[Flash Game Development Journal] Demon King

[damijin]

As of this Friday, I will be leaving my Community Manager position at Kongregate.com to pursue full time Flash game development. While I was there I learned a shit ton about the flash and casual gaming worlds, including knowledge that the top earners in this industry are easily bringing in 60-100k a year on their titles. I know of at least one sponsorship for a single game that went for 45,000 USD, and several that have reached above the 10k mark, and that's not including post-release advertisement revenue.

So I was thinking, I'm making 34 grand a year, I should be doing what I love and making more than this. Lets make us some games.

In the past, I had developed a flash puzzle title called "Oh, Buoy!"

It sort of tanked, and the reason wasn't really that it's a terrible game (though it is fairly amateur), it was that I completely misunderstood what the flash gaming market is. When I had designed the game, I assumed that the Flash market was the casual market. That it was like Pogo.com, for old ladies and kids. I was... very very wrong.

The Flash portal market is the core gaming market. It's the people who play Xbox 360, MMOs, and DS games. Its just those people while they're at work and school. As time went on I learned that Kong's demographic is strongly on the male side of the table, and typically between 13 and 20 years of age. We do have quite a bit of diversity in the active community which skews older and more female, but if you looked at the raw data, you're talking about teenage males.

SO! Knowing this, and knowing what types of games have earned $45,000 I've set out to make an action game with the working title, "Naga: Blood Conquest". It is potentially the first in a three-part trilogy following the life of a sea serpent general of Atlantis. Here's some rough color concept art and animation concepts.




These were derived from my wonderful artist based on a pencil sketch that I had made of what I thought the main character might look like. He made the snake-ish Naga that I had drawn much more fishy, and obviously, a whole lot better. Here's what my original sketch looked like:



We began concepts for this game a few weeks ago, and the team consists of three members. Myself providing user interface art, design, and direction. Joseph King who is doing the actual game art and animations (and the two pieces of art you see up there), and my friend David Robinson who will be coding the game.

In these first few weeks we've defined the general game concept, begun a rough design document, and created these first pieces of art. The concept for the game is that it will play something like Amorphous+ in terms of controls, but that it will feature many more 'sticky' features. Your main character will level up over time and unlock new skills, and the plot of the game has you seeking conquest over a rival undersea civilization. You'll progress through a campaign map while taking over territories, and all of this is done from what I call an "underwater aircraft carrier", which is basically a giant hermit crab with a city on it's back.

From the crab, friendly AI units are spawned to fight against enemies. They fight along 3 points of battle, and you as the hero, aid them where necessary and repel the enemy yourself. In this sense, it is something like DOTA, because there is an illusion of a constant battle, and you are a hero in it. The AI units are not controlled by the player at all, even their spawning is automatic. Because of the way these wars art fought between massive mobile platforms, the underwater war will take place along roads and routes -- giving it more of a terrestrial war feeling. The benefit to using the underwater theme is that it gives you more usage of the screen, since your units can swim up and down. This could also be accomplished with a game about angels, or flying creatures of some sort on floating islands.

As your character progresses, it will also earn money which will be used to buy equipment upgrades, items, and enhance the ally units and war platform. There will also be the involvement of minor story elements as the game goes on.

I have a crude mockup made to describe to our artist the terms of scale for the actual game. Although units will need to be quite small (due to browser window limitations and such), I believe we will use much more detailed art for story elements and in-between screens to show off our beautiful concepts when we can.



So that's where it stands. I'll be updating this thread on occasion to describe the process and how the game is progressing. Right now we've set some goals to have basic core engine functionality by October 12th. I won't be kicking into full gear until next week when I'm done with my current day job, but I'm looking forward to a development time around 4-5 months in length.

[schild]

You want to know something, I've played a shitload of stuff on Kongregate, but for whatever reason, Flash stuff just kills my will to game seriously. I think it's because it feels like the gaming equivalent of a modern Tiger Handheld :( And I'm not sure how half of these flash companies monetize that shit.

That said, best of luck.

