I would like to hear from as many people as I can about their thoughts on paying for casual game titles, compared with getting them for free and having in-game advertisng inside them… both from a game player/buyer perspective and from a developers perspective.
I know the whole in-game advertising medium is very new and un-tested… but I believe its going to pave the future for a better revenue stream than one customer at a time selling…
Any thoughts… ?
Also, please vote on the Poll above.
As a teenager, I have no money, and so anything free is better than having to pay for it. I’d imagine the vast majority of pirating is done by teenagers who can’t afford the real thing :). Though, adults tend to trust freeware a lot less than paid for software, and I prefer paid for software, if I had the money for it.
Seriously depends on the nature of the in-game ads. If you’re talking signs along the road in a driving game, or branded posters and whatnot in a FPS game then I don’t mind. If you’re talking about anything that interrupts my game play to view an ad then I would certainly not want to play that game…
So I can’t really answer your poll as it’s not so black-and-white of a situation for me. 
Ok, im talking “non-interupting” game ads… but clearly visible ones. For instance… you are in a sporting area, and there are ads around the stadium… or you are in a play-ground and there are billboards around the place.
I am talking non-obtrusive ads. But still visible enough to justify charging advertisers. More brand based advertising.
I’ve give a bit more info as to why we (S3) are asking…
We have started loggin our demo game usage per country, per player and number of plays. We feel this is justified due to the fact that we have had almost 30,000 demo downloads in less than 2 months, and many of our demo players are playing well over 40 times, yet aren’t buying…
To give you more accurate figures… in the last 8 days, we have had 3378 unique demo players that have racked up just under 20,000 plays of Turret Wars 1.2 between them, across 20+ countries. And this is just for a demo of a paid game!
I personally believe these figures would atleast tripple if it was the full TW game they were playng for free.
We see clear value in looking at an advertising model here to possibly replace the paid model… hence the request for others feedback/comments…
agreed on all.
if you can have both options, ad supported (but only the in game variety if unobtrusive) paid ad free, that’s the closest to a win-win for all IMO. you make money your customers have a choice.
Why aren’t you having your game played online with in-page (as opposed to in-game) advertising revenue generation? For example, submit it to one of the game portal sites (like shockwave.com) and go from there. The truth is that action games are more often than not played by a younger crowd that wants free games and there are profitable channels that exist now that you can use and not introduce in-game ads into the mix.
Based on them being non-interrupting ads I’ll now vote. But I’m not sure that dumping ads into your game will get you much compared to making it a web-based game that drives revenue from in-page ads. Besides, there are veryfew* advertisers willing to go with in-game ads right now, most are shying away from it until it’s proven a bit more successful.
The problem with that idea is that the number of ad revenue generating versions drops, and therefore makes it less attractive to potential advertisers. Its the number of plays and unique players that will attract good advertisers… Having both version might solve the customer question… but would kill the plausibility of the idea in the first place.
more than triple i’d think - but still it takes alot of eyeballs to make some decent cash from advertising, doesn’t it? enough to equall what you get out of a paid version i’m not so sure.
i personally wouldn’t do both (have customers pay then see advertising). i know the writing is on the wall with this but there’s currently a big stigma against it among gamers - i probably wouldn’t buy a game like that.
so then you could just have an ad supported demo an ad free paid full version, no?
Well, we are too late for that concept with Turret Wars… but for one of our next smaller titles, that might be an option.
I would love to hear more about how well games are doing financially on shockwave.com before I look down that route, as most of the stories I hear are that there is still little $$ in it for the developers with such a cluttered marketplace.
Yoggy? Wanna step in here are share a little?
I’ll preempt a Yoggy response by saying that with a successful game there’s a fair amount of money to be had, especially if you utilize multiple distribution channels. You might consider shockwave.com, realarcade.com/gamehouse.com (I’ve recently been in touch with them and they too are open to Unity submissions), bigfishgames.com, etc. Even if you keep it in downloadable format look to distribute it as many times as you can. Conversion rates of only a few percent (conversion from trial to purchase) are not unheard of so you need to distribute as many as possible to make that 1-3% add up to something good.
Yes, thats what we will be doing with our future main titles… and in hind sight, should have done with Turret Wars… but who knew! Hahahaha!
We have had well over 250,000 plays in less than 2 months of TW demo (to teh point were we stopped demo players from saving highscores due to the network traffic it was taking), and could have built a fantastic in-game ad based case study from this… but we didnt know that was going to happen when we launched Turet Wars. From the number of downloads others were discussing prior to our TW 1.0 launch, we were expecting less than half this number in a longer time-span… Oh I wish i could turn back time now! Haha
In game advertising isn’t new, but is a huge concept and has made those who have put it to practice initially very wealthy. I have voted for free game(s) but of course as long as the in game advertising can generate enough income to put food on the game developers plates etc. 
