I attended the first ever flash game summit. It was great to have one of those. Ada Chen from Mochi did a great job organizing everything.
My notes below:
MultiPlayer:
Types: Head to Head / Competitive, Cooperative.
Negatives: loss (try to minimize loss). Stuck
Problems: when a person is booted out while game is still going,
Good things: aggressively iterate on audience feedback.
How to get multi player games popular: 1) Long Alpha and Beta, High Scores, player recognition
“platform racer 2” great job getting player into game (millions of monthly plays).
Player drops, AI fills.
“puzzle pirates”
All multilayer should have single player modes for instruction, battle ground (get people comfortable).
Hosted site must be a community that will appreciate game, ie cooperative game should be hosted on social site.
Average Gamer likes things they know already: card game, puzzel game.
$$$: micro transactions maybe, figure it out later.
You need to build enough context for people to value things (ie story line, connections).
Multilayer monetize(credit card) at 3(5%-20% of active users), Single Player(credit card) at 2%.
Back end: Smart Fox, Electro-Server
Games: Scrapper, facebook games, pet society,
Face book is viral, Portals are not.
Viral-ness: url should link to session.
How do people play: most people use credit card, then pay pall, (sms??)
Grieving: More death, more grieving. “idiots expressing themselves”. In cooperative game match people by skill, not too many high level grievers.
even simple puzzle game should have hardcore components/elements
asynchronous multiplayer – go do something, leave, other people show up and do something and then leave, and then game state persists
blog: eric reese, startup lessons
Monetizing:
ads and non-exclusive license.
give traffic to your site or to sponser.
ad only works for top tier game.
In-game ads : some portals wont take your game. 30% more return w/o ingame ad.
Links: mindJolt, gimme5games (they pay you), flashgamelicence
Kongergate brings ad revenue.
Achievement can unlock a banner that people can put on there myspace and link back.
Retaining users is key.
*Ingame sharing mechanism (share something user builds or accomplishes).
Contests: make sure you dont give away rights, if you dont win can you get a nonexlusive.
Game is worth the most before its released (drivin off the lot).
If something works, create sequel, dont launch it to close, change more than content, new mechanism.
Game Maker Assets include Brand, IP
33% under 15 (more hardcore, ad revenue), 33% 15-25, 25+ (more casual, direct Pay)
analytics: quancast, com score demographics.
Down loadable size of game to distribution (a good game can be upto 15MB, sweet spot at 3MB.)
To be successful in distribution: devout a lot of time to distribute, lots of portals,
user created content by link incentives-es users to share.
Flashgamedistribution good way to distribute.
Problem with flash: easily scrap able.
Sites: newgrounds at the right hour.
Adobe:
Flash Media server is cheap (entry level = 1000), peer to peer.
Flash 10: Custom Filters and effects, 3D efects, Print-quality text, color manager
HardWare acceleration, Graphical rendering improvements, Vector,
Rich Media: Audio Processing, Dyncamic Streaming, Speex audio, XMP data, Next gen communication over UDP (RTMFP).
Pixel bender: multi threaded functionality.
RTMFP : Peer to peer audio video, udp.
Stratus (hosted version of rtmfp).
3 Questions: 1 round trip time, 2. concurrent connection pricing, 3. multiple peers?
Projects : WiiFlash, merapi
just released, distributable player: labs.adobe.com/technologies/distributableplayer
Flash player 9 on play station 10, wii flash player 7.
Monetization
vested time in developing character monetize well.
Lite wieght (3K), simple, gameplay, big game dimensions
CPM: (type of traffic). High CPM from US(2.50 CPM), not in china(.02 CPM).
Virtual currency powerful in china.
Links: Super Rewards, AddictingGames.
advertisers are interested in weeving there message into message of a game. Differentiation.
Social gaming.
Metrix developers should look at to value properties/games: RIA: length of play time (8 minutes +), probability of return.
LEADER BOARD (+30%), clean colorful simple thumbnail
building advergame for client.
Virtual currency