Hi, at RndLabs we recently released a free game. People seams to enjoy it. We have sponsors that host games of it. So it's free for us to host them. But, we are not paid. And making this in free time (Since we have full time job outside of this). What we though, is to put more sponsors in our futur games, and try to make money this way. And give freely those games over the net. But, is it really possible? If I calculate : Let say you have a sponsor, that host websites for 80 bucks/year. We put thier banner into the Browse game menu. So, let say we have 50 000 players (that will be enormous for us). How much players will follow the link of that banner ? And how much of those users will buy that website hosting? I think on 50 000 users, maybe 2 or 3 !?! So, the sponsor to make money, they would give us like 25 bucks per clients lol Wow. Lot of money! I need to know what you think guys. Thanks

Advertisement is already being successfully incorporated into games, the process is suprisingly slow but steady.
You don't need your users to click on the banner, it is enough that they see it in your game, probably more than once.

So I guess your sponsor would rather be interested in how many people actually saw the advertisement, for how long, at what angle ect.

I think it is a great idea especially for indie developers to have ads in game, have zero price tag on your game might attract a lot more people.
On the other side I don't see it happening anytime soon, at least not big style, I don't think many corporations think that it would suit them to have their logos printed in "low budget products" and in many cases they are even right.

Does anyone know how profitable in-game loading-time advertisements are? Let's say it takes 3 seconds to load a map. That's 3 seconds of someone looking at a full-screen advertisement. Now let's say there are 60 occassions your game loads a new map. That's the equivalent of 3 minutes of commercial time in your game (probably more effective too, because it is spread throughout the game).

Now kiome brought up a good point. Who would want to advertise in your game? The answer is simple - Professional games. Let's say you made a free simple RTS. Obviously your entire audience is interested in RTS games. That's a GOLDMINE for commercial RTS games. Unlike other advertising venues (commercials, magazine ads) where at best 10% of your audience is even remotely interested in your product, in-game genre-specific advertising guarantees 100% audience interest. (Not even gaming magazines can top that, as gamers interested in any of a number of genres might be reading the magazine, and only a fraction of them might be interested in the latest RTS game).

Now I'm curious, how much revenue could this kind of advertisement generate? Let's say you have 3 minutes worth of advertising in your game, and 1,000 people download your game. How much would that be worth?

What about donations? Has anyone had any experience with giving games away for free, but asking for donations?

[Edited by - ManaStone on November 9, 2006 1:19:14 AM]

Quote: Original post by ManaStone
What about donations? Has anyone had any experience with giving games away for free, but asking for donations?

Yes and the concensus seems to be that very few people donate. Ad revenue is probably better than asking for donations.