Indie startup

1. i think that it is a good start to develop a game to Flash, publish and lets see people like or not.
2. what about advertisement? All market need many adverts to players get to know my game?
3. So my problem is don't know where can i start. I have a fully documented game and a little group to develop this game.

1. Publish where? How? Your plan is unclear.
2. Yes, that is a problem. One reason people use Steam successfully is that the game is visible there. Visibility is a key part of the puzzle.
3. Before your group begins work, you need to write a good business plan and execute a collaboration agreement with your partners.

Your question is asking about whether you want to crawl, walk, or fly. Your product will determine when and where you publish the game. Your advertising, marketing and social word of mouth strategy will determine your customers and sales. Your study of demographics, ages, ethnicity, religion, social media from the selected target region(s) for your game will determine who plays your game. You go to Steam with a full out no holds AAA game with the correct advertising and marketing campaigns and you see almost no limit to income. You come to Steam with a slapped together paper drawn game and you will see only hundreds of sales. If you are totally new, you need to check your vision. You need to be able to see the end before you begin, and then begin. You want to be able to share your values with the people you work with and understand so they can see your vision to. A lack of vision leads to failure, and a lack of doing leads to failure. Failure is giving up on one's dreams because you are lazy and would rather make excuses than succeed. Failure is invented, as everything can be successful if you do not lack in one area of business, management, cash flow, and team skills.

Steam is for a different type of game than Mochi Media is. Mochi deals with publishing portal games with ad revenue as the main source of income. Steam deals with direct sales of games. Most indies on here and that publish to these distributing publishing portals lack in a area. Those that don't lack "angry birds" will always be successful. Common knowledge isn't common anymore. Laziness works up into a person's mind, and they want instant gratification from nothing. The promise of doing nothing and letting word of mouth go about enters their head. Simply put, you can either pay people to spread the word of mouth for you, create the word of mouth yourself, or rely on the random luck of noobs to spread it for you.

You need a business, you need a team or extreme self dedication to the project. You will need to sacrifice to see it succeed. You will finally need the education in business, advertising, psychology, and then management and social skills to succeed. Don't bother starting if you think a game is for fun. Games are about meeting a media entertainment need. You want to make profit to make more games. You want to be able to craft a multi-layered game. You want visuals that work on the conscious and subconscious levels. You want to appeal to the ethnicity of the players and games. You want to create and elaborate choices, ideas, decisions, and information and craft a visual experience. You want to do that also with sound and game mechanics. Finally, if you have achieved all that, you can then begin to give back to the community.

Do you want to walk? Then learn to walk. Do you want to crawl? Then learn to crawl. Do you want to fly? Learn to fly. Decide, then see the end before you begin.

That was really intructive read your post, RedPin, thanks!
First i'am not that guy who wants to build a WoW clone or other mmorpg game for first and i'am not lazy. I'am able to [color=#1C2837][size=2]sacrifice many things to do that work.
[color="#1c2837"]My first idea was to build a Flash based game (that i fully documented) because i do my full time job (as a programmer for near 10years now) next to this game.
[color="#1c2837"]But later i find out that there are many other platform like Steam where i can publish. I think so that start with a 2d Flash game has much more chance to success.
[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]So advertisement. You sad that no matter where do i publish that game i need a very good advertise, right? So Kongregate and Steam for example just a publishing portals.
[color="#1c2837"]I need to get know people where is my game, what kind of game is.. etc
[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]I'am familiar with Flash very well and jmonkeyengine too. I know that these are a very different platforms with very different graphics need
[color="#1c2837"]Currently graphics are done only paper, because with Flash it will 2d and with jmonkey it will be 3d.
[color="#1c2837"]but 3d is much more complex

So in short. I just want to know, where can an indie team be successfull regards to income, popularity..
I want to decide between:
- Flash games (published on portals like Kongregate and earn from income + Mochi, and so on)
- AppStore
- Steam

Please share me the advertisement habits on these platforms.
Is there any company who can help me to monetize these games?
What platform has more chance for an indie? What platform has more advertisement needs (to monetize)?

Thanks!

Nobody? Web or mobile for start? please give me some idea

How to make decisions: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/m70.htm
How to write a business plan: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+write+a+business+plan

My problem is, i read too many blogs,etc about..

Is this true that, an appstore game needs more advertisement to be success than a browser game?
What about monetize? A flash based browser game can earn money from sponsorship,ads,microtransaction,.. i can spread my game on facebook,twitter,youtube..
i can upload to kongregate for ad revenue or maybe i can get sponsorship, and there is flashgamelicense..

it seems for me there are much more possibility for a beginner in browser games
but please correct me! i already have a macbook+iphone and ready to buy a dev license to develop games
but it seems it's cost more money to develop to AppStore (because dev license and the advertisements that needs to users see my game!)

My problem is, i read too many blogs,etc about..

Is this true that, an appstore game needs more advertisement to be success than a browser game?
What about monetize? A flash based browser game can earn money from sponsorship,ads,microtransaction,.. i can spread my game on facebook,twitter,youtube..
i can upload to kongregate for ad revenue or maybe i can get sponsorship, and there is flashgamelicense..

it seems for me there are much more possibility for a beginner in browser games
but please correct me! i already have a macbook+iphone and ready to buy a dev license to develop games
but it seems it's cost more money to develop to AppStore (because dev license and the advertisements that needs to users see my game!)

Flash portals such as kongregate is an "easy" way to get a good game noticed (When your game is uploaded it will be near the top of the new games list, if it gets high ratings from the first group of people who try it, it will end up on the front page, if it is "good" and implements their API it might get badges (which will give it even more free exposure).
Getting some decent revenue however is still hard, you need hundreds of thousands of views/plays, Microtransactions are risky (Done right it can add significantly to your revenue, done wrong and it will push people away from the game).

