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Chris Hughes谈Flash游戏现状和技术竞争

发布时间:2011-10-27 18:31:27 Tags:,,,,

作者:Edge Staff

在近代游戏技术中,Flash有着非同寻常的历程。正如我们前几天讨论的那样,它在行业公司收购、竞争和手机崛起的艰难条件下生存,展现出繁荣且能够带来可观经济回报的网页游戏社区。这项技术的核心公司之一是Flash Game License,这家公司以独立开发商和大小门户网站之间联络人的身份参与了大量的交易。其联合创始人Chris Hughes在媒体访谈中提到了Flash游戏盈利机制,以及如何制作价值5万美元的Flash游戏。

你能否简要概括下公司的业务,过去数年发生了怎样的改变?

Flash Game License的核心业务是为Flash游戏开发商和买方提供服务的市场和社区,但是我们也同Unity开发商和HTML5开发商合作。从本质上来说,我们帮助的是所有类型的网页游戏开发商。但是,主要业务仍然是Flash。我们的业务主要包括两个部分。我们有自己的拍卖系统,如果你愿意的话,可以把它称为Flash游戏界的eBay。开发商将游戏上传到拍卖系统中,我们拥有5000个会访问站点并对游戏竞标的买方。一旦游戏通过拍卖系统售出,交易便达成,通常会在游戏中加入添加某些类型的品牌标识。我们把这个过程称为赞助。站点的另一个部分便是Game Shop,开发商们可以在此出售次级授权。只需要内容的站点会采用这种方式进行购买,这些站点并非出于营销目标购买游戏。这便是我们运营的两项主要业务,而且势头正盛。我们已经连续4年取得三位数的增长。

现在最热门的是非独家授权。我们在授权交易上领先一步,吸引到了较大的公司。比如,雅虎想要大量的内容,但是如他们想要触及我们这个类型的市场(游戏邦注:即独立开发商快速开发游戏),如果他们想要100款游戏就要去接触100个开发商。这对他们来说是件很麻烦的事情,尽管可以实现。微软要求游戏获得300万美元的保险,这笔保费甚为昂贵。显然,独立开发商根本无力承担。因此我们推出了Easy License,我们将所有这些联系起来,与大公司合作将游戏授权给他们。雅虎会与我们签订合同,我们会与100个开发商达成交易,而且我们负责所有的保险和税务事项。这个系统运转的良好程度令人惊奇。所有人都很喜欢。开发商可以更快地获得报酬,他们可以获得更多的交易,大公司也能更快地获得内容。因此,开发商们可以将自己的游戏以数万美元的价格出售给他们的主赞助商,然后在非独有市场中从次级公司处获得所有此类交易。

对于那些无法处理这些麻烦过程的小型独立开发团队或独立开发者来说,使用这项服务的主要优势在哪里?

对于这些人群而言,使用这项服务的优势很多。其中之一是成本。许多开发商在这方面碰到了难题。就最便宜的300万美元保险而言,那些连带责任以及其他因疏忽大意所耗费的成本可能就高达1到2万美元。大多数此类开发商并无法承担这笔费用,或者从经济上来说这样做并不划算。其次,多数开发商都是小型团队,他们的主要目标是制作游戏。而我们的目标是:帮助开发商专注于他们喜欢做的事情,这样他们就可以无需考虑业务、营销和法律问题。因而,他们会与我们签订合同,而我们根据合同来与其他人联络。

还有就是报酬。如果我们同确实会支付报酬的大公司合作,有时要经过60或90天才能收到报酬。如果你的生活完全依靠制作游戏的话,这意味着你可能无法维持生计!但是我们会马上给开发者支付报酬,然后等待微软等大公司将酬劳发给我们。这是一个方面。另一方面,大公司也希望能够统一付酬。他们不希望分别向100个不同的人付款和打交道。

开发者可以获得多少酬劳?来源于何处?

根据我们的观察,开发者所获酬劳的范围很广。优秀游戏可以售得5000美元以上,极好的游戏可以售得1.5万美元以上。通常,我们每月会看到2到3款游戏属于“极好的游戏”这个范畴。偶尔会看到售得8万美元的游戏,但那只是少数而已。而且,我需要强调的是,这些都只是预先付款,许多交易还可以获得额外收入或广告盈利抽成。所以,以上数据是开发者能够获得的最小收入。这个行业还存在次级市场。Kongregate向你支付2万美元购买主要授权,这意味着你还可以出售非独家授权,因而你可以将游戏授权给其他门户网站来获得更多收入,售价在1000美元到2000美元之间,或者你可以同微软或雅虎之类的公司达成盈利抽成交易,如果游戏流行得足够长久的话,这也将是笔数万美元的收入。

当游戏并非独家授权时,Kongregate支付这些资金能够获得哪些权利?

