Flash Indie Game Interweb Mash-up: March 9, 2010: Flash Gaming Summit Edition

The 2010 Flash Gaming Summit was a great day all around (with a few strange exceptions). Today’s mash-up will be based on things we saw and people we met during this long day

Who we met:

Untold Entertainment
During a couple of the presentations there was one dude who kept asking some pretty “hard-hitting” questions. For example, he asked Joel from Addicting Games why his content has adult themes but is targeted at children. Ada Chen also seem to not want to say anything on record to him. He turned out to be Ryan Henson Creighton of Untold Entertainment. Ryan (like everyone else) turned out to by quite a nice dude. He had an iPhone demo app he tried to show us, but somehow we got distracted in any case it was good to meet him. Ryan, let’s talk further about that one. I have two new Objective C books that I am going through right now…

The Push Button Engine
Ben Garney (pretty tall dude) was there doing a talk on his amazing Push Button Engine (Flash game development framework/engine). We didn’t get to see his panel discussion as we were stuck taking notes on some other presentations (I’ll get to those in a minute). We did get to talk to Ben for a few minutes as we waited for the ill-fated ride to the over-crowded after party. I think I will have to take some time and build something with his engine soon and test it out. I feel very late in the game on this one. I need more time. Ben, I am looking to free up some time by shedding a 13 year old albatross. Once I do, I’ll come looking to test this out further.

Note: I am not complaining about the generous after-party. It was just full. Thanks for the free drinks, we still had a blast!

Digital Visions
Jose Garay has been visiting our site and emailing with me back and forth for a a while now. We were finally able to meet up with him and see what he has going on. He has a whole bunch of classes going on as he teaches game development to impressionable youngsters. I certainly hope our book can make it into his curriculum some time soon. Jose has his own development house going on (like everyone we met). He is in Las Vegas and I see Steve and I working with him on some projects in the future.

Pixel Welders
While were were eating the boxed lunch (actually very good as these things go) we met Zack Jordan from Pixel Welders. I have linked to a lot of his cool stuff from here before. We had a short discussion on Blitting to sprites, etc. We were also able to ask his brother (Ben) about working for Electrotank (who were no where to be found except for Ben of course).These guys reminded Steve and I of ourselves 15 years ago.

Flash Game License
More on these wonderful dudes a little later, but I want to point out that we were finally able to meet Adam face to face. He let me know that I gave one of his games a terrible review because I thought the IP was stolen (when it was not). I apologize and let him know that my reviews don’t mean much anyway (and he agreed!). Its all in good fun. Chris Hughes was on the best panel of the day, called Next Gen Monetization of Flash Games (more on this later). Steve and I searched far and wide to talk to him, but never did find him before succumbing to hunger and searching for a place to eat on Mission.

The Casual Collective
I am a HUGE fan of these guys and I swear, I was honored to just have these two even recognize my name and our site. David and Paul have moved to the Bay Area from England and we discussed my failed attempt to get the Sleep-based Active Timer to work with FP 10 properly. I certainly wish I had something successful of my own to talk to them about. (pwned fail)

The Mochi Staff
We talked a little to Jameson Hsu for a bit and Ada for an even shorter time (she seemed afraid to say anything with bloggers like us and Ryan around!). Everyone was very cool but they all looked tired. We have to remember that this is still a job for them and it was A LOT of work to keep 500 babies (mostly smelly dudes, but not as smelly as at e3) entertained, fed, and a little drunk for 12 hours.

What we saw:
I am going to be honest will all of my impressions from the various speaking panels. Steve and I stayed in the main hall most of the day to hear the monetization discussions. We did this because I plan to go full time into indie and contract game development within a month and needed to see what my options might be. Here are my impressions based on that sphere of influence:

Mochi
The big deal from Mochi was the Mochi Developer Fund. It is a $10,000,000 fund to help developers make the “NEXT GREAT FLASH GAMES” using their new Mochi Social API. All of this is very exciting, but there was not a lot of information.This is the first sign that Shanda Games has the resources necessary to make Mochi a huge force in browser based gaming (I guess gold farming pays off…ha ha heh. um, sorry. just kidding.). Mochi’s Justin Wong will be in charge of the fund. I certainly hope his email address doesn’t get out to the Mochi Community board…by the way, what’s his email address again?  Hey, Justin we have this GREAT idea to use all of Mochi’s services in a a retro-evolved RPG shooter that include Mochi Coins and Mochi Social.  Call us!

