Then What Happened?

I promised to post more stats on Plink. Let’s pretend I originally set out to do a year long study then decided to give it to you early. That’s so much cooler sounding than “I’ve been so busy with other projects I haven’t posted.” So here it is:

Statistics for Ping

The numbers look huge but those are actually rather modest for a flash game it seems.

9 months, 1 week in the wild. (published November 23, 2008)

• Total Views: 283,679
• Total Hosts: 143

This doesn’t show the Kongregate numbers but they were along the same lines.

Total income from all sources (Mochi and Kongregate) ~$20

Lessons Learned:

• The system works. Mochi, Kongregate, etc. can really get your game out there.
• You need a popular game to make much money directly off ads. (Plays in the millions).
• Developing Flash games under Linux is still a little painful. Serious developers should probably use the Adobe tools.
• There’s plenty of free content out there from places like 8bitrocket.com and freesound.org
• There’s are also enough free libraries and tools out there like APE to really give a newcomer a great start.

Would I do it again?

I think I will probably write another game someday, maybe something to tie into another project. I like the idea of tiny games that talk to each other and serve a purpose like design or negotiation. Imagine if you work day could be a series of interactive games, not just figuratively, but literally. After all, “Play is work you enjoy doing for nothing.” — Evan Esar

Next Up: A brand new project!

Further Ludification

According to Mochibot, Plink has had 95,490 views this week. According to MochiAds it’s had 18,365 ad impressions. I’m assuming there are alot of add blockers involved. The views look like they’ve started to peak, so I’ve submitted the game to more portals. It makes me wonder if it might be better to provide some sort of bonus to folks who turn off their adblockers to play.

Here are all the portals to which I’ve personally uploaded the game. Mochi networks has distributed it to many more.

www.newgrounds.com
www.kongregate.com
www.allgamesallfree.com
www.hallpass.com
www.flashportal.com
www.addictinggames.com
www.killsometime.com
www.channel4.com
www.gamegarage.co.uk
www.thegamehomepage.com
www.flashgameasylum.com
www.ugoplayer.com

Spontaneous Ludification is Full of Awesome and Win

I know I promised to describe the other Muses, but I never said I would do it in order. The latest muse has really been doing some interesting things, so let’s jump ahead and talk about it. The Spontaneous Ludification initiative in Project Muse started when I stumbled across a blog by Emanuele Feronato where he described his experiment in making money with free games. It sounded like great fun, so

Ontopolis started our own experiment.

Observations:

1. Hey, flash games are much cooler than they used to be! It’s alot like the early PC days and the Commodore 64s and Tandy’s and TIs. There are flash game studios, but individual developers can still build something cool, and get it to eager gamers who will immediately tell me what’s wrong with it.

2. An entire ecosystem of game portals, ad and sponsorship brokers and social networks gives a new game developer a free and easy way to reach the gamers and hear their opinions (which make the next game better). It’s a complete market and a fun place to play the game developer meta-game.

3. Games are just really cool.

Hypothesis:

A game with good game play and simple, free content can make enough money to pay for the effort of creating and marketing it as well as a little extra money for diet Dr. Pepper and cheeses, and several of these games over a few months might pay for a nice vacation.

Protocol:

Create a simple flash game using only free tools and libraries on Linux.

Tie it into an advertising network and upload it to portals.

Measure the results.

Experiment Notes:

November 17 – Coming up with a good idea was harder than expected, but I’ve decided to make a Pachinko type game with balls that bounce off pins and fall into bins which either add or take away a ball or provide a score.

November 23 – It took longer than I expected too, but I did have quite a bit of travel and work in between including a week long vacation in London.  I estimate it took about twenty hours, but most of that was learning Flash AS3 and researching MochiAds and getting my environment setup. I also found some great sound assets and a free physics engine. Unfortunately the physics engine looks like it’s no longer maintained, but it’s very nice and the code is easy so I can use it for one game. I also learned that looping sound support is very tricky in AS3. Pick an sample where you don’t mind a pause between loops. There is no reasonable way to eliminate the pause under without Creative Studio or a bithack only available under Windows.

November 24 - Added MochiAds and MochiBot and uploaded the SWF file for approval. Rejected at first due to a bug in the way I had inserted the ads (use their preloader example, you’ll need it). Resubmitted before I went to work. Email around noon says they accepted the game. Another around 4:00pm says they will also distribute it! Just before dinner uploaded the game to Newgrounds, Kongregate. There were 337 plays before I finished dinner!

November 25 – According to MochiBot there have been 3,546 plays since last night, 450 of those saw AD impressions (kongregate doesn’t show MochiAds and alot of them were there). The game has earned $0.18 in ad revenue. The game has earned a Kongregate “Good Game Bonus” and has a 2.70 rating with 121 votes. On Newgrounds, the game has been favorited 8 times, has 21 reviews and a score of 3.46 out of five! Not bad for a first try. I’ll let it run another day just on those portals and then upload it to others. I’ve noticed that the credits aren’t showing up (they get overwhelmed by game messages). I’ll have to fix that and upload an update. MochiAds makes that very simple with their built-in version control.