主赞助商可以获得营销中最有利的部分。开发商在主授权售出后1到2周才会出售次级授权,这个时间间隔有时还会更长。但是如果你看看Flash的游戏生命周期,你会发现2周的时间确实会带来很大影响。站点需要处理大量的游戏,所以即便是极为出众的游戏,他们也只能让它们在站点上存在数周时间。在此之后,游戏对你的价值就会逐渐减少。你获得的玩家数就会进入平稳期。事实上,我们见过有些3到4年的游戏仍然每天可以获得数万玩家,但是这些游戏在发布首周获得的玩家是数百万。

这是优势之一。还有个部分,就是购买次级授权的站点无论如何都不会发布打上其他人品牌的游戏。比如,Addicting Games永远不会让带有Kongregate品牌的游戏上线。因而,让他们再次授权游戏并贴上自己的品牌,Kongregate并不会有所损失。真正有意义的是,Kongregate可能会想:“我可以支付5万美元购买这款游戏的专属使用权,这意味着没人会愿意将含有我品牌的游戏在自己的站点上线,倒不如省下3万美元,游戏可以在Addicting Games等其他站点上发布,反正我无论如何也无法获得那些流量。”因而,这种方式在成本计算方法还是有一定用处的。

有些站点不愿意这么做,他们会支付全部5万美元换取游戏的专属使用权。当然,这很大程度上也取决于开发商自身,有些人希望获得更高的预先付款,而有些人希望能够出售非独家授权。这都是双方谈判才能达成的结果。但是当我们追踪这些情形时,我们发现上述做法能够帮赞助商节约成本,开发商也能够从非独家授权中获利。

随着时间推移,交易有何改变?是否出现预先付款变少但广告盈利变得更为重要这种情况?

情况并不稳定。直到去年的很长一段时间里,流行的交易是赞助商根据点击游戏的用户数量向开发商支付报酬。因而,如果Armor Games赞助了某款游戏,玩家点击“更多游戏”按键链接到Armor Games的站点时,他们会追踪到这个行为,然后以每用户5美分的价格向开发商支付报酬。这确实可以刺激开发商将人们引向站点。现在这种方式使用得较少,主要是因为赞助商很难获得投资回报。比如,如果游戏玩家有30%在中国,你为每次点击支付5美分,但是只能从这些用户身上获得每人0.1美分的盈利。因而,站点会计算出每用户获得的盈利数。现在这个数据的计算更为方便,你可以算出从每个美国用户上可以获得5美分的盈利,无法从中国用户处获得盈利,从每个欧洲用户上可以获得2美分的盈利。赞助商需要更多地关注浏览跟踪,而开发商会担心能否从中国或其他地区获得流量。因而,现在你只会看到那些能够产生大量高质量流量的开发商采用这种方式。

就那些值得预付费5万美元的游戏而言,这些项目究竟有何特点?

能够获得大笔资金的都是游戏续作。这些游戏有着庞大的粉丝群体。这能够确保赞助商从中获利。一旦你收到玩家的信件,希望你能够制作游戏续作,你的游戏的质量就值得你付出这大笔资金。

是否存在能够赚得大笔金钱的题材标准?

没有。我们的活跃赞助商中,多数是年轻的男性。他们喜欢僵尸游戏、RPG和射击游戏。但是这并不能够说明市场的趋势,他们只能代表在游戏站点上活跃的玩家群。当开发商发布一款强大的麻将类游戏时,这样的游戏确实能够售得大笔金钱。

在FGL(游戏邦注:即Flash Game License)运营业务期间,游戏发生了怎样的改变?

游戏的质量有所提升。随着资金开始流入这个领域,逐渐开始有开发者团队看到这个市场。曾经同我们合作过的只有2到3人的团队已经发展到6到10人。很显然,游戏的质量能够得到提升,因为这些团队拥有了艺术师和音频工程师。

个人开发者制作的游戏是否依然有市场?

当然有。但是如果他们不精通各个方面,似乎会遇到很多困难。就我个人而言,我自己也是个游戏开发者,但是我做不成游戏,因为我的美术功底很差。有些人或许并非世界上最棒的美工或程序员,但是拥有合适的技能将这些东西整合起来。通常发生的情况是,独立开发者们做出了一款优秀的游戏,但是美术方面确实有一定缺陷,于是在下个项目中他们就会寻找美工组成团队。对Flash游戏来说,润色阶段非常重要,找个人来负责这个方面确实很值得。只要能够从游戏中获得快乐,玩家确实是很宽宏大量的。

有多少个赞助商和开发商在使用你的站点?

如果你不介意的话,我现在就可以查下。数量增长得很快,我每次接受采访时几乎都会说“但是现在的数量会更多!”这句话。我认为到达某个点后会逐渐下降,但是这个顶点还未出现。看看,我们现在有5000个买家和逾2万个开发商。

FGL的成长是游戏开发业逐渐发展的反映,抑或只是在现有的游戏开发社区中扩张?

