[Link] FlashGameLicense.com - Marketplace to connect game developers and buyers

[Archbob]

Actually, yes I can compare it because I am self-employed as well.
Insurance and stuff is expensive but I also get alot more tax deductions and benefits being self-employed than working for a company because I get my money pre-tax. On average, even buying my own benefits such as insurance and 401k, I get about 5% more than a comparable salary at a company, its really not that bad.

As for an unstable salary, it goes up and down, some months I'll make next to nothing, other months, I can make alot, its just one of the risks I took.

All in all, its not that bad.

And remember, when you sell even an exclusive liscense to a site, you usually get to keep the earnings if your win a contest on Kongregate or Newgrounds for your game. Most, if not all, game sponsors allow this. This is not true when you work for a company, you don't keep intellectual rights to the game if you work for a company.

As for my low initial + Mochi Ads, I see it this way. Your interests are the same as mine in this case. Your game's value to me is how much exposure your game gets. If it gets very little exposure, then you don't make much but I also get screwed, because I just spent money on a game that won't bring me anything back. There's no justification on spending a large amount of money on such games.

On the other hand if your game does very well, you could make tens of thousands and its worth it to me because I also get benefits to my site with that many views.

Its the same as working in a company, you perform well, you get a raise, you don't, you get fired.

[tomsamson]

i think my point regarding why you can´t compare employment status with sponsorhsip relationships wasn´t clear: what i meant was that you give examples stating you have to live with these downsides as its like with any other job where you´re an employee.
The point is yeah, you get all those downsides an employee has but you don´t get the upsides the employee gets. the employee has benefits thanks to his boss which are missing of a sponsorship relationship,so yeah,its not that ideal for comparison.

Overall, yeah, i can´t think of any sites which pay the developers really well/let em take part in revenue sharing in a fair split percentage and at the end all earn great,developers just like the site runners themselves.
That´s exactly the point i´m moaning about all the time (that there are many who earn great but then usually don´t let the developers participate in the returns in nice way).
I think there´s definately a spot open for sites which do it in nice way so i´m sure they´ll grow with time and once those become big and strong some other site types could have some issues.

[Archbob]

Well, lets take a game that is very known in a hypothetical example and base it off some well known numbers(I don't think this violates some forums rules). I'm going to use Bloons as an example(most all information I will present is on already on flashgamesponsorship).

Now Balloon rejected an offer of $350 for source code - which was a ridiculous offer so I'm not surprised.

But lets say we get two scenarios:

1. Gets offered $8000 flat for the game
2. Gets offered $1000 + Mochi Ads(more of my kind of offer)

Which one to take, if you didn't know how it would turn out? Most would take the $8000 flat but in the case of Bloons, that would be a mistake as the Mochi-Ads for that game have earnings over $30,000 now(last figure online I heard) so in retrospect $1000+Mochi Ads is a much better deal because now instead of $8000, you just earned $31,000.

Was $1,000 too low of an initial offering? Well considering you would have made 30,000 without and 31,000 with, its not bad as its just $1000 over what you would have made.

Now obviously if I were to make that game, I would prefer $8000+Mochi ads but I would realize that no one is going to give me that because well, its too much of a risk for a site to take since they don't know if it will do well or not.

So in short the $1000+Mochi wasn't a bad offer as its low initially but you get the benefits if its played a lot. And its $1000 more than you would have made without it.

Well, I need some dinner and then finish the graphics update for color bubble touch, the game I'm offering for free. I like this topic and will continue to discuss this thread.

But a portal is a business and like any other, it has to make the best decisions for profit.

Oh being self-employed has benefits like schedule flexibility that far outweight the benefits a boss gives you.
For instance I hired a guy to do a game for me and he's 3 months overdue on it. In a company, you get fired for that. But in this case, I'll still take the game if he ever produces it and there won't be any price penalties for being late. Of course he risks me not hiring him again because I can't afford to wait forever but he still gets paid in full.

