An awful lot of our blog posts are questions recently, we need to change that.

Anyway, where exactly is the Cash for Flash ? There's a very in-depth article on the always excellent gamasutra about Flash gaming and the money it can make ( Where's The Cash For Flash ) to which I see quite a few blogs have linked to already.

As a developer you're constantly aware that Flash games are seen as a very disposable medium. They're free and there are thousands of them, a lot of portals have no concept at all about copyright because swfs are just so ubiquitous now, they're moving jpgs aren't they.
If you're a fellow dev. reading this, I'm sure more than once in your life you've had to actually try and explain the value of a Flash game to a client, that good work takes time and money, that just because there is already a lot of content out there it doesn't mean it's all of the same quality. Basically, that Flash isn't actually disposable, that very cool things can be done with it.
If that's the case, if there's this near constant battle to validate Flash and Flash games worth ( To the point that if someone from EA quotes Flash as a valid gaming platform our hearts go all a flutter ), why the fuck do so many developers shout from the rooftops what they earn ?
I don't want the tax man knowing what I earn, never mind a 100,000 strangers. What's that all about ? If it's a full time job, a living, keep it to yourself. If it's a hobby with benefits, then it's just re-enforcing the whole Flash games are just a disposable something to do on the weekend and earn "$20k" from it view.

By now I'm guessing you've figured I'm not a 100% pro this article.

I suppose I should caveat things now to avoid a ton of hatred coming my way. I'm a big fan of what Adam and Chris have done at FGL ( I remember chatting to Adam only last year I guess and him saying "I've got this crazy idea that I want to try out" ), and all the game authors quoted in the article, in terms of their work, excellent.

If that's the case, what's the point of me writing this ? Am I just writing venom for the sake of writing it ? Am I bitter 'cause I'm not had my $40k indy hit yet ? Or is it because every article about Flash and it's commercialisation paints an even rosier and skewed picture than the one before it ?

Figures, let's stick with them, as everyone is so keen on them ( Me too if the truth be known ).

In the article there's mention that 25% of all games on FGL are sold. That still leaves 1,500 games unsold. That's a lot. I imagine not all of those are real stinkers.
Also the average deal brokered is quoted at $1000, but I'm guessing any >$10k deals skew that figure a hell of a lot.
( Again, this isn't a criticism of FGL, just note that spin is put on figures, everyone does it. I'm trying to highlight that when it comes to Flash and money you really need to read between the lines, I'm not digging anyone out for putting a favourable spin on their own business ).

"At a minimum, developers selling their first game ever -- if it falls into the 'good-to-great' category -- make about $500-and-up"

$500 is piss all really, unless you're 14, then you'd kill people for that sort of money. $500 really just makes it a disposable something to do on the weekend. But we all start somewhere, my first game was sold to miniclip for £350 ( There, now I'm spewing my guts on how much I earn, it's an addictive trap ).

Next up in the article is the Dino Run guys. $40k for that game, plus still more coming in. Great, really well deserved, Dino Run is one of the best games in Flash and deserves everything it gets.
Although that is 7 months development, between two people, so that's $20k per person. Still nice, $20k for 7 months, that's just under $3k a month. But... Dino Run is one of the best games in Flash right now. Have you got 7 months to develop a game as good ? I know I haven't and I wouldn't presume I'd even have the ability to make a game as good.

See these well done stories in the article are the pinnicale of where the indy market is, not the average, not the norm.

The article then goes on to say on the strength of Dino Run the PixelJam guys have got a couple of adver-game gigs that nearly earned as much as Dino Run in a much shorter space of time.
That's key. That the indy market is so far behind the industry as a whole in terms of finance that the best outcome is that you get some client based work out of it with the money that brings in. That's where the living wage with Flash is, not with mochi-ads I'm afraid.

