How to monetize your game (Split from Windows 8 thread)

News & General Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

While having a lively discussion about what Windows 8 means to Unity developers the topic of how to monetize your game came up, and I wanted to give it a space where people can throw their ideas and experience out there, without completely derailing the original thread.

One topic that was debated is how valuable is the web player functionality to a developer and are there ways to monetize it? So far, I can come up with only one example of this from my personal experience. Rocksolid Arcade publishes games under a “free teaser/pay for access to full game via web app” model. You can find them here:

http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/

They started this with their Robokill title, and seem to have kept it up since then. They’re charging $9.95 for access via web to a flash game, which would probably make them some of the more expensive flash game content on the web. All the same, it seems they make enough money of this to be worth their while as they have followed the same business model a second time.

Another thing that came up was how worth while ad revenue was. I have no experience with embedded ads, and would love to hear from someone who does. Is this even a source of money that is worth while to bother with?

In the Flash world, some of the game aggregator sites such as Armor Games, Kongregate, etc. will pay developers a certain advance for high quality games if they have a window of exclusivity. In fact, there is at least one community site that is dedicated to matching flash game developers up with people willing to pay to host the game:

http://www.flashgamelicense.com/

Does anyone know if anything similar exists for Unity developers, or if the aggregator sites will pay advances for high quality Unity games?

Of course there is the option to put your game on the Android marketplace (aka Google play) or the Apple app store, but the main barrier to overcome there seems to me to be publicizing your game in a very crowded marketplace. Since I have not published a game I can’t personally comment on strategies that would aid success in these venues, though I do have some ideas for what might be “best practices” or at least close to them as I have published other media products in the past. My thoughts on this (and I would very much love to hear from someone with actual experience in this field) would run along the following lines:

  1. You need to have a presence on all the usual social media sites: Facebook, Google+ (especially since they publicly admit to biasing their search results to favor those on G+), Twitter, etc.

  2. You must have a professional quality web site that can generate familiarity with and excitement about your product with the ability for customers to buy from you directly there. If you look at the example of Rocksolid arcade, this seems to be where the bulk of their money comes from. When I was producing children’s learning videos, we made almost as much profit from website buys as we did from any single distributor. This had mainly to do with the fact that the distributors bought at wholesale, while anyone who bought through our website paid retail. Amazon was our single most profitable venue however which leads to the next thought:

  3. Don’t limit yourself to where you put you product up for sale. Get it out on both app stores, get it on amazon, publish for the Nook, heck, if you can, get it into retail stores (though this involves serious overhead you may not want or be able to deal with).

  4. Consider giving away a freebee. Got a great game you want to publish on the Android marketplace? Consider making another, simpler game and giving it away for free. Sure, you can place ads to it to get some revenue out of it, but the main benefit to the developer here is when someone downloads your free game (which I know a lot of people do download apps strictly because they’re free, so why not?), you will pop up in the “Other games by this publisher” space at the bottom of their marketplace window. If not that, it seems reasonable to take a leaf from Rocksolid Arcade and give away a teaser for free (the first few levels in their case) to get people hooked on the game and get them to buy from you.

  5. Once you have a product out on the market, you need to spend as much energy publicizing it as you did producing it. Sadly, in business, creating a product is usually the relatively easy part. The hard part is getting people to even notice it, much less buy it. In the case of we indy developers, my thoughts on how to drum up publicity would be to talk to bloggers who blog about games and have them try yours. Hopefully they’ll give you a good review. Perhaps they would want to interview you (love free advertising for you and content for their blog). Again, this is primarily focused on the Flash world, but http://jayisgames.com/ would be an example of someplace to send your game to and try to get talking about you. Anyone who has similar sites that focus on Unity games or other niches that Unity developers might fill, please list them, it would help us all!

If you can manage to get mentioned or even reviewed in a magazine without the backing of a huge publisher, even better, but good luck doing it. The write ups in most magazines go to those who buy copious amounts of advertising from the mag, something out of budgets of most indy developers. This does however bring up another good point: Do buy the advertising you can afford. Google adwords has been a cost effective solution for a lot of different businesses I have either been involved in or have known the inner workings of. Though I have no experience advertising with Facebook, it might be worth the while (of course you need a good Facebook page first!) so long as it is cost effective. The big boys spend large dollars on advertising because it works, not just because they have piles of money laying around with nothing better to do with it. The old saw that you have to spend money to make money is still very true. The good news is, now days you have to spend LESS money to make money.