[tomsamson]

let´s say i work on an AAA title with a team of 4 for a timespan of 3 months.
The dev costs far outweight 1k.
So in the moment of you paying me 1k i have already invested in this project lots of time/money/risk,more so than you.
Then the game is online, it gets spreaded around, you get traffic and you probably have more ad revenue than me as i´d be restricted to that one mochiad impression per game view (to simplify things let´s say i show mochiads once in the game and you have a few ads on a game page).
So yeah,there´s a some slight imbalance of risk/reward.
Allowing mochiads is way better than not to, no question, but yeah, from the example above you can see it would be way too risky for me to hand you out an AAA title with the expectation that mochiads alone will make up for all my dev costs (i like the mochiads conncept but so far don´t know any longer timespan average numbers to be able to say how likely it is that medium-high dev costs are likely to be made up in reasonably short timespans).
With time this all will surely evolve, i hope mochiads and other such ways which allow the developer to take part in revenue sharing more will take off nicely which would make more developers work on nice titles for that release manner, until then either you have to pay a bigger initial sum or yeah, live with maybe not getting that many that great medium-large scale games.

Personally i think a really well done game which binds a community to it for a good while makes up for lots of crappy games whose only purpose is to be a one time click of the day.

anyway, yeah, had a long day, too, so enough for now.

[Archbob]

Actually your at least getting 50/50 share with Mochi Ads. You get payed for every online play, I don't. I only get payed for plays on my site, which is small portion of the total ads.

For instnace I sponsored flash empires which has now over 2,000,000 views so the developer gets payed for the 2,000,000 views. Its been viewed on my site probably less than 200,000 times in all(based on bandwidth usage), so I'm getting payed for 1/10 of the views you are and in case your wondering, no my CPM is not even close to 10x Mochi's CPM.

What your asking for is the sponsor to take all the risk and pay you a large sum plus revenue sharing. No sponsor will do that, you will either get large initial or low initial plus revenue sharing in pay for performance because as I've stated above if your game doesn't get that many views, it doesn't justify a large initial sum from a sponsor, regardless of the man hours you put into it. I doubt it will evolve, it may evolve for a select few titles, but for most games in the medium-quality category, I see prices slightly dropping rather than increasing because there are just too many of these games looking for sponsorship and I've rejected a large number of med-to-low quality games lately.

[BlinkOk]

tomsamson. if you just go to archbob's site and look at the games he is talkin about you will see that he speaks the truth.

[Archbob]

Yeah, Flash Empires is really the only game I can say that I have turned a profit on. There are a few others that are pretty good too, but most I just sponsered to be nice.

[Evilfree]

Wow... this thread has been busy!

I'll admit that the behind the scenes knowledge of portals monetizing games (with specific numbers) is something I am still weak in. I've been working hard in this area and have some initiatives that I hope will give me a much better understanding in the next 3-6 months.

I'm most interested in details from the bigger sites (CMG, ArmorGames, ArcadeTown, etc.) but I appreciate some of the details you have shared with your site Archbob.

I wanted to comment on a few things.

Is 5K enough for a good game?
First, sponsorships can go much higher then 5K. The biggest deal I've brokered has been a 25% profit sharing deal with $5,500 advance. Its unlikely the game will earn over 22K but if it does the developer will see $250 for each additional $1000.

A game sequel with a successful track record can command much more. I don't know the actual amount (nor will I mentioned the game) but I talked to one sponsor who offered 7K and didn't win it.

A bigger issue, I think, revolves around the question of 'Is 5K enough?'. Trust me Tomsamson, I know where you are coming from. However, without defining more details its a bit of an empty question. Is 50K enough? 100K? You need to define an exact deliverable to give meaning to a price.

First, unless you have an amazing successful game (Desktop Tower Defense, Bloons, etc.) the average flash game developer is not going to be making $100/hour like you could with mid/high end programming consulting.

I don't know the development details for all of the games I work worth. In general, I think non-flash programmers would be incredibly surprised to learn how fast you can turn around a game.

