You can make games for fun and you can make games for money.
You can also do both at the same time.
As an budding developer, how can you make money off of your games? Or even find an audience to actually generate income from in the first place?
Learning to make money from your work can be confusing at first. You can’t make any money if you don’t have access to an audience. Getting an audience and making money is what I’ll be going over in today’s post.
I know a lot of talented developers who have no idea how to make money off of their work or how get their game in front of players- yet they've been making games for years! This post is intended to be helpful to them and beginners alike. This is a guide that I wish I could have read six years ago when I started making games.
10 out 10 people with money agree: "Money is pretty cool"
I’ve been making games for 6 years now. I made my first few games just for kicks. I wasn't thinking about money and was quite surprised when they generated some money. Four years after making games for fun, I went from amateur hobbyist to developing games for a living.
If you want to move beyond being a ameuteur designer, you'll need to be able to fund your bigger projects. You'll need to hire musicians, artists, sound designers and more, all of which cost money.
As a developer, having an audience is vital
You can sell games traditionally for a set price. That’s what my ex-team did with Coin Crypt, and what I’m going to be doing with Sentry Knight Tactics on Steam.
When starting to make games, I highly recommend making "free" games. I put free in quotes because they are free to the player. There are lots of ways for the developer to make money though! I discuss that more below.
Free games are a very popular way to attract eyes because there is no price barrier for people to play your game. The sites your games get featured on (like Newgrounds!) will already have a well-established player base. From here, you can start building your own audience.
As for selling games, proving you have something worth players money when you have zero credibility is much more challenging. An existing audience makes this much easier. Having the support of an audience who like my games made getting on Steam much easier.
There are a lot of different ways to make money with your free games
There are many ways for you to make money off of a free game. You can post free games on the web and mobile platforms alike. Here are the different types of ways to make money off of free games:
1. Sponsorship - For free game developers, this is a great method. You complete your game and seek out a sponsor. You can email game sponsors directly to see if they’re interested in your game, or use a bidding site like FGL.com. Sponsors tend to pay you based on how well they think your game will attract players. Higher quality games tends to equal higher payment. Sponsors will put their logo on your game in an attempt to attract more players to their site and play their other games, thus making them more money.
- Almost all of my games available online use this method. I find it's the best way to make the most money in the web game world.
2. Microtransactions/Premium Content - In this method, you sell a game for free but offer more content to players should they decide to pay money.
- I haven't done too much of this but plan on doing it more in the future. I sold premium content in the form of extra levels and spells in Sentry Knight 2, and it sold just over 1,000 premium units.
- Some players view microtransactions as "evil". I disagree, as they help fund the developer to make more free content. I've personally become accustomed to buying microtransactions in games. I think MTX are totally fine if handled reasonably.
3. Ad-revenue - Ad companies will pay you money based on the amount of views/plays your content gets. The more plays, the more money you'll make.
- This is great if you have a game that manages to go viral like the one myself and @wolvegames made: Video Game: The Game. It was played by Pewdiepie and Markiplier and recieved an insanely high views because of them. Those views translate to even more Ad Revenue money.
Even if you hate Let's Players, remember: they can be a valuable tool in drawing eyes to your games.
You can (and should) combine all three of these methods to maximize your revenue.
Free games also have chances to spread virally to other websites, further increasing the eyes on your game. There are tons of platforms to release free games on: Flash, HTML5, Unity, mobile, etc.
The rules for success change when selling traditionally
When you move from free games to sell games "traditionally", the rules change. Getting in front of an audience is still vital, but a bit harder. Player's expectations for quality raises dramatically when selling a game.
The world of "traditional" digital sales is a new horizon for me. While I have worked on a few games that have sold on Steam, I am still quite new to this world. However, here are a few suggestions that worked for me and my partners that can help you gett your game out there to a paying audience:
1. Publisher - A publisher will financially support you to develop your game and then help you distribute and market your game. They are in touch with press and have connections to help get your games in the public eye. These people also tend to exhibit your games for you at game conventions. You will have to give them a percentage of your sales, but it's likely they'll help you get more sales than you would have without their help.
I'm currently doing this for Sentry Knight Tactics with Armor Games as publisher. I'll be sure to post about the process more in the future.
2. Bundles - These are digital bundles that include your game and multiple other games. They tend to be heavily discounted. Because of the savings, these bundles tend to sell a lot of units. Less popular games get a lot more sales if paired with more popular games.
Coin Crypt was featured in a bundle with some really popular indie games like Mercanary Kings, Freedom Planet and The Stanley Parable. Being sold alongside those games got it in the hands of people who never heard of it.
My hope is that this is helpful to newcomers or people struggling to find an audience.
I know there are quite a few veterans on this site who have had great success with sales on steam. Going forward, I think it would be cool to pick their brains to share with readers. If any veterans are reading this, please share your experiences!
I will be posting more thoughts like these and development posts of my game, Sentry Knight Tactics, every week in 2016.
ZJ
I gotta say, brother, I give you all the props in the world for living off that type of income. I'd be terrified to think that my way of life financially was based on factors like people like Markiplier and if people clicked ads for CookieCutterGames.com in my work. I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'm so anal that if I had to do that shit, I'd be up all night worrying.
Tyler
Haha it's not that bad or desperate. LPs and ads dont come anywhere close to bringing in money like the other options, thankfully. Otherwise I would be off to trade shows to blow all the lets players!