Podcast Interview: Adam from flashgamelicense.com

Adam, from flashgamelicense.com, talks about a good way for indies to make money off their games...

You can download the podcast here...
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/flash-game-license-podcast.mp3

or listen to it here...


Show Notes:
Interviewer: I'm here at the Game Developers Conference and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Adam: Hi, this is Adam Schroeder from flashgamelicense.com.

Interviewer: What's your site about?

Adam: Basically, we're a marketplace for flash developers. You can upload your game to our site. We put you in front of hundreds of different buyers. They bid on the game, and we get you the most money possible for it.

Interviewer: So, if an indie wants to actually... Why would an indie use this site aside from, I guess, getting more money? Are there other benefits to reach this site?

Adam: Yeah, in the whole community there's about 4,000 developers now. We have really active forums. You can get feedback on your game or coding help. We have a sister site, FlashGameArtWork, where you can look to find artistic talent for your games.

We have a first impression service where you can quickly order reviews of your game and get sort of iterative feedback within a very short time period, make changes to the game, run it again, make sure people are understanding the directions and the game play, and sort of getting into it really early.

Interviewer: How much is the sponsorship range in terms of prices that games can get on the site?

Adam: The prices range all over the place. A really high end flash game can make 5, 10, 15, 20, even more money. What we try to do for the really high end content is structure a deal where the amount that an offer receives is directly proportional to the value that the sponsor gets on the game.

Usually, that's under some sort of CPC model where you get, say, 5,000 upfront and then five cents per click for a certain period of time. Under that model, a really popular game can really generate a lot of revenue.

You can also put in-game ads within the game which can generate lots of money. There's lots of different ways of licensing the games. What we really push people towards is what we call primary license where the person is sort of buying the rights to brand your game for the general distribution, sort of the free version of the game that can go all over the Internet.

Interviewer: Sure.

Adam: But, you still have full rights as the developer to sell versions of the game to single sites that remove all of that branding or make any other change you want as long as that version of the game is locked to just that single site, that single domain. Of course, you have full rights to sequels and anything else you want to do.

Interviewer: How much does it cost an indie to use this service or to put it on the site?

Adam: It doesn't cost anything to use the site. If you sell the game through our site, we assess a 10 percent commission. But other than that, there's no cost to upload it and get the feedback from developers.

Interviewer: Do you know what games, I mean, does it change in terms of what games are getting sponsored recently? Is it like, genres have their own trends or how does that work?

Adam: Yeah, any really good game is going to find a lot of interest. I guess some of the hot stuff right now - tower defense games are still real popular. Physics games using the box 2D engine are very popular.

Interviewer: What about multi-player games?

Adam: Multi-player is much harder. I mean, the big issue with the multi-player game is supporting that back end server. It's a lot less of an open market on a multi-player game. You almost have to pick the publisher that you're going with before you build the game in order for everything to work out and scale correctly. It makes it a lot harder to just build a great game and get the most value out of it because you're kind of got to make a deal ahead of time.

Interviewer: Now, sometimes indies will just put together a game in a week or a few days. Is this even an appropriate site to try to get sponsorship for that, or what's the type of quality that you guys are expecting?

Adam: The brilliant thing with flash is how fast you can really put together a game, and obviously production value is important. You need to have that initial first impression of someone that it's going to be a quality game, high quality graphics, but it doesn't take a lot to really make a great game. Just a simple game mechanic that it might only be a day to put together and just build something around that. It can be a very successful game.

Interviewer: Can you talk about your sister art site? How many people use that, and how can it help indies then?

Adam: Sure. The Flash Game Art's a new site we just launched. We're just getting started. Currently, it's just a way to upload portfolios of your work. We have a really active collaboration forum on Flash Game License, so that's where people are connecting. Then, if you can link to the FlashGameArtWork, people can see all of your work.

The future edition of the site will have more work flow and product management pieces, but currently it's just kind of a portfolio...

Interviewer: Can you talk about the community and the forums then for Flash Game License in terms of how it can better fit indie game developers?

Adam: Yeah, I mean...

Interviewer: And is it Flash Game License or Flash Games License?

Adam: It's Flash Game License.

Interviewer: So, corrected. OK, cool.

Adam: Yeah, the community is very supportive of one another, and it's definitely something that you want to take advantage of and use our site. One, you get free feedback from other developers that play your game. If you have any specific programming challenges, you can ask in the forums and get answers to that.

There's all sorts of articles and resources people have linked to, so you can just really get a nice start to everything.

Interviewer: Is this then a place for part time indie game developers, or are there people doing this full time, or is this a way for indies to go full time with their flash games?

Adam: Potentially, if you have really high end content, you can definitely support yourself full time with it. Most of the flash developers now are still doing it part time or hobbyists. There are a lot of college students or even high school students that are coming out with really good games.

Interviewer: Oh, really? OK. Are there any last words or suggestions you have for indie game developers who are interested in getting their flash game sponsored?

Adam: Check out Flash Game License. In the past, even just as short as a year ago, there were only a few sites that people really knew of that were sponsoring flash games. So, the developer didn't have a lot of options, and those sites had a lot of power and weight over the games they take and what they pay for them.

At Flash Game License we now have hundreds of buyers that are interested in flash games. We've sort of opened up the marketplace to really anyone that wants to buy flash games could come to our site and compete within it where before they never even had the opportunity to do so.

Interviewer: Compared to other sites, what's the benefit of going to your site versus some of your competitors?

Adam: There really isn't another marketplace for flash games, so you can't really get what we have anywhere else right now.

Interviewer: Sounds good, so flashgamelicense.com.

Adam: Yes.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.


Take care,
Action