[damijin]

It's really the only place to be for indie right now. Honestly, I'd really rather be in any other part of gaming (except cell phone mobile) -- but it has it's gems, and as far as indie goes... well, its got a revenue model. The intention really is to start here and use it for the basis of a company that would grow out of the flash/web space.

[schild]

Wii Ware? PSP Dev Kits are super cheap right now I believe. Like, free as in beer.

But seriously, can you talk about monetizing a flash game? Really, if it's just people clicking on the ads, who are they and how dumb do you have to be? I mean, what's the point of clicking those ads?

[damijin]

Flash game monetization is an amalgamation of advertisement, premium content, and sponsorships (which are really just big advertisements).

Each game that is released carries a sponsor. This will typically be a portal like Kongregate, Armor Games, Crazy Monkey Games, or dozens of others. In order to get the best sponsor price, you shop around. This may include going to a site like FlashGameLicense.com, and brokering a deal with a fella named Adam Schroeder, who is the Don King of Flash Games. He'll pitch your games to all the sponsors with whom he has a good relationship, and if he can get you more than you could get on your own, you pay up 10% of the difference to him. Everybody wins (except the sponsors).

Okay, so you've found a sponsor, and they're going to have some terms for you. Most require that you put ads to their page in your game. This works out for the sponsor because it drives traffic back to their page no matter where the game is played on the web. So the sponsor loads their page up with ads, makes their revenue like that, and pays lump sums out to developers to get content which brings people to their ads.

So that's the primary source of revenue in flash right now.

Aside from that you have things like MochiAds. MochiAds are a flash-based advertisement system that developers put into their game, and it puts up pre-roll ads before your game starts. These have a standard CPM system, but whats great about it is that no matter where on the web your game is played, that ad is a part of your swf. You get paid for it based on CPMs the same way you would get money for your ads here on F13, Schild. If your game gets good spread, and is played in lots of places, you can easily be building thousands of dollars post-release based on those MochiAds.

Then you have sites like Kongregate, which offer their own ad revenue sharing. Much like Mochi, except only for one site. The top games on Kong have also earned thousands of dollars post-release on advertisement alone. Kong has three people in-house who are advertisement folks that broker deals for Kong to get the best CPMs and best ads. Kong then pays up to 50% of the ad revenue generated on your game page, to you.

You also have your own personal site, which if you do that as well as HandDrawnGames.com did, you can generate thousands on your own page on top of the Mochi/Kong stuff. A single great title can float you for a good long time based on these ad systems.

Next up we have premium content. This will apply to future games as microtransactions and online games become more popular in the flash space, and are likely to become the largest form of revenue in late 2009, going into 2010. Right now, premium content is limited mostly to developers who can set up their own payment systems -- and typically revolve around the old casual game model of try before you buy. They release a free flash game, and just put something in there for "Pay $5 for the full version of this game." This strategy hasn't been tried a whole lot, but I've heard anecdotal evidence from the developer of Fantastic Contraption and Stormwinds that it can be well worth it, and generate significant returns. What significant means, I will not know until I try.

I personally plan to follow the methods of sponsorship and advertisement revenue for the rest of 2008, and the start of 2009, then my plan is to move into online gaming using Kongregate's microtransaction platform.

[Signe]

Good luck with this!  It all sounds really interesting so keep us updated on how it develops.  I'll play!  I hope you make tons of $$.

Oh and you seem to have crabs. 

[Krakrok]

And I'm not sure how half of these flash companies monetize that shit.

The two brothers that developed Bloons make $30k a month from advertising. I can't find the article again where I saw that quoted. Their Bloonsworld site has a user content (design your own levels) feature.

http://www.google.com/search?q=bloons

It sort of tanked, and the reason wasn't really that it's a terrible game (though it is fairly amateur), it was that I completely misunderstood what the flash gaming market is. When I had designed the game, I assumed that the Flash market was the casual market. That it was like Pogo.com, for old ladies and kids. I was... very very wrong.

