See it in person with an example game: http://www.mochiads.com/games/ryokan

Leaderboards 2.0 Highlights

• The new challenges feature enables gamers to invite their friends to compete. This means more traffic and game plays for your games!
• Publishers can get new traffic back to their site by implementing the publisher bridge
• Slick new interface for Leaderboards

The New Leaderboards Challenges Feature

For developers, adding the MochiAds leaderboards is exactly the same, and you don’t have to lift a finger to take advantage of this improvement. When a gamer views your leaderboard, they will see a new challenges option on the board. This allows them to challenge their friends to private competitions for the highest score. They can specify the time period for a challenge (1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month) and either send links or invite their friends via email. When their friends receive the challenge, they can play the game too and see a challenge-specific leaderboard to compete against their friends.

Developers who have customized their leaderboards game are strongly advised to check that the new leaderboards will show up properly. Read below to find out how.

If a publisher integrates our the Integrated Leaderboards, they can take advantage of this new traffic — the invited friends will go back to the original site they were invited from. Otherwise, they will play the game on mochiads.com.

Publishers, if you’d like this extra traffic, please integrate the Publisher bride. Read below to find out how.

Developers: How to check your existing leaderboards-enabled game

Version 2.0 of the Leaderboards default to a different size than the original leaderboards. If you have custom graphics, or any UI shown around the leaderboard, then some of these elements may be hidden from the players view. Here is the difference between v1 and v2 of the leaderboards.

Original Leaderboard specs:

• Default width: ~405 pixels - The width would change if you specified a smaller board via the showLeaderboad parameters, OR if you removed columns via the advanced settings in the MochiAds Developer tool.
• Default height: ~250 pixels - The height would change if you provided a height via the showLeaderboad parameters
• Smallest width: ~250 pixels - If you turned off all the optional columns via the MochiAds developer tool

New Leaderboard specs:

• Default width: ~450 pixels
• Default height: ~350 pixels
• Smallest height: ~360 pixels
• Smallest width: ~380 pixels

Viewing your game to test:

If your game is distribution enabled, then you can visit the mochiads site to see what the new boards look like.
Example: http://www.mochiads.com/games/GAME_SLUG_HERE

Developer Opt-Out For Leaderboards 2.0

If you think the new leaderboards don’t fit within your game, you can visit your game settings page and opt-out of the new board. Your game will stay with the old leaderboards format.

1. Login
2. Click on the game from your dashboard
3. Click on the ‘leaderboards’ link near the top of the screen
4. At the top of the page will be the ‘Leaderboard Version’ section. You are automatically set to the new version
5. Click on the ‘Edit’ button
6. Select your leaderboard version and hit ‘Save’

Publishers: How to get extra traffic from Leaderboards

When you add the MochiAds publisher bridge to your game pages, it opens up new features on all MochiAds Leaderboard games. With the new v2.0 Leaderboards, your Publisher Bridge will bring all invited players back to your site to play the game. The integration is simple and can be done with a simple copy and paste of HTML code. To grab your Bridge Script visit the settings tab of your account at: http://www.mochiads.com/pub/settings

1. Login to your MochiAds account and visit the publisher section
2. Click on the ’settings’ tab near the top of the page.
3. Scroll down to the section titled ‘Publisher Bridge’
4. Copy and past the script onto your game page template. It should be anywhere above the tag of your HTML.

Frequently Asked Questions

Developers - Can I disable the new version 2.0 leaderboards from showing up in my games?

Why in world would you do that?!?! But hey…just in case, yes you can! You can disable them for all of your existing leaderboard-enabled games through our opt-out process detailed above. New games created after the Leaderboards 2.0 launch will not be able to use the old version.

Developers - Does the new challenge feature support multiple leaderboards?

Absolutely! When players make a challenge, they are challenging others across the whole game no matter how many leaderboards you have. For instance, if you challenge your friends to ‘Super Pantaloons Remix Part Duex’, and you submit scores on both the ‘easy’ and ‘impossible’ leaderboards, you’ll automatically see a challenge board for both!

Publishers - Am I required to host the game to get the extra invite traffic?

No, it doesn’t matter who hosts the game SWF. All you need to do is use the bridge described above and you’ll get the traffic sent back to you.

Related Posts

Introducing MochiAds Leaderboards 1.0
Introducing the Leaderboards Service for Publishers

© Ada Chen for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments

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Load it up and give it a go, folks!  Make sure to congratulate Pencilkids in the forum thread!

Have a great weekend everyone! Get some sun!

