Hey guys, I saw there were a lot of Unity games on Kongregate. If you have a Unity game on Kongregate, may I ask about how much money you have made off your game? I am thinking about putting a game up there but I want to hear some success stories first.
I’ve made about $16USD with four games I posted back in early 2011. Unless your game is extremely popular its not a very good source of income. There should be threads asking similar things lying about the forum some place if you want more. Use the search.
You’d be better served with a ‘spray-n-pray’ approach. My first two games, SHMUP and Zombies vs. Knights, brough in a total of $20 across various portals.
GameJolt is the worst portal of all - it only made me roughly over a dollar USD in three years. I use it for an easy source of beta testers, personally. But, it’s still there, and so far the initial spike on my current project has made me another dollar there (it’s In Progress of course, and a pre-release candidate). I suggest using GameJolt as a beta testing platform.
Kongregate did better than GJ, on just Zombies vs. Knights - about $5 USD. When I release my current project, after the launch spike subsides, I’ll have a little more info. The problems I have with Kongregate is there a lot of flash developers who seem rather hostile towards unity works, so you may get artificially low ratings. Of course, there are some highly-rated Unity games there, too…you pays your time and takes your chances.
Wooglie is by and far the best performer of any portal I have used. My two games there have made 15 Euros (!) over three years, and Zombies vs. Knights is consistently bringing in a eurocent on a daily basis - sometimes two or three, and bear in mind this is still about three years after launch. You have to use an editor API to upload to them, but if you’re looking for monetary reward, so far they’ve been by far the best. Another reason I like them - they do review submitted works to limit the amount of fluffware. Zombies vs. Knights was far from a good game, but my first go-round with them it was way worse, and they correctly pushed it back and said, ‘do these things, and we’ll post your game.’ My doing those things is probably the reason the game is doing as well across the board as it is.
TL;DR - GameJolt for testing, Kongregate to cover your bases, Wooglie for great feedback and some small reward.
I only have flash titles on Kong currently (Creeper World games). A unity web version of Creeper World 3 will be there within a few months…
But for serious indie titles Kong is your best friend. Ad revenue share and contests can earn you thousands. Premium content significantly more.
But the games can sit there for months, or years… and drive millions of views to your website which can generate business level sales. Is it Steam level traffic and ridiculous sales? No… but it can be the difference between a hobby and a business.
To be effective at all, you have to have an absolutely outstanding game that will get 4+ stars. Do that and you get crazy exposure. Make a game that gets 3 stars or less and, eh…
Take a look at the top rated games at Kong across the genre’s you are interested in. Look at the production value, the game concept, the uniqueness, the features, game depth, music, art. Make something that fits in with that crowd and you’ll get millions of plays just on Kong. With those millions you can do what you choose… take ad revenue, sell premium content, sell a desktop ‘full’ version…
So if you are just starting out, or a hobbyist, then full steam ahead. Just go do something you are happy with and fire it out. You have nothing to lose and much to gain. If you are a business level indie developer, you already know everything I just said
Wow, is this true? I guess that could possibly explain why my game seemed to get worse ratings on Kongregate than on the other two portals I released it to. I got like 2.5 stars on Kong, while it was around 4 on Wooglie and GameJolt.
Agree with what you said about Wooglie, I definitely got the best response on there. It’s probably due to that fact that on Wooglie you’re not competing against a million Flash or Construct/Gamemaker games like on Kong or GameJolt. Also, the way GameJolt is organized seems to make it very difficult to get views unless you get featured, and from what I’ve seen you’ll only get featured if your game has pixel art.
I don’t think it’s pixel art that is or is not the problem - I think it’s how low the barrier to entry on GameJolt. You can put up a project with no vetting whatsoever, and you get into the ‘Just Released’ queue. With the number of people who can make games out there, it’s easy to be simply drowned out.
You can write news articles for your game, or talk about your project in chat channels, but the fact is GameJolt has such a current (see what I did there?), that even if you’ve got a really good release, the most you can do is hope that it tops the charts in whatever category you’re releasing for…even then, it’s going to get drowned, most likely.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I will look into GameJolt and Wooglie.