The Flash portal market is the core gaming market. It's the people who play Xbox 360, MMOs, and DS games. Its just those people while they're at work and school. As time went on I learned that Kong's demographic is strongly on the male side of the table, and typically between 13 and 20 years of age. We do have quite a bit of diversity in the active community which skews older and more female, but if you looked at the raw data, you're talking about teenage males.

That might be Kongrigate/Newgrounds/ArmorGames market segment but the flash portal I'm working with is 60% female 13-35. We're on month 5 or so of building out our portal. Hard core gamers are a much harder segment to cater to. Old ladies and kids' parents have lots of money.

And if I were you I would release little short games along the way that augment your main game (using art from your main game) so you can get more of a feel for game distribution. 4-6 months to build the uber game is all fine and good but that is having all of your eggs in one basket. Releasing little games along the way at the same time will build you up a distribution channel for your main game. You never know what little puzzle game you come up with could make it big.

[damijin]

I will be developing smaller games along the way. The programmer on this larger project will be focused on the large project while I'll be doing smaller games with my far inferior programming skills, and working on small projects with other folks. Those will just not be nearly as large or fun to document, so I probably won't discuss them here other than to mention that they were created.

What portal are you working with, if it's not top sekret?

[Krakrok]

What portal are you working with, if it's not top sekret?

I'll take the free link. Fupa Games is the portal. The logo was inspired by

[ezrast]

"underwater aircraft carrier", which is basically a giant hermit crab with a city on it's back.

Sold!

That is, if you promise right now to include narwhals.

So badass.

[damijin]

We decided last night not to use that original mockup, because it will decrease the level of intimacy with the main character. Instead we'll be using a tighter camera in a game area, so it'll be like that mockup, just you'll only see a portion of it at a time. We initially were against this idea because we felt it might make the level too confusing, but I think with proper radar and alerts that tell you where you need to go, it should be fine, and will allow us to use much more detailed art and have everything look more epic.

Narwhals sounds good :D

[schild]

I had a long post here, but I couldn't be asked to figure out a conclusion. In short: Epic and Detailed are two things I think are ridiculous to worry about in a Flash title. I may be wrong, but it's just one of those things. On all accounts, I should love the ever-living shit out of Dofus. But for the life of me, that game bores me to goddamn tears, as most flash titles that are "trying to be real games" do.

[damijin]

I don't discount your opinion, Schild. And in the past I would have completely agreed with you. For the audience this game is going to -- Newgrounds, Kongregate, Armor Games, I've found that there is actually a demand for flash titles that have depth and striking graphics. Sonny is probably the best example, which is a really simple RPG with fantastic animations. It's currently the highest rated and one of the most played games on both Kongregate and Armor Games.

Along with this, I find it more personally fulfilling to make a game that is 'trying to be a real game', so we've resolved to test that route. If it doesn't work out, we'll do something else.


Edit: I should also point out, having worked for Kong and having a great relationship with the guy who brokers all of our sponsorships, games that treat themselves like real games are what are getting all of the money these days. You either need to have an amazing unique fun idea that no one else has done (very hard to do) or you need to treat your game seriously and try to make it look as good as possible. Those are what drive traffic and get the cash.

[damijin]

Sorry for the double post, bit of an update to the journal.

Related to:

And if I were you I would release little short games along the way that augment your main game (using art from your main game) so you can get more of a feel for game distribution.

This morning I met a fellow on Kongregate chat who has been a reg for a long time. I knew he was a programmer so we got to talking, and we figured out that he's a very capable AS2 and AS3 programmer, and recently left his job to do freelance work. Except, no real freelance work has been coming and he's been feeling jerked around. He told me that he is from Indonesia, and that the pay he was getting at his full time job was less than 1/6th what I was making at Kongregate. I was a bit taken back. His English was superb -- he told me he had studied here in the states for 5 years.

After a bit of talking we resolved that he could definitely beat his old salary if we worked together on games, and since he has no day job, he's able to rapidly develop as a full time job, unlike my current programmer who holds down a separate day job.

