Now, I don't claim to be an expert on this topic at all, however I have tried all of the methods below with varying success and regularity. As you can tell, I'm still here typing, so I haven't made it "big" with any of these methods. I've been writing games for the love of it for years, I like everything about it. However, for me it's important to have my games played and appreciated - how better to gauge that then to try selling them? What's more, when it's just hobby, the extra cash for beer money is just like icing on time wasters cake!

1) Shareware

The original way for indie types to make money. You give away a free version (or the full version if you're daring) and nag the end user about paying the money for the full/unlimited version making sure to point out the wonderful features they're going to get. In short, it's proven, it works. Letting people really play the game beforehand gives them confidence in the purchase. However, give away too much and they might just decide they've played enough and don't need the full version. I used this method with Tiltilation and it wasn't too bad, making a couple of thousand pounds sterling for 6 months work. It was also my first commercial endeavour and almost killed me. Shareware works well for full scale desktop games but the game needs to be a certain size before you can split it into the free bit and full version and leave both parts providing enough to play.

2) Adware at Home

Adware comes in a few forms. First you can stick adverts on the website around your web based games, most common for this is Google Adsense. Next if you're using the right technology you can embed adverts right into your game. If you're using Flash you have a multitude of options for this, most popular being MochiAds. In other technologies you can always opt for Google In-Game. Both methods essentially rely on the context adverts being smart enough to entice your players to click the adverts. This may of course annoy your players some, so it's best used carefully.

Now the "at Home" bit - one way of using these things is to keep your game (and idealy a bunch of your other games) on your website and try and drive traffic there, much like I do here at Coke And Code by writing blog articles like this (oooh, meta). The upside here is that you've got the exclusive on your games. The downside is you've got to drive that traffic yourself and that's not as easy as you might think. Here at C&C I make enough money from Google Ads to pay for my hosting (read about 25 quid a month) which can't be bad really. I get the odd special deal, but the traffic really isn't enough to making any real money. However, there are other options...

3) Adware at Portals

So you're happy to advertise in your game and/or around it, but you can't get the traffic. Well you might consider submitting the game to a portal and having their huge collection of games drag the traffic in. If you're working in Flash there are a massive number of portals to choose from including my faves Newgrounds and Kongregate. Both offer deals on advertising revenue including extra bonus percentage for integrating with their APIs (highscore, achievements, etc). If you're using other technologies you're going to find yourself limited, although the rather wonderful Game Jolt has just opened up their revenue scheme. For once, they take pretty much any technology and the games selection is starting to look really good!

Putting your game on a portal has a downside of course, it can easily get swamped under the mass of other people doing the exact same thing as you. Your game has to be good enough (and more important, re-playable enough) to actually drag people back to it. That said, my rather limited collection of flash games has been dragging in 15-20 pounds a month for the last few months on portals, so I guess that isn't not too bad. If you had a really popular game on there you could be getting some reasonable cash out of it, but it'd be unlikely to be sustained given the number of new ones every day.

4) Sell or Brand It!

You've written a kick ass implementation but average idea game. Putting it on the portals might get you some money long term but wouldn't it be nice to get a quick lump sum payout. There are a few portals around that will buy games in any technologies but they are few and far between. I've sold a Java applet to a portal (I can't mention here but) only for $250. That's nice for what was a week's work, but it did take an awful lot of finding. However, if you're working in Flash then you have a wonderful option left open to you - Flash Game License. This site lets you upload games for viewing by sponsors and publishers. If your game is quality looking and feeling, but the idea is average (or its a remake) then this is a great option. The downside is that at times you see games getting stolen and published elsewhere, but that's pretty rare these days.

There are a few deals you can do on lump sum game payments. You can sell an exclusive deal - this means the game only goes on one portal but tends to be a decent deal. You can sell a branding deal, where the game goes anywhere you want but carries the branding of a portal. You can just sell the game outright (with or without source), this is a rare occasion but sounds like you can write your own ticket (never happened for me). Each of these deals also may or may not let you keep your own advertising in place. In the best case you might end up with a branded game in which you can keep your own advertising and are actively encouraged to distribute. This is like having option 3 with a bonus :)

The deals vary alot from around $50 up to a few with $10,000+. Obviously game quality and appeal controls how much you're going to get offered. On Flash Game License it's a bidding process where publishers may try to out do each other. Moreover, in some cases you can sell the game to multiple publishers! I've made deals from $500 up to $1500 here, with games not taking more than a few weeks to put together. The problem is keeping going. It's a very dry process designing games to be explicitly appealing in this context - but it's probably a good cash in if you can stick it.

