have anyone of you earn money from applets games?

Business and Project Management Discussions
#1

i would like to make an apllet game in jogl, but also i was thinking about that is it any good way to earn money from it? For example i can host in on my sever with some addons from goggle, has anyone tried this business model? Of course it will be available for free so more users would like to play it. Also i would like to ask you some other questions as follows:

  1. What are your experience in earning money from applet games?
  2. How much money on average do you earn?
  3. Could you give examples of other companies that could pay me for clicking adverisments like those addons from google?
  4. Do you know some online gaming sites that could get my game, host it and pay me money from it, something like games.msn.com? Are there open for independent developers games? Have anyone earn some cash from them?
  5. Could you please share your experience with other business models, ideas, ways to earn cash using applets?
#2

Runescape anyone!

#3

Square Shooter made me a bit of money by licensing it (letting them to add -and lock- to their own site with a small modification - namely their logo and a link to their page) to two sites. One is FreeArcade (which right now has SS as the newest game ;D). The other hasn’t yet added the game, so i’m not sure if it’s ok to mention it. When it comes to modifications, here is the original, so compare. The other site also wanted all highscore functionality to be removed too.

However this is far from being something i could live from :-). I made barely enough to pay the rent and the second deal was done about two months after the first. Of course that’s better than nothing. Note though that i barely mentioned the game anywhere (i mentioned it here a few days ago while the game was made more than two months ago) and i somehow crossed roads with the sites that licensed the game. Someone who was going to spend a weekend (or more) looking for sites to license the game, could have better returns.

When it comes to own site, though, i don’t know how good idea is. There are three major problems you’ll face: 1. make the required games, 2. raise a lot of traffic, 3. keep that traffic :-).

In fact 2&3 are much harder than 1. I thought at some point to make a java webgames portal where other developers could post their applets and get a % from the income from ads, but while that isn’t really difficult to make (although i would need a few games of my own to boot), the hard part is bringing traffic and keeping it.

#4

What did you get for Square Shooter? (If you don’t mind me asking)

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

From the first site i got an offer of $300
From the second site i asked for $300 and they said ok ;D
(note: i don’t know if there are any “standard rates” for such stuff…)

So as you see, this isn’t something i could live from :slight_smile: but it’s ok to pay the rent (or actually the majority of it) or buy me a good second hand graphics card :-).

I’m currently writing a framework based on Square Shooter’s code so i can make more simple games like that. I’ve got a lot of ideas for simple, small and -hopefully- addictive games like this. My plan is to license them to the sites around and once (and if) i make enough (say 6-7) of them to make a small site with them and put some ads around (i’ve recently added an ad above SS, but really i don’t expect anything from this, i just added to see how the process is done).

Of course, as always, my main job is taking me most of my time and energy, so although in normal circumstances making a robust framework from SS’s code would be a one or two days’s task, i haven’t done much since last week…

#6

Congrats, Not bad! Definitely more than what I had expected. I had a look around and some sites weren’t paying anything at all, so I expected that the ones who did only pied peanuts. As you say it’s not enough to live on, but a nice bonus! Do they tell you any hit stats or anything like that, once they host it?

How did you get past:

when you published on the second site?

#7

Simply: they didn’t sponsored my game, they just licensed it :-). Unfortunately it’s hard to sponsor a Java game because sponsoring works by putting their logos and links to their site etc in the game and spreading it all over the net (so they get the traffic back from other sites, etc). The “hardness” with Java is that people generally prefer to spread Flash games instead of Java. A Java game has to be exceptionally good and polished if it is to be sponsored, while a Flash game has just to be addictive. Not sure if i should tell this, but anyway i don’t think it’s a big deal… i was told that if Square Shooter was a Flash game, it would be sponsored, but since it’s a Java game it didn’t. I even was asked from some company at Canada to make a Flash version for phones :slight_smile: but well, i don’t know anything about Flash so i didn’t made it :-P.

Sponsoring a game will bring you much more than licensing it, but still not enough to live from (can’t disclose numbers here, though).

The webgame “arena” is a much friendlier place for Flashers…

#8

You can say that again. This game http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/, makes this guy about $8000 a month in ad revenue alone. You can check out a blog entry that discusses it here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000872.html.

#9

300 bucks sounds actually rather nice. Maybe I should pump out a few older games for a quick money fix. :wink:

#10

That is what is known as atypical, i.e. it is not the norm so there is no point in following this rare success as it is rare - unless it is not rare.

EDIT: like I say to budding musicians, first learn to make good product, learn the industry, then create your strategy of time and money investments to make a profitable return.

#11

Good on him! I’d imagine it’ll be reasonably short lived at that rate, as he mentioned in the interview - he’ll have to keep producing games that are as popular to keep the money rolling in.

Still, $8000 for a month, I wouldn’t mind :slight_smile:

Kev

#12

I think it’s a different thing. This guy gets most of the money from the ads in his own site, not by licensing the game around, so he can use whatever technology he feels like.

#13

Well that’s exactly what I was saying about ‘atypical’ examples

#14

I agree. You never can tell what will catch the casual gamer’s attention.