One game I brokered for $5000 which the developer claimed to have created in <80 hours. He has also won $1000 from a Kongregate contest and nearly $2000 from Google ads from traffic that the game attracted back to his own site. Last we talked, he was still getting $5-$10/day from the google ads.

His game was amazingly successful with over 6.2 Million plays over the past 2 months and still getting 50K+ a day. Certainly not all games are developed this fast or are this successful. The 50K/day is likely to remain for months or years. With this much traffic (looking forward 2-3 years) the sponsor is going to make VASTLY more then the 5K they paid.

The biggest issue is that it is incredibly difficult to know how successful a game will be before its released.

In my case I spent 200+ hours on Asteroids Revenge III. I grossed a bit over 6K from sponsorships and contest winnings and netted $4500 after paying for graphics and sounds. As an hourly wage that's nothing to brag about.

A side tangent:
If I was 17 years old again (so long ago) I would be THRILLED to make over $20/hour MAKING A GAME, compared to my $5.50/hour working in a factory placing freshly made sandpaper into packages.

I'm planning (at some point in the distant future when I can actually find the time) the next chapter of the game and by leveraging the existing assets I can probably turn it around in 50 hours and still get a similar amount of money.

Additionally, there is still a tremendous amount of value in having the game in my portfolio. It still brings 100s of people to my site every day and has led to many interesting business opportunities. I've done a lot of traditional corporate/marketing freelance programming and generally the contract did not allow me to proclaim it as 'mine' in my portfolio. The ones I could claim were useful in cementing new deals but virtually useless in attracting business to me passively.

Of course there is also the non-tangible benefits of 'making the game how you want it', 'bringing your vision to life', etc.

It's also worth noting that my game has had only 1.75 Million plays over 4 months and is still only getting 5-6K a day. Assuming that rate remains for 3 years (a big if) that only gives me 7-8 Million plays. Depending on CPM rates I could easily get less total then my up front sponsorship amount. It's also impossible to know how much less traffic I would have received without it being promoted by CMG.

I'm hoping the future chapters will increase the traffic and value of the first game.



Big sponsors will sponsor anything and make it successful
I don't believe this is true. I often send a list of 5 games to a portal that I've already filtered out the 'best' or what what I think they will be the most interested in. I'm happy if more then 1 of them catches their eye. Big sponsors are incredibly picky about what they actually sponsor and often have very different tastes from one another.

I would bet that CrazyMonkeyGames (and other portals) sponsor less then 5% of the game that are sent to them through their regular submission form. They have very high standards. There are certainly lots of games on their site that I don't find 'fun' but everyone has different taste on that. Often how well a game is 'rated' doesn't have as big of impact on its 'success' as you might think. One thing you will see at CMG and other big portals is that all of the games have a high level of polish and most of them are actually pretty good games.



Sponsorships & Up Front Cash vs. Money Over Time
At its core sponsorship is an investment/gamble. I believe that most sponsors lose money on many of the games they sponsor, but the ones that are 'hits' bring in PILES OF CASH and offset their losses. When a developer accepts a sponsorship they are eliminating their 'risk' but also losing a potentially huge 'reward' if their game is extremely successful.

I've written A LOT about that here if you are interested:
Lump Sum or Trickle of Money Over Time?



Distorted Sponsorship Values
Many portals are surprised at how much sponsorships have risen in price recently. There isn't a simple answer to this but there are two really interesting contributing factors.

1.) Its been estimated the value of advertising around these casual games will increase over 10 folder from 2007 to 2011. That is an INCREDIBLE growth rate.

2.) Established game companies (Eidos, EA, etc.), big media groups and people with venture capital all see this rapidly expanding pie and want a piece of it. With their resources they are able to buy market share (one approach is to sponsor games) and not worry about losing for money along the way. They know that longer term that market share will be incredibly valuable!

Of course a 1-man startup portal is going to have a hard time competing with this and can't easily 'lose money' for years on end.

It's really exciting to me to see a site like FlashNinjaClan grow successfully facing challenges like this.


