Daniel Cook of Lost Garden did an interesting presentation this morning titled “The rise of premium Flash games”. Those of you who have been following his Flash Game Love Letters might find a lot of this content familiar but there are also some interesting Bunni stats in there too.

Daniel started off his presentation with a quick comparison of how developers are making money in Flash. Many developers choose the route where you “work for a master” building advergames or you work “without a master” by adopting ad systems like Mochi Ads and game sponsorships. However for the developer seeking true independence without a master, it’s often very difficult to make ends meet with ad and sponsorship revenue. There’s a new and better way, through micro-transactions where players pay.

Charge Money

He outlined several games which are adopting this new model: Fantastic Contraption, Kongai, SAS: Zombie Assault 2 and the game he’s been working on, (with Andre Spiering) Bunni.

On a basic level, micro-transactions follow a simple cycle, he explained. Acquire customers, create value and charge money. In charging money, you have to have a valuable game. Players buy into the value structure of the game, and this deepens with the more time and engagement they spend in it. “Game design equals value equals being able to charge players”

Payment Service Options

There’s several options for implementing micro-transactions. Daniel outlined several different options and presented a payment service checklist to think about:

• margin
• ease of implementation
• persistent storage
• contact your customers
• financial metrics

It’s usually a trade-off between keeping margin and the level of service that you get.

Business Options

Daniel breaks business options into four buckets and presents some transaction options for them. His advice is to pick 3 out of the 4 types and try them.

• Time poor (busy people who lack for time but most likely have money) – accelerators, sale of virtual currency, utility items

• Money poor users (people who have unlimited time but no money) – ads, dual currency models

• Status users – aesthetic items, high visibility items

• More of the same – time gate, content gate, subscriptions

Create Value for Flash games

Most Flash games are low value. Addicting Games recently at Flash Gaming Summit said that users average about 8 minutes of play time for Flash games. This small amount of time makes it difficult to create value. The Flash game market thinks of play time in minutes, the casual game market thinks of games in hours and MMOs and social games think of games as month-long journeys for their users. Casual games tend to convert at 1% within the first 45-60 minutes and MMOs convert in the first 1-2 weeks.

Game Mechanics for Flash Games

“Don’t invest in low quality game mechanics,” meaning elements of the game that are high burnout that the user can only experience once. Examples of this are story, plot and graphics. Better mechanics to spend your time on are mechanics that can create hundreds of hours of game-play, such as sim games, evergreen puzzles, and randomly generated games like Nethack. Also, he advocates creating social mechanics in games for people to share, create, roleplay and interact with one another.

Flash Distribution is Awesome, But–

Flash is awesome at distribution. There are over 30,000 portals out there serving over 100 million players providing ways to get your game out there. Many developers follow the technique of creating a layer cake and creating lots of recurring revenue from multiple titles. However, distribution is not enough. To be successful, developers must keep their customers. How? By creating a brand (e.g., Bloons) where brands are promised value to the player or by creating a website. “Create a website. Just do it,” says Daniel, advocating that websites funnel track to a community and back. The Bunni game has an achievement tied with visiting the forums and received over 20,000 posts in just a few weeks of launch.

A Web Game Is Not a Box

Games are a service, and you’re not done once you’ve shipped it. There’s a lot of tuning and changes and updates that can be made afterward.

Staying In Power

Be careful about contracts. Do not sign away your: margin, customer, IP, future rights (t-shirts and other platforms), and carefully read the fine print. Be pragmatic however. In the short-term you might need money to pay rent, minimize debt and should bootstrap with the right partners. However, keep an eye on the long-term goal where each step plans for independence by reducing your tech lock-in and keeping users, IP and Sequel Rights.

Bunni Stats

• Bunni’s current play time is about 3 hours
• Bunni’s fun level is about 4 out of 5 in a “How fun did you find this game?” The game is less than 4/5 of fun in the first 30 minutes so they want to improve the introduction.
• Bunni’s retention is about 39% after 45 minutes and 26% finish the game over 3 hours
• The Bunni game has an achievement tied with visiting the forums and received over 20,000 posts in just a few weeks of launch.

“There’s a huge market emerging, said Daniel. “Make a game, make something people love and charge money for it.”

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