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).