Brainstorm: making money with small games

Can't you use AdSense on your site, and embed the games?

If XNA, why don't you just publish them in the community games section come this fall?

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Original post by Andrew Russell - In-game advertising. But would the advertisers come?

Could you use a service like Mochiads, or one of the similar services that find advertisers for you?

I know that most of them are for flash, but I know at least Ad4Play is available for other platforms and programming languages as well.

It seems like in game ads for the flash world are really taking off getting money into the hands of independent developers, maybe that model would work on other platforms as well.

I don't know if I've got any "brilliant" money making schemes, and if I did I'd use them myself [wink]. Actually I need to brainstorm some of these ideas myself in a month or two for a few projects of my own.

You could co-opt a few ideas from webcomics, although most of these depend on having a moderately large audience to begin with (but that's an issue with any revenue scheme):

• Merchandise: sell stuff based on your games. It's pretty easy to set up a T-shirt store. However I think your games will need to get a cult following for this to be worthwhile.
  
• The Ransom Model: having something that you'll only do if you reach a certain revenue goal. This tends to annoy people if the "something" is too large, like the continuation of the whole game making project, but you can adapt it. You could have a number of ideas up on a site and only develop the ones that reach a certain bounty.
  
• Sponsorship: a variant of "Gimme Some Candy", you could include avatars of people who pay a certain amount in your next game. This would restrict you to certain genres of games though.

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Original post by DaaarkIf XNA, why don't you just publish them in the community games section come this fall?

Well to put it bluntly, that would be something like trying to make money juggling on the same street as several thousand other jugglers, and you're all dressed exactly the same.

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Original post by Andrew Russell My next project - that I'm currently planning out - involves a series of small free games (not very fancy - think "flash" and "arcade"), released one per week. The platform is Windows/XNA. There will probably be 12 games to begin with, but perhaps more later on if things go well. Now, I'd be quite content to release these games for free (this could best be described as an "experimental" project), but it'd be nice if I could make a few dollars off them too. So far my ideas: - "Donate" link: Very common and simple - but is the performance of this even worth it? I'm sure that at least someone here can comment on the usefulness of "donate" links? - Clone of Ze Frank's "Gimme Some Candy": Sell little trinkets (icons and messages - or maybe something else?) that are displayed in-game, probably on the main menu. A more-visible donation system. Downside: it's been done before, and Ze already had a huge following when he launched it. - In-game advertising. But would the advertisers come? Any other ideas? Something that leverages the regular update schedule? Perhaps someone here has a brilliant money-making scheme that they'd love to see somebody else try out for them?

These have been tried where I work, and here's the results
- Donations: when applied over the development time of the project it worked out to something like $0.50/hour for the amount of work that was put into the project, so there was income but it was hardly worthwhile
- In game items while they were in the game, sold I think 3 items over the course of 8 months, which again isn't that worth it, however they changed it so there was a pay to play version that had all the items and that sold quite a bit more.
- If you're using flash, then yes, otherwise it's iffy. You need to have a game compelling enough to be played tens of thousands of times per day to make in game advertising worthwhile.

I think product placement is the most important form of in-game advertisement. Don't pay licenses to use car models, make the car manufacturers pay you to use their car's likeness as a form of advertisement. Don't pay a license to include the likeness of the original Coca-Cola bottle in your game, get Coca-Cola to pay you. Repeat.

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Original post by capn_midnight I think product placement is the most important form of in-game advertisement. Don't pay licenses to use car models, make the car manufacturers pay you to use their car's likeness as a form of advertisement. Don't pay a license to include the likeness of the original Coca-Cola bottle in your game, get Coca-Cola to pay you. Repeat.

Is that really feasible for the kind of project AR is pursuing though?

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Original post by brent_w Quote: Original post by DaaarkIf XNA, why don't you just publish them in the community games section come this fall? Well to put it bluntly, that would be something like trying to make money juggling on the same street as several thousand other jugglers, and you're all dressed exactly the same.

If you've seen the variety in quality of XNA GS games, you wouldn't say that. There are a few stand out games, some decent ones, and some crap.

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Original post by Valderman Quote: Original post by capn_midnight I think product placement is the most important form of in-game advertisement. Don't pay licenses to use car models, make the car manufacturers pay you to use their car's likeness as a form of advertisement. Don't pay a license to include the likeness of the original Coca-Cola bottle in your game, get Coca-Cola to pay you. Repeat. Is that really feasible for the kind of project AR is pursuing though?

if it's stick soldiers 3 then maybe

I looked into the XNA Creators Club thing...

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In which regions will developers be able to sell their games at launch? Creators Club Premium members in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain will be able to create, share and sell their games on Xbox LIVE when Community Games launches this holiday. We will look to add support for additional countries soon after the service launches this holiday.

Poor Australia is left out again. And I'm still waiting for the Zune too. It's not like there isn't a significant number of game developers in Australia.

I'd jump at the chance to publish games on the XBox. But it looks like, for this project, it will be well after-the-fact.


I'll have a few more comments later - but for the time being: bump - any more ideas?

get an amerifriend to publish the XNA game for you?

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Original post by eedok get an amerifriend to publish the XNA game for you?

But won't the amerimiddlefriend what a cut of an already presumably small pie?

Wait maybe that's the idea. Be the gateway for Australia. I'm not sure how that helps AR though.

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Original post by Andrew Russell And I'm still waiting for the Zune too.

Well, yes, you and everyone else outside of North America. Indeed, I've heard of plans to NEVER release the Zune outside of North America so it's not like you are missing out.

Just follow my brilliant plan and make games, release them for free with source code on a website with no advertising or donation links or anything and you'll be well on your way to making no money whatsoever.

I think Advertising might be out. Mochiads seems solid, but is flash-only. Ad4Play's website is woefully inadequate, information-wise. I don't think trying to find and manage my own advertisers is feasible for this project.

Trapper Zoid's ideas from webcomics seem pretty good - although as he says, they really need an audience first. "The Ransom Model" has given me some ideas that will fit in well with what I have in mind for "phase two".

Product placement isn't really appropriate here - but it's something to think about for the future. Perhaps next time I'm crazy enough to do a Stick Soldiers-type game.

The best plan, so far, seems to be a "gimme some candy" clone - because it's easy to implement.


I'll keep the idea of asking an American friend to handle XBox publishing for me in the back of my mind. Although that kind of thing has all sorts of annoying implications - especially if they do get around to opening the service in Australia. Perhaps it will be reasonable if it looks like they're going to "do a Zune" and delay it forever.

Speaking of Zune: the last I heard was "Worldwide in 2008". Although based on a Google of Microsoft's website (or a low opinion of the geographic ability of Americans) it's actually "Canada in 2008". They've still got a couple of months left, though...

I <3 you, mittens :)