The story of creating one social flash game

In this article I want to share the story of the creation of our flash games for social. networks. Immediately I will note that we had neither experience, nor any knowledge what, how and where.

So I had to try everything on my own experience. Before that, there was only the experience of creating various websites - from simple to fairly complex (knowledge base on games - see the “links” section), i.e. In fact, the experience was limited to HTML / PHP / MySQL. But we are one of those people who are not afraid of the new.

I will talk about the creation, costs, pitfalls and profit.
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But first things first…

Idea and getting started.

So, it all started with an idea ... For a long time, my friend and I were agitated by the brain with the idea of somehow using the flexibility of the cricketry of the well-known Spore. And then - came across the flash editor shouting Spore 2D . Immediately I wanted to do something similar. Upon reflection, it was decided to try.

Initially, the game was planned as a tamogochi. You feed / play with screaming ... it grows ... you can buy new parts of the body.

No sooner said than done. We decided to start. It is worth noting that my friend partner is a working man, so they decided to work in the evenings, after the end of his main slave. of the day And in order to finally motivate yourself - they rented a small office for themselves, since working at home was not particularly successful, as we found out in our previous joint projects. But due to the presence of this basic work, we didn’t spend a lot of time on our project every day, so it all took place for quite a long time.

We decided to make a serv in PHP + MySQL (http) + client in flash. It is worth noting that we almost did not have flash experience (I last wrote on flash in the days of AS 2.0), so I also had to learn everything again ... The flash editor scream was not as simple as it may seem - with him we were busy for two months and we had to remember the whole school course of trigonometry, and also to master the physics engine Box2D (the creation of a non-intersecting spine was done on it).

Closer to the acquisition by the editor of meaningful outlines, in parallel began to write the server part, and the question arose graphics. Here we had no illusions about our own abilities, so at one of the freelance exchanges we found an artist who agreed to draw all the graphics we needed for 15 thousand. To be honest, we were ready for more, but we really liked his works (even more than expensive offers), and we decided to take this particular artist. Additionally, they promised a bonus of 5,000 rubles, if all goes well (and later, they paid as they were satisfied with the work).

In the process of creating Tamagotchi, it seemed to us that playing this would not be very interesting and we decided to introduce at least some PvP. We stopped at the system of zero-player-fighting game a la MyBrute. It seems that in theory everything looked great - you are fighting, pumping your pet, buying new parts of the body for it, upgrading it. In fact, in her head seemed a kind of "Prowling panda ...", but with a flexible character editor, where everyone was free to show their imagination.

The change of course added us nearly a month of work.

As for monetization, we decided not to invent a bicycle. We decided to make it possible to purchase almost all game objects both for real money and for virtual accumulated money. Well, in addition, some useless decorations only for real.

Social networks.

Once the game has become more or less complete, it's time to think about the inclusion of the social component. We began, of course, with "contact." There are many reasons for this - a large number of examples and documentation, a large community of developers, and ease of start (no legal entity is needed to start). Just made the game and launched.

To start from social. We implemented some chips - the ability to steal a small% of resources + top friends to measure who has a better pet. It would be necessary, of course, more ... but very much we delayed the project and very much wanted to start up as quickly as possible.

So, soon we screwed up the API of the contact and the game seemed to us more or less complete and ready to launch.

Run, first results.

After launch, the application in contact gets to the top of new and begins to recruit visitors. To say exactly how much - now I can not, because we immediately decided to try promotion for money. Of the ways chosen mailing.

We tried two options - first paying for the sent invitations ($ 1.5 for 1000 invitations). Then they figured it out, and realized that it would be more efficient to pay for the result (for large orders, the price was 50 kopecks for 1 application that added itself). Having invested 50 thousand rubles in this business (for 100 thousand installations), we waited. Artist promised to cope in less than 2 weeks.

So, after 2 weeks we became owners of approximately 120,000 installations. How many of them were bots, and how many - real people - is difficult to determine. But it is necessary to recognize - the activity of the invited users quickly subsided:

But there is a definite plus here - this newsletter brought our application to the 1st page of the “most popular” top. From where it is, naturally, safely and flew after the end of the mailing.

Having gathered a certain mass of users, we began to wait. Naturally, constantly “finishing” the application and simultaneously picking up to other social services. networks - "classmates" and "my world."

First profit and registration of legal entity.

However, for the publication and making money in these social networks, it was necessary jur. face. It was decided to open the IP, and if “popret” - then think about the LLC. I’ll say right away - again - we were full of profane here too. And in order to protect themselves from the hassle and paperwork - it was decided to use the services of the company-recorder. In one of them, then just opened a new office and in connection with this provided good discounts.

Also, I was always afraid of reporting - all these tax returns, deductions to the FIU, etc. Therefore, we decided to use the services of outsourcing in the same company, which cost 4,000 rubles a year. For this money, they prepare and pass absolutely all pieces of paper - to the tax account, all notices about opening a bank account, preparing all deductions to all kinds of funds, etc. In short, you don’t need to think about anything, only occasionally pay for the receipts sent to you.