Ok, so take all the above with a grain of salt, as I openly confess I have not yet published a game. My background is in video and television, though I do suspect much of the above will transfer over well. Would all the more experienced developers please throw in their two cents worth? What have you done to monetize your work? How well has it worked for you? Is there anything you have considered trying but haven’t yet that you think is worth sharing? Thanks for the input everyone.

2

Another thought is that crowdfunded games (Kickstarter etc), at least those which are successfully crowdfunded, have a built in audience. If you go this route, the key is to leverage that built in audience as much as possible to build word of mouth. Make sure you’re regularly emailing them with updates on where their “investment” is in the production process, post new videos and still images to your site and send them links to them. Share funny stories and maybe even videos of development team meetings if you think it’s worth the while. The more you can get the people who had faith in your game up front to get even more excited about it and talk about it to their friends, the better. The other benefit of this level of contact is that if you have to go back for a second round of crowdfunding, your original backers may be more willing to give you more money if they feel connected to the production process, or just as importantly, bring in friends to fund the project.

/thinking out loud…er…in text.

3

I didn’t read through the entire post, just browsed it quickly.

Ad revenue, atleast through google adsense, is done on clicks and views per 1000. The actual amount of money per click/per thousand views depends on the person paying for the ad. It averages around 40c -1$ per click and I think it’s about the same for 1000 views. My personal website made a total of $4.46 last month, with less then 1000 views and around 8 clicks. So unless you have a very high traffic website, ad’s generally don’t make all that much.

If releasing the game on PC, I’d also recommend frequenting game developer forums as well as websites such as rockpapershotgun and trying to get them to give your game a bit of spotlight.

4

Good stuff trackpants, thanks. Do you have any experience with ads embedded in a game sold on the android marketplace or Apple app store by chance? I’m wondering if ad revenue makes it worth while to publish a game for free, if only a relatively small one. It’s done often enough, so it must work for some developers. I realize it will have more to do with how many people are playing your game than anything, but I’m curious to know anything about what the pay out rates are per view/click.

5

There’s lots of microtransaction browser-based unity games using a f2p model.

Nice to see someone charging for a browser game in your example, I didn’t know of any to post in the other thread, but know from a web admin point of view you can use accounts/sessions to detect a validated connection and offer a link to the game. People trying to bypass authentication and go directly to the link will be re-directed to the login page. Basic stuff tbh.

The more popular facebook games have top paying customers spending over $200/mo on microtransactions, according to ex employee’s of zynga.

I think that’s ^^ why there’s such a trend to go f2p right now with microtransactions, even the free players who aren’t paying are valuable to a game by populating it for the paying customers. Lots of games have been f2p for years and are still popular…clearly somethings going right for many companies using it…

6

Sign to the left. Sorry, just had to :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Please provide some context for that picture.

8

I got it from here.
I could go on and rant about this alot but in short: I think game developers should spend your energy on making an amazing game rather than how to make money on a mediocre game. This is obviously completely subjective but when I talk about amazing games, Im mostly referring to what the game play has to offer the player, rather then shiny graphics shallow rewards, etc. One of my favorite designers Jonathan Blow talks in depth about some of this here

I think it is the complete contrary, if you make a product that is of high quality and originality then the game will essentially market itself through word of mouth etc. The thing you should ask yourself is why should anybody want to play your game? What makes it different from all the other games out there.

Im done highjacking this thread, don’t let me bother you guys any more :stuck_out_tongue:
(Hope I didn’t come out as a self righteous prick, I didn’t mean to offend anyone. Also Im not religious in any way)

9

I respectfully disagree with this. I agree that a high quality game is essential. But sadly, the many articles and posts I have read lead me to believe that a high quality game is not enough. Awsome marketing (including marketing luck) greatly increases the chances of a high quality game being financially successful.

10

That is so adorably naive!

