About serious monetization

News & General Discussion
1

Hi there,

I am thinking of becoming an indie game developer. Yeah, I can hear you laughing, don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish.

Done? Right :slight_smile:

I have experience using Flash (10yrs), Maya (7yrs) and several other programs. I’m working full time at an agency, but thinking of going by myself doing games. For that, I’ll need to earn money from my work. While I’ll be starting without leaving my dayjob rightaway, I need to know some insight from the community that I haven’t been able to find by myself. Main thing is, serious monetization model for Unity games.

I was so sure I would take the Flash path, but then Molehill appeared and later on the Unity Team (that sounds like A-Team…) announced support for it. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

Flash: It is a known environment (for me at least), ability to deliver to lots of audiences without additional cost (even more with the upcoming Air 2.7 which performs well on iOS devices it seems). LOTS of proven monetization options (mobile, sponsorships, ads, micro transactions…).

Unity: I should spend time learning it (altough Unityscript seems similar to AS3), and I could use my 3D knowledge to produce content. Monetization seems hard, since only Kongregate seems to be sponsoring Unity games, there are no microtransactions and each platform costs an extra licence. I know about dimeRock (or something like that) but it doesn’t seem to move a lot. Union? Sounds great, but I wonder if it’s only for the BIG boys. But Unity seems so enjoyable and sexy to work with…!! I’ve watched lots of tutorials, downloaded the free version, played a little with it…Also, if Flash exporter from Unity becomes a reality this year, it would be awesome since all those monetization options mentioned before would be available! But again, this is like building castles in the air.

I have never had trouble trying and testing different softwares / platforms, so please don’t just answer “test it and if you lie it go ahead”. I’ve already done that, but before going any deeper I would like to know the opinion of people in the bussiness.

My main concern is devoting time and resources to a technology only to find out a year later that:
a) I can’t monetize my game
b) I can’t monetize my game ENOUGH (since 3d game is much, much harder and slow to make than a 2d one)

I think I’ve read something along the line of b) regarding Blurst.com, am I right?

Hope that this turns into a healthy conversation, sorry for the long post!

(You can go on laughing now again)

Regards,
Poe.

2

Why not find or create a team/business instead of working alone? If you wish to conquer the land, you’ll need subordinates…or in your case: co-workers, partners, employees.

Doing business is about taking risks.

Is there a reason why you’re limiting yourself to games played in the browser? Unity3D supports stand-alone and mobile platforms as well–both which are great platforms for casual games (which judging from your thread, you’d be interested in).

P.S. I didn’t laugh. We all have to start some time :slight_smile:

3

It sounds like your really pigeonholing yourself into a web-based game, which would of course hurt monetization. Also, I don’t really see any reason to be making a correlation between development environment and monetization.

You can sell your game as a standalone from your own website, like Minecraft.
You can submit to the Mac App Store.
You can build your own microtransaction system and host a webplayer on your own website.
You can submit your game to Steam (and if its really good, it’ll get accepted. There are a few Unity games on there).
You can try Union.
You can make an iOS/Android game and release it on the respective app store.

4

You seem to have decided to make a browser-based game and now you’re trying to figure out how to make it profitable; instead you should decide to make a profitable game and then decide if it should be browser-based.

Well, is your concept dependent on 3D; and if so, 3D with lush, rich graphics? There are a slew of 2D games with simple graphics doing very well; game play, novelty, and artistic style go a long way, while ‘really awesome 3D models’ only matter if everything else is already polished.

Don’t get me wrong, I like sweet 3D games, but I just spent the weekend playing ‘Sonny’ (a free web-based game) and was very impressed with how a lot was done with a little.

5

Thanks for your answers!

Sorry if I stated it that way, but I’m not trying to limit myself to browser games. It’s just that it seems to be more profitable from an indie perspective…at least that’s my impression, but I could be heavily biased coming from a Flash background :slight_smile:

I think I’ll try to make a very small simple game in Unity and see how it goes.

6

I have to agree with the lack of options part of the post, though.

I am aware of iOS options and a few Browser based options, but I am not aware of a lot of options for desktop monetization…
What kind of options are there?

7
  1. Sell download
  2. Make money