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."

Comments

The problem

[Norsefire]

The problem is if you develop web-based games then you are going to attract a young target audience, even more so if your application is for a social networking site. Children often do not understand what is involved with making the game ("but XYZ does it for free!?"), also children either don't have money or have no method of transfering it via the internet (no credit card unless their parents let them use it). In my opinion, you're not going to make any significant profit out of such a target audience unless your profit does not come directly from them, ie. advertising; whether it be on the page or in the game itself.

Re:The problem

[slim]

Children often do not understand what is involved with making the game ("but XYZ does it for free!?")

Seems to me the children understand perfectly. If XYZ offers people a better value proposition, then people will go for XYZ.

Basic microeconomics says that production cost doesn't dictate price: what dictates price is what consumers are willing to pay. If you can't turn a profit under those conditions, get out of the game. If other people seem to be managing - work out why they can produce to that budget while you can't.

The Web != Facebook

[onion2k]

Yes it's worth developing games for the web. You can make a big pile of money and have loads of fun at the same time. Loads of people have.

But Facebook is not the web. It's Facebook. They're different. Maybe Facebook isn't such a good platform for rolling out premium 'pay for' games. But even that I'm not convinced about. People do pay for stuff in FB. I think it's more likely to be the case that people just don't like having things taken away. The lesson here is that Facebook users are motivated by a carrot rather than a stick.

Experience

[Walker_Boh_Druid]

I think generally most people who are producing web games are doing so less to make money in the short term and more for the experience that it gives them. Producing a web game lets people test it quickly and you'll get a fast response as to whether they like it or not. Seems like most people I know producing games online do so to expand their personal work portfolios. As for facebook, it's not exactly a great cross section of the average web user.

Yes, it

[BattleCat]

Totally worth is. But forget Facebook and other closed platforms - go for your own infrastructure. Basically, what facebook gives developers is audience, an ability to quickly announce your project and make it known among huge auditory. This is a plus on early stages, but it becomes not so significant later, when you'll afford to advertise independantly and effectively, but Facebook-as-an-app-platform limitations will remain.
And one more thing - never, ever expect users to be grateful or pleased. I work for company developing and producing Web-based MMOs, and one thing I've learnt over years is - even if you'll hire hookers to give every male player in your project one head job - the only thing you'll listen from them is "why only once ?" - they are lazy, stupid and greedy.