It’s been a few short days since friendly neighbourhood Bob Ippolito from MochiAds clued me in to the rev share service’s opt-in distribution tactic. This offering sees developers uploading their games to the site, which are then offered to portal owners so that their games are automagically distributed to anyone who wants them. It’s a lot like putting a plate of muffins stuffed with lit cherry bombs in the park, and listening for the sounds of exploding squirrels.

Proviso: that’s not something i’ve ever actually done.

Curiously, you can’t upload the same MochiAds-enabled file to participate. You have to embed a different piece of code into a “clean” version of your game, otherwise you find this message in your inbox:

Dear Ryan Henson Creighton,

The MochiAds Quality Assurance team has reviewed “Two by Two” for distribution and found aspects of the game which do not meet the MochiAds Program Policies.

Reason:

Stuck at “Loading” screen. Loader apparently not compatible with version control (and not necessary, version control guarantees the content is fully loaded when it begins). See https://www.mochiads.com/community/forum/topic/old-news-but___/47191#47191 for the latest tips for using version control

Please visit the link below to review the reasoning from our QA team.

https://www.mochiads.com/dev/game_hosting/two-by-two

Kind regards,

The MochiAds Team
support THE_AT_SYMBOL mochiads.com

Drat. i understand the problem - i just don’t have time to fuss with it at the moment, because we are closing up shop for vacation next week.

HOWEVER …

There IS some breaking news in the Pimp My Game saga that’s just too good to ignore:

WE BROKE THE ONE DOLLAR MARK!!!
Keep reading »

i’m taking Two by Two from the Untold Entertainment library to see how various online monetization methods for Flash games pan out.

Introduction
Part 1: Armor Games
Part 2: Kongregate
Part 3: MochiAds
………./\……….Update: MindJolt

First things first: the MochiAds user agreement keeps me from linking to the site or using the service’s logo, both of which i’m doing in spades here. But since the purpose of this article is to review and critique the service, i claim these usages under Canada’s Fair Dealing provision. And with that, we begin.

Keep reading »

i’m taking Two by Two from the Untold Entertainment library to see how various online monetization methods for Flash games pan out.

Introduction
Part 1: Armor Games
Part 2: Kongregate
Part 3: MochiAds
………./\……….Update: MindJolt

This is a website hailing itself as “the Youtube of video games”. Upload your game to the site to participate in their revenue share split - as the developer, you earn a portion of the advertisting money. Kongregate also has weekly and monthly contests to attract new games on a regular basis. The site offers a bigger portion of the revenue pie to developers who integrate their more “hooky” features like high scores and statistics, as well as making your game exclusive to their site.

Keep reading »

i’m taking Two by Two from the Untold Entertainment library to see how various online monetization methods for Flash games pan out.

Introduction
Part 1: Armor Games
Part 2: Kongregate
Part 3: MochiAds
………./\……….Update: MindJolt

Armor Games is a Flash portal that will sponsor games on a case-by-case basis, with a game’s worth being determined by the site’s moderators. The site owners appear to be very efficient at pimping out games themselves; the Armor Games splash screen seems to pop up in every conceivable corner of the Internatz.
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It’s a great day and time to be an independant game developer. There’s a player and developer backlash against the antiquated notion that you need a team of hundreds, a budget of millions, and a timeline of years to create a video game. As the audience for electronic gaming widens, more and more players are satisfied with smaller, faster, and more focussed games that scratch the entertainment itch just as well as a $400 game console and a $80 special edition new release of the hot new game, Totally Shoot Things in 3D.

But while the teams behind Totally Drive Cars in 3D and Totally Murder Hookers in 3D stand to win back their investment and then some in high sales numbers, what’s the best that an indie or casual game developer can hope for? Day by day, there are more and more opportunities for independant developers to monetize their games. In this series, i’ll be taking one of our own games and running it through the setup process for every monetization plan i can think of, to generate some real data on how effective these various methods actually are.
Keep reading »