5) Go Mobile!

In the last couple of years the iPhone market place has become hot property. Now, with Android market launched and host of mobile providers itching to release their own versions, there may be money in them there handsets. There are a few great success stories about iPhone applications but not many given the number games released. The process for getting games up on iPhone is labourious but the market is very rich. In contrast the Android market is wonderfully simple to get games up on, but the market is still trying to find it's customers.

Getting your games out there and charging is pretty easy on both accounts. The APIs for developer are also pretty simple. Mobile games seem to work in a similar way to shareware. You push out a free lite version, then charge for the full game. So, why not port your game to a mobile?

I've got a few games out on both iPhone and Android at the moment. Nothing massive, but neat games, with polished looks. Android is selling, well not a lot, I can't imagine I've sold more than 3 in a day of anything so far. This isn't going to make me rich. On iPhone I don't current have "lite" versions and even then they're out selling Android 5 to 1. It's an interesting market. Probably one I need to spend more time on.

6) Trust in the good nature of people

If you really can't bear selling out in any way, but you'd like to make some cash then you consider the infamous "Donate" button. I've tried this on one game (that is no longer available), you're essentially saying "be nice, I wrote the game, drop me some cash". It could work, really it could, but I've yet to see it. The game would have to be something that people felt part of, that they came back and played over and over, that they were committed to - and even then you'd need your players to have enough disposable income to not mind shelling out some cash on something they could have for free. Tricky business!

Conclusion

While it's important to choose the right method for you, it's also to have a great game and put the hours in - which is probably where I keep failing :) There is no get rich quick and there is no easy win. If you work really hard, and choose the right business model and get lucky... you might make enough money for a pub lunch. If you get to be the one in million who makes it's really big, congratulations!, but for most of us it's best to accept that while you can make money on games it's unlikely to become your primary income. Write games for the love it and appreciate the beer money when it's there.

The RPG is ticking along (when I get a spare moment from everything else). I've redesigned it considerbly since last iteration but it's starting to come together now. The combat is much more intricate than it was previously:

It'll be available as an Applet for free and on iPhone/Android as a minimal price in about 30 years :)

Two more games I'm involed with have gone live on Android and iPhone.

Funky Football is a turn based football game that has a really great feel. It's almost the perfect mobile game and has had me playing again and again over the last few weeks. The lite version is free but is limited to 10 games, the full version adds tournament mode and access to team selection.

iPhone and Android

Block Knockers is a brain training puzzler where you smash the hell out of a set of blocks to match a given pattern. It tracks your progress and is surprisingly addictive. Both lite and full versions are available here too!

iPhone and Android

The best thing for me here is see how wonderful the distribution systems on both markets are. Getting your games to the people (free or not) is what it's all about and is this medium I really feel like I can do exactly that.

Exciting times!

It's the time of the season for Java game related libraries. Here's another exciting one, Ninja Networking by another java guru, Nate. It provides a light weight method of stuffing data cross the network and managing shared instances. Released under a BSD license we should be good to go on commercial outings. Go on, be a Ninja!

Wow, it finally turned up. Nifty is a Java OpenGL based GUI system that allows really cool and stylised game GUIs to be created. It's gone through many iterations and now starts to look like something very very cool. Particularly interesting to me is how wonderfully well it integrates with Slick ;)

Anywas, Nifty GUI reached version 1.0 - check out the demo

I was contacted recently asking about advertising on coke and code. I get alot of these mails, generally it's generic spam, this one however came from a site I've seen before 3DRT (3D Real Time). I've been through before, purchasing some of the models for various projects I've worked on. I had a quick look through the free section and got a strange feeling I'd seen the models somewhere else:

Wow, what a blast from the past! In one of the very early versions of NewDawn's space game, Dark Void, we used that very model to make the game look that much more professional. At the time however 3DRT were called "Ghoulish Art". It's so great to see how far along they've come. Anyway, they're and indie outfit, so on with the plug..