Don’t take me wrong, there is lots of wrong with the exploitation of free-to-play models, but there are huge numbers of bankrupt studios that closed doors because their “original” and fun game failed to catch up. This is not a charity, this is a job. You need to make money to be able to keep doing it.

11

I’ve known michael (boss of rocksolid) since he was 14 and making his first game (juno nemesis). We’re friends. He isn’t stuck on their current pricing model last time we chatted, he tries new things all the time. Don’t take what he does as gospel.

Indeed. To add to that, the money is in momentum. It’s fine having word of mouth but if you rely only on word of mouth you need to get lucky. It is the same as trying to make the funniest meme ever. Do you think you can make the funniest meme ever, post it on 4chan and let word of mouth carry it to the level of forever alone or fuuuuu?

Why not try an experiment. Make a meme, post it on 4chan once and sit back. It works EXACTLY like that appstore in terms of exposure.

Not gonna work is it?

Anyway: momentum is bunching up enough hype so that a large group of people all see it roughly around the same time and start hyping it, this generates momentum where word of mouth is effective enough to carry it. In short: marketing.

12

I posted an earlier opinion. Then I went back to the OP and noted that my post had very little to the OP since I deviated too much from the topic so I deleted it.

So now, I write a post that is more relevant to the topic.

As most of you know that, this is now the age of payal and many other such online payment mechanisms. There is also stuff like facebook credits and kongregate has its own similar thing and so on.

In such a situation, I would think the more viable route for people who DO NOT own a mac would be as follows. Now please note this is only my opinion.

Instead of spending 500 plus bucks to buy a mac and then 99 bucks to buy the opportunity to publish on the app store, do this. Make your game a small scale multiplayer online game. By that I mean similar in game mechanics to the many browser and php based multiplayer games out there.

Then instead of spending that 700 bucks on the mac stuff spend that money on advertising and pulling together a pool of players, some of whom might pay as per the freemium model if you have a compelling product.

What say you guys? Bad idea? Poorly thought through? If so, why?

13

Interesting to know Hippocoder. I have to say I enjoyed his game, and thought at the time it was worth the ten bucks I paid for it, so I don’t think his pricing model is out of line personally. The one point I think Rocksolid fell down on, is they didn’t keep in touch with me after they made the sale. I would have been keen to know they had produced a sequel to Robokill. I only found out about it when I searched for them to post a link for this thread. I’m probably going to check the new chapter out next time a get an entire hour in a row to sit down and actually play a game rather than working on building one. I suppose the lesson there is regardless of how you sell your product, make sure you keep in touch with your customers and let them know about new products you have. Repeat customers are the cheapest to get an the most profitable. That point is fundamental to any business.

Far from gospel, I just think it’s interesting that someone has apparently successfully pursued the pay for web game model. Frankly, I’m not sure there is a “gospel truth” to making money in indy games. Just a collection of ideas and possibilities that may work for some games, and not necessarily for others. Being that I’m just beginning to wade into this field, I’ll look for illumination from anyone who seems to be doing something that works.

Cheers!

14

It’s an option Mr. T, but not a solution really. Even if you make a multiplayer game that relies on microtransactions (a more and more popular business model these days), you still have all the issues with marketing the game. No players = no revenue. One way to get more players is to make the game available through as many channels as possible, the Apple app store being just one of them.

The decision weather or not you want to publish on the app store should involve the same mental calculus as any other business decision: Will the money you make from selling on the app store be greater than the cost of entry? If the answer is no, then of course don’t do it. However, the cost of selling on the app store is relatively low at $700. Even more so when you consider two other factors: 1. that is a one time cost, and does not have to be re-paid with every new game you publish on the app store. 2. The iOS market is fairly large, willing to spend money and the most effective way to have access to that market segment is through the Apple App store.

Given the above, I think the App store and Android marketplace (google play) are just about no brainers (even more so now that Unity has made the Android and iOS modules free for the time being!). You can’t expect to make much money if your product is difficult for your potential customers to buy. Very few people are going to go out of their way to give you their money when so many of your competitors are making it easy. The two app stores don’t solve the marketing problem, so you still have to find ways to get word out about your game so people want to buy it; but they do at least make the game readily available to your potential customers when your marketing works.

