So, how much does torn city and other browser games make?

[ConceptDestiny]

Sorry, some of them seemed too interesting to ignore. :/ lol

[Jackolantern]

Start a new thread then! The problem with necro posting is that people assume it is all new, and will start to respond directly back to old parts of the conversation.

[SpiritWebb]

Jack is right, you need to start a new thread. This is an old thread...

I will talk to Halls regarding locking old threads so it can only be read...

[Baseball435]

Well yes I agree with conceptdestiny that this is a interesting topic so sorry but I'm going to comment too. I think that to get a game really running and off it's feet you need to get traffic. You need to get people just coming back for more. And a good way to do this Is to make just a normal website. Whether it's a blog or a website Just make one and constantly update it to make people stay on it and come back. Like just about everyone here keeps coming back to this website. And once you get a good number of people on the website start advertising your game and you will get your game off it's feet and active with a lot of people in a week. It's kinda like what halls did, he had a popular forum, advertised on YouTube and other places, and got a bunch of people on his games! Then put in some ways of making money and stuff like that

[hallsofvallhalla]

It's kinda like what halls did, he had a popular forum, advertised on YouTube and other places, and got a bunch of people on his games! Then put in some ways of making money and stuff like that

hmm let me give a history of it

have been building Pen and Paper games and Board Games for over 20 years but...
I started trying to make a 3dMMORPG about 5 years ago. Went through several engines and learned everything I could. Started my mother project Forsaken Sanctum via Mods, Finally found the TMMOKIT and TGE and built Forsaken Sanctum. Had a great team and a good time and got into a early beta. Had about 300 players tops. The actual success of the game before it was released was the real eye opener for me. Had millions of hits to the website, packed out forums, interviews from big name communities, was a great time. Just in the height of the project I asked myself...is this what I really want? Do I really want the success of the project(as small as it was) to shape my game? Answer was no. Do I think FS would have been a successful game right now with thousands of players? Without a doubt.. But I against many peoples wishes and with angering lots of people I dropped the project and moved on. It was never about money or success. It has always been about me bringing a new world to people. For people's imagination to build from a world I created. To bring a living breathing world to gamers much like Oblivion, Halo, EQ, or any other game you can name a place or equipment from.

So I went through several experiments all the while learning and meeting new people. I decided I wanted to try to bring my world to life through a browser game. I committed myself to learning what it took to make my game. When I did release Forsaken Sanctum 1.0 I had tons of people ask me how I did it and if I would write a tutorial. At the time I was going to use someone else's forum but everyone told me to make my own. So I did and I figured if I have not found what I am looking for in this long journey of building a living breathing world for players then I might as well help others who are ready.

And the tutorials and Forums were born So you can say I am lucky as hell to have all of you to have stayed at the forums and to have help make this my favorite community. It is not too crowded but not too dead. These forums are the perfect Porridge. Not too hot, not too cold. It is these forums that keep me committed to all my current projects and game development in general.

Forums must be built upon a great idea not on the whim of wanting to be admin of a place or to make money from advertising. The same goes with a game and a game dev team. never forget that.

[Jackolantern]

It is not too crowded but not too dead. These forums are the perfect Porridge. Not too hot, not too cold.

I agree. That is one of my issues with gamedev.net. It is so crowded, and posts fly so fast that there is no real sense of community. It almost feels like you could talk to someone over a few posts one day, and then never run into them again. I know I have experienced that many times before there.

[hallsofvallhalla]

yep same here and others. I also know of some forums that the advice there is solid and the best I ever receive but it is so dead due to over development of their own games by the members that I barely get posts answered.

[Baseball435]

Yeah i agree. The forum isn't dead but it's not crowded. It's like the perfect amount of people. Like yeah gamedev I hate because it's too over crowded and you don't really get to know anyone. On this forum though you run into the same people on every topic and everyone gets to know you and you get to know everyone. So really no one is left out on this forum. It's perfect.

[Callan S.]

Well, since this seems a full resurrection and it was my thread to begin with...

I'll say that while artistic expression has its place, not all of us have (or atleast not all of us feel we have) a job of sufficient income to fund that artistic expression. The art must make money to some degree, in such a case. Now I'm not advocating a binary situation of either all for cash or all for art. It's a sliding scale as far as I can tell. I choose a 75% about the art, 25% about the money position, myself. As Halls says, this forum and it's videos are primarily about his world building artistic expression and giving others the chance to create their own expression - you really have to respect it as that.

That said, having a forum would be a good step towards a monetised game, if monetising is your goal to any extent. You have to realise that this forum gives a hell of a lot - it's not just people chatting, it's gifting knowledge that would cost hundreds or thousands to learn elsewhere and a great deal of time.

Really monetising and gifting don't really match, so if monetising is your goal really you can't use this model terribly well. Though when starting out you could give spot prizes of in game items for posts on the board, manually handed out by you the creator - that could be a gifting incentive.

Really the direct area to look at is assisting the formation of human connections between players, rather than them just being disparate players who happen to play the same game. I think alot of games, including wow, just leave it up to chance for people to form human connections. But you have other social networks who take what people like in music or movies or books or whatever and kind of match them to other people. This helps form connections. Of course if your really focused on monetising, this focus on forming connections becomes incredibly cynical and even sociopathic. The more your monetised, the closer you get to doing nasty things. It's something to be very careful about and take responsiblity for.

Anyway, some thoughts...

[kaos78414]

Really the direct area to look at is assisting the formation of human connections between players, rather than them just being disparate players who happen to play the same game. I think alot of games, including wow, just leave it up to chance for people to form human connections. But you have other social networks who take what people like in music or movies or books or whatever and kind of match them to other people. This helps form connections. Of course if your really focused on monetising, this focus on forming connections becomes incredibly cynical and even sociopathic. The more your monetised, the closer you get to doing nasty things. It's something to be very careful about and take responsiblity for.

I love what you said about social aspects in games. Too many MMO's today are missing that. In my PBBG, I wanted to make sure there was plenty of opportunity to take advantage of the benefits of using the family features, marriage features, guild features, etc. It is difficult however to get players to be social.

As Callan said, you can really ruin the social aspect of a game by monetizing too much. There was one game, and I can't remember if it was Fiesta or something like it... It had a pretty awesome cash shop, because I never felt like it was selling something that allowed other players to get something that I couldn't obtain myself; mostly aesthetic items. With browser games, you do have the option of displaying ads, which is something to consider.