Finally in the article they speak with Sean T. Cooper who coded the excellent Box Head series. He is very honest, and explains that you have to build up a fan base for your IP, that to get the really good money you need that fan base there, people who are just panting for the next installment. Sponsors know that, they have a very good idea of what a sequel as part of a popular franchise will bring in in terms of traffic, and will pay for that.
Keep in mind that Sean said he sold the first one for $1500. 4 games later and he's getting good money, he's in a great position, but that's at least a couple of games first that you have to sell for not a great amount of money ( If you're making games to the standard of the Box Head ones you're looking at a min. of 4 weeks, and this is if you do all the art and sound yourself. 4 weeks at 40 hours per week, that's 160 hours, which at $1500 is $9.38 per hour [ Thanks to Bryson for point out my really poor maths first time around, corrected now ]. That's best case scenerio. It really is a big investment of your own time to make it successful, don't expect to be paid well for that time. In effect your gambling on the strength of your vision if you're doing this for the money. If you're doing it for the love of the art, well, you can do whatever the hell you want and just enjoy it ).

"Which means that one person can -- with a lot of hard work, meaning every day of the year -- expect to bring in close to $400,000 a year, I think."

This is the core of why I've written this article. I don't want to pick a quote apart from one person, but come on mate, $400k ? I'll be happy doing half then, 5 games for $200,000.
It's things like that, the come on everyone, get Flash, it's like getting paid for having a laugh, then just rubs me up the wrong way ( Obviously ). It doesn't do anyone any favours.
Ask yourself this, if that sort of money is possible, is Sean or anyone else, earning it via indy games ? If I said to you, work hard for a year, and you'll earn nearly half a million dollars, you'd bite my arm off to do it, like I would yours.

Be realistic in what you think you'll earn, don't get your head turned by the Bloons or DTDs. They're great games, but there are other great games which have fallen by the wayside. Do it for the sheer joy of making something cool out of that untitled.fla, and if you make a couple of quid, then sweet, better in your pocket than anyone elses, but please don't fall into the Flash trap of timelines paved with gold.
With a lot of effort and maybe a bit of luck you'll get the $40k game, and then by all means post in the comments and let me know you wear a crown when you code now and I'll be gladly put in my place, and keep that as an objective ( The money, maybe the crown wearing, not the rubbing my nose in it ) but take all the quotes with a slight pinch of salt.

Squize.

...Melody Maker and NME were essential reading ( Along with Viz ).

I thought the only time I'd get to see a news story on nme.co.uk involving something I'd done would be if I attacked a celebrity ( Stephen Hawkins would be my first choice as I'd fancy my chances, I mean that nurse had a good go, but not quite indie pop enough to make the pages of nme ), but thanks to the miracle of paid for placement advertising, the Invaders Must Die game is being pimped on there. Sweet.

Have a look here and see us move up in the world, in between stories about the Strokes and Babyshambles. Could we be any more rock 'n roll ?

Squize.

PS. We're on the nuts front-page right now too, but you're really not going to play my game there are you. Be honest. No, I didn't think so.

So I have rencently finished a bigger update on a client's website, dealing with all the nasty and ugly shit one would rather like to avoid (to name just one: css - what was wrong with the good old table layout? OK, I know what was wrong, but dealing with all the browser's shitty problems to make it look nearly the same is just ... well, shit)

Meanwhile Squize was hammering out post after post so I didn't felt too bad being quiet.

Now today I actually have something to post, so here we go ...



This is a single frame from the X menu/background animation I've been doing. It'll take a while to render so I have to set up the network renderer on Monday to get the 30 seconds movie out to an flv file (which then will be played in the X menu) ...

If you're a fan of that game already, why not use that image as wallpaper? You can grab the 1024x768 version here.
Bigger Versions are rendered tonight and will be posted later this week - and maybe (if rendertimes for hi-res vids aren't that high there might (really just might) be a screensaver ... we'll have to see).

nGFX

It seems like we're sleeping with Pany over at gamepoetry recently, what with having the exclusive first glimpse of the Zombieland post mortem here, and me currently writing up the Invaders Must Die post mortem as an exclusive(-ish) article for his blog, but we're not. No, honestly.

But... in saying that we are supporting the new comp they're running,

Our new game, "Invaders Must Die", is live today.

Our highest profile to date release is coming along and due for launch this coming week.

Busy busy busy. I'm like a broken record. A busy broken record.

X is on hold for the time being, but it doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it. I think being denied the chance to work on it is making me think about it more, it's like smoking.

