place?  I think I would have even enjoyed an extreme position: maybe a rant about how this is big brother 2.0, or how we should be happy that our society is on the cusp of transforming into a superior transhuman collective working toward common goals structured originally through game design.

It is possible that the point of the talk was not to focus on ramifications and our personal influence on the future, but I find it glaringly missing.  Not only do I find it missing from this talk, but from many other discussions I have heard.  Honestly, I don’t even know who agrees or disagrees with how I feel about the subject.  That’s why I felt the urge to post this and start a discussion.

So, assuming these sorts of game mechanics continue to trickle into our everyday lives, what should we be thinking about?  As both game designers and users of “the system” what should we worry about and what should we start to change, now, to make sure these mechanics end up bettering our lives?  Or should we throw the whole thing out the window?

I’ll start with some of my thoughts on the matter.

Firstly, I am acutely aware of the ethics gap that new technology often creates.  An obvious target here for argument is that on the back end of these gaming systems are corporations who want to make money off of users.  Or utilize user data to make more money.  I’m not sure this is inherently bad, but it can obviously be extremely bad if not used properly.  I often think about the gowalla’s and foursquare’s out there: The geotargetting programs that track where you are… no, that you TELL where you are… and award points for doing so.  Obviously this data is very interesting to companies.  And they surely keep people engaged and connected, in a way, which is their other intended purpose.  But what evil can be done when the whole world knows where you are, and where you’ve been.  Even if the companies themselves don’t misuse the data, others could.  There was an interesting article on techcrunch about this, to a degree, but it focused on the fact that you are letting others know you are out of your house. I actually think this is a little silly, but still it shows people have it on their minds.

Now, I don’t want to focus exclusively on the horrible things people can do to you with all of the information easily available to anyone on the net.  That is a different discussion.  I want to focus on issues with game design, but I DO think it is important to realize that these dangers do exist and we need to have them always at the forefront of our minds when designing and implementing systems.

And really, that is what is at the root of my fears; that designers and developers do not think of the good of the end user, and user flow, before pumping out systems with game mechanics.  This is another thing I wish Jesse would have covered.  He pointed out that we game designers could have a phenomenal impact on the effectiveness of these systems, but he did not point out that we could also have a similar impact on the ways they truly improve life for people and furthermore, do no harm.  And by this I don’t even mean personal harm by giving away user information, but indirect harm by being so narrowly effective they actually damage a process they are trying to improve.

Let me use an example.  Microsoft recently released an Office add-on called Ribbon Hero. Basically it turns your work into a game.  You get points for writing documents or filling out spreadsheets etc… Basically the thought behind it is by introducing game mechanics you can increase your productivity. They even brought on some game designers to help them, which I think is great.  I have to admit, I have not tried the product, but from what I’ve seen from several videos and heard from a few sources it seems to be a really cool system.  And I would bet it is effective in many cases.  However, I have one main issue with this, and it holds true to almost all other systems that implement game mechanics.  Any system containing game mechanics to reward users will be gamed by the users.  This is crucial, so let me emphasize it: Any system containing game mechanics to reward users will be gamed by the users. Now, you may be thinking that there are cases where this doesn’t fit.  Surely you’d only be cheating yourself to game a system meant to increase productivity in your work.  But think back.  Remember the days you were in high school or college and your teacher/professor would assign a paper that had to be 5 pages long.  What did you do?  You triple spaced the document and increased the margins and did everything you could possibly think of to get that 2 page paper to be 5 pages.  And if you didn’t, most of your classmates did (and you don’t need game mechanics to improve your productivity!).  So, using Ribbon Hero, let’s create a hypothetical scenario.  You run a company and you have all of your employees run Ribbon Hero so that they all can compare their scores to each other and have fun as they do their work and the hope is their productivity goes through the roof.  At first this works great, but then Bob (oh that Bob), finds a way around the system that lets him do half the work, but get the same score as everyone else.   Soon, Bob is half as productive as he was before.  Eventually, he lets his little secret leak and others in the company do the same.  Now, I could go on with this, but the point is to show the issues with putting game mechanics in places they weren’t originally.  If you don’t keep in mind the end goal things could work out counter to what was intended.  And in this case, you can’t even blame the employees.  What happened is that you, the boss, gave them an incentive and they worked towards that incentive.  If anything, the problem was that you gave them a flawed incentive! Even if you stressed that the points didn’t mean anything, by merely introducing the mechanic you changed up the atmosphere and created a new goal everyone was working towards.

