Here is a little article I wrote for those looking for some tips to start their own arcade.
At this point, you are probably dreaming about all the money you could make with your gaming portal. It may not be as simple as it looks like. They are certain things that you absolutely need to know before getting to work. Without them, you will never be able to earn even a buck!
1) First of all, to start off any business, you need some money. You will not go pretty far if you are not willing to spend a couple of those precious green bills. You will need money for the followings:
- Rent a server to host your site (I use IWeb, which provides excellent hosting at a very low price : less than 3$ a month for 10 years!)
- Buy a domain name (10$/year)
- Buy an arcade script (starting at 20$) (I use AvArcade Pro)
- Advertise your site (Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Ads, etc.)
Those are almost all mandatory if you want your site to be successful. Other fees may be necessary, such as hiring people to help you with your website design/logo or to code special or unique features for your site. However, if you have an excellent knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL, you certainly have a clear advantage over thousands of people.
Furthermore, if you really wanna be serious with your project, you will have to sponsor games. You can start doing this at www.flashgamelicense.com. This will require some investments, but it will always be the best way to promote your website and bring thousands of users to play on it, thus bringing you money (mainly through Google AdSense) and helping you grow your business.
2) Second of all, you need something that is even more precious than money. You need time to invest in your project. That applies to anyone looking for success in something. Running a popular arcade portal does not require only a few hours of work, after what you let it run by itself and start earning a nice income daily. It requires constant work, and only after incalculable hours of work will you see the money starting to pay off for all that hard work. Working on your website design, content, as well on marketing, advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are things that take time and that will be worth it in the long-term adventure.
3) Invaluable qualities that helps building a great gaming website are creativity, talent, curiosity, sense of business, engagement and motivation! Without those, it is gonna be quite difficult to achieve any kind of success.
This was not indented to provide a full guide on how to build your arcade website, but to inform you about the most important things that you should know before starting your gaming portal project. It is now time either to experiment by yourself or go and find other useful information around the net. Here are a few links to help you get started.
Domain name:
http://www.godaddy.com
http://order.1and1.com
Hosting:
http://www.iweb.com
Arcade scripts:
http://www.avscripts.net
http://www.arcadescript.com
http://www.phparcadescript.com
Other useful arcade informations:
http://www.talkarcades.com
http://www.forum.avscripts.net
http://www.flashgamelicense.com
http//www.arcadewebmasterforum.com
Good luck with your online games website and most of all... enjoy anything you are investing time in!
Top Flash Games
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Making games not too difficult is important
So for game makers, there one point that I’ve written about before but it seems many game developers, and sometimes even myself, miss out on. We like to make our games difficult and challenging because we think that way players will keep on coming back to them in order to beat them.
However, this is not usually the case. If a game is really challenging, a lot of the players will just give up. People like instant gratification more than ever now and if something is too hard, they will more likely give up rather than try again. Take for instance a game I sponsored in the past — Lightwing. It is an excellent plane shooter game and graphically on par with the Raiden X series, but it had one major flaw — people consider it way too hard. I tried to get the developer to implement mouse controls but he wouldn’t do it because he designed it to be that way. The game ended up doing OK but I think it was denied a chance at going super-viral because many people just got frustrated at the difficulty. As one player put it “I simply do not like games that are all about dying”. Now, the game is possible to beat but it is highly challenging. I believe if mouse controls had been implemented or the game made easier, people would have rated the game a lot higher.
Another testament to the popularity of easy games are sites like arcadeprehacks, which basically take all the challenge out of a game and let players win instantly. Now, you might think that no one would want to play such a game, but in reality, those sites are madly popular. Once again, people prefer instant gratification rather than having to work for something. So next time when designing a game, do not make it too challenging or hard or have difficulty levels were people can choose to make the game easy if they want.
Flash Games
However, this is not usually the case. If a game is really challenging, a lot of the players will just give up. People like instant gratification more than ever now and if something is too hard, they will more likely give up rather than try again. Take for instance a game I sponsored in the past — Lightwing. It is an excellent plane shooter game and graphically on par with the Raiden X series, but it had one major flaw — people consider it way too hard. I tried to get the developer to implement mouse controls but he wouldn’t do it because he designed it to be that way. The game ended up doing OK but I think it was denied a chance at going super-viral because many people just got frustrated at the difficulty. As one player put it “I simply do not like games that are all about dying”. Now, the game is possible to beat but it is highly challenging. I believe if mouse controls had been implemented or the game made easier, people would have rated the game a lot higher.