3DRT are now producing some seriously high quality models with nice low poly counts for those of us targeting lower end platforms (not to mention some incredibly details ones). In most cases they seem to provide mesh, textures and files to allow creation of variants of the models (something thats extremely useful!). The packs cover everything from RPG characters to large city scape building sets.

One thing has changed, the models cost, but the prices are crazy for whats provided. There's not one pack thats over $200 (100 pounds) at the moment and I'm thinking for the cost of 2 packs I could resource a complete game with professional art. What's more the models look like a project artist could extend the set easily to give your game that unique look. That's seriously good going!

Right, plug done. Do yourself a favor, go over to 3DRT, check out their wares and give your game a really professional look!

Some days my geeketry amazes me. I got an IM from Canada telling me that one of my favorite board games of all times is being rereleased in a special aniversary edition.

Space Hulk is Back!

I've preorded of course and looking forward to getting my mits on it in September. When asked who I'd play it with with a collegue I was amazed. My response? "I won't open it, I'll just look at it" :)

The results of the JGO Game Competition 2009 have been announced:

First Place
     Bend Hero by kevglass with 92% positive 
     votes out of 25 total votes!
Second Place
     Cat On a Wire by Orangy Tang and CherrySlug with 91.7% positive 
     votes out of 24 total votes!
Third Place
     Bunnies in the Clouds by SimonH with 73.7% positive 
     votes out of 19 total votes!
Fourth Place
     Steel Mill Duke by Alan_W with 30.8% positive votes 
     out of 13 total votes!
Fifth Place
     Bending Techniques by me with 30% positive 
     votes out of 10 total votes!
Sixth Place
     Duke Ben Dover - Kick Ass by steveyO with 25% positive 
     votes out of 8 total votes!
Seventh Place
     Rocky - the illegal pool jumper by dertom with 23.1% positive 
     votes out of 13 total votes!

Congratulations on finishing, everyone!

That's right. Ego of the year here. I won! Bend Hero got the most votes. It also got a bunch of useful feedback - thanks to everyone.

Congratulations indeed to everyone competing (including those who didn't manage to complete their games in the weekend). It was a lot of fun (not least the winning bit) and I hope there will be more contests soon!

Infact, there is! Next up is the:

The 1 Week Roaring 20's Monochrome Strategy Competition!

Well there it goes, our first release to both Android and iPhone use the same piece of Java code backing the whole thing.

Fruity Pops is a simple but fun pattern matching game where you find a run of fruits in a grid of bubbles. It's simple but addictive. It's proof of concept for a framework we've been coding away on over at Mobileium - which is just the name we're using to publish under right at the moment.

Android publishing was painless and wonderful, upload, fill in details and click publish. Within 5 minutes it was available on phones everywhere! iPhone not so much - 2 weeks waiting time (which I hear it pretty good actually).

In general the experience has been pretty painless and more releases will be planned for the future. Which is of course means eating into my spare time even more. Sorry to the Slick users who are getting very little updates at the moment - I'll schedule another bug run soon!

A week or so ago I got a HTC Hero, an android phone for those who don't know. Apart from being great for my development hobby it's also a cool smart phone. I didn't realise it was so smart it'd change the way I dealt with the internet tho.

First, e-mail. Having email on the go is great. However, the best integration the Hero has is with Google Mail, which I'd never used (although I have various accounts with it). So, I logged in for my first time ever and slowly realised what I'd been missing. A few clicks later and I have google mail grabbing mail from all my other accounts. A few more clicks and I have everything organised. All my accounts now end up at one glorious central hub with one of the best web interfaces I've ever seen. What's more, when you manage to get mail into my inbox my phone tells me too :)

Next, twitter - it now flows to me and from me at all times. I'm surprised how much I enjoy reading and posting the inane events of everyday life :)

Facebook/Contacts - I lump them into the same thing now see? Why, well because all my contacts, their phone numbers, their emails, even their birthdays are all brought together from various sources on my phone. It's a beautiful thing to behold.

Market - I never tire of seeing what's new on the App Market. Whenever I think something hasn't been done, there it is. Crazy. The possibilities of this phone amaze me.