You might consider a hybrid approach, use flash portals to get your game noticed (While ads don't generate much revenue a decent game that is free to play will get noticed on most flash portals even without advertising) and appstores to generate revenue from an improved mobile version (Which you can advertise in the flash game)

[color=#1C2837][size=2]You might consider a hybrid approach, use flash portals to get your game noticed (While ads don't generate much revenue a decent game that is free to play will get noticed on most flash portals even without advertising) and appstores to generate revenue from an improved mobile version (Which you can advertise in the flash game)[/quote]


Thanks, it's a really cool idea


You told that Flash games don't generate much revenue from ads, but it's possible to get a sponsorship, right?

You could look at past games sales figures to get a rough idea on how much money you could make:

http://mikengreg.com/blog/2010/10/2-months-of-solipskier-app-store-sales/
http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/

Getting the game/app noticed is going to be the hardest part of the project and arguably going to take up the majority of your time and resources.

You told that Flash games don't generate much revenue from ads, but it's possible to get a sponsorship, right?

If you are lucky and the game is interesting you might get a sponsorship. But its certainly not a case of putting a game on Flash Game License and having people fight over your game. And then you are going to be lucky to get a few thousand out of a sponsorship. People that get $15k seem to be the exception and not the norm. Flash games are completely over saturated right now. Its very much a buyers market now.

I work on Flash games for Facebook as my day job. Its certainly not a case of putting a game up there and watching the money roll in. On Facebook you will only make money from micro transactions. And if you aren't careful its very easy to piss people off. You also have to spend a lot of your own money on adverting and not to mention that you can only use Facebook credits of which Facebook takes a cut of every purchase.

From your posts I kind of get the idea you are only seeing dollar signs which is your reason to be getting into indie games. Thats a huge mistake. For every Minecraft there are thousands of games that are lucky to make $100. Indie games should be something you want to do on the side for some fun and if you make a few bucks then good. But if the motivation is just purely to make money you will be disappointed for the most part I think.

You should probably also worry more about getting your game done first before counting your money.

[color=#1C2837][size=2]From your posts I kind of get the idea you are only seeing dollar signs which is your reason to be getting into indie games.[/quote]
Sorry if my posts seems like i only want money, this is wrong.
I do financial software developing almost 10years now. I want to do something else.. something that fun and yes something that can bring some money. But not the money in the first place.

[color=#1C2837][size=2] Its certainly not a case of putting a game up there and watching the money roll in.[/quote]
I know and i don't except this.

I have 3 game idea that i fully documented. I asked many people that what they do think about these games? They liked it so i would like to develop these games.
After that i started to read blogs, forums for the browser/mobile things and here is i completely lost!
Because i only have little time next to my familiy and my work, the time need for developing is a important factor for me.
I just wanted to know, where should i start? But now it's seems a good idea to start on Flash, gain some players and than if the game is so success.. go toward AppStore.
But it's important too that i already invest for a mac and an iphone. maybe i can publish the game simultaneously..[color=#353535][font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2][/font]
..
and finally i started a topic here to get some instruction
[color=#353535][font=Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2] [/font]

[color="#1C2837"]From your posts I kind of get the idea you are only seeing dollar signs which is your reason to be getting into indie games.

Sorry if my posts seems like i only want money, this is wrong.
I do financial software developing almost 10years now. I want to do something else.. something that fun and yes something that can bring some money. But not the money in the first place.

[color="#1C2837"] Its certainly not a case of putting a game up there and watching the money roll in.[/quote]
I know and i don't except this.

I have 3 game idea that i fully documented. I asked many people that what they do think about these games? They liked it so i would like to develop these games.
After that i started to read blogs, forums for the browser/mobile things and here is i completely lost!
Because i only have little time next to my familiy and my work, the time need for developing is a important factor for me.
I just wanted to know, where should i start? But now it's seems a good idea to start on Flash, gain some players and than if the game is so success.. go toward AppStore.
But it's important too that i already invest for a mac and an iphone. maybe i can publish the game simultaneously..[color="#353535"][font="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"] [/font]
..
and finally i started a topic here to get some instruction
[color="#353535"][font="Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"] [/font]
[/quote]

Just go for it tbh, covering your living costs is a huge success and not something you're likely to do with your first few games anyway.

Summary:

Flash:
- need to be lucky beacause saturation
- maybe with sponsporship can get decent money
- can get few money from ads

AppStore:
- lucky
- need to advertise your game that costs money
- can get much more money if the game is really cool and you can notice potentional users

Steam:
???
needs advertisement? AAA game,. etc?

Summary:

Flash:
- need to be lucky beacause saturation
- maybe with sponsporship can get decent money
- can get few money from ads

AppStore:
- lucky
- need to advertise your game that costs money
- can get much more money if the game is really cool and you can notice potentional users

Steam:
???
needs advertisement? AAA game,. etc?

Steam accepts indie games aswell, luck helps on all platforms but hard work is far more important.

Don't forget the collaboration agreement. Make sure all members of the team are on one page as to the reason for doing the project, and the risks they're taking, who owns what, and how any profits (if any) are to be divided.

I'd say just pick the platform you are most comfortable with (probably Flash) and pop out a few free games and see how things go. When you get some game experience under your belt (which is different then bizdev) you will be more in a position to answer the question yourself. Its very rare that people make any money on their first games. Having your name out there on some fun free games will make it much easier to start charging for games later on as people get to know you.