Porter's World

Perfection

One of the biggest issues I face as a flash game developer is the fact that I’m a perfectionist. I absolutely hate submitting a game to the world that isn’t absolutely polished to the best of my ability. This is both good and bad at times, depending on which way it’s looked at. I’ve been trying to look at both the negative and positives sides of being a perfectionist and have come up with a lot of content for both sides. The biggest matter to come to mind when thinking of this, is the importance of a brand. Is it really worth having a quality brand name? Do players recognize names such as Ninja Kiwi and Berzerk Studios studios and know that the game is going to be good? Such thoughts circle through my mind on a regular basis and keep me from releasing anything below my best efforts.

The negative side of being a perfectionist is a rather big one. On a regular basis I’m sliding by in life spending little money, usually saving up what I’ve earned from previous games for rent. I am admittedly still learning a lot and don’t work nearly as much as I should, but that’s irrelevant for the most part. My main issue is that I just can’t stand the idea of producing a quick mouse avoider or simple puzzle game in a few days, and then selling it for a couple hundred bucks, I just can’t get myself to do that. I feel that everything I do has to be some epic project, something that’s going to be a hit on the net to some extent and not just give me money to survive; I try to design games for fun, not for a living. This obsession goes so far that I’ve actually considered creating a “fake” brand that I would use for my smaller projects and I would literally make no association to my main brand. This is in fact a very simple solution that would indeed work, however I would morally hate myself for sinking so low as to feed sponsors a sub par game that wont’ go anywhere, but will give me my rent. The biggest conflict of working with bigger games is taking a risk, something I’ve been doing for some time now. Every time I get into a project that will take 1-3 months I risk not having rent money to pay my roommates, not a good feeling. If I dedicate that much time to a large project, and it somehow doesn’t pay off, I’m not going to be in a good position. I could go back to working a day job at Domino’s just to pay rent, but I truly do prefer dedicating my life to something I care about, rather than wasting my days away eating pepperoni on the line.

Aside from these complications, there really are a lot of positive aspects to being a perfectionist. Having a quality brand really does pay off. A single hit game will establish a relationship with sponsors and help build a good reputation. Players definitely take a liking to games produced by popular artists, and regardless of the game’s quality, the ratings show. I’m not saying a bad game from a big name will do wonders, but a good game under the right name may go above and beyond, even if it’s not necessarily deserving. One of the biggest issues sites such as Kongregate and Newgrounds suffer is user ratings. A great game can go under the radar on Newgrounds if the right people zero vote your game out of the “awesome score” range of 3.60 or higher. Every game receives it’s fair amount of zero votes, but having a good brand name among the public can easily counteract such assaults. Regardless of the perks with the public, there’s also a certain sense of fulfillment to having a pile of great games under your belt. I don’t mind experiment every now and then and making a game that doesn’t do so well, but having the majority of my games clearly be of great effort is something I hold highly.

Sponsors Love Mouse Support

A very simple concept that is often overlooked is the importance of mouse support. As far as sponsorships go, you are far more likely to get a sponsor if your game is fully mouse controlled. A great game will always sell, adding mouse support just increases that chance, as well as the money you’ll receive for your sponsorship.

There’s a few reasons mouse controlled games do so well. The first we’ll look at is why sponsors love mouse support. Having mouse support greatly increases the amount of click-throughs a sponsor receives from your game. This is the entire reason the sponsor pays to put their name in your game, so it’s essentially the most important feature aside from your game being great. Even an amazing game without mouse support will find a lot of trouble getting a sponsor because it simply doesn’t give enough click-through back to the sponsors site. I spoke with Lars,( the Games Acquisition Manager for King.com) about why mouse support was so important and he shed a lot of light on the matter. My recently sponsored game Tower of Greed was a rare exception in Lar’s pickings, he generally only sponsors games that are mouse controlled, however this is proof that a great game can still recieve sponsorship if it’s built right. Although the game is entirely keyboard friendly, we did include mouse support for menus to raise the click back for King as well as make the game more user friendly.

