Porter's World

FGL

Lately more than ever I’ve realized how in depth and advanced the Flash industry can be. From market plans by developers, to the increase of technology in the software used, Flash is constantly evolving. The level of quality for a game, to be accepted as good, has  risen dramatically even in the last year. It’s also a common misconception that creating and selling Flash games is an easy task, lets go over some specifics.

First off, we’ve already gone over market experience and showed you how important having ads and submitting to revenue share sites can be. Well this is just the surface of how in depth marketing can get for a Flash game. Aside from ads and revenue share there are micro-transactions, performance deals, Non-Exclusive license sales, in game ad placement and more. We’ll go in depth on all the above in future  posts, but I think it’s clear the market isn’t a simple one.

The software Flash developers use is also in a constant phase of upgrading. I started Flash using Flash 4 back in middle school, at which time the company belonged to Macromedia. I now use Adobe Flash CS3. Even now, with an expensive and advanced program I find myself one program behind, for Adobe has already released Flash CS4, which comes with it’s own share of interface changes and new features. Aside from Flash itself advancing, the services and programs us developers associate ourselves with are constantly changing as well. Everything from Editors like FlashDevelop, to the API’s available for various tasks. These advancements roll over into our next bit of discussion, the increase in game quality.

It’s no mystery that the longer you do something the better you get at it, the same goes for Flash games. As the industry has been around for years, and constantly evolving, we’ve seen Flash game graphics go from mostly stick figures, to high end graphics that match those of any well made 2D game regardless of platform. Creating a game is not nearly as easy as it once was, the bar has been raised significantly with games such as GemCraft being created, and finding sponsorship is not as easy as it once was. There are more restrictions, more specifics, and more details to be gone over for every deal ranging from agreeing on a type of license, to if the sponsor will allow ads or not. Had saying this I’d like to move on to a friendly warning to fellow developers and new-comers of the industry.

As mentioned above the quality of Flash games is on the rise. Flash games are no longer created primarily by single users doing both graphics and programming, but by teams of 2 or more people. It’s commonly thought that you can simply get into Flash, think of a game idea, create it, and then continue to sell said game. It doesn’t work that way these days, you really have to know what you’re doing, and you will most likely fail before you succeed. I was lucky enough to get myself into the industry on accident, I was just making games for fun to post on Newgrounds to get a bit of recognition. I had no idea I could be paid for what was quickly becoming my favorite pass time. I think most developers issues these days is that they are in it too much for the money and failing to be passionate about game design on it’s own, even if a penny was never to be made. I love my job, it’s my hobby as well as my pay, I would continue doing this if sponsorship didn’t exist and have fun with it all the while. If you can’t be passionate about your work and devote a lot of time and energy into your projects, it’s very unlikely that you will succeed, and that’s after you have a game or two of trial and error and learn your way into the industry. I’ve seen a lot of new developers come into the industry lately, and I can honestly say that from my perspective, very few of them will succeed with their current outlooks and attitude towards the Flash scene as a whole. That’s not to say that new developers can’t succeed in this field, but they must keep in mind that there will be failure, there is much learning to do, and things are not going to be as easy as most see.