I believe this will be one of the biggest, non-obvious, issues with introducing game mechanics into systems.  Influencing actions in ways not intended. I often think about a calorie counter program I have on my iPod touch.  Not only does it count calories, but you can record activities you do and it subtracts those calories.  One of the actions is “sexual activity.”  Now, the first interesting thing about this is I wonder how many people would truly be accurate with this if they knew there was even a possibility of the data being viewed publically, but another thing I think about is that if this system had a point system (I know of other calorie counters and health programs that do) how would that activity choice influence people?  If it were worth, say, 10x what other activities were worth, don’t you think there would be a great new pick up line for guys at bars?  “Hey baby, how about you and me go and score 500 points?” Or excuses for adolescents to pressure their significant others? “But, babe, we HAVE to do it… I’m only 50 points from level  5!  Would you keep that from me?” Humorous, yes, but with a sliver of truth. The main point is that gaming systems are intended to influence behavior, not merely track it, and if we are the ones responsible for implementing these influential systems, shouldn’t we be thoughtful to their impacts?

I sometimes joke that it is sad that I can easily find the player who scored the most goals at the game last night, but I can’t find an easy to view list of who the top brain surgeons in the US are (but if you’re interested in the band, you’re in luck!).  So why don’t we create a point system and a leaderboard for surgeons?  Now, this is meant mainly as a joke.  Of course there are huge ramifications in doing something like this, but that is exactly what I am concerned about.  How can we accomplish both things?  Or can we?  Can we create a system to appropriately reward the best surgeons without causing ill effects on other surgeons and patients?  Would such a system truly make surgeons perform better or would they do worse feeling the constant pressure on them? To challenge Jesse’s suggestion that these mechanics, when added, improve us as people I ask: “Are we more likely to be better people, or make it look like we are better people by doing whatever is most highly rewarded through these systems?”  And on that note, but to discuss another time, does that mean hackers will be our future idols?

Jesse’s closing remark is something I’m on board with.  Game designers, though I’m sure they will go by different titles, will have a great impact on the future of the world and how we interact with it.  We should seize on this opportunity, for sure.  However, we should not do so without careful thought and consideration of the impacts beyond short term gains.

-Chris
FlashGameLicense.com

Hi guys, FGL_Eric here! I used to put my trends-and-statistics posts in the forums, where they always got lost. Now that we have a blog, putting them here makes more sense. So without further ado, here’s a look back at 2009, especially contrasting it to 2008. All these stats are pulled from FGL’s database of games and sales. It’s important to keep in mind that this is a limited picture of the Flash market, because we’re only watching one of many revenue streams here. But it’s still pretty interesting, so here we go…

How Many Games Get Accepted Bidders?

First up is the most common question newbies ask: what are the odds my game will find a sponsor? Well, first we ask, how many games are there?

• Total games put up for bid during 2008: 3225. During 2009: 4087.

Then we ask how many games got bids they liked?

• Total accepted bids during 2008: 588. During 2009: 1196.

That gives us…

• Number of games that had accepted bids in 2008: 18%. During 2009: 29%.

(Those last numbers aren’t quite accurate since some games have multiple accepted bids, but it’s pretty close.)

This is a great trend! From 2008 to 2009, your odds of a sale on FGL went up by over 50%!

How Much Are Games Going For?

The range of sale prices is HUGE. It can be hard for a few statistics to convey this, but let’s give it a shot:

• Average (mean) accepted bid during 2008: $1295.80. During 2009: $1484.10

But like I said, that really doesn’t tell you much. Let’s break it down by Admin Rating. We give most games a rating between 1 and 10, which some sponsors use as a quick-gauge tool. But it’s also one (semi-arbitrary) way to break up our games by quality level.

• Average sale of games rated 1-4 in 2008: $482. During 2009: $350.
• Average sale of games rated 5-6 in 2008: $444. During 2009: $639.
• Average sale of games rated 7 in 2008: $889. During 2009: $999.
• Average sale of games rated 8 in 2008: $2017. During 2009: $2126.
• Average sale of games rated 9-10 in 2008: $3897. During 2009: $5567. *but see below

So what does all this tell us? The biggest gains are clearly in the highest-quality Flash products, but even medium-quality games are seeing a good growth rate.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that other revenue streams such as ads, microtransactions, and exclusive site-locks are not shown in this data. These other revenue sources can be very big money makers. In general they have a dramatic curve — middling-quality games (those rated 6 or less) tend not to make much money from other sources. Games 7 and above often make a modest amount from ads and a nice chunk of money from non-exclusives. The very best games can make a HUGE amount from each of these revenue streams.