Another testament to the popularity of easy games are sites like arcadeprehacks, which basically take all the challenge out of a game and let players win instantly. Now, you might think that no one would want to play such a game, but in reality, those sites are madly popular. Once again, people prefer instant gratification rather than having to work for something. So next time when designing a game, do not make it too challenging or hard or have difficulty levels were people can choose to make the game easy if they want.
Flash Games
Site-locks — when is it worth it to buy
In the world of sponsorships there are generally two kinds, primary licenses(which you can distribute) and site-locks(which only work on your site). While primary licenses are useful on just about any arcade site, site-locks have very limited use and should only be purchased on certain types of sites.
Basically site-locks are only good for retaining traffic and have almost zero marketing or promotional value – which is what most sites need. Because of that reason, most sites(like 99% of sites) have very little use for them. The only sites that would have reason to buy a site-lock at any price are the big sites. If you run a small or medium sized arcade site(less than 300,000 page-views a day), then you should not buy site-locks, no matter the price because even if they are under $100, it is most likely not worth it. If you go the site-lock route, it only makes sense if all your games are site-locks since a site with some site-locks games and others not still gives traffic away to other sites and would make no sense and be a waste of money. This confines smaller sites in another way. Some really good games(like a lot of the stuff that armorgames.com puts out) are sponsored on an exclusive license or are made in-house so site-locks are not available for these games. Therefore, you will not be able to put these games on your site which could deny you a decent amount of traffic from SEO.
You might think that sites like Armorgames.com or Andkon.com are successful by doing only site-locks and got big that way, but that is also not the truth. Both Armor Games and Andkon were already huge before they started buying site-locks. Neither site has really grown at all because of buying site-lock licenses. Since site-locks have no promotional value, they actually do not bring in any new traffic. They just prevent people from clicking on logos within the game and leaving your site. This contributes only a small amount to the overall bounce rate for a site. Armor games grew because it got into the game early and sponsors on primary or exclusive licenses to attract new traffic. It was already an industry leader before it started buying site-locks. Andkon sprung up suddenly and grew huge because of a massive paid ad campaign a few years ago where almost every single Ad on a gaming site was for Andkon.com. There really isn’t any arcade that grew popular or big because of site-lock buys so it is not good way to initially gain popularity.
If your site is a huge site already, don’t buy site-locks as they are not a good investment. Instead spend the money on directory listings, primary licenses, and even site design. You will get a much better return on investment if you do so.
Flash Games
Basically site-locks are only good for retaining traffic and have almost zero marketing or promotional value – which is what most sites need. Because of that reason, most sites(like 99% of sites) have very little use for them. The only sites that would have reason to buy a site-lock at any price are the big sites. If you run a small or medium sized arcade site(less than 300,000 page-views a day), then you should not buy site-locks, no matter the price because even if they are under $100, it is most likely not worth it. If you go the site-lock route, it only makes sense if all your games are site-locks since a site with some site-locks games and others not still gives traffic away to other sites and would make no sense and be a waste of money. This confines smaller sites in another way. Some really good games(like a lot of the stuff that armorgames.com puts out) are sponsored on an exclusive license or are made in-house so site-locks are not available for these games. Therefore, you will not be able to put these games on your site which could deny you a decent amount of traffic from SEO.
You might think that sites like Armorgames.com or Andkon.com are successful by doing only site-locks and got big that way, but that is also not the truth. Both Armor Games and Andkon were already huge before they started buying site-locks. Neither site has really grown at all because of buying site-lock licenses. Since site-locks have no promotional value, they actually do not bring in any new traffic. They just prevent people from clicking on logos within the game and leaving your site. This contributes only a small amount to the overall bounce rate for a site. Armor games grew because it got into the game early and sponsors on primary or exclusive licenses to attract new traffic. It was already an industry leader before it started buying site-locks. Andkon sprung up suddenly and grew huge because of a massive paid ad campaign a few years ago where almost every single Ad on a gaming site was for Andkon.com. There really isn’t any arcade that grew popular or big because of site-lock buys so it is not good way to initially gain popularity.
If your site is a huge site already, don’t buy site-locks as they are not a good investment. Instead spend the money on directory listings, primary licenses, and even site design. You will get a much better return on investment if you do so.
Flash Games
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)