© Alexander Shen for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | No comment

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This week we’re bringing you an interview with Pixeljam Games about their stellar game creation Dino Run. If you haven’t played the game before, I recommend that you stop reading this article and go play it here because you’re missing out! (and then don’t forget to come back here to finish reading this article ;D) –Ada

MochiLand: Hi Miles! Let’s start off with an introduction. Tell me about yourself and Pixeljam Games.

I’m Miles Tilmann and I’m the programmer for Pixeljam. Rich Grillotti does all the art and animation, and Mark DeNardo takes care of everything audio-related.

MochiLand: How did you get the idea for your latest creation, Dino Run?

I’m not sure exactly :) I think Rich had the idea about a year ago when we were brainstorming for mini-games. Something simple and exciting. And then somehow the whole thing kind of exploded into the size that it is now. That’s usually the case with us. We thought we would have it done in 3 months, and then 3 months turned into 7….

MochiLand: You had 300 beta testers for Dino Run. Can you share with us how you found these beta testers and collected feedback from them?

First of all, it took months to even collect that many. We beta tested the game twice… once in mid-production and once at the very end. This made a huge difference, as it allowed lots of time to gather testers, and we made a lot of changes to the game mid-stream before bad or untested ideas could take over the game.

We were lucky enough to get linked to from indiegames.com and tigsource.com, who have a very devoted following and always like to help out other developers. We are also fortunate enough to have a decent amount of indie cred from Gamma Bros, so lots of people that went to our site saw the link from there as well.

So to answer the question simply, patience and perseverance.

MochiLand: Sometimes feedback can be contradictory. Some people think a level is great, and others hate it. How do you decide which way to go?

We rarely do exactly as our testers suggest. Most of the feedback is used to tip the scales when we are on the fence about something. Also, the delivery of the feedback is really important. A very negative criticism that is well-thought out and well written will get a lot more weight than blind praise.

It’s very easy to get emotional about passionately delivered feedback. Take it all in and let it simmer in your head for a while before taking any major action.

MochiLand: Tell me about how the beta testers influenced how Dino Run was made and how it changed during your testing period.

I dont think the game would be nearly as successful had it not been for the testers. To get so many different perspectives on a project while you are working on it can be very overwhelming and possibly frustrating, but overall it’s a necessity, unless you are omniscient. As with any endeavor, big or small, if it becomes too insular it’s going to disappoint a lot of people except yourself.

In the middle of the game we needed alot of feedback on basic gameplay mechanics. And at the end we just needed to make sure everything worked. Theres no way we could have done this by ourselves. The game had become way too complex for just a few people to approach it from all angles to make sure it was solid and bug-free.

MochiLand: Would you use beta testers for all your games?

Absolutely.

MochiLand: Any advice and recommendations for other Flash game developers?

As we transition from starry-eyed amateur developers to a self-sustaining company with a few titles under our belt, we’ve definitely learned alot in the process. Some of these points are no-brainers for more experienced developers, but all of them are worth considering again:

• Your game is not just a game, it’s more like a small universe that will eventually self-create it’s own community and politics. Keeping this in mind is very important, even before game development has
  started. Expect for a lot of unexpected things to happen once the game goes live.
• Making up the rules and features of the game as it is developed can be a nightmare, especially if the game is large. If possible, plan everything out beforehand and then program the game to make it easy to change later if (and when) you change your mind about how it’s all going to work.
• One mistake we made with Dino Run was adding a few more features after testing was done and a day before the game went live. I could have sworn that it was a simple change and couldn’t possibly break, but if you are lone programmer working on a large game, assume that every tiny change can break the game, even if it doesnt seem possible while you are adding it. Do a lot of testing mid-development, and then finish the game 100% before doing the final beta testing. When you add more features, ask the testers to play it again. Do this over and over until you are certain everything works. Better to delay the release by a few weeks than to get a bunch of stressful emails from frustrated players after the game goes live.

Thanks for your time, Miles! Please feel free to ask any Miles questions via comments, and if you would like to see anyone else interviewed, please let us know who and what you’d like to ask them!

© Ada Chen for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments

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Enter now for your chance to win one of these hot sponsorship packages:

• 1^st Place: $7,000
• 2^nd Place: $4,000
• 3^rd Place: $2,000
• 4^th Place: $1,500
• 5^th Place: $1,500

The winners will be selected by an excellent panel of judges consisting of Bart Bonte (Bonte Games), Vadim Starygin (Elite-Games), Joseph Lieberman (ArcadeTown.com), Patrick Shaw (GamePro.com) and Ira Willey (OneMoreLevel.com). You can read all about them on the judges page.

