Slashdot Mirror
Is It Worth Developing Good Games For the Web?
SlashSlasher writes "A friend of mine started up a Facebook MMORTG game called Realm of Empires with his buddies as a personal project. Over the last couple of years, I've seen it grow up from an idea into a thriving community. A lot of money and effort has been sunk into constant improvement. As a result, it has become one of the most polished and substantial applications I've seen on Facebook. It's been quite interesting seeing the action behind the scenes without being directly entangled. Normal gameplay is free but certain premium features do exist. Recently, after allowing an open beta of premium features, the users complained vehemently that they would have to pay to keep these special features. They went so far as to start a petition to stop them from charging for premium features. People are getting up in arms about features that can be bought for less than $3 a month. I know the project hasn't broken even yet, and more money is put into it every day. I had always assumed that developers would receive a chunk of the ad revenue they attract to Facebook; apparently I was wrong. Facebook only gives the developer a very small (and shrinking) piece of real estate to try and make money with. How are these people supposed to break even, let alone profit? What working business models exist for the small game developer? Are people just too spoiled by free, throw-away games to be a target market for anything significant? Are developers who want to make any money for their work forced to move to restrictive platforms like the iPhone or the console market? More details of their story are available at their blog."
Don't give people shit for free and then come crying when they don't want to pay for it. If you've sunk 1000's of hours into a project and then expect to retrospectively monetize your work then that's your own fault.
If they are losing cash hand over fist I suggest they take there code and go elsewhere. Maybe on there own hosting ad's can pay the bills.
As previously posted- people pay for value. Your games are probably as cheap, stupid and homogeneous as your players (who obviously can't get any either).
Aren't rude unconstructive comments just great?
But seriously now. Given the mention of "sunk costs" (on developing a Facebook app- we're talking BIG venture money there </sarcasm>), advising simply for "your own infrastructure" (while perhaps appropriate to an entrepreneur) is useless to the asker in question.