我觉得这两个方面都有,我并不认为我们是Flash游戏制作的主要驱动力。但是,我相信我们有一定的影响力。我和联合创始人Adam在4年前都是开发者,我们看到这个系统很乱,开发者会碰到很多麻烦。以前,如果要获得赞助,你必须给所有人发邮件,看看他们是否对我们的游戏感兴趣。因而,这个站点的作用只是将大家集合起来。我想站点的这个作用却是很突出。但是我们仍然将其视为帮助行业成长的一部分,而并非成长的驱动力。也有很多交易在我们的站点之外达成。我坚信我们在行业中的市场份额正在增加,但是整个行业也在不断成长中。

行业将注意力从网页游戏转向iOS之类的游戏,你是否有这种感觉?

这是个事实。但是我们看到并推广的想法是,基于浏览器的游戏可以测试你的游戏是否能够在iPhone上获得成功。如果游戏的Flash版本获得玩家上亿次的体验,这种情况我们已经见过许多次,那么你就需要移植这款游戏。你需要将其移植到其他平台和市场上。Berzerk Studio制作了游戏《Homerun In Berzerk Land》,随后游戏名称改为《Berzerk Ball》。他们发布了Flash版本的游戏,之前和现在游戏的表现都非常出众。所以公司将游戏移植到iOS平台上,它在那里的表现也很不错。我确信他们在iPhone上赚到的钱比Flash多,但是如果他们不发布浏览器版本的游戏的话,根本就不会知道这款游戏会流行。他们可能花上1年的时间来制作某款iPhone游戏,然后看着它在市场上销声匿迹。你可以在1个月的时间内将原型制成Flash游戏,售得2万美元,然后看看游戏的流行程度,随后再决定是否移植。如果游戏失败了,你至少还能够赚到2万美元。

berzerk-ball(from needfreegames.com)

berzerk-ball(from needfreegames.com)

那么,是否可以说,两个市场间的区别就是,你可以确保从Flash游戏中获得合理的最低盈利,但是这个收入永远比不上《愤怒的小鸟》的收入,而在iPhone上,你可能投入数百万美元却颗粒无收?

是的。通过网页游戏赞助商赚取百万美元,这几乎是不可实现的。我讨厌这么说。或许会有出现古怪和疯狂的情况,但是我还是想说这很难实现。事实已经多次证明,这在iPhone市场上是可能实现的。使用免费增值模型可能会让情况有些许改变。我们拥有一个称为GamerSafe的系统。我们将其称为游戏加强平台,但是其核心是个微交易平台。你可以在系统中加入成就、排行榜和其他很酷的东西,而且还能够与金钱产生联系。我们已经看到了精巧地利用这个系统的游戏,而这正是Flash游戏获得上百万美元收入的潜在可能性。但是你需要制定稍微长远些的计划,并非1个月就能取得如此多的收入。因此,我们通常的建议是,将你所制作的游戏放在市场上测试,如果成功了再融入微交易系统。

现在有多少款Flash游戏尝试使用微交易系统?

我想说的是,这个数字正在逐渐增加,但是增速并不快。如果你看看社交游戏和Facebook上的其他游戏,这是完全一番不同的景象。我们确实帮助过某些此类游戏,但是这并非我们的主要业务。过去数年间,这类游戏的数量大幅增加。但是传统的休闲Flash游戏的数量并没有增加得那么快。主要原因在于开发者群体。从执行到发展成熟总要经过一段时间。第一批整合GamerSafe的游戏让人们感到愤怒,玩家感到很讨厌,而且表示很反对。因此,开发商们就会对此表示担忧,因为这像是个错误的模型,但是事实只是由于他们不知道如何执行,他们的执行方式就像是在说:“想要保留这款游戏吗?付钱吧!”没有人会喜欢这种形式的交流。但现在他们要聪明得多,向玩家提供对完成游戏不必要却能够让游戏更加有趣的东西。他们明白了Zynga已经知晓数年的知识。但是,这种情况还并不普及。我相信,使用这个系统来赚取大笔金钱的人还很少,现在开发者主要实行的方法是使用Flash版本来赚取些许收入,然后将游戏移植到其他平台上赚取获得大量的盈利。

Flash-HTML5-War(from koktale.com)

Flash-HTML5-War(from koktale.com)

HTML5是否会对Flash构成威胁甚至取代它?