That leads us to the next big reason mouse support is so important, it’s user friendly. Flash game players are not your usual gamers, unlike console gamers, flash gamers aren’t used to using a controller. I personally love keyboard controls, far more than mouse controls. As strong as my liking for keyboard controls is, I grew up playing NES, SNES and so on, and I recognize that. As simplistic as arrows or WASD with one hand ,and two buttons for jump and another action with the other hand may be to many gamers, many flash game players find these controls to be very confusing.

Overall using mouse support is something you should definitely do if you can. If you’re a beginner to the industry I highly recommend you use a game that is fully controlled with the mouse. It’s rough starting out and using the mouse for your control scheme will greatly boost your chance of finding a sponsor while you lack abilities in other areas due to inexperience. In the end, using the mouse for your game’s control scheme is going to benefit you, your sponsor and your players, so be sure to consider such things when planning a new game.

You're Not Done

There’s always a lot of talk about how to make great games. From my experience however, there isn’t too much talk about what to do after your game is completed. Believe it or, there’s a lot of work to be done after your game is completed, and it’s quite possibly just as important as the work done beforehand.

Let’s take a look at the obvious work that must be done after completing your game, as said above, finding a sponsor. It may sound straight forward, but the sponsor you pick goes far beyond the current project you just completed. Picking the right sponsor could be your doorway to a stable relationship with that sponsor and help increase speed as well as revenue earned from future projects. If you own your own portal, you’ll want a splash intro screen that leads back to your site. It’s not he main branding of the game, but if the game does well enough this will get you a considerable amount of traffic. With this in mind, it’s very important to pick a sponsor that has a great distribution program. Some of the bigger sponsors will push your game much further than any of the smaller sponsors could wish to. Spreading your game to as many players as possible helps build you a name, and that name can prove incredibly powerful down the road when you have a few games under your belt.

Moving on from the more known knowledge and diving into the lesser known works of post-completion. Once your game is sponsored and released, there’s a lot to be done. Submitting your game to all the right portals is a must do. Such sites include, Kongregate, Newgrounds, Armor Games, MiniJuegos, AllGamesAllFree and FlashGameDistribution. It’s important that you the developer upload to these sites, because in most cases your sponsor can’t submit them. If possible you should add in medals to your Newgrounds games, and include the API on Kongregate in case Greg picks your game for badges, which is a huge plus.

There is also extra money to be made beyond getting your upfront sponsor payment. Sites such as, Newgrounds, Kongregate and Fizzy all offer revenue share plans to developers, and if you’re game gets enough views this could mean some very nice additional money in your pocket. Another huge plus to spreading your game around the net and getting exposure is the wonderful concept of non-exclusive licenses, or NE’s for short. Sites will contact you to buy a license for a site locked copy of your game on their site, given your game is successful enough. These copies generally sell between $100-$400, and up to $1000 in special cases. These sponsors pay for you to remove all outgoing links and original branding, which in most sponsorship cases is allowed according to your agreement, but always double check before signing a contract. In addition to the above, if you have in game advertisements in your game you can also see an extra chunk of change if your game does well. With all of the above you can be seeing a very nice amount of extra money, one that can sometimes exceed your original payment. I think it’s safe to say that under no circumstances should the above events be skipped before you jump into your next game.

Another hugely overlooked aspect of post-completion is relationship building. Making your sponsor proud to have selected your game is very important and builds a foundation for future sponsorships. Having this kind of a relationship scores you more money in the future, and also saves you time looking for a sponsor since you can directly contact your previous sponsor to pitch ideas or show them a finished product before anyone else sees it. This is exceptionally important seeing as one of the major loses many people suffer is a load of down time between games due to looking for a sponsor.

