Okey Dokey… Will upload the first 3 over the weekend…
Hi jojoh,
Like I said in this thread below I would like to know if you’re doing advertising for games4j? The reason is that Incredibuilder and I’m sure a lot of other games are simply not played. The play count very rarely increase. I would be surprised if it’s due to the games themselves. Or do you have other planned strategies to increase visibility?
Thanks
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,20283.msg173324.html#new
I’ve noticed this as well with my games on Games4j. I already have a long list of sites and things to do in order to plug my own website, which includes putting games on Games4j. I’d really like to see the site become successful but as long as it’s pulling in no (or very few) plays then it instantly goes to be the bottom of my list.
[quote]I already have a long list of sites and things to do in order to plug my own website
[/quote]
Please share this list if you don’t mind.
Yes, it is probably time to have an update and let you know what is happening and what is planned.
Rest assured that we are by no means done with the site or are just leaving it as it is. I have just recently managed to lure two more people to help me with the site and we have a long list of things that we want to do.
The site is currently in “hidden” beta, basically only JGO members know about it. We want to make sure that everything works as we want it and the way you want it. The community part of the site is really important to us, and we want to make sure that we don’t have to make big changes later on, since that often scares the community away.
We have a few key changes that we want to do before actively marketing the site, but we are already planning for that. All money coming in the first two years will go to marketing (minus what goes to game developers).
We are also working on external financing, mostly for marketing. We are about to apply for a grant for marketing of startup companies. If we get it, it would mean that we really could put some effort into the marketing, but we also have to spend some time on filling out the application and creating a proper business plan (taking time away form developing the site). The grant really fits us well, but there are probably unusually many startups applying this year, so we will see.
We also need a certain amount of games before spending money on marketing. The aim was at least 100 games, 30 with highscores, and we are only about halfway there. The marketing will not have any effect if visitors don’t find anything to do and leave. We want to be able to keep the visitors when we do drive them to the site.
I might have overestimated the amount of java games that we could get to the site, and we probably have to go after flash games more and maybe also web-starable games.
I have also been in contact with a community manager, who “does a lot of viral marketing”. I tried to get him to join us as well, but he is really busy, but he said he will be happy to give me advise so I intend to take him up on that offer. The first marketing push will be of the kind that doesn’t need any (large amount of) money.
Things that are coming: More use of the applet boot loader, save game API, multiplayer support first step, flash highscore API, Player of the month, facebook login and more.
So, do submit your games (It is really quick and easy to both sign up and upload games). Do use the web/highscore API and that will take us closer to make a marketing push.
Greets,
Jojoh
Thanks for the update jojoh!
Other than that, could you explain what these ad sense info are used for the edit page please?
Google Ad Client
Google Ad Slot
Ah yes… Google is not very consistent when it comes to labeling these things unfortunately. I added some other labels in the submit page, but forgot to change that on the edit game page.
The “Google Ad Client”: is also called “Publisher ID” on some places, and the “Google Ad Slot” is sometimes labeled “Ad ID” or just “ID”.
On the adsense site you can select “AdSense Setup” -> “Manage Ads”.
At the top right you will find the “Publisher ID”, and if you have created and “AdSense unit”, then you will find the Name (#ID) in the table. You might have to create an ad if you haven’t done so.
You can also find the code by selecting the Action “code” in the table. You will then get the html code that can be used to display an ad.
there the codes that should be entered in the fields at games4j.com are labeled “google_ad_client” and “google_ad_slot”. These are however the same strings, just called different things.
Hope that clears it up. I will try to add better info on games4j for this.
And what is the purpose for games4j? To share revenues to the developer? If not, how do you intend to do that?
From the undertone of the reply I guess I didn’t explain it that well, and I am afraid I don’t quite understand your question.
I saw that you added the AdSense info to Incredibuilder. That means that 51% of the time that Incredibuilder is loaded, your ad will be displayed and you will directly be credited via AdSense and you can also see the statistics on your AdSense account.
[quote]From the undertone of the reply I guess I didn’t explain it that well, and I am afraid I don’t quite understand your question.
[/quote]
Don’t worry about that.
hmm, if I don’t provide the ad sense info, would I get shared revenues as well? Sorry if this seems stupid to you, I just want to make things clear for me. 
Other than that, I’m now linking back to games4j via my site. I extracted the site logo.
I see. No, for now, AdSense is the only way to get revenue share. Paypal is something we like to add later on, and probably add a tip-jar and similar things, but other things have higher prio right now.
Yes, the “Add link to us” page needs to be done as well Thanks for setting up the link. The author homepage will be a proper link after next update of games4j.com as well by the way.
ok, everything is clear now. Can suggest to add doc about revenue sharing process (sharing percentage is already covered)?
Thanks
Hi, some minor updates.
I added some layered help window regarding the adsense setup, and also added a sentence (next release) to the developer info page, to make revenue share better explained and easier to set up.
The very first silverlight game has been added to the site, Construction. It is quite good, so go check it out.
I am currently working on some simple multiplayer support, for turn based or slow paced games, among other things…
One more update I forgot to mention. You can now get the news as an RSS feed. You can also get the text comments on each game as a feed. Would any developer like to get this as email as well, or is feeds enough?
email would be a cool feature for new comments and ratings, also and option to turn this on/off would be cool.
nice incremental updates.
OK, I will add that to the todo list, next to sending e-mail about status changes between submitted, incubator, and published status. I will probably add some checkboxes to the submit/edit game page, to let you turn on/off mail feedback.
One more thing I forgot to mention was the new “edit applet tag” page that I added for the game developers.
So Kapta, when will Final Kapster be added to the site?
I still got one or two things i want to add/finish on it (power ups, music and some sfx). I just haven’t had the time or motivation to get to it lately. But as soon as its done I’ll post it on games4j.com.
There’s a bug about the google ad slot: when I set one the system makes an error somewhere because it doesn’t take it. When I reload the edit page I see HTML code: Slot" type=“text” value=“3721909762” size=“30” maxlength=“10”/>
Hi!
I tried to reproduce the error, but could not find a way to do that. I changed google ad slot on my game and it worked fine. I have not seen any error message in the logs today either, so it is a bit surprising. My admin user also got one message that Incredibuilder had been updated, so some update should have happened.
Could you maybe give it one more shot, and if it still fails, I will update the ad slot for you and then further look into what the problem might be.
I didn’t retry but will do soon.