所有的东西都是由金钱驱动的。FGL现在已经能够支持Unity。我们也可以很轻易地对HTML5提供支持。问题在于,当我们采用这种做法时,我们创造的是根本不存在销路的市场。但是当谷歌、微软或苹果这些公司决定推广HTML5,当他们表示“我们将提供100万美元供开发者制作HTML5游戏”时,这个领域就有了市场。有趣的是,在我们同微软频繁讨论相关问题时,他们总是尝试让我们推广HTML5并说服开发商。但是我们要他们提供某些资金让开发商可以进行下去时,他们的回答是“不,我们并不想这么做。”。如果他们愿意投入某些资金,那么可以在数个月内得到数百款HTML5游戏。而所需的这笔资金其实并不多。

因而对我来说,这项技术是催化剂,但是目前还没有提供支持的理由。假设你想要制作一款HTML5游戏。你要采取什么做法呢?你要从哪里获得盈利呢?你唯一能够采取的做法,便是走委托途径。但是这是种外包工作,并非独立开发者的创造性产物。如果你只是想要将自己很棒的想法变成游戏,那么根本就没有理由去尝试HTML5。而且,现在这项技术还并不成熟。我之前曾经做过网页开发者,HTML5让我感到很棘手,即便只是HTML也是如此!能否兼容火狐或IE浏览器?这些还只是网站而已。当你制作的是兼有物理引擎的复杂游戏时,你想要让游戏在如此多种类的浏览器中运行,有可能出现多种失败的情况。还有,你要如何保护你的代码呢?你根本无法进展下去。这些都是问题。当然,如果有人给开发者10万美元,那么这些问题的解决都不在话下,但是现在连愿意付1000美元的人都没有。

当市场正式起步时,我们也已经做好了提供支持的准备。我们愿意追随着开发者的脚步朝任意方向移动。事实上,我们尝试将Unity作为驱动力,推动这项技术的发展。我们在这方面投入了许多,但是丝毫没有成效。赞助的目的就是为了营销。你在可移动的内容中放置条幅广告。如果使用Unity,游戏可以马上推向3个站点。游戏或许极为令人惊叹,但是结果呢?它并不具有Flash游戏病毒性传播的功能。据我看过的上次数据,当有人点击Unity游戏时,50%的人在看到‘安装Unity’页面后放弃。所以你在玩家看到游戏之前就已经失去了半数用户。或许现在这种情况有所改善,但是使用Flash你可以直接触及98%的用户。如果有人将来会实现上述覆盖率的话,那么有可能是Unity。他们有着许多优秀的员工,而且他们采取了许多正确的措施,但是依然很艰难。

你如何看待Flash Stage 3D的出现?

这确实很有趣。但是就3D而言,我不认为它将改变游戏行业。3D本身并无法发挥很大作用。你仍然需要令人称奇的游戏机制。而且如果这项机制需要或者能够良好地利用3D,那么确实很棒。但是将平台游戏3D化的结果如何呢?新东西总是让人感觉很棒的,所以我们看到了些许采用这些做法的游戏,但是并没有卖得很多的盈利。也就是说,我觉得开发者社区会很认同这项新技术,即便玩家并不认为这是最棒的东西。

假如Flash确实遭到了挑战和竞争,那么Adobe会采取何种做法来确保Flash保持对开发者的吸引力呢?

我认为他们现在正采取正确的做法。他们在有些方面认识不到位,但是最重要的是他们已经认识到了游戏行业,他们现在已经成立了游戏部门,此前很长一段时间都没有这么做。他们将这个行业视为巨大的业务来源,视为某些他们需要做出努力来保住市场份额的领域。3D便是其中的一部分。所以,现在事态进展良好。而且,他们已经暗示了还将提出其他针对游戏的想法。较为出众的就是跨平台,这是条可以继续发展下去的路。这便是Unity的强大之处。如果可以运用到手机设备和网页,将会产生很大的影响。

我们的多数开发商事实上都是使用Flash来进行开发。我并非是否定他们的能力,但是我不认为他们中多数人能够迅速地掌握Objective-C。他们需要雇佣某些人来移植他们的游戏,否则就会错过机会。我们确实看到Adobe优化了手机平台上的Flash网页游戏,尽管存在些许运行问题,但效果还是很令人印象深刻的。这也可能成为游戏行业的变革力量。如果手机上的网页游戏能够发展起来,这可能改变整个行业,到那时就不会再有付费下载应用这种事情了。

你的意思是,Kongregate的Android应用能够让玩家浏览他们的网页游戏?

当然,但是现在通过手机只能访问门户网站的网页。但是,有许多人希望这方面能够有所突破,包括运营商和手机产商。对这些公司的盈利流而言,目前的应用销售起到很大的影响,他们希望能够马上解除这种威胁。

但是如果这种情况发生的话,对你们这样的公司来说确实很棒!

当然!但是手机市场对我们而言很难用此来吸引赞助商,因为目前没有将应用转变成网站的方法。但是对玩家来说很有好处,因为你无需再担心需要为应用付费,或者担心某个公司通过过滤机制只展现给你他们认为重要的内容。所以,这个市场很复杂。

你们是否同iPhone发行商合作过,帮助他们寻找值得移植的Flash游戏?