Within 7 hours of meeting this fellow, we had come up with a concept for a game, and rapidly prototyped it. I'm not ready to show it off yet, but I think we may be looking at a development cycle of under a month. He did amazingly fast work today.

The basic concept from the game spawned when he told me that he had devised a way to get large numbers of sprites on screen simultaneously. I thought it would be fun to run around slaughtering large armies as some sort of god. So I thought about it and we decided to make a game where you're a demon lord. You raid villages to harvest souls and phat loot, so you go village to village and just slaughter the citizens, soldiers, women, children, livestock and lay waste to their farms and shelters. Sack a few villages, fight a few bosses, bada bing bada boom, you got a game!

We were actually able to prototype to the point of having a main character who is controllable, and infinitely spawning enemies that can be killed. The main character can be killed, and hundreds of enemies can be on screen at a time. I'm shocked this was all done in one day. I'll try to keep the journal updated with the progress of both games. I'll be providing art on the demon game, while my more professional artist remains the lead on Naga. It will be interesting to compare the responses to the two different styles of development and how they impact the final product.

[Krakrok]

The basic concept from the game spawned when he told me that he had devised a way to get large numbers of sprites on screen simultaneously.

Take a look here:
http://www.normsoule.com/?p=59

Wouldn't it be better if your demon game used the same graphics as Naga?

[damijin]

Wouldn't it be better if your demon game used the same graphics as Naga?

Yes and no.

Yes, because the art is good, and it would allow us to reuse it. No, because I didn't do the art (pay cut to me), and the art is from a different perspective. Siding with no for now, but I plan to hook the programmer and the good artist together in the future.

[Aez]

100k a year?  Make a decent collectible trading card game and you'll make this in a month!  I think I spent 500$ in 3 months on MTGO back when it was still playable.  You don't even need decent animation.

[schild]

I think I spent 500$ in 3 months on MTGO back when it was still playable.  You don't even need decent animation.

You don't even need it to work properly!

[Yegolev]

I think I spent 500$ in 3 months on MTGO back when it was still playable.  You don't even need decent animation.

You don't even need it to work properly!

I like a low bar.  The console version worries me greatly.

[damijin]

Things are working out with the new programmer. His work ethic is out of this world. Today was my last day on the Kong job, farewells to all, and it went very smoothly.

Naga has hit a bit of a stump. The artist is getting married this weekend which puts him out of commission temporarily, but at a crucial time. I'm going to put pressure on the programmer to continue development, but I feel that the fact he works 40 hours from home on his computer already makes it incredibly difficult for him to continue working on the PC after work is over.

We'll try to address this by having him begin working at my place in my office basement, but it worries me greatly.

In my position though, having put my back to the wall with no other plans, I need to succeed, and if that requires focusing more of my attention with the new programmer over my friend, that's what will have to happen.

I'll be ready to show off some early prototypes soon, I hope.

[Krakrok]

Working with friends is tough.

I recommend Bryce 6 and Poser w/ Daz3d (do a search for water) for rapid graphical prototyping.

Here is an example of what you can do in Bryce in a few minutes:

[damijin]

Bit of an update. Naga continues on stall. Issue being that my programmer has been painting all week, so his free time is occupied. Artist is getting married as we speak, so I've told him I want him to enjoy the honeymoon and take it easy a while. Dave, the programmer on Naga, seems confident he'll be working hard on it after he finishes his home project of painting, so we'll see how that goes. It makes me uneasy. It's so easy for projects like these to derail.

Greg and Demon Lord continue to be my strong point. I'm working on a village map for the game, but Greg has hit a bit of a snag with collision detection. He borrowed an open source particle engine for the game's mass enemies, but he's having a tricky time getting them to collide with arbitrary buildings and stuff. We hope he'll find a solution soon.

We've found a sound/music person who contacted me right here on F13 to join the team. Of course with the uncertainty of these sorts of projects, sound will come last. Its too easy for them to fail, so it doesnt makes sense to get things like sound assets until you know it will actually be released.