Some reviews:

“Stragely Addicting, Proof that no amount of bump mapping or 3d graphics will ever beat a solid concept.” – Super Perro

“Great Fun, Smooth game play, good sound. I would like to see different levels with higher point values.” – ripulus

“Amazingly fun game, I just hated that I couldn’t restart without watching the stupid highscore board pop up! The ad in the beginning is find, but PLEASE, take the scoreboard out.” – Zayro

And from Garwism who had high score for awhile last night:

“OMFG ADDICTION!!!
I got 19,000 points “

My own best score was only 1700…

Average Review: 7.9/10

Zayro wasn’t the only one that hated the scoreboard, and several people said the game was too easy because there were spots where the balls could fall straight through. (This makes me wonder if the randomization of the ball starting position wasn’t working for everyone.) And more people asked for levels and changing pin layouts. All in all great feedback and great ideas for the next game.

Results:

The experiment is still in progress but things look very positive.

Reactions — Whoohooo I’m a game developer! I made money on the interwebs. I’m so gonna celebrate when I earn my first $1.

The First Muse: The Conqueror Worm

The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued

…

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm. – Edgar Allen Poe

So it seemed like a good idea at the time, laudable even. After all, more and more people are looking for ways to reduce, recycle and reuse. What if they could even make money doing it? Worm farming doesn’t take up much space, the little wrigglers don’t crow at dawn, they can’t kick you across a corral like an ostrich and they eat garbage. People were bound to be interested in a full course on worm farming. We could interview the top breeders (yes breeders), farmers, entomologists, the Secretary of Agriculture, maybe even get a foreword by Brian Herbert, Author of Children of Dune. So that was step one accomplished.

1. The first step in coming up with a muse is the idea.
2. The second is to find out how much the product would cost to develop and create. We shopped around and found a printing and fulfillment house that could do the packaging and printing and duplication and could put the whole thing together and provide a fulfillment back-end for the website for $30 + %20 of the difference between our cost and the sales price with a minimum first order of 50 and single orders after that. We didn’t really settle on what we wanted to “charge ourselves” for doing the research and interviews and authoring the course, but based on experience with non-fiction for traditional publication we put a ballpark at three months part-time and called that 120 hours.
3. The third step is to test market the idea before you spend any money developing it. This is where the system really paid off this time. We first built a simple three page site with marketing copy describing the product and links to buy the product. We were careful not to keep any individual information from visitors. There was a form to fill out to purchase, but we didn’t connect the form action. This was to protect the potential customer from any possibility of identity theft. We then pointed a Google Adwords campaign at the site and ran 1000 clicks through the funnel with targeted keywords like “raising worms” and “worm farming.” In the end we generated less than three hits to the goal page. We tried various price points between $50-$150 with similar results.

We used existing hosting and bought a domain, plus the Adwords. Total cost, less than $200.00

Result of the test: FAIL

Overall Result: WIN (the system worked and saved us from throwing good money after bad)

There could still be money in them thar garbage piles, and we may look into it again at some point if we come up with a different approach, but for now we won’t be spending any more money on worms. If you’re interested in taking a crack at the worm farming market yourself, feel free and please let us know how it works out. We removed the buy buttons and goal pages as well as the marketing copy, but you can see the site itself at yourwormranch.com

Geez, that forward by Brian Herbert really would have been nice to have though…

“Like tiny individual reflections of Shai Hulud in a crystal of shattered time, the earthworm is the agent of change beneath the earth. He who controls the worm, controls the garbage.”  — Never Said by Brian Herbert

Next, scary stories.

Exercising the Right to Be Wrong

Why we fight

At Ontopolis, we’ve been working while the cabbage sleeps. Since March we’ve been working on “Project Muse” which, as well as being an excuse to name a project something mysterious is also a collection of ideas and actions aimed at feeding later projects. The idea for Project Muse is not to get rich quickly or even at all particularly. The idea is to create a tiny business that earns a little net profit without soaking up too much time in ongoing support and management. Once one of these grazing automatons is wound up and bumping into walls like a cute little memebot, we do it again and again, until the Ontopolis basement is full of these cute little gizmos generating a dollar here, a Linden there and dropping them into the cash pump to feed other things including lame art projects, jokes in poor taste and odd charities. We will also use the money to buy cheese and time to think up more stuff. There are only a few of us right now, but we’re open to anyone who can fit in the uniform and play the electric kazoo.

This evening I’ll list talk more about the results and progress from our first three muse experiments.

For further reading:

The 4-Hour Workweek – Great introduction to cash pumps and muses, but check the website for more up to date service providers and information. Most of the providers in the books were either swamped by his readers or are out of business.

Fight Club – You are not your khakis

Principia Discordia – Don’t read this one if you’re a cabbage. If you can’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.