我们做过这种事情。许多发行商只是想要获得在手机上发布的许可,他们甚至连代码都不要。他们有自己的团队来构建和发布游戏。但是,他们制作游戏不是为了要把它作为营销工具。他们只是想要通过游戏来盈利,他们对驱动流量毫无兴趣。这就是两个领域之间的差别,但是这种差别的存在能够带来很好的结果。如果两者之间的差别不大,那么我们会希望将二者融合起来。但是作为开发者,我希望能够给予开发者自由创作的空间,制作某些他们梦想中的东西,然后再进行销售。这便是我们正在努力争取实现的目标。

那么,也就是说Flash还未消亡?

这只是平台间的战争。习惯于广告游戏或外包工作的公司将注意力转向HTML5,这便是“Flash正在消亡”想法的萌生之地。在那些循环中,或许这种说法是正确的。如果你想要开发一款iPhone游戏并愿意投入10万美元,那么或许走HTML5这条路会更有意义些。但是,我或许会警告他们说:“难道你们不认为苹果会在此类游戏开始赚钱之时改变规则吗?”但是,我能够理解这项新技术如此游戏的愿意。除此之外,使用HTML5并没有多大优势。有人可能不认同我的说法,但是现在仍然是Flash的天下,后者的渗透率更高,而且玩家和开发商的多数时间都投入到后者中。提及真正的创新型游戏,Flash在行业内的地位犹存。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2011年10月12日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Flash gaming: Doing deals with Chris Hughes

Edge Staff

Flash has one of the most remarkable stories in recent game technology. As we’ve discussed over the last couple of days, it’s survived acquisition, competition and the rise of mobile phones to deliver a thriving webgame community that’s enjoying considerable financial reward. At the heart of this business is Flash Game License, a company which brokers a huge number of deals between indie developers and portals, small and large. We spoke at length to co-founder Chris Hughes about the mechanics of the Flash gaming scene, from what US players are worth, compared to European and Chinese, to what it takes to make a Flash game worth $50,000.

Could you outline your business and how it’s changed over the last few years?

Flash Game License at its core is a marketplace and community primarily for Flash game developers and buyers, but we also do work with Unity developers and HTML5 developers – basically any web game developer we help. But primarily it’s still Flash. We’ve got two main parts to that. We’ve got our auction system – eBay for Flash games, if you will. A developer will come and upload a game and then we have 5000 buyers visit the site and bid on the games. Once the game has gone through the auction a deal is made – usually some sort of branding gets put into the game. That’s what we call sponsorship. The other part of our site is the Game Shop – that’s where developers sell secondary licences. A site who just wants content will buy it that way – they’re not using it for a marketing purpose. Those are the two things we launched with and are going strong. I think we’ve seen triple digit growth every year, for four years.

I’d say the biggest thing right now are the non-exclusive licences. We’ve pioneered a licensing deal that brings in the bigger companies. I’ll give you an example: Yahoo wants a bunch of content, but if they want to work with the type of market we’re in – indie developers pumping out games quickly – if they want 100 games then they’ll have to deal with 100 developers. That’s hard, if not impossible for them. Microsoft requires a three million dollar insurance coverage for the games – it’s an expensive annual premium. Obviously independent developers can’t afford that. So we have Easy License – we bundle all that together, and we work with the large company to sub-license them the game. Yahoo will sign a contract with us, and we’ll do the deal with the 100 developers, and we have all this insurance coverage and do all the taxes. This has really gone amazingly well. Everyone loves it. Developers are getting paid faster, they’re getting more deals, the big companies are getting content faster. And on top of this the devs are selling their games for tens of thousands to their primary sponsor and then they’re getting all these deals from the secondary companies in the non-exclusive market.

Is the main advantage for the small development teams or solo outfits who can’t handle all the red tape?

Well, there’s a couple of things. One is cost. A lot of them just can’t afford it. The cheapest three million dollar coverage you can get for cyber-liability and errors and omissions and so forth is probably ten or twenty thousand dollars a year. A lot of these developers right there can’t do it, or it doesn’t make sense financially. The other thing is most of these developers are small teams – their main goal is to make games. And really that’s been our goal: to help devs focus on what they love to do, so they don’t have to wear their business hat, marketing hat or their legal hat. So they have a set contract they do with us and we worry about the contract with the other guy.

And then there’s the payment. If we work with a big company who we know is going to pay us, sometimes they’ll take 60 or 90 days. If you’re living paycheque to paycheque, that might mean you can’t feed yourself! But we know we’re going to be paid, so we pay the developer on day one and wait to get that money back from Microsoft, or whoever. So that’s a big part of it. But on the other hand too, the big companies want one point of payment. They don’t want to pay 100 different people.