By now it’s no mystery that the work doesn’t end upon getting a sponsor. There’s reputation to be had, money to be earned and relationships to be created or fortified. The bonuses of having a good reputation help future games enormously, and a bit of reputation never hurt anyone’s ego. The extra money is great, and in cases such as mine can even pay rent between games. Overall there’s a lot of extra work to be done once your game is complete, but it’s certainly not without reward.

Physics Games

I’m sure nearly everyone reading this is aware of the success that physics based games have been bringing in. Games such as Splitter, Super Stacker, Fantastic Contraption, Totem Destroyer and Civiballs have done amazingly well on the net thus far. There’s clearly something majestic about these games in the eye of the player, but what is it? Do they feel that the game is better because it offers realistic physics which are rarely seen in games? Does the general public (dare I say it) enjoy using their brains to solve puzzles using real life knowledge? There’s something about these games that really draws players in, and because of that, sponsors too.

Many developers have heard of the Box2D physics engine, the power behind nearly all of these highly successful physics games. Many developers enjoy using this amazing tool, while others put it down for one reason or another. Regardless of developers opinions, it’s clear that the games produced with Box2D that were given a decent amount of effort pay off very well. Civiballs is the highest paid sponsored game by King.com, and many other physics games are up there among other sponsors. Many developers like to use Gemcraft as the ideal example of a successful game, which it certainly is, but what many of them don’t know, is that some of these physics based games have sold for more, a lot more. Without a doubt, games such as Gemcraft have a ton of more work put into them, but somehow these physics games with a significantly lower effort put into them (not low, just lower) are doing amazingly well along side them. With this newly found info to many of you, you may want to think twice about ignoring Box2D any longer, unless you prefer making less money for more work. That’s not to say developers should all flock to physics games and abandon others, but I’d love to see some more creative takes on the genre, and I’m sure sponsors would be willing to dish out the cash, judging by recent sales of similar games.

Let’s take a closer look at a physics game and dissect it, let’s try and figure out what makes these games so successful. Dynamic Systems is a brand new game (at the time of writing this) that was sponsored for a price that definitely sits up among the top paid for games. The goal is to guide a small metal ball to the bucket in each stage using various tools such as dominoes, bouncing platforms, metal rails and more. My first impression of this game’s success, as with most physics based games, is that it’s incredibly user friendly. I’m against hand-holding in most cases, but it actually works in these kind of games and I know from experience in game design that players love to have things spelled out for them, at least at first. There really isn’t any confusion to be found within the first few levels, new elements are introduced one by one and in very easy scenarios. The trick here is that the difficulty would be boring if it was the same over and over, however since a new mechanic is introduced every level for some time, the difficulty is completely disregarded, a smart move in level design. Once you’ve learned every mechanic the game has to offer, it’s up to you to think on your own and solve the puzzles combining your newly found knowledge. From a player perspective, I believe I can see why these games do so well. Most flash game players are complete novices at games, they don’t like a huge challenge, especially at first. These games teach you everything you need to know step by step in a way that isn’t boring, nor does it actually appear to be a tutorial you would normally click through, despite the fact that the first few levels indeed are just a tutorial in disguise. Aside from that, I believe the realistic approach of using physics, something we encounter every day in the real world, really appeals to gamers. I believe they feel like the developer has done a good job mimicking the real world and that impresses them. Not only that, the real physics makes them feel comfortable because they’re already aware of many of the reactions they will get in the game, because it’s based on what they live with every day in the real world.

Regardless of my opinion on why these games are successful, they certainly do well. Players love them time after time and the games seem to recieve a higher number of views than their surrounding games on nearly all portals. Weather you’re a fan of Box2D or not, I would recommend giving it a look. If you’ve got a creative mind and the ability to use this library, you’re certain to come out with some very nice cash in the next few months. On a complete side note, I recently said that achievements were going to be the next big thing in flash games, now it seems that real physics is the new trend, sponsors better check their bank accounts when developers start using both.