Contest Results

The MochiAds “Top of the World” contest results are in!  And…

I didn’t place.

The funny thing is that my son and I especially enjoyed “Electric Box.”  The others are really great games too.  And I can see where “Haku” deserves the technical merit reward especially because you can really see the 3D effects in rotation and texture swapping.

Flash Games are really all about “gameplay over glitz.”

I got really wrapped up in the new technology and instead of focusing on a great game, I made a mediocre game with a neat 3D-like effect.  As much as I talk about how AAA-games should focus more on gameplay, I fell victim to the same “geeking-out” that they do when it comes to some neat visual effect that becomes the centerpiece of the game.

Because Flash Games have to be careful to not tax system resources, the general push of Flash Games have always been gameplay over glitz.  You can only guess what the mantra I will be repeating to myself the entire time I’m making my next game.

I won’t lie and say that I’m not disappointed.  I pushed hard, worked hard, but in the end I can say that I have a published game.  Finishing is the hardest part of making any game.

And so far in a month and a half, “Strike Eagle” has over 160,000 gameplays and my blog has tripled it’s bandwidth.

And I’m only getting started.

After the completion of my first game, Strike Eagle, I was very sure to write Daniel “Danc” Cook of Lost Garden, thanking him for the use of some of his artwork, specifically the trees and explosions that he generously posts on his blog for game developers to use in their games.  Be sure to check them out, and if you use them to give him due credit.

Danc was very gracious to write me back and asked me about some of the things I learned from the experience.  This is what I wrote.

Hi Danc,

Thanks for writing back.  I hope that things are going well with your game, “Bunni.”  Your blog continues to be one of the most insightful blogs out there on good game design.

I learned quite a bit from the experience of programming my first game: a lot having to do with tenacity and making design compromises to hit the contest deadline.  But upon reflection, I see my game as focusing too much on technical prowess and too little on gameplay.  One of the major design requirements for the contest was to use a 3D element in the game and I used the a 3D plane quite extensively.  However, because of that, the focus of my design became technical mastery rather than “fun” factor of game design.

My game was modeled after “Afterburner” from the 1980s arcade.  But the reason why a game like “Afterburner” is fun, is the novelty of using a flight stick in a fast-paced arcade-like shooter.  Translating the experience to the keyboard and mouse loses a lot of what made “Afterburner” fun.  I’m quite proud of the technical tricks I used to get the moving background effect to look convincing, but in the end, what matters is if the players enjoyed it, and will come back again telling all his or her friends.

I am quite proud of the numbers my game has produced: over 100,000 in ad impressions in a month, and a spike in site traffic on my blog, however there is also the reality of spending over 120 hours of long sleepless nights for a low return.  So far, I’ve gotten back about $.40 to every hour I’ve spent working on the game and to be frank, there are many great games that I’m competing against that are far more polished and deserving of credit that I believe I will not win the contest.

But as my Dad would say, “Count this as a tuition fee.”  I am still a student of game design and have much more to learn.  I will be sure to make my second game a lot more fun and I’ll let you know when it is posted.

Again, thank you for all the incredible posts on your blog, and especially the art that you so generously let game developers like myself use in their games.

Sincerely yours,
Paolo

Now, the next question is, do I go on or do I give up?  Is it worth the price especially looking at my son sleeping next to me as I write, the countless hours of sleep I will lose on my next endeavor, especially in the face of even more hours at work in the coming weeks?

You better well believe it.  Let’s do this again until we get it right.

Two weeks after the release of Strike Eagle, I’m seriously raking in the dough:

Earnings from Strike Eagle

Now granted, I have no network.  I am a virtual unknown coming into the Flash Game Development field, and until the contest results come in and I place, I’m virtually no one.  My rank at NewGrounds was a little above average and same with Kongregate.  So with approximately 30,000 ad impressions, I’ve made close to $20.  If I somehow break 3,000,000 impressions, I make $2000.  But only the best games with the highest replay value ever get that high.  So this is not a viable way to make a living or start a gaming revolution.

Several people have taken me aside and said that if I put the game up on Flash Game License, I would have easily gotten $1500 for the game.  Which again means that I still have a long way to go to get effective games done.  I put in over 120 hours into “Strike Eagle”, and if you divide it up into an hourly rate, is not very high.  I actually make more money doing freelance web programming than I do making Flash games at that rate.

Urbansquall recently posted about his business model with how he makes money for his Flash Game Development company.  And oddly enough, he also states the same thing.  He makes the majority of his money in Licensing and in Contracting – not in advertising.

I think that for my next game, I will try licensing the game I create rather than going for a contest.  As much as I think this contest experience on MochiAds was great and a giant motivator to get me moving and especially to finish a game, waiting for the contest result and the uncertainty of knowing if all the hours you put in are going to be worth your time is very frustrating.  Worse still, since your game is already out there, you can’t go back and license it.

So I may have to reneg on the Jennifer Ann contest.  It is a noble venture, but I currently have a small freelancing job I have to complete, which I will document here on my blog to show the agile software development process for an overseas client.  By the time I complete this job, I will have no time to finish for Jennifer Ann.  But I will seriously consider it for next year.

For now, I will let a possible sequel to Strike Eagle sizzle on my mind and I will document and finish my small freelancing project using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).