[damijin]

Time for another update, it's been a little bit.

Naga is probably DoA, this is unfortunately the case for many small scale indie projects. I loved the idea, and the concept art, but the programmer just has too much shit on his plate.

The Demon game however, is going extremely strong.

Although I don't want to show off our gameplay prototype yet, because it lacks fun (and history has taught me not to show games pre-fun), I would like to share the title screen with a pretty dope fire effect.

http://www.theworldtakes.com/DemonKing/GameMockup.html

The pentagram background is jacked I think, might be from Doom or something. We'll come up with something different but similar. We're hoping to make a less processor intensive version of that fire effect for spells in the game.

[Krakrok]

We're hoping to make a less processor intensive version of that fire effect for spells in the game.

It runs at 28% CPU on a Q6600 with Firefox. I'd suggest this particle engine but I don't think it's faster than what you have. It's three smokestack effect takes 37% CPU and it's one smokestack effect takes 10%. Might be useful for other effects though.

[damijin]

Those are some really cool effects, shame that it says they're for AS2 only. I bet they would still work in AS3, but I don't think we'll purchase it for this project.

[Krushchev]

Good luck on your game damijin ;) I enjoyed Sonny, and I wouldn't mind more great flash games.

[damijin]

Updated the title being as how Naga is dead in the water, but thats how this shit goes. Indie is like that~

Anyhow, here's the campaign map for Demon King. Its only missing one or two more things, but for the most part is done.

[Krushchev]

Looks sweet, and hopefully long. Can we get a rough % done estimate? Or a release date? Or a alpha build, etc?

:)

[schild]

Looks sweet, and hopefully long. Can we get a rough % done estimate? Or a release date? Or a alpha build, etc?

:)

Why the fuck are you asking this about an indie flash game? Have you no shame?

[Slyfeind]

Looks sweet, and hopefully long....

That's interesting. I took a look at that and thought "Ew, too long."

[Krushchev]

Looks sweet, and hopefully long. Can we get a rough % done estimate? Or a release date? Or a alpha build, etc?

:)

Why the fuck are you asking this about an indie flash game? Have you no shame?

I am sorry.   

[damijin]

To respond to a few things. My hope is to have Demon King done around the beginning of the new year. I have a secondary project that I am working on as well that is much smaller and I hope to release next month. To Skyfeind, I actually agree with you. I rarely ever play through long flash games. I am in fact building a game longer than what I would normally play. I think in some ways thats a foolish move on my part, but on the other hand, the market for this particular game is a younger crowd who wants a fulfilling, long gameplay experience in a free format. If it bombs, I'll know better and stick to what *I* would actually play, rather than trying to guess at what my target would want.

You'll like my smaller game for next month though :)

[damijin]

We decided about two weeks back to re-do our engine with a tile system and bring the camera in closer for more detailed graphics. Although that is still underway, I do have some of the graphics for the main character which I think are fucking rad, so I'll share those.

http://www.theworldtakes.com/DemonKing/demonkinganim.html

[Miscreant]

Why the fuck are you asking this about an indie flash game? Have you no shame?

Dude, most things worth following are indie these days.  Keep up the updates, damijin.

[damijin]

Updates are actually that the game got sidelined because we need money. We'll be releasing something by the middle of this month, which after release I will disclose all sorts of information about, and then we'll see what happens from there.

For a pre-mortem disclosure on why Demon King and Naga both died:

Scale was too large. Naga had programmer issues with time commitments. Demon King's prototypes were never fun, so we decided to start changing things around, but it got ahead of us. Simultaneously I did a bunch of drugs and didn't talk to the programmer for a week, leaving him confused. The vision of what the game should be was lost, and in confusion, we stagnated. My bad.

Ultimately we were like, fuck it. We can scale down and do something different much faster and make enough scratch to pay rent then come back to this. So that's what we're doing.

It's a physics game, and uses a neat fire effect. Specifically the one from the menu of Demon King which we had already developed. Total dev time will be about 1 month.