* In fact, the top-end games are the least well represented here, because the best quality games have yet another revenue stream: they get performance bonuses from their sponsors, which can yield a very large amount of money, but aren’t recorded in our database here. It is not uncommon for a game that gets $6k in direct cash to also earn $15k to $20k when they reach performance goals. The best-quality games make a lot of money. But of course, very few games can be “the best quality”. Which brings us to the next topic…

How Good Are These Games?

The last numbers showed us that the top-end games are worth a whole lot more than the other games. So how many games are “top end” (in FGL’s subjective opinion)?

• Number of games rated 1-4 in 2008: 18.3%. During 2009: 10.4%.
• Number of games rated 5-6 in 2008: 49.3%. During 2009: 36.7%.
• Number of games rated 7 in 2008: 24.6%. During 2009: 35.7%.
• Number of games rated 8 in 2008: 6.5%. During 2009: 16%.
• Number of games rated 9-10 in 2008: 1.1%. During 2009: 0.9%.

Some of this data reflects how we rate games — we tend not to use the lowest part of the curve; if a game is so bad that it would get a 1-4 rating, we encourage the developer to go back and work on it some more before we review it. This is a policy we’ve been much more strict with this year, so many fewer games fall in that category.

But more generally, the bulk of games are starting to trend upwards in rating, which is slightly due to an increased pressure on our reviewers to rate games higher, but also points out that sales-quality Flash games are, in general, getting better. The competition is getting tougher, and more and more games are looking really good when they launch.

It’s also important to keep in mind that our ratings are not infallible. We’ve had a game we rated “6″ sell for $8,000. We’ve had a game we rated “9″ sell for only $250. These things happen. I am not trying to say our number is all that important — it’s just the only numerical rating we happen to have that applies to all our games, so it works well for these statistics.

How Big Are Games, in File Size?

One question we see a lot is, “How big are these game files?”

• Average Sold Game Size in 2008: 1.6 mb. In 2009: 2.13 mb.

So games are getting larger on average. But this single data point doesn’t tell a complete story. Here’s another illuminating data-point:

• Average Sold Game Size for Games Rated 8+ in 2008: 2.68 mb. In 2009: 2.76 mb.

This second statistic tells us that the highest-quality games have always been larger than the lower-quality games. But these top-end games aren’t getting a lot larger than they already were, while the lower-quality games are growing larger pretty quickly. (Remember this is a mean average, so the actual size of successful games varies quite broadly — anywhere from a few hundred kilobytes up to ten megabytes, which is the maximum size FGL allows.)

How Big Are Games, in Screen Size?

Another question asked often in the forums is, “What screen size should my game be?” Our data on successfully-sold games shows that the typical successful Flash game has a screen resolution of 640 by 480. There are some much larger and some much smaller, but for both 2008 and 2009, most successful games stuck pretty closely to this screen size.

ActionScript 2 versus ActionScript 3

Yet another constant forum topic is whether ActionScript 2 is dying out. Well, here’s some data for you:

• Percentage of Sold Games That Used AS2 in 2008: 63%. In 2009: 38%.

As you can see by these pie charts, the ratios flip-flopped — in 2008, the significant majority used AS2; in 2009, AS3 took the lead. At 38%, AS2 is not at all dead yet. But it does seem to be dying off. For 2010, that probably means that AS2 games are still fine. By 2011, we may start to see sponsors who only support AS3 (e.g. with their logos and banners and APIs). So our recommendation is to switch to AS3 for new projects, but if you’re working on an AS2 game now, don’t rewrite it — your AS2 games will still sell just fine, for now.

Can I Make This A Full-Time Job?