The present and looking forward
This market is incredibly exciting! One absolutely sure thing I know is that a developer that is looking for someone to invest in their game (including the traditional sponsorship approach) will get FAR MORE value if they are are able to get as many people interested as possible.

If you want to talk about 'sponsorships' I've seen a game that had 0 interest from anyone, suddenly get a $1500 offer when it found the 'right' person that wanted it.

You want to talk about 'non-exclusive licenses'? We have helped established developers earn $1000's of dollar on their older forgotten (but good quality) games by finding people wanting to buy site-locked versions.


Chris and my goal with FlashGameLicense is to find you as many options as possible to leverage your game and to do it on your terms. When you submit a game you tell us what options (sponsorships, revenue sharing, MochiAds, non-exclusive only, etc) you want to explore. Then we work to bring you as many opportunities as we can.

For portals (particularly newer ones) we give them a chance to look at many many more games then they would otherwise get a chance. Right now most developers just think ArmorGames or CMG and don't even think about submitting a game to FlashNinjaClan or some of the 40+ other portals we have signed up.

There are already TONS of options available... and its only going to get more exciting in the future as new in-game ad companies sprout up to compete with Mochi and cellphones (like iphones) are able to start playing all of the existing flash games.

The other absolutely sure thing I know is that ALL of these things are going to need quality content from developers. Talented developers that are able to play there cards right stand to make a lot of money and have a TON of FUN throughout the process!

Fun stuff!!

[tomsamson]

nice post and interesting stances there, overall i´ll just reply the next year will be pretty cool, we´ll see how all those things get into their place way more where both developers and game sites have contant return streams on the content and we´ll see which ways work out best in a longer timespan

Anyway,
Keep it up and have a nice holiday time people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgzHr...eature=related

[Archbob]

Most CMG games are quality, but what about games like this one:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408309

Not quite "quality" as I wuld think of it.

There are a few others like it at CMG, they, like me do sponsor some crappy games to keep a developer's interested every once in a while.

I'm surprised AR3 only has had 1.75 million views so far in the months since release.
Flash Empires won the December Competition and has about 2 million in less than 2 months and as ratings show, AR3 was a far better game.
Flash empires is still continuing to get 25-30k plays a day so in total the developer has made over $1000 from pure Mochi Earnings(based on average CPM) + the money won from the Mochi Ads december contest.

[ch00se]

I'm really glad to see that this started a discussion. I think it is good that both the sponsor and developer sides are telling their point of view.

I just want to also say that we have to remember that flash games follow two somewhat related bell curves. One is the size of the team developing the game. The other curve is the quality. I say these are somewhat related because there some great flash games made by individual developers, and conversely some very bad games made by large teams. However, these curves are still important because usually game portals are not sponsoring very large scale flash games. I think Adam did a good job of breaking down a cost per hour for an individual developer, but those of you working on larger teams are, of course, going to think about things differently than just "we'll make $5k on this game and that will be awesome" because if your team consists of more than 5 people, this sum gets hard to work with, even if you were making games pretty quickly.

However, this all works out because there are other means of making money when you are developing in large teams. For instance flashgamelicense.com has an entire section for large developing companies where their STARTING price is $5k. Game portals are usually not interested in this section because the games don't usually fit with their sites anyway.

I just wanted to bring all of this up because when we discuss such things we need to be sure we are comparing apples with apples.

[Squize]

"So in short the $1000+Mochi wasn't a bad offer as its low initially but you get the benefits if its played a lot. And its $1000 more than you would have made without it."

Sorry Archbob you're getting all the flak as the only portal owner replying here, but the whole $8k vs $1k and revenue isn't a valid comparison.
In a way you're trying to justify offering a low upfront amount by saying the potential to earn more is then there with advertising.

