Forum ‹ Monetization ‹ Monetizing a multiplayer cardgame

[Normero]

Hello,

I'm currently developing an online card game with playerIO API

I don't know how the game is called in english, I think it's called something like elyseé. I couldn't find it on google.
It's a card game with oldschool playing cards. you play with 4 to 6 players in a room.

I've developed 2 games so far. Warehouse worker and it's expansion Warehouse worker 2, it's basically just a level pack. The first part I monetized by putting it on Kongregate and receiving revenue. It got me about 7 bucks from Kongregate. Not really alot, but I didn't mind, since it was distributed by Spil Games I got quite alot of visitors on my website.

For the sequel I decided to try out MT through MochiAds. that got me about 3 bucks. Even less. My income is coming like 95% from China, and 90% from that from one website.

I'm fairly new to flash game developing. This will be my second actual game. I'd like to get some tips on monetizing and sitributing my game.

I found some people pointing to FGL. That looks awesome. I have some questions.
Are sponsors willing to pay server costs?
About how much would I get for such a game, and what would I have to do for it?
Do sponsors pay periodically, or a one time payment? (for MP games)


In short. How should I monetize my game? Sponsorship or MT? or Both?
How can I redistribute my game? What are your experiences?

Any other tips?

Thanks alot

[Oliver]

It sounds to me like you should really sell sponsorships for your game. It's probably the easiest way to make more money than you're doing now. The alternative is of course to build payments into the game, but that takes a ton of time to tweek to get a game to the point where players are having so much fun that they're willing to put money into the game.

FGL is a great spot to go looking for sponsorships. Simply upload your game to FGL and see if any sponsors bid on it. They all have different terms, so you'll have to negotiate with each of them. In general they'll all want that the game hasen't been distributed yet, before they'll buy a sponsorship.

Are sponsors willing to pay server costs?
About how much would I get for such a game, and what would I have to do for it?
Do sponsors pay periodically, or a one time payment? (for MP games)

All of those comes down to one simple thing: Negotiate! We mention a few sponsors on our frontpage that we know are willing to sponsor Player.IO games, so you could start there. In general: everything is a negotiation.

Best.
Oliver

[Normero]

Thanks a bunch for the reply.

I'll definitely check out the sponsors on the frontpage and post my game on FGL.

[TobiasW]

In general they'll all want that the game hasen't been distributed yet, before they'll buy a sponsorship.

Does that mean "nobody has yet seen your game"? Or "it isn't online on some big site yet"?
More importantly, does that mean if I plan to sell it to these guys too, I shouldn't post it to be test-played on forums like this one?

[Oliver]

It means: "hasen't seen exposure on gaming sites".

So if you post here, and only a few people see it, that's no problem. But if somebody copies it to newsgrounds and it spreads from there... then that's a problem.

Generally you'd lock down your game some how (playcount or timelimit) to prevent this from happening. FGL is nice because it's a forum for showing off your game, without risking widespread exposure.

- Oliver

[TobiasW]

I was more thinking about, like, TIGForums (an Independant Developer/Gamer-Community), which doesn't exactly mean "only a few people" - at least not if the game is any good. I could take the game anyday off there though, since I am only linking it and not hosting it there.

Might that be a bit too much, or do I still only have to care about a proper lock down?

[nirza]

I think your game can be decompiled even if you just link to it.

[Oliver]

Unless somebody from tigsource takes it and spreads it around real flash gaming sites, the amount of plays you'll get there still falls into the category "only a few people". You have to remember that the big flash portals, who sponsor games, gets many millions of views, and even bad games gets a lot of plays...

You can show it on TiGsource, but make it load a bigdb object that describes if the game is enabled or not... Then you can remotely disable all instances of that game simply by changing/deleting that object later..

- Oliver

[TobiasW]

I think your game can be decompiled even if you just link to it.

Yep. I'll need some kind of encryption, too.

Unless somebody from tigsource takes it and spreads it around real flash gaming sites, the amount of plays you'll get there still falls into the category "only a few people". You have to remember that the big flash portals, who sponsor games, gets many millions of views, and even bad games gets a lot of plays...

I sure knew that the user base of the flash portals is higher, but not where they draw the line.
So: Thanks, that's really good to know!

You can show it on TiGsource, but make it load a bigdb object that describes if the game is enabled or not... Then you can remotely disable all instances of that game simply by changing/deleting that object later..

Good idea. Though this needs to be somehow deeply tied into the game so that it cannot be easily taken out of the decompiled source...

Seems like I should look into encryption/decompilation.