Sometimes seeing these sorts of statistics can be pretty depressing. The average top-quality Flash game makes only $5500 in sponsorship money? If you have a partner that splits those profits with you, then that may not seem like a lot of money, especially if you’re trying to do this full-time. Before jumping to that conclusion, there’s two key things to keep in mind. First, these are all mean averages, so a couple games in 2008 and 2009 made more than $50k in a single sale. But there are other top-quality games that just didn’t find a big buyer and ended up being sold for only a few thousand. There are many variables in determining a sale price. But if you were to make a few dozen top-quality games, then you would probably find they average around $5500 each, when you factor in the bigger and smaller sales.

The second thing was mentioned earlier, but bears repeating: this is only one of several revenue streams. The higher quality your game is, the more revenue options become available to you. Your top-end game will make some nice money from ads (CPMstar ads can earn you several thousand on a top-end game), and often you’ll have performance deals or bonuses for reaching certain goals your sponsor makes. A game that does well and uses the Primary Sponsorship model can also make several thousand from exclusive-sitelock deals for other portals. Some games fit into the microtransaction model well and can make extra cash with GamerSafe, too. All of these options require effort, but you can often double your money (or quadruple it, for the best-quality games) by following up on all the revenue streams available to you. Our numbers above follow only one source of revenue.

In the end, is it enough money to live on? That depends on lots of things — where you live, if you have a family, and most importantly, how many high-quality games you can make a year. We’re now seeing several small teams who make enough top-quality games to live nicely on the profits. On the other hand, it’s also highly variable — sometimes you may not make much money for months at a time, if a game doesn’t do well — so this a risky full-time job if you don’t have some money to fall back on.

We are also seeing a lot of top-quality games coming from hobbyists — people who spend a whole year on just one game, but they make that game count. This can be a very rewarding and lucrative part-time job or hobby. If you’re a hobbyist, keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity, because if you make a top-quality game, all sorts of money opens up for you, whereas middle-quality games will be stuck with fewer revenue sources. It’s definitely true that making one high-quality game is a lot harder than making multiple medium games, though. And just think, making this into a full-time job requires making multiple high-quality games each year. This requires extreme dedication and a lot of effort. In some ways it’s like painting or novel writing — you can make it a full-time job if you try hard enough, but it has to be your dream job, or you just won’t have the motivation to reach your goal.

The best news these numbers show is that the average sponsor sale price is going up pretty quickly. If this keeps up, we expect to see more and more people able to make this a full-time job in the coming year, and especially in 2011. Of course, game quality is going up just as quickly as sale prices are. It’s now very hard for one person to make a top-quality game, because most people aren’t good at the programming AND the design AND the artwork necessary to make them. Teaming up with another developer is now the best way to get top-end games quickly and efficiently.

The Wonder of Numbers

I could go on with tons more numbers and statistics, but I think these are the biggies — statistics that might help you plan, organize your game, or even consider whether making Flash games is right for you. But if there are other statistics you want to see, please let me know in the comments!

It’s that time of the month again,  yup boys and girls another glories episode of Way Too Casual has hit the internet!  In this fantastic episode we discuss some really cool games, Forever Samurai, The company of myself and few more.  But what really makes the podcast worth listening to (not saying you shouldn’t)  is in this episode we have a celebrity join in on the madness.   That’s right folks, *drum roll* after many phone calls, and a few shady deals, we were blessed with the presence of the mighty Chris Hughes; co-founder of Flash Game License and Gamer Safe.

What makes this episode stand out from all the others is the very insightful and thought provoking discussion we have on micro-transactions.  We try to cover the topic from both a developer and gamers perspective; discussing different ways to approach them, why gamers shouldn’t run away screaming from them, and lots more juicy information.

Although we did talk a pretty hefty amount about the topic, we’d like to hear what you the listeners have to say on this very touchy topic.  So we invite you to express your opinions on the matter by leaving a comment, voice-mail or an email.  By doing this you will be helping a greater cause and possibly get your email or voice-mail read on the next episode of the show!

E-mail: waytoocasual@gmail.com

Download Way Too Casual 02
“All micro-transactioned out!”
(MP3, 64.5MB, 70:28)
Subscribe via iTunes

-Joseph Burchett

Recently, Mochi released the results of the Flash Game Market Survey that we participated in, and I have to say I am a bit disappointed.  The number of responses was so low that I’m not entirely convinced the selection of respondents is indicative of the larger community.  But ultimately, for that, we can only blame ourselves. We have nearly 10,000 registered developers on FGL, and around 4,000 true unique logins a month, yet with us, Mochi, JiG, and Newgrounds participating we only got around 1,000 developers to participate?? Well, for now at least it is what we’re stuck with.