My thoughts.

15

It feels like the rich app devs get richer

16

That is an elaborate informative answer and If I am not reading it wrong, the subtext of your answer seems to be that the App Stores is a juicier target unless and until some special circumstances exist. Correct me if I am wrong.

Continuing this discussion. Let me rephrase this in another way. And although this in reply to blurededge, I would be really happy to receive other inputs especially from people who have got their hands dirty with the freemium on PC model as well as the app sore.

Consider this hypothetical scenario. Everything below this is hypothetical
Supposing I was developing a game similar in concept and scale to this. (I am only dreaming of course but do play along please)
Swords and Potions
http://www.edgebee.com/games?id=3
If you have a kongregate account you can get a basic feel of it here
www.kongregate.com/games/EdgebeeStudios/swords-potions

Supposing I was at a fork in a road.
I am a the stage where I should decide whether to go
A. Multiplayer online like the people above did
OR
B. Concentrate on a standalone with the same concept with some free content and some locked content unlocked on payment at the App Store and playable on the iOS.

Which route will prove more lucrative in the end? Especially appreciate the inputs of people who have experience in both routes

17

Hi again Mr T. I would be very interested to hear the input of those who have been there and done that as well. No substitute for experience. That being said, me personally, I like option C do both. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. Doing both allows you to cerate more revenue streams with the same content. If the barriers to entry into the app store are prohibitive and the web game is not, go web game first and use the profits from that stream to fund the creation of the app. Its been done before. Check out the game Shift on Armor games, also available as an app with over 10,000 downloads on the android maketplace alone (similar numbers on the apple app store).

Clearly there are those who will count me crass for saying it around here, but monetization and planned revenue streams need to be as much a part of your game design plans as the storyline. If you dont make money, you cant keep making games.

Cheers!

18

This is a childish mindset. Want to be a success? Accept the following ideas as truth and make yourself a success!

  • People with GRIT succeed. Grit means to work at something, over the course of years, despite adversity, failure, and setbacks. A simple 6 item grit questionaire is a better predictor of long-term success than ANYTHING else, including grades, $$, or opportunities.

  • Growth Mindset leads to success. Growth mindset means to approach setbacks as opportunities to improve. Failing does not a failure make; giving up and quitting defines failure, and sometimes that’s okay. On the other hand, the fixed mindset says ‘the rich get richer’ and ‘I wasn’t born rich.’

  • Habits. Success comes from establishing keystone habits that change your life in subtle ways, such as making your bed, or exercising once a week. A habit is when a cue, leads to a routine, that yields a reward. Exercise for 20 minutes, not because you are supposed to. Instead, do it because you got home from work and you will start to crave the runner’s high as your reward.

  • Professional developer. Being a professional is doing what you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing it.

  • Happiness. The quickest way to happiness is to be grateful for all that have already. Do this every day as a habit because… Happy people are more successful (not the other way around).

  • TV. The average person spends 20+ hours a week watching TV. Take seven hours and invest it in your health, relationships, or personal growth. You will be happier and more successful.

  • The victim. Society wants you to blame others for your situation. Victims are compliant and easy to manipulate, and they are rarely successful.

Envision the successful person you want to be 10 years from now. Embrace that vision and don’t waste a second of your life QQ’ing at people who are more successful than you. Learn from them instead.

Good luck,
Gigi.

19

I run a successful Indie blog that focusses on new and indie iOS and Android Apps. The ways I’ve monetised the blog are very similar to ways that a small app developer can slowly start to gain capital.There’s no big secrets-just adsense; paid banners; paid links and paid promotion of smaller sites and projects.
The one thing that my app friendly blog and your apps have in common is the need to be known. I grow with traffic (so come on down and have a read please!) and you guys thrive on app installs-so get your name out there! I’ll help your apps gain a little exposure via my blog, just like these forums and your good wishes and word of mouth get me more readers!

Let’s Connect!
Gametrender

20

Btw you might want to know that big mike is making http://www.underthegarden.com/ in unity now. It’s looking extremely impressive (even if he isn’t extremely impressed with some of the things unity does badly) :stuck_out_tongue: