Flash Game Summit re-cap and my in development Facebook game (Grid[z])
I spent my Monday attending the first annual Flash Game Summit in San Francisco (http://www.flashgamingsummit.com/), the first conference specifically for flash games. I really enjoyed all the sessions, particularly the last one on making Flash Games for social networks. Bret Terrill from Zynga (http://zynga.com/) talked about how some developers are making thousands of dollars a day putting games on social networks like Myspace and Facebook by taking advantage of the social aspects that those networks bring to flash games.
Here are some of the main points I took away from Terrill’s talk
- Developers are making $10k-$30k a day.
- Zynga current takes in revenue from the following: 30% ads, 30% microtransactions, 30% Super rewards (e.g. sign up for Netflix and get 10,000 gold). There was no mention of the missing 10%.
- Zynga is willing to consider buying a Facebook game application if it has 200,000 daily active users or more.
- If you are going to put your flash game up on a social network, don’t just embed it as an application! Incorporate social aspects into it.
- Most games shouldn’t have real-time multiplayer (unless it’s a game like poker), try to incorporate a style of play similar to e-mail chess .
- If you do decide to incorporate real-time multiplayer, make sure the user is able to play with strangers and not just their friends.
- The platform is social, people log in 4-6 times a day to play a game for 5 minutes each time.
- Status is important, let the user be on stage, ranking vs. friends.
- Gender: Competition vs cooperation, a grooming game makes for a cooperation experience.
- Recipient loop (Gifts): You send a gift to a friend, they send you a gift back to you and to their other friends. Good example of this is Little Green Patch (http://apps.facebook.com/greentrees).
This has given me great motivation to work on my current project Grid[z]. I been putting in a lot of work into it for the past couple of weeks, and I think it’s almost up to the point were my partner (http://www.parrisstudios.com/) and I have a leader board and a fully functional game. It’s currently being testing by friends and I plan to have it up ASAP and hopefully get my taste of Facebook success.
Check out the Grid[z] beta on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/gridzzz/.