I did like that Mochi sliced and diced the data a number of ways, but I would have liked to see the data sectioned out into different categories.  And there were some other statistics I would have loved to see.   Luckily, since we helped with the survey we got access to the raw data.  So we can look at it any way we want.

However, there is a lot of data, and it is a bit daunting to just dive in and dredge through it all.  What I decided to do was to pick a couple of data points and look for some interesting bits of information, then post it here (and I have, below).  Then I want to ask all of you to give me some suggestions on what types of metrics/data points you’d be interested in seeing.  So, feel free to comment below.

First, I need to give some disclaimers for the following info.  For the age data (and only the age data), I only selected the group of people who entered an age, so those who didn’t are obviously left out.  For the averages I just selected a middle ground on all the age groups and then performed the average calculation (for example, the age group of 25-34 I assigned as “30” to perform the average).  I also think that some of the averages would change drastically if there were an “under 18” option for users to choose, but the data I have starts at age 18 and goes up from there.  Unfortunately there weren’t options for developers to choose “Which services do you use” instead the question was “which forums do you use” so I used that data point to decide if a user was an “FGL user”, “Mochi user”, etc…  Not the most accurate, as many members of all the services do not frequent the forums, but hopefully it is close enough.  The data is also focused on three sites: FlashGameLicense, Mochi, and Newgrounds.  The only reason for this is because they are the closest to a significant sample size to mean anything.  If people want me to section it out differently I can do that.  I should also note that I took out some data that seemed highly suspicious to me, like a user who claimed to make more than $25k a month only using in game ads only.  I actually would have left that one except that the user also said they made over 9million in sponsorships in the notes section (not in the data section). So, with that said, here is some interesting facts:

-          Average ages of users are similar for FGL and Mochi (27), NG crowd skews younger(24) (and remember, no below 18 option)

-          28% of FlashGameLicense users say they work on games full time, 22% of Mochi users say this, and 18% Newgrounds users

-          36% of Newgounders only visit the NG forums

-          14% of users use both FGL and NG forums

-          12% of users use both Mochi and NG forums

-          25% of users use both FGL and Mochi forums

-          64% of respondents only visit one of the three forums (this surprised me)

-          Only 8% of users use all three forums (this one surprised me too)

I realize that there is nothing earth-shattering here, but I just wanted to dip my toes in first.  I started looking at some money stats and that looks much more interesting. Like, on average, developers who get their games sponsored make approximately $1,000 more a month than developers that do not.  But, again, I’d like to hear your suggestions before doing much more.

Here are some ideas I thought about:

-          Money stats broken out by top 50% of earners, top 10% of earners, bottom 50% of earners, and bottom 10% of earners

-          Earnings average by age

-          Earnings average by years of experience

-          Earnings average by number of games released in the past

What else?

Chris

Hey everyone it’s your friendly neighborhood Spider man!  Well, okay, not really.  But close!  It’s FGL_Joe, and boy do I have a treat for all of you, after a long time of pondering and based off of all the input from the thread I started many moons ago…  Figured id do what I do best! Talk.  Alot.  But I am not alone in this, oh know, I pulled in the mighty Jay Bibby from Jay Is Games and one of his exceptional reviewers; John Bardinelli.

That picture sums it up pretty well…  Except instead of two it’s three guys, all oddly enough starting with the letter “J”,  so just call us the “J’s”?  Combining the awesome-ness that is Flash Game License with the awesome-ness that is Jay Is Games the mighty J’s have created Way Too Casual.  A podcast in which we discuss whats happening at each of our sites, and review/discuss the latest Flash games that have been released from FGL and reviewed on JIG.  Then to really spice things up we have a segment were we discuss a very thought provoking topic relating to the Flash game industry.  Oh and it gets better!  We even have plans of getting on lots of special guests ranging from developers, sponsors, Jay’s cat, and lots more!

“Why Joe, why did you do this?”  Hm, good question…  The podcast has many reasons for being, helping get the word out on all the awesome games that have come out of Flash Game License and the games that have been reviewed at Jay Is Games.  Learn what works in a Flash game based on the excellent critique from the experienced casual game reviewers from JIG, learning how your fellow developers make their games great, what sponsors want and of course to hear the J’s make complete and utter fools of themselves!  What’s not to love!  But really id say John Bardinelli show notes for the first episode says it all!

FlashGameLicense and the JayIsGames staff have gone mad and decided to create the greatest thing since sliced baconbread: a podcast about Flash games! We call it Way Too Casual because, well, that’s what we are. The bi-weekly episodes will focus on casual gaming news, events, reviews, and lots more. We have some great surprises planned for future episodes! It’s a great way to keep up on the biggest browser game releases and current events in the world of casual gaming. All while you go on your morning jog!

In our pilot episode, Joe, John and Jay (who are entirely aware all of their names begin with the letter J) give their thoughts on four recent Flash game releases and discuss Adobe’s recent iPhone-related announcement. There’s also a brief allusion to an old Nintendo DS slogal and a surprise shout-out to our little armored friends!

But wait! There’s more! We’re not content to just talk amongst ourselves, we want to hear from you! Got a question you’re dying to toss our way? Want to know our thoughts on the latest casual gaming revolution(s)? Need that recipe for brussels sprout soup? We’re here to help. Leave a voice mail on Skype or drop us an e-mail. You never know, we might just use your question for the next episode!


E-mail: waytoocasual@gmail.com

And now, without further stalling for time and pointless space-occupying, we present to you, Way Too Casual!

Download Way Too Casual #001
“I Can Say Armadillo”
(MP3, 38.5MB, 44:07)
Subscribe via iTunes

News:

• CGDC #6 winners announced
• FlashGameLicense launches blog

Featured games:

• Small Worlds – a beautiful game of exploration
• Canabalt – run, jump, run, jump some more, crash into a window
• Trap Master – you get to burn, crush, and eat humans!
• Cave of Wonders – hope your keyboard is sturdy

Topic of discussion:
Adobe announces Flash Professional CS5 to have “export to iPhone app” feature

Well boys and girls I do believe that’s it, so make sure to take a listen to the Way Too Casual podcast while you are taking your morning jog, out fishing, walking to school, at work, while doing your homework, playing Jacks, or while playing World of WarCraft, it’s audio so you can listen to the J’s just about anywhere!  Make sure to leave an email, or voice mail, this podcast was made for the Flash game community and we want to hear from all of you!

-Joseph Burchett

I was inspired to write this blog post after a number of recent events that really got me down, and after talking to some developers who helped to lift me up. I doubt that the developers realized that they had any such impact on me, as I didn’t let on, but I am deeply grateful. I won’t go into too much detail on the events that I mention above, but I’ll explain a little bit of the back story in order to set the stage for the true purpose of this article: to say how awesome the Flash game community is and how it has affected me.

As many of you know, we have a new system called GamerSafe (www.GamerSafe.com) that aims at enhancing the gaming experience for gamers and also allow developers to better monetize games through in-game payments. You also probably know that there are an abundance of other players in the microtransaction business. When we first released GamerSafe we went to many of these other companies with a saying: “We don’t have competitors, we only have partners who aren’t working with us yet.” We had built our system to integrate with other payment platforms and “play nice” with other systems. We thought this was a great idea, this is the same philosophy we’ve had with FlashGameLicense… to work with everyone and to advance the Flash gaming space by helping each other out. It was sure to work out in the microtransaction space too, right? Wrong. Sadly, not a single company took us up on this offer. Many of them tried to get us to replace our system with theirs, some even offered to buy out GamerSafe altogether. We created GamerSafe to improve the lives of Gamers and Developers, and we put a ton of thought and work into it. We knew we’d come up with a great resource for developers, and so we really didn’t want to sell it or replace it. We also had (and have) great plans for the service.

So, in the end we found that we had entered a space that wasn’t as friendly as the developer space. No problem, we would just keep working on our product and continue to work with publishers and developers since we already do that and know they are all great to work with. We should have known better, but it didn’t turn out to be so easy. Even though we focused on our own product, and focused on working very closely with developers and publishers/sponsors to make sure GamerSafe worked right for them instead of focusing on working with or against other companies doing similar things as us, we still had conflicts and confrontations. I do think that many of these incidents were unintentional, but the result was that developers were emailing me and asking me to take a particular position. Then I started to worry that this was widespread, that there were many developers that had a bad impression of us due to things being said behind our backs. I brooded over this.

I recently had a chat with Greg Wohlwend of Intuition Games about getting burned out, and how it is so easy to get so sidetracked with the work and pressure of making a game that you lose sight of everything that got you into making games. I also read many of his articles at http://mile222.com which touched on this and I think were great. It made me think back to when Adam and I started FlashGameLicense.com. Adam and I started FGL out of a love for games and a vision of enabling developers to get their fair share. We were developers ourselves and saw that changes needed to be made, and that in fact they could be made in a way that actually improved the situation for Sponsors as well. This started FGL, but it didn’t keep it going. What kept it going were all the amazing people we worked with. Some people think it’s sad – and a bit ironic – that I have less time to make or play games now than I did before FGL was around but to me it’s not a huge deal because that time is replaced with working with some of the most innovative, fun, creative, and smartest people I’ve ever met. But now… now things had changed. GamerSafe started off in the same thread. But then, after all this time, the emergence of micropayments in games, and the slew of companies entering the market, had finally started to segregate the Flash game developer community.

When this hit me, I felt very down. I knew that I couldn’t give up on GamerSafe, it has the stains of my blood, sweat, and tears and I still believe it to be the system with developers most in mind. But I also felt like it was a big part of the problem. That it was at the core of this anxiety eating away at my insides: that I was contributing to a cause that was hurtful to the community I so loved.

I now realize this was utterly stupid. The true answer was nestled in with the problem I thought I had. You see, as I was brooding and worrying that developers were thinking negatively of me or of FGL or GamerSafe, they were actually all around me supporting us. From all of the developers that visit our forums daily, to the ones singing GamerSafe’s praises before even trying it out, to our very own FGL admins who are some of the most awesome developers around in their own right and for some reason work for FGL for WAY less than they are worth. All of these people see what we’re trying to do and are working towards the same goals… and I had been so distracted that I took it for granted.

We’ve had a few games in the works for a while that are integrating with GamerSafe, so I’ve been communicating with those developers quite a bit lately. A couple of them include Simon Lachance of Berzerk Studio and Ben Olding of Ben Olding Games and though we talk about the games and how they will best integrate with GamerSafe etc… I find that more often we talk about other things. Life, our families, other game ideas we think would be cool, etc… and it reminds me that this is why I kept doing this in the beginning. We made almost nothing in the beginning. And Adam and I still make less than we would if we worked at a sporting goods store or a restaurant. GamerSafe is growing very nicely, but is still a money dump for us as we spend money building it out. But none of this matters. We didn’t start this thing to get rich, we started it because it needed to happen and we saw that if we did it we would have the developer’s best interest in mind. In fact, we don’t even claim to know that we personally know the developer’s best interests. We work with developers to find out what is needed, and even have an entire “suggestion forum” set up so developers can vote what we work on. We have currently helped indie developers make nearly $2.5 million. I think that is more than any other group, or at least close to it. We are extremely proud of this, but what we are even more proud of is the fact that we helped developers get what is fair and right for them in a way that is fair and right.

So, this was a very long winded (thanks to those of you who stayed with it this long) way of saying that we plan to focus on what needs to be focused on: the developers. I owe that to all of you since you are what keep me sane and keep our jobs fun. One of the best times I’ve ever had was at GDC when I actually got to meet many of you, and I look forward to that opportunity again.

What this means, though, is that there will continue to be negative remarks aimed at us, and we will ignore them. Also, it means that our business will continue to be run in an “indie” fashion. This will mean hiccups and delays in the “bonus” features of our systems, but that has never hurt us in the past. If anything it has been extremely useful in preventing us from building out features that nobody wants. It makes us prioritize what we hear people want. I hope everyone will forgive us for these limitations. I personally think it’s rather appropriate for an indie business like ours to work alongside the indie game community.

I also want to encourage all of you to be cognizant of the changes happening in the industry and how they are affecting all of us. These are exciting times, but it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is a very rare situation we are in where there is such a large, supportive community all working toward similar goals. Sustaining this environment as long as possible is one of our main goals at FGL, even if it means being a thorn in the backs of those trying to make as much money as possible at the expense of others.

So, with that said, I want to thank you all for being supportive and allowing us to be a part of this crazy, and amazing, industry. Without you and your games none of this would be possible (or fun!).

- Chris Hughes, Co-Founder FlashGameLicense.com & GamerSafe.com

We’re currently setting up the brand new FlashGameLicense blog, keep an eye on this space!