Woohoo! So what are the requirements to enter?

First, your game has to incorporate the MochiAds Version Control and Encryption service and run MochiAds.

Second, unlike every other contest we’ve done in the past, you must take action to submit your game to the contest. Mark the ‘Yes! Add my game to the Flash Game Walk of Fame Contest’ opt-in box when you upload your game to MochiAds with Version Control and Encryption.

Step 1 of the ‘Add New Game’ setup

Games meeting these criteria that are submitted and approved in our system between today, November 17 through midnight December 31, 2008 will be entered into the contest.

Read the detailed contest rules.

© Alexander Shen for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments

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Flash Game Friday winner: 99 Bricks

Play it — and then don’t forget to congratulate new MochiAds member WeirdBeard on the related forum thread.

Happy Friday everyone!

© Maya Baratz for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | No comment

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On October 28th, 2007, I started a an experiment where I released a one-day game called Circle Chain to see if I could earn some bucks with a Flash game. Since that day, I published a total of 10 games and I am currently developing some more.

A year later, this is what I made:

• MochiAds: $4,628.18
• Third-party sponsorship: $4,000.00
• API integration: $250.00
• Donations: $124.00
• Google Adsense: $390.77
• Revenue Sharing: $20.80
• Grand total: $9,413.75

In my opinion, MochiAds is the most interesting way to monetize a game, due to the fact that it’s relatively easy to implement and it’s a constant, easy revenue stream. In other words, whereas I need to find a sponsor in order to secure sponsorship money for any game I make, I’m still earning money from my very first game through in-game ads.

Want to try it yourself?

Here’s my step-by-step recommendation:

1) Sign up for MochiAds.

2) Sign up for MochiBot, a free service that helps you monitor the popularity of your games.

3) Sign up for Flash Game License, where you can get your game sponsored.

4) Think up a game design concept. The more original, the better. If you have no ideas, you can visit Three Hundred Mechanics for some inspiration.

5) Make your game.

6) Once you think it’s finished, encrypt it. You can use the MochiAds free version control and encryption service.

7) Add your game to MochiAds, and add MochiBot to your game.

8) Submit your game to a developer forum or take a look at First Impression service by Flash Game License to get some quality reviews of your game. Remember to site-lock your game if you want to prevent it from being spread before you’re ready. If you don’t know how to site-lock a game, read How to sitelock a Flash movie.

9) Submit your game to Flash Game License.

10) Wait at least two weeks.

11) If you found a sponsor, distribute the game according to the partnership you signed. If you did not find a sponsor, return to step 10 or proceed to step 12.

12) Submit your game to as many portals as you can.

12) Return to step 4.

Good luck!

© Emanuele Feronato for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments

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Flash Game Friday winner: Blockular

Be sure to congratulate MochiAds community member Megazorb on the forum thread.

Happy Friday, everyone!

© Maya Baratz for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | No comment

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If you’re in the London area on November 15th, be sure to check out this event organized by your Flash developer peers Ernesto Quezada (Games Garden) and Undersiege (USS Games, aka Carl Trelfa).

Date & Time: 5pm on November 15th, 2008
Location: Penderel’s Oak, 283-288 High Holborn, Holborn, London, WC1V 7HP

Event Description

From MochiAds community member and meetup organizer undersiege:

Whether you’re a game developer or publisher, please join us at tea time to talk about Flash games, portals, and anything else that comes to mind. The meetup location is a pub, so you do need to be at least 18 years old to attend.

We look forward to seeing you there!

© Maya Baratz for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | No comment

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MochiAds Flash Game Friday Winner: GraveShift

Have a great holiday weekend!

© Maya Baratz for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | No comment

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MochiAds Halloween Flash Games: Bad Moon Rising

• Bad Moon Rising by Dragonray
• Halloween Pumpkins by Fupa
• Pumpkin Dude by delpiero
• Hallowed Days Trick or Treat by mygameline
• Grave Digger by blu3bird
• GCC: Halloween Edition by ciaren-c
• Halloween Hatchlings by grimdayz
• Pumpkinman by 8bitrocket
• Pumpkin Evasion by slimslaby
• Pumpkin Sweeper by Ernesto Quezada
• Super Trick or Treat by somenick
• Halloween Shooter by frederik77
• Hallows Revenge by earthwind
• Halloween – Witch vs. Wizard by thenakeddeveloper
• Candy Bag by cartoon64

Visit the related forum thread to check out more games and add your own!

© Maya Baratz for MochiLand, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments

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