What kind of deals do you see getting cut? What sort of figures get offered and for what?

We see a huge range. A good game will get anywhere from $5000 and up. A great game will get $15,000 and up. We typically see two to three games a month that are in that ‘great’ range. Occasionally we get a game come through that gets $80,000, but that’s definitely the exception. And, I should note, this is all up-front; a lot of the deals have performance bonuses or ad-share revenue. So these numbers are the bare minimum they’re getting. And then there’s the secondary market. Kongregate may offer you $20,000 for a primary licence – which means you can sell non-exclusives as well, so you can go to the other portals and sell it for additional money, in the $1000 to $2000 range, or get a revenue share deal with someone like Microsoft or Yahoo, which can be tens of thousands down the line, if not hundreds if the game is popular long enough.

What’s in it for Kongregate to shell out those sums of money when the game isn’t exclusive?

When you’re the primary sponsor you get the juiciest part of the marketing. They don’t sell the secondary licences until a week or two after, occasionally longer than that. But if you look at the Flash game life cycle – the first two weeks really matter. The sites do a huge churn, so they can’t really afford to have even an awesome game up for more than a couple of weeks. After that, the worth to you diminishes. There’s definitely a plateau of players you will always get. In fact, we have games from three or four years ago that a still getting tens of thousands of plays a day – but those are the games getting millions in their first week.

So that’s one part of it. The other part is that the sites who buy secondary licences won’t put a game up with someone else’s branding anyway. So Addicting Games, for example, will never put a Kongregate-branded game up. So Kongregate loses nothing by letting them license that game again and put their own branding in it, because Kongregate would never have seen one person come from that site anyway. Where this makes sense is that Kongregate says, “Okay, I can either pay $50,000 for this game and make it exclusive, which means no one can put it on their site without my branding, or I can save $30,000 and he can put it on Addicting Games or wherever, because I’d never get that traffic anyway.” It just makes sense from a cost perspective.

There are some that don’t, and will pay the full $50,000 for the exclusive rights to that game. A lot of that’s up to the developer, too – some of them want that higher up-front money, some of them like the ability to sell non-exclusives. It’s all about negotiation. But when we’ve tracked these stats it’s cheaper for the sponsor, and the developer makes up in non-exclusives, and there’s no traffic lost.

How have these deals changed over time? Has a share of ad revenue become more important while the up-front payment got less?

It really fluctuates. For a while – I’d say up until last year – what was popular were performance deals where sponsors were paying developers a cost-per-click for a unique user to their site. So if Armor Games sponsor a game, and a player clicks on the ‘more games’ button and gets taken back to Armor Games, they would track that and pay the developer something like five cents per user. And then they’d usually cut it off at three months. And that really incentivised the developer to push people to the site. That’s diminished a little bit now, mainly due to the fact that it’s really hard [for the sponsor] to get a return on investment on something so broad. So for example, if your game has 30 per cent of its plays in China, you might be paying five cents per click but only be able to monetise them at a rate of 0.1 cents per user. So, the sites have worked out what they can make per user; it’s more calculated now, so you get five cents per user for US, nothing for China, two cents for Europe. But it’s more work on the sponsor side to keep track of that, and developers have to worry about whether they are getting Chinese traffic or this or that traffic. So now you only see this sort of deal with developers who know they can drive a tonne of quality traffic.

In terms of the games that command a $50,000 up-front fee, how substantial are these projects?

The games that are getting a tonne of money are sequels. They’re games that have got a huge following. It’s a guaranteed home run for the sponsor. Once you’ve got players emailing you to make a sequel, your game has a calibre where it commands those sums of money.

Is there a standard genre which makes good money?

No. Most of our active sponsors are part of the youngish male action audience. They like zombie games and RPGs and shooters. But that’s not indicative of the market; that’s indicative of the people who are really active on our site. When a developer releases a really kick-ass Mahjong game, that thing sells for a crazy amount of money. It’s just you’ve got two sponsors interested in it instead of ten.

How have the games changed over the time FGL has been running?

The quality’s definitely gone up. As money started flowing in, teams of developers started getting involved. We work with developers who were two-to-three man groups and now they’re six-to-ten. Obviously the quality’s going up because they have artists and audio engineers.

Is there still a market for games made by solo developers in their bedroom?

Absolutely. If they’re not well rounded, it’s hard. For me personally, I’m a game developer but I couldn’t pull it off, because I suck at art. There are guys out there though who might not be the best artist or best coder in the world, but have the right skillset to put it all together. Usually what happens is that devs will work their way up – they’ll make a good game, but the art’s a little lacking, but it’ll be good enough to do well, and then for the next project they’ll team up with an artist. With a Flash game the polish level is so important, it’s really worth it for someone to do that. Gamers are really forgiving as long as they’re having a good time, but they have to get over that first hurdle of quality. The stickman thing only works with certain games.