I guess if the correct model was implemented everyone could win. It could mean not paying for game development from your own pocket, or scrounging around for investors, rather a set pool of money chipped in from potential advertisers.
This is a great initiative and something that every game company should research as it will probably be a standard in the future.
Jared.
don’t most portals have a non-disclosure agreement as far as the money you make? (or is it just the terms?)
if i read shockwave’s info correctly, you can have a webplayer a full download for traditional sale as well. though i have heard they take around 50-60% somewhere.
Some might have NDAs about the actual money received, others may not. Same story for percentages received. That having been said, revenue share percentages are often in the 20-30% range, a bit higher if your game is exclusive to their site, lower if not. But remember, it’s their site, their bandwidth and their user base that you are leveraging. So post it to your site and get 100% of the ad revenue for thousands of monthly visitors, post it on their site and get 20-30% of the revenue for your slice of their millions of monthly visitors. The idea is that the game portals offer far greater volume that you might get on your own, so in the end it can often work out to be the more profitable channel.
I’m not so sure about that based on what I’ve heard from folks and read elsewhere. My understanding is that advertisers have been a bit hesitant to go this route as there have been studies showing that game players don’t have any more product awareness after playing games with in-game ads. So advertisers are hesitant, there’s no visibility guarantees nor duration of visibility guarantees. At least with an in-page ad they know it will be fully and clearly visible at least once, for “bumper” ads (those shown while a game loads) they know you’ll be staring at it waiting for it to finish so you can play.
Sorry I’m stepping out soon, but I’ll look for the study link about product awareness later.
Edit: and now that I tried a quick look I’m buried in write ups that say product awareness is in fact higher… Doh! Either way, I still have heard plenty of stories about hesitance in this area, mostly on the part of advertisers. Perhaps that’s more in the casual area in specific? Perhaps not?
Edit: and I’m not saying that in-games ads won’t some day prove very lucrative, it just seems that for now there’s more hype than substance…
don’t get me wrong - i think the portal system is a great option (and i may be trying to get something onto one before too long ; )
Higgy B:
Here is a link to a company that is at the forefront of in game advertising globally: http://www.massiveincorporated.com/
This company was started by regular people with good ideas who are now very wealthy …
There is money to be made in this area, and there seems to be companies willing to advertise if there are mutual benefits.
Have a google around and you’ll see this isn’t new, it’s happening !
Jaydubs.[/quote]
Yeah… its going to be HUGE… but unlike everythign else I though was going to be huge… and never got on the bandwagon… this one I plan on not only being there… but helping forge the way.
The theory that… even if you had only a one play per person situation (due to them being pissed off by the in game advertising - even though a free product)… you can still generate amazing monthly income at low IPT (Impressions per thousand) rates… just from 1,000,000 one off players over a year.
@Jaydubs: I’ve known all about in-game advertising for a few years now and am well aware of Massive Inc. My point is that in-games are not something that is a “use it and you get very wealthy” stage. Sure, some folks are using it, but in general across the industry it’s not quite as widely adopted as some of the hype might have you believe. It’s beginning to be adopted at the console/AAA title level but doesn’t seem at all present in the casual games space just yet.
@Seon: I think it will grow and offer some good potential, but as I said before, thus far it hasn’t seemed to gain much traction in the casual space. Based on your theory, why aren’t you similarly jazzed about in-page advertising? The same player that plays your game only once must also download it once, thus they’ll see the page ad(s) just as much as they might see the in-game ads, and not get pissed off at your game, right?
So my main point is that in-game ads are something that advertisers have taken interest in on the casual game level, and based on that it’s something you may not be able to take advantage of today as easily, or to the same level, as you could existing revenue models. As folks (perhaps like Seon ) forge the way that can surely change, but for most indie developers (most of this forum) it’s likely better to build on proven business models until they can afford to forge the way for others.
Yoggy, can you disclose how much loot you have made thus far at shockwave? Or anyone else who may really know.
Can you disclose your percentage?
Is shockwave paying you on ‘impression’ rates or ‘click’ rates?
I understand if you are under NDA, but the answers to those questions are the ones that never seem to really get answered. If you can’t disclose no problem. But if you could that would be awesome.
Usually the answers to those questions are similar to those of a congressman at a news conference…