4 ms·

Not shown: other 100,000 computer geeks making $0 from their online games.

unalone 17y ago
I'd like to think those geeks are at least having fun. Seeing this article actually made me think I'm going to try my hands at making something like this—not for money, but just because it seems like a fun way to spend college.
elai 17y ago
So why do those 100'000 other geeks make no money? And why does torn make money?
- unalone 17y ago
  95,000 of those geeks made their "game" by stacking a bunch of HTML pages on top of each other. 4,500 more are in "beta", which means they didn't finish making it. 400 more were built by people who didn't understand CSS, and so are ugly and Times New Roman'd. 70 are blatant copies of other existing games. 20 are played by a small group of friends, but didn't spread beyond that. 5 thought they would make money by selling t-shirts or something silly like that. 4 make money, but not a million dollars worth.
  - chasingsparks 17y ago
    Mmm, chi-square.
  - kiba 17y ago
    So you make sucky games and have a poor advertising stragety? Big deal! That is like saying you won't succeed because 99% who went into martial arts never made it to black blet because they never took martial art seriously.
    - unalone 17y ago
      That's the point I was trying to make. If you take only the people who're good at what they do and put a serious effort into what they do, I doubt you'll see as many failures as the 1 in 100,000 would indicate.
- agibbins 17y ago
  To be fair, I recently started a text based game (nothing but html, JS and a few minor icons - no flash) at the beginning of last month and I'm making reasonable money purely from ads - a single ad, in an unobtrusive place. I haven't even introduced the premium features yet - people get very addicted to these games and are happy to pay for UI enhancements. Hell, I've ever had multiple people contribute designs, graphics and JS to the site wanting nothing in return. It's been running less than a month in beta and has had 0 public advertising (this being the very first time) and has 150 active players purely from word-of-mouth. Admittedly its not making any worthwhile money currently despite me putting hours and hours of work into it but its been great fun and a great learning experience so its worth it never the less - so long as it breaks even I'm happy. - http://islandor.com http://islandor.com
  - vaksel 17y ago
    150 players and making reasonable money from ads does not compute, well unless you consider 5-10 bucks reasonable
    - agibbins 17y ago
      Read the rest of my post :) Reasonable = Break even - which is all I ever hoped to receive, I only did it for fun and as a side project. When I implement the premium features I suspect to increase this given the amount of interest and my experience with other similar games. Games like this are based solely around a community, people get friends on these games so don't wish to leave - the game itself is just an addon to the community. Oh, and its more than $20, I think people must just be clicking as they want the game to survive or something - I've no idea. Not to mention I'm getting spammed with evony ads. I also suspect having a very direct advertising target helps, compared to other sites which often have a very broad market and thus struggle to advertise.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    Those text games really are addicting. I played that mob game on iPhone. However they made on big mistake, and it was that after a while you can't do anything because of the time limit they set for actions. So when that happened I stopped and deleted the game. So yea if you can hook them, don't give them any reason to drop the game, always give them something to look forward to to keep them coming back. Good luck.

I'd like to think those geeks are at least having fun. Seeing this article actually made me think I'm going to try my hands at making something like this—not for money, but just because it seems like a fun way to spend college.

elai 17y ago

So why do those 100'000 other geeks make no money? And why does torn make money?

unalone 17y ago
95,000 of those geeks made their "game" by stacking a bunch of HTML pages on top of each other. 4,500 more are in "beta", which means they didn't finish making it. 400 more were built by people who didn't understand CSS, and so are ugly and Times New Roman'd. 70 are blatant copies of other existing games. 20 are played by a small group of friends, but didn't spread beyond that. 5 thought they would make money by selling t-shirts or something silly like that. 4 make money, but not a million dollars worth.
- chasingsparks 17y ago
  Mmm, chi-square.
- kiba 17y ago
  So you make sucky games and have a poor advertising stragety? Big deal! That is like saying you won't succeed because 99% who went into martial arts never made it to black blet because they never took martial art seriously.
  - unalone 17y ago
    That's the point I was trying to make. If you take only the people who're good at what they do and put a serious effort into what they do, I doubt you'll see as many failures as the 1 in 100,000 would indicate.
agibbins 17y ago
To be fair, I recently started a text based game (nothing but html, JS and a few minor icons - no flash) at the beginning of last month and I'm making reasonable money purely from ads - a single ad, in an unobtrusive place. I haven't even introduced the premium features yet - people get very addicted to these games and are happy to pay for UI enhancements. Hell, I've ever had multiple people contribute designs, graphics and JS to the site wanting nothing in return. It's been running less than a month in beta and has had 0 public advertising (this being the very first time) and has 150 active players purely from word-of-mouth. Admittedly its not making any worthwhile money currently despite me putting hours and hours of work into it but its been great fun and a great learning experience so its worth it never the less - so long as it breaks even I'm happy. - http://islandor.com http://islandor.com
- vaksel 17y ago
  150 players and making reasonable money from ads does not compute, well unless you consider 5-10 bucks reasonable
  - agibbins 17y ago
    Read the rest of my post :) Reasonable = Break even - which is all I ever hoped to receive, I only did it for fun and as a side project. When I implement the premium features I suspect to increase this given the amount of interest and my experience with other similar games. Games like this are based solely around a community, people get friends on these games so don't wish to leave - the game itself is just an addon to the community. Oh, and its more than $20, I think people must just be clicking as they want the game to survive or something - I've no idea. Not to mention I'm getting spammed with evony ads. I also suspect having a very direct advertising target helps, compared to other sites which often have a very broad market and thus struggle to advertise.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Those text games really are addicting. I played that mob game on iPhone. However they made on big mistake, and it was that after a while you can't do anything because of the time limit they set for actions. So when that happened I stopped and deleted the game. So yea if you can hook them, don't give them any reason to drop the game, always give them something to look forward to to keep them coming back. Good luck.