How many sponsors and how many developers use your site?

If you don’t mind, I’ll look it up right now. Let’s see. It grows so fast, every time I see an interview with me, I’m like, “But we’re much more than that!” I thought at some point it would level off, but it hasn’t yet. So, we’ve got around 5000 buyers, and over 20,000 developers.

Is FGL’s growth a reflection of a burgeoning development scene, or is it expanding into an existing community?

I’d guess both – I don’t kid myself in thinking that we are the main driving force in all of this. I definitely think we’ve had an influence. Me and my co-founder Adam [Schroeder], we were developers four years ago, and we just saw that the system was broken and everything was piled up against developers. To get a sponsorship in the old days, you’d have to email everyone individually, saying, “Hey, do you like my game?” So this was just a way of bringing everyone together – it’s a kind of glue. I think it’s done a good job at that. But we’re still better looked at as a percentage of the growth rather than a driving force of the growth. There are a lot of outside deals, too. I do think our market share in the industry is growing, but the industry is growing.

So do you get a sense that there’s a migration away from browser games to things like iOS?

It’s a factual statement to say there’s a tonne of interest in that. But kind of what we’ve seen, and pushed, is that a browser-based game is such a great proving ground for whether your game is successful on iPhone. If your game gets 100 million views in Flash – and we’ve seen this several times – you need to port it. You need to put it somewhere else. It needs to be in a different market. Berzerk Studio made one particular game called Homerun In Berzerk Land, and later changed the name to Berzerk Ball. They released it in Flash. It did awesome, and still does awesome. So they ported it to iOS and it did great there too. I’m pretty sure they made more [money] on iPhone than in Flash, but they would never have known they had a popular game if they hadn’t put the browser game together in a month. They could have spent a year making an iPhone game and watch it flop. You can make a pretty fleshed out prototype in Flash in a month, sell it for $20,000, see the popularity of it, and then port it over. And if you see it fail, you’ve still made $20,000.

So is the comparison between the two markets that you can guarantee a decent baseline revenue from a Flash game, but you’ll never hit the Angry Birds sorts of figures – whereas on iPhone, you can make a million or fail to make any kind of splash at all?

Yes. It’s going to be impossible to make a million on a sponsorship. I hate to say that. Maybe there would be a weird, crazy circumstance – but I’m going to say it’s impossible. It’s been proven, multiple times, to be possible on the iPhone market. Where that changes a little bit is where you use a freemium monetisation model. I’ll give you a disclaimer and an example: we also own a system called GamerSafe. We call it a game enhancing platform but at its core it’s a microtransaction platform. So you can do achievements, scoreboards and cool stuff with it, but you tie it to money. We’ve seen games do well with that, and there is a potential for Flash games to make a million there, easily. But you’re going to have to plan that a little bit longer than the one month turn around game, so what we usually suggest is you make a game, you test it in the market and then you take the next step with microtransactions.

How many Flash games try to be “sticky” or use microtransactions now?

I’d say it has increased, but not by leaps and bounds. If you take all the social games and Facebook and so forth – which we do help with somewhat, but it’s not the bulk of our games – that’s a whole different ball-game. That’s increased by a ridiculous percentage in the last few years. But in terms of the usual casual Flash game, it’s not increased a tonne. That’s mainly due to the developer base. It’s taken a while for the implementation to mature. The first few games that had GamerSafe on Newgrounds, people were pissed. Players hated it. They were so against it. And the developers were worried it was because it was the wrong model, but it was really just because they didn’t know how to implement it – it was like, “Hey, want to save this game? Pay me money!” No one likes that. But now they’re much more clever, offering you things that aren’t necessary to complete a game but make it more fun. They’re catching onto the things that Zynga has known for years now. But it’s not blown up. I think there are a few people who will get it a make a tonne of money on it, but right now it’s mainly just people making pretty good money on Flash, then porting them and making the bulk of their money.

Is HTML5 a threat to or replacement for Flash?

Everything’s driven by money. FGL supports Unity now. We could easily support HTML5. The problem is, when we do that, we create a marketplace for a market that doesn’t exist. But the second that Google, Microsoft, or Apple or any of those guys pushing HTML5, the second they say, “Fine. Here’s a million dollars to developers to make HTML5 games,” we’ve got a market. It’s funny – we talk to Microsoft quite frequently about things, and they’re always trying to get us to push HTML5 and convince developers. But the second we ask for some money to give to developers they go, “Ah no, we don’t want to do that.” They’re shooting themselves in the foot – it would be so easy! They could have hundreds if not thousands of HTML5 games in a matter of months if they just dumped some money into it. And not even a lot of money.

