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Making A Fortune From Casual Games
hapwned writes "In yet another interesting article from the Escapist, Allen Varney has a piece on the ludicrous amount of money you can make from small, downloadable flash-type games that most Americans play. From the article: 'Which American designer personally made the most money last year from computer games he or she designed? Not the most money for a company, mind you, nor for a studio or licensor, but individual, take-home, taxable income. Was it a famous game god? John Carmack, Will Wright, Sid Meier, Warren Spector? Probably not. It was probably some guy you never heard of who wrote some little shareware game you never heard of. Those "casual games" - the puzzles and Mahjongg tilesets and card games and Breakout clones and match-three Bejeweled-type things - are downloaded, and sell, in numbers some game gods only dream about. Over the lengthy life of a successful casual game, the independent ("indie") designer can make serious, serious money - high six-figures and low sevens. Personally.'"
Isn't that why these games are successful though? Because they're so easy to get? Since when was the Sourceforge download page easy for new-users to navigate?
I'd get into making flash games, except for the whole fact that I hate flash and it seems to have a high learning curve. I can't think of any cool uses of flash that I've ever seen. Cool as in "useful", that is. And "useful" as in "couldn't have been done any other, less complex way without a plugin".
To me, the interesting part of this is the implication that FINALLY a business and distribution model has emerged. Apparently not quite "micropayments", but it's interesting that games can get the attention they need, and then get people to fork over some dough... ...besides the spur of Internet distribution via fancy websites, is the model much different than what Id used back in the day, here are some levels, pay us for more?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The article uses a truly awful flash-based reader. I had a hard time getting past the first page, too.
It's a great article but they should really dump that Flash, especially since lousy Flash font handling makes it a great deal harder to read than a HTML site. Why do people insist on spending weeks or months to create an interface that's worse than what already exists in standard HTML?
That being said, horizontal scroll all the way to the right side of the screen and you'll see "Next". You have to have a really wide screen to access this page properly.
Hope that helps.
D
While these one-hit wonders are nice in the short run, lets face it. These kinds of games are hit or miss. For every Bejeweled, theres hundreds, if not thousands of other games out there that get almost no public attention.
The target audience for the big games is largely computer enthusiasts, people with high spec machines who know how to play games. These are also people that are more likely to circumvent copy protections. The target audience for the small games is more casual gamers, office workers with too much time, mum's and dad's that just use the PC here and there. These people are less likely to know how to get these games without paying and are not to fussed to shell out $10 to unlock a small shareware game.
Good, so we've heard the success stories (which is all the author really mentions). What about the legions of shareware developers that just make a decent living (nothing wrong with that) without making a fortune? And what about the ones that soon have to find something else to do when they can't pay their bills?
It's just like rock bands. You only hear about the successful ones. You never hear about all the very decent bands that, 20 years later, are still playing in ordinary bars in front of an audience of 3.
(trivia: The Police once played in front of an audience of 2!)
Give me a break, "most Americans" do not play Flash games. What do you base that on?
Doesn't Popcap's framework only support Windows? BeJeweled doesn't work on OS X anymore... I don't even get an error message or something helpful like that.
If you're going to do a web game, you might as well do one that supports any web-enabled platform.
- chrish
to be honest with you, i've been here for two years and i still barely speak czech. it can be frustrating but it's just not required in prague. most companies are doing international work and so they require english skills. czech just makes it easier to communicate with your co-workers. many times, official company policies say that everything should be done in english. to answer your question directly, if you study and actually use the language (neither of which i do), you can be FULLY communicative within a year. why have you been told not to move? that sounds like the dumbest thing i have ever heard. you can't expect the jobs to come to you. let me know if you'd like my help. i can set you up with people who can help you find a place to stay and maybe even be able to get you a job directly. the visa process is a pain in the ass but they won't reject anyone with an education because the employee demand is so high.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?