Quite a few people are feeding back that the controls stop being responsive on lower end machines. This is due to the main loop it uses. Rather than me go into depth about it, have a check of the great tutorial at the other end of that link.
The only downside to it is that so much of Flash's time is spent actually updating the display that input listeners can be missed, making it feel that the game is being unresponsive ( I'm guessing a listener buffer within the vm is checked every frame, and if the mainloop over-runs due to the sheer amount of data which is being plotted then the listener handler misses it's chance to check the buffer for any triggered events for that frame. That happens 60 times or so and that's two seconds where the game is ignoring you ).

One of the ways I'm looking to fix this is to add an options menu to the game, so people can turn off the eye-candy to suit their set up. The downside to this is, do I default to the game not having everything turned on by so anyone can just come to the game without messing with the options ( As it should be really, a game shouldn't expect or force a user to jump through config hoops before you can play it ), or do I max it out and put some comment in the game telling people that if it's slow to go and mess with the options ?

My current thinking is to run a cpu speed test at the start of a game. So some text explaining what's happening, that the user can go to the options page etc. and a counter runs down whilst it does it's thing ( So we can get an average of say 5 seconds ). This generates it's own problems though ( Doesn't everything ? It'd be so much easier to just be making banner ads for twice as much money ).
The first being, what test do I run exactly ? Should it be a maths formula in a loop and it running some bitmap plotting at the same time ? Is that the best way to judge a machine ? Then, should it be running under a normal enterFrame, or using the timer loop ? Next up, how much can you trust this test ? I don't know where this game will end up, so in theory whilst the test is running something could be happening in the background ( From the user opening a new tab to a nasty chat window to the right of the game doing something ).
Finally where do I get a good spread of test figures from ? I can tell you how quick a quad core pc running FP10 in FireFox 3 with 2 gig of memory will run the test at, but from there we only have so many other test machines. Are there going to be enough of you good readers of this blog willing to give good feedback on such a test ?

Even so, using the figures themselves isn't totally clear cut. To try and explain that, let's say a test on my machine comes back with a value of 10. I know X plays perfectly on my box, nothing I've thrown in there has affected anything at all, so 10 <= is a perfect machine in terms of playback. Great. Say you test it, and you get a rating of 20. What does that mean in real life ? I really doubt it means your machine is twice as slow as mine, 'cause it's just too much of a generalisation. But let's say it means that, what options do I turn off ? Do I kill the particle effects and leave the others running, or can I get away with removing something else.

I'm thinking the way to do it is run the test, output your machines rating, and then turn all the options off. Then when you're playing it, ask you to turn each bit of eye-candy on 1 by 1 until your machines screws up.
Quite a big ask.

I'm really throwing this open to all of you guys, what do you think ( About any of it ? )

Oh the new asteroid images are in the game btw, usual place.

Squize.

Slowly but surely getting closer to the deadlines for the current projects. That's not really a time to worry, as it means they'll be done soon.

To everyone I owe an email too, sorry, I do love you, I just can't show it right now.

Just to give the blog a slight shot in the arm, I found an article which you guys may find interesting.

In-Depth: Biggest 10 Browser-Based Game Sites Ranked

A few surprises for me there, I thought some of the portals listed would have been higher up. There's an insane amount of traffic and therefore ad revenue being generated by those 10.

There's an interesting nod of the head to the newer browser plug-ins ( Such as Unity3D, which is coming to Windows at last, and StoneTrip, not to mention QuakeLive , which although "closed", is still bringing quality 3D to the web within a community ) at the end of the article,

"It also means that we will probably start to see a shift in the monetization model," he predicts. "This will be hugely underscored by 2008 technology developments allowing full-blown immersive 3D in the browser."

The future is more than papervision and Away ? Possibly. Hopefully. I think there will be a lot of smaller micro studios with existing 3D pipelines who will be looking at browser based content a lot more now, as an alternative to XNA and WiiWare ( And iPhone ), all of which are either already really saturated, or heading that way.
It won't be long before mochi, google and gameJacket ads are in more than Flash, and perhaps that's the Flash killer app that everyone has been glancing over their shoulder looking for all this time. It won't be silverlight, or Unity or any other plug-in, it'll be mochi-ads and gameJacket. If you can make money from Flash and make the same amount from something done in Unity, which are you as a game developer going to want to play with the most ?

Yeah, me too.

Squize.