[casual_games] Game portal script

[Colin Cardwell]

Hey, 

Thanks for not picking on me.

I actually think this is a really interesting topic for discussion, we struggled quite a lot with trying to get the revenue share right for developers on Fizzy. When you look into it though, it's not just about revenue share....

If you look at free Flash games (the vast majority of what gets uploaded on Fizzy) it's pretty complex because game developers put their own ads in and most web games sites don't give any revenue share. A lot of this is about positioning too, Apple, for example will distribute a free app 'free of charge'. On Fizzy we distribute a free app and pay you, so a better deal than apple. The bottom line though is that the App store and a web portal are very different beasts.

When it comes to download Flash games (which we sell on Fizzy), I think it is different again. We give 50% of all revenue generated by the game, including the ad revenue. Furthermore we provide all the DRM, the marketing, the customer services, the distribution of demo games, online reporting, yada yada yada. I'm not so much trying to defend our rev share (even though I think it is pretty good), I'm saying that it is not about revenue share, it's about what you get. I have to say, that for developers, the Apple offering is very good right now and will remain pretty good even if the revenue share does change.

My question to the group though is what is it that developers do want? In creating the developer portal on Fizzy, we're trying to position it in such a way that your average FREE Flash game developer can in a relatively risk free way, up the anti a bit and start developing bigger, richer games that can be then sold on Fizzy (and anywhere else they can get distribution, it's not exclusive). Anyone can sign up and have a go, where as getting distribution of your games on some other portals is much tougher. What we've found is that a polished download game takes about 3-6 times the time/cost to develop, but generates about 10-15 times the revenue (a lot more than that for the Swords and Sandals series).  Is there a space for such a developer portal? Should we be doing something different? 



Cheers
Colin

Colin Cardwell
CEO
m +61 (0) 401 888 322
p +61 2 8923 1200
f +61 2 8904 9966
3RD sense Australia Pty Ltd
Unit 8.04
6a Glenn St
Milsons Point, NSW 2061
www.3rdsense.com

Have you been to Fizzy today?

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Adam Martin
Sent: Thursday, 11 December 2008 10:03 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Game portal script

Out of interest, do you think apple's app store pricing -developer gets 70%- is going to exert any pressure on casual games sites to change their rates?

(im not picking on Colin, but isn't the apple rate substantially above what most casual portals do today?)

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