#15

Well that’s why it’s important to learn “the game”. Money is all about circulation, example:

  • Keldon (me) receives #200 p/w from employee

  • Keldon (me) receives #50 p/w from website advertisement

  • website advertisement gets #100 p/w through ad revenue generated from my site

  • employee gets #300 p/w profit from work from Keldon

  • ad revenue from site is generated from #1,500 worth of purchases from various sales site

  • profit from keldon’s work comes from flow of #50,000 in stock market exchange

  • all of this money exists within the global economy

  • some of this could be a result of me doing something games related

So when you think about it all you are doing is separating the money from the global economy and making a benefit from it; so there are many ways in which you can make money through gaming related things. For example you can part the global economy from #500 every month by selling products/licenses to games developers.

#16

Congratulations Bad Sector, that’s pretty darn good. 8) And thanks for sharing that info with us, it’s very useful.

I wonder if the game portals and others who pay for games prefer Flash so much because users actually have it installed already and it just works, unlike Java which has sucked in this respect - even when Java is installed upgrading versions takes ages, involves the user too much and is butt-ugly, as OrangyTang pointed out recently.

Hopefully the up-coming Consumer JRE and JavaFX hype will change this. Sun seems to be shifting focus to the consumer market which is great.

Keith

#17

Well, a lot of computers already have Java installed (although many of them have previous versions - but i’ve yet to see a computer that was used to browse the net and not have at least 1.4) and when someone plays webgames, he’ll need to get java at some point if he doesn’t have it already.

However, i think that the reason is other: it’s harder for most (non-programmer) people to make a Java game, while (for non-programmers) it’s easier to make a Flash game. And from the people who make Java games, many games are actually bad mee-toos of something well known (if i had a cent for each breakout, tetris, pacman and space invaders clone applet, i would make a living out of it…) or badly made (awful -and usually pixellated- graphics are the #1 plague of Java games).

In other words, Java webgames do not play or look good. This isn’t a problem of the medium, though. It’s just that Java is a programming language while Flash is a “visual thing”. It’s “IDE” is focused to make visuals and require no programming for it. Of course with better tools in a Java programmer’s disposal, one could make better games. It’s all about the tools.

But anyway this is my personal opinion on why Java isn’t liked that much. Since i don’t have any hard facts on any opinion, from my observations i came to this conclusion. I may be totally wrong, of course :-).

#18

Many people still use internet café’s and I am yet to see one that has installed a Sun JRE. Nearly every net café/public terminal (such as a library or youth club) that I have seen has the latest Flash and Shockwave installed but no Sun JRE - and for good reason. There simply is no reason to install it. Install Flash, Shockwave, anti-virus software and MS Office and you’re ready to go

JRE comes with a few packages that consumers need, but there is a large group of people who will never find the need to install Java. On top of that most popular game sites are Shockwave/Flash based anyway and [one of] the most popular Java game is RuneScape (compatible with Java 1.1 & Microsoft’s Java runtime).

I also think that most Java applets are plagued by the 99.99% of materials that gave everyone the [b]wrong/b way to create graphics for a game. I created a fast Java 1.1 compatible emulation of the GBA Graphics Hardware for a game project this week. The implementation is not complicated in any way yet, so even from Java 1.1 we have had the ability to create Mode 7 style graphics and even reproduce GBA style graphics and effects on fairly low spec computers yet we didn’t.

#19

But how many people go to netcafes in order to play webgames? Hardcore games (fps, strategy, etc) yes, but for webgames it’s very rare. Personally i didn’t had internet connection for my home for more than two years (a big story) and i was almost every day in a few netcafes and i worked in one for a while. From all that time, from all people going to netcafes, only one person actually went to play non-hardcore games and this person used his own MAME cd-rom.

#20

Kids! If kids are using the Internet in their school, youth club or college, chances are it’s for coursework or browsing (i.e. gaming). Think of all those school/college/youth club computers that don’t need JRE. Also libraries are likely to be running the bare minimum too, and anyone using those computers are either lacking one or just happened to be in the library when the urge to use the Internet arose.

Then you’ve got the 1,000’s of people who just didn’t install the plugin/latest JRE! Not to mention the differing trends in other countries (although their trend may be to install the latest JRE on public computers). All I know is that nearly every public computer I’ve seen (apart from a few webcafé’s) are running the Microsoft Java plugin, and many people’s computers I’ve worked on don’t have the latest Java either.

Basically “why must I install Java”? Why must your user have Java? Typical answers may be:

  • for development (I needed the JRE for eclipse)
  • because I want to play Java games (that I have knowledge of, hence I know I must go to java.sun.com) and know that I some are not compatible with the one installed
  • it installs with some other package (like OpenOffice)

How many typical users fall into any of those? It’s like expecting your users to have GTK+ installed, sure it is installed in any GIMP users computer or someone running Linux - but numbers are low. Hence you supply GTK+ with your application.

EDIT: If you’re making a Java game application then they must have JRE, and should be expected to download it. But when considering an applet where you are telling the user that they must install a particular program alienates people on public computers, without administrative rights, and those unsure of whether they should take this huge step in adding another program … etc.