Yes you can take a game that has been really popular and use that as justification, but how many games reach that level where the ads are actually worth anything ?
If I was offered $8k or was offered $1k with the possibility that if the game took off I may earn more than $8k, then I'd be an idiot to risk that. Anyone would be ( And the whole "Well at least you'd be a $1000 better off". Yeah I could sell a kidney for $1k and be better off )

Let's say I wrote the next Bloons and got $8k for it and it went huge. Yeah I would have lost out on that ad revenue for it, but I would have had it's development paid for. Also for the sequel, I'd go the ad revenue route and be able to get a better deal on the strength of the first one.

Offering a low amount with the off chance of making potentially more isn't a great deal for anyone.

One last thing, it's not a case of developers not wanting portals / sponsor sites to make money. The more money you guys make the bigger the budgets for us. What we don't like is being treated like the site is doing us a big favour and under paying for someone's hard work ( This whole "Well next to nothing is better than nothing" attitude ).
From a purely personal point of view, I'd also like to see the games which are hosted being presented better. It's heart breaking to see your game on some nasty shovelware site built using a lame template and just shoved on there.
Part of the problem is that games are just treated like tins of beans, and that's why the perceived value of them is so low. More always isn't better. Rather than a site saying it's got 1000's of Flash games, I'd rather go to a site that had 30 or so, but they were all the very best.

Squize.

[Archbob]

Unfortunately as vistors have shown, sites with 1000s of games attract more visitors. Games that are medium-quality really aren't worth that much because they are truly a dime a dozen and I get many sponsorship requests for such games each week and many of these games just go unsponsored. Are they bad games? No. But are they worth what the developer thinks they are worth on the market, not a chance.

As for how many games there are with the Ads are worth it.

I can tell you that my offer+Mochi Ads for Flash empires is better than if he had taken 4x my offer without Mochi-Ads and Flash Empires 2 is close to coming out to be the same way. Plus me allowing Mochi ads allowed the developer to win another large Mochi-ADS December prize.

However, I spent alot of my time promoting such games. I believe there are many instances, if the sponsor is willing to take the time to promote a decent quality games that a low offer+Mochi Ads is better than an offer 2 or 3x that amount.

[Ray Beez]

Geez people. Where is the sense in arguing about this?

If you don't agree with the service, then don't participate. Don't politicize it! If your game isn't offered enough $$, then don't take it! Go shop it around to some ad agencies and see if a big brand will pay to have it re-skinned. Whatever. It's up to authors to decide.

A "sponsorship" is really the wrong term and is causing people's panties to get in a twist (Tom?). What you're doing is SELLING ADD SPACE. That loading page with a link is ADVERTISEMENT. Start looking at it from that perspective.

Thank you, good night, and Merry Christmas.

[tomsamson]

Such things don´t make my panties twist, but yeah, i obviously got annoyed by some statements in this thread.
And yes, i never liked using the term sponsoring for naming what is done on such portals either. What is done there is obtaining a non exclusive usage licence in most cases.
In some cases an exclusive one. In some cases also granting the portal to spread the game around freely (again, this point *can* be positive for the developer in case he wants that and has mochiads added in the game)
So yeah, what is done is way more than a sponsor deal as in sports where the sportsman just wears the logo of the sponsorer, so why give it that false naming?
Seems like Archbob is at least trying to do things towards the right direction on some ends and as i said with time it´ll be possible to see if such sponsoring deals combined with ingame advertising revenue for the developer are generally rewarding enough or are more just rewarding in some special cases or if the initial sponsor fee is higher.

[TOdorus]

So basicly we're all assuming there's a need for flash games and especially quality flash games? At least this warrants the devs requests for big amounts of money when brokering his/her game. What if consumers just want mediocre games and lots of them?

In this thread the dev and portal side of the story both complain that it's hard to make a buck with flash games, so the other side shouldn't complain that much about their income. Well what if it IS hard? A good friend of mine once said:"I'm a millionaire.If I were a millionaire, I'd be doing the same as I'm doing right now. So I'm a millionaire." I still live by that quote today. And if I'm reading the posts here correctly, so does everyone else on here.

So in conclusion: so what if you have a hard time coming by, doing what you do? If it really is what you want to do, just make ends meet. If you want/need the money go for the money.