So to me, that’s the catalyst. But right now there’s no reason. Say you’re a developer. Right now you want to make an HTML5 game. What are you going to do with that? Where are you going to make money? The only way you can do it, is to go the commission route. But that’s a contract job, that’s not a creative indie developer thing. If you just want to make your cool idea into a game, there’s no reason to try HTML5. And the technology is so behind right now. I used to be a web developer and HTML5 is a pain in the ass. Or even just HTML! Does it work in Firefox? Does it work in Explorer? And these are just websites. When you have a complex game with physics in it, you’re going to have to make it work in so many browsers, it’s going to break in so many different ways. And how are you going to protect your code? You can just view the source! There are all kinds of problems. Of course, a developer isn’t going to care about any of that crap if someone gives them $100,000, but right now, no ones even giving $1000.

When the market takes off, we’ll be ready to support it. We’re willing to move wherever developers want to move. In fact, with Unity we tried to be the driving force – to give it that little extra push. We put a lot into it. But there was no bite. The whole reason of a sponsorship is marketing, right? You’re putting a banner ad in a movable bit of content. With Unity, a game can go to three sites right now. The game might be awesome, but so what? It doesn’t have the viral spread of a Flash game. And the last statistic I saw, when a person hits a Unity game, there’s a 50 per cent drop off from the ‘install Unity’ screen. So you’re losing half your customers before they’ve seen the game. Maybe that’s improved some now, but with Flash you hit 98 per cent of your users straight away. But if anyone’s going to do it, Unity will. they have awesome people working for them and they’re doing lots of things right, but it’s still tough.

What do you think of the advent of Flash Stage 3D?

It’s definitely interesting. But 3D in general, I don’t think it’s a game changer. 3D of itself doesn’t do anything. You have to have an awesome game mechanic. And if that mechanic requires or makes good use of 3D then awesome. But as far as just making a platformer 3D? We’ll see a little bit of a surge because new things are cool, but I don’t see it being a huge deal. That said, I think the developer community will go crazy with it, even if gamers don’t think it’s the best thing ever.

Assuming that the competition to Flash does step up, what could Adobe do to ensure Flash remains attractive to devs?

I think they’re taking the right steps. They’re a bit disorganised with some things. But the biggest thing is that they recognise games – they have a games division now, which they didn’t for a long time. They see it as huge business, and something they need to do to keep their market share. 3D is part of that. So that’s all good. And they’ve hinted at all kinds of other game specific ideas. The huge one is cross-platform – that’s got a way to go. When you port something from Flash to iOS you still get a huge performance hit. That’s what was strong in Unity’s court. If you’re able to deploy to mobile devices as well as the web, that’d be huge.

Most of our developers, they really are Flash developers. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but I don’t think the majority of them could pick up Objective-C very quickly. They’ll hire someone to port their game or miss out. We actually did a competition with Adobe for Flash webgames optimised for mobile, and that was pretty impressive despite the performance issues. That could be a game changer too. If webgames on phones took off that could change the entire industry – paying to download an app would be irrelevant at that point.

You mean something like Kongregate’s Android app which lets you browse their webgames games?

Sure, but even just viewing their web portal on your phone. But there are so many people who’d want to block that – carriers and phone manufacturers. App sales are so important right now to these company’s revenue streams that they might stop that threat straight away.

But it’d be pretty good for you guys if it did happen!

Oh yeah! But with the mobile market it’s been tricky for us to get hooked in there with sponsors because there’s really no conversion from an app to your website. But as a gamer it’d be huge, because you wouldn’t have to worry about paying for apps, or worrying about the filtering mechanisms of one particular company to show you what’s important. So there are lots of upsides.

Do you have a relationship with iPhone publishers to help them find Flash games that are worthy of porting?

We do. A lot of them license games just for mobile rights – they don’t even want the code. They just have their own team build it and release it. But it’s not the same kind of marketing tool. They just want to monetise their game, they’re not interested in driving traffic. It’s different, but it’s good. It’s definitely a slower up-take though. If nothing changes, then we’d hope to have a mix. But my concern as a developer myself, is that I want to give developers the creative freedom to create something they have a vision for, and then sell it. That’s what we’re pushing for.

So, Flash: not dead yet, then?

That’s just platform wars. The companies that are used to adver-gaming or contract work are looking into HTML5 – that’s where you see the “Flash is dead” thing come up. And maybe it’s true in those circles. If you’re going to develop a game for iPhone and you’re willing to spend $100,000, then it may make sense to go with HTML5. I would probably caution them to say, “Do you not think Apple’s going to change the rules there if it starts making money?” But I can see why it’s interesting. Beyond that it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. People can argue, but it’s still Flash right now: that’s where the penetration rate is so high, and gamers and developers focus most of their time. When it comes to the really innovative games, Flash is still where it’s at. (Source: Edge)


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