Panel: 4 Keys to a Successful Social Game that all Game Developers should know
The panel included Mark Skaggs from Zynga, Gavin Barret from Crowdstar, Dave Stewart from Playdom, and Don Fiden from Playfish. Hmm, what can I can say here? The moderator (Sana Choudary from Traffichoney) tried to elicit some good responses from this panel, but honestly NOTHING was said. While these are 4 companies that I respect very much and I was excited to hear what they had to say, there was not a lot of useful information flowing. The 4 keys were basically each of them  throwing 4 words out to the crowd: Fun, Good, Sticky, etc. I don’t think the crowd needed to know that a game must be fun and have nice visuals. Can we just retire those words when we give advice to game developers targeting the casual crowd? These 4 spent more time dodging questions than answering them. When asked how others could enter the Facebook market they all look terrified that someone might figure out they they didn’t know either. They said things like “the ladder had been kicked”. Which means to me that they don’t want anymore entrants and want YOU to know that YOU are too SMALL, and not COOL enough to threaten their superiority. There was one funny interaction when there was a Zynga / Playfish small hint that someone stole something from the other (Gangster City v. Mafia Wars Vs Mob Wars anyone?). Hmm, that ladder sure gets around. This Panel seemed like it was designed for the GDC where these guys can pump up their peacock feathers and impress people. No one was impressed here.

I wonder how the Causal Collective feels about this. David and Paul let us know that that do very well targeting Facebook (with really great, innovative games) too.

Panel: Money In Flash: Next Gen Monetization Of Flash Games
This was the best panel of the day for me. The panel included: Chris Hughes of Flash Game License, Jim Greer of Kongregate, Justin Wong from Mochi, and Vikas Gupta from Social Gold. All 4 of the panelists represent companies that are working WITH developers to monetize content. I guess this was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy on my part, but I expected this to be the best panel and I was not disappointed. All 4 panelists have services that let true indie developers make their own money with either ads, micro-transactions, game save features, and more. The panel agreed that micro-transactions are difficult at the beginning for many “free game players”, but there is a point where they will buy (some will at least). The target % of players to purchase is about 1% to make a good little profit. Chris said that there is a magical point in a game where a micro-transaction can work. Usually if the player loves your game, but can’t get by a certain spot, he/she is more likely to buy an item or ability that will help the situation. Mostly they have found that selling things in the menu screen, extra level packs, etc are not as affective as engaging the user and finding the right place to sell them an item. The user doesn’t have to be forced into the purchase as the game can be completed without the item, but it makes the game easier to complete.

Panel: Adobe Tools And Services For Flash Games
Renaun Erickson, who I respect very much, and Danielle Deibler gave a moderately interesting discussion on Adobe. The choice of overhead projecting an iPhone (with a distracting blue light in the way of the actual content) was a little awkward. They showed a multiplayer Tic-Tac-Toe game being played on a PC v and iPhone (I think, or it might have been two iPhones, it was difficult to tell). They also discussed Air apps and the Air Marketplace. It seems that most hand-helds will be swf compatible as Adobe is doing a good job of signing them up in the wake of Apple’s bone-headed desire to ignore Flash.

Panel: Monetizing You Game Outside of Sponsorship
This was an inspiring discussion with 4 genius developers: Colin Northway (Fantastic Contraption), Daniel James (Three Rings), Sian Yue Tan (Rocket Birds), and William Stallwood (Cipher Prime). All four create games and either sell online login licenses or outright downloadable and installable games. During this discussion the subject of the term “Flash Gaming” was brought up. I think it is unfortunate that Flash Gaming is synonymous with “Free Gaming”. I don’t think the game players care about the technology, they just want free browser games. These 4 (and Tim Flowers’ Now Boarding) are great examples of developers that broke out of that “free browser gaming” box with the technology called Flash (the same technology the fuels free browser games …imagine that!). This was a very interesting distinction and one that we will need to expand if we are going to make any really good money in game development. All four of these panelists were great, but I feel a great kinship with Colin (even though we have never met, we reminds me of many of my friends). Also, Daniel James needs his own UK TV Comedy show. That guys is fucking funny!

Panel: Everything About Sponsorship and Licensing
Participants: Greg McClanahan (Kongregate), Joel Breton (Addicting Games), Lars Jornow (King.com), Robin Young (Candy Stand). This was a good discussion but it pretty much ignored the subject of licenses in favor of sponsorship. I know Joel to be a pretty good dude already, and while Greg seemed to be a little overwhelmed with his “one-man” show duties at Kongregate he seemed like he genuinely wanted to help developers make some money. Lars has always been very fair and he seemed to be the most open to using FlashGameLicense. I don’t know if Robin Yang is representative of all of CandyStand, but while she seemed nice enough I think her general stance was “If we trust you already, come talk to me, if not, good luck”. I didn’t learn much here except that Joel reminds me of Dave Eggers.

Turbulence Ahead: The ups and Downs of Getting a Premium Flash Game to Success
Tim Fowers gave a very good discussion to close out the day on his Air app distributed game, Now Boarding.
Like the panel on monetizing with out sponsorship, Tim had a lot of
good information on selling his game as a download (in almost a
Shareware/Demo capacity) and using the Full (but shortened) Flash
version as a way to draw players in on portals. It was a great way to
end the days discussions.

There is certain to be more when I find my notes. I seem to have left them some place. In any case, thanks to the Mochi and FlashGameLicense folks, along with all of the sponsors (Zynga, Adobe, Palm, Kongregate, RockYou, MindJolt, Armor Games, King.com, Candystand, Greystripe, Hero Interactive, Influxis, Kindisoft, Playspan, Social Gold, Spil Games, Yummy Interactive, and Zong.

We had a great time.