In general, it turned out that it is not so bad and not so expensive. With an absolute ignorance of the whole kitchen - for me everything was done and organized.

Total, on opening of SP and accompanying, it was spent:

Services of the company, notary, state duty, seal: 2500 p.
Outsourcing documents: 3000 p. (incomplete year)
Opening a bank account, filing all notifications: 900 p.
Internet bank connection (it was possible not to connect), verification of documents: 1500 p.

In the meantime, contact users began to slowly make money. At that time, we had about 10,000 active players and about 75 votes per day. Total, in terms of rubles, the monthly ARPU is about 65 kopecks.

Other soc. networks and finishing the game.

Somewhere in 2 weeks we started in "My World". What is good is that after launching, you immediately find yourself in a prominent place in the top. This gave us about 5 thousand installations in the first couple of days. Also, for the original games, they give a free advertising package of 21 million impressions of our banner. Which gave us another 5,000 installations. This, by the way, demonstrated the absolutely unjustified cost of advertising on MM, since such a package of advertising would cost 100,000 rubles.

While we were waiting for the opening of all bank accounts and passing all the formalities for registering in “my world” to include billing, we understood one thing - we had a rather boring game with zero virality. People absolutely did not want to invite friends, and they were also clearly bored.

So we decided to try increasing virality. They added a lottery before the start, the number of chances in which depended on friends, introduced the ability to leave friends on the wall with various pictures and invitations.

In addition, to increase the interest of the game - made a daily championship between players, as well as introduced bosses.

Virality still didn’t increase much, but the championship and bosses obviously made people spend more. True, the effect here is not clear, because people began to fall off on the mailing list, so that the number of active players has become less, and the income - more. ARPU was about 1.5 rubles, which is quite good by the standards of Contact.

Soon we launched the game in Odnoklassniki and connected the billing of my world. The number of installations in the "MM" has not changed, and there were about 600 active users. ARPU turned out to be clearly higher - about 8 rubles.

The launch in “classmates” caused a double impression. First of all - a heap of traffic. We even dropped the server, we had to optimize a lot of things. After getting into the top of new ones, people just knocked down the shaft. And literally in 2 weeks we scored about 100,000 installations.

At the same time, ARPU was quite low. On average, there were no more than 4,000 active players per 100,000 installations, with a (monthly) ARPU of 60 kopecks.

(Here we must remember that with 1 OKa the developer gets 50 kopecks).

Also, we tried to buy ads in contact. What is convenient is that an ad application can be purchased for votes at the rate of 6 rubles per vote (when cashing votes, the rate is about 3 rubles). The price per click was about 60 kopecks. Those. receiving about 100 votes a day and putting them into advertising, we received about 1000 clicks. Installed the application about 50% of the clicked.

Results and conclusions.

Next, we just waited. Gradually finish some things, fix glitches ... rolled out one update (new bosses, new parts of the body). But in general, this did not particularly affect the decrease in the activity of users.

So let's start with errors:

The idea of the game turned out to be too complicated and implicit. It all began with a riot of fantasy (which, by the way, some of our players could not use), but ended with a blunt pumping and the addition of 20 identical spikes or eyes. In addition, we never managed to achieve the kind of candy-look that Spore2D provided. Docking parts with the body there turned out much nicer. Perhaps, it required additional fitting of elements by the hands of the artist. And due to the uniqueness and complexity of the characters, they are very difficult to animate, for this fight in places it looks like a fight of cardboard animals.
We started too early. Later an explanatory video was added at the beginning of the game, a championship, bosses, etc. As well as increased virality.
Because Many things were thought out on the go - they did not fit well into the game interface.
Dispatching order remains controversial. I do not know how many real people came through her and began to play.
The game icon also does not look the best. She's cute, yep. But there is no interest or desire to click on it and start the game. But it is the icon that is the “face” of the application in all the tops.
Virality failed. From the part - maybe because we began to fasten it to an already finished product, trying to “wedge” it into all possible places. Partly - because of the low utility in a specific project.

But there are also positive sides:

We gained invaluable experience and understood what was happening in the kitchen of social games.
We have written a universal library for working with different soc. networks and issued all the necessary documents for further quick start in the three social networks.
We understood our mistakes and made conclusions.

As a result, now the game brings about 15,000 rubles per month. Practically does not grow and does not fall ...

Future plans.

At the moment we want all this experience not to be wasted. According to this, we have conceived a new, completely different game project. Let me just say that this time we will not reinvent our own bicycle, and in part we will borrow a very famous and proven over the years setup. And the game is planned for a completely different level - with a server on sockets (in Java) and with originally thought-out gameplay and subtleties. And the gameplay of the new project itself seems to us much more familiar and understandable for the player. Together with sufficient uniqueness (yet) for social. networks. What will come of this - time will tell.

There is only a question with the artist. Still have not decided. Whether again resort to the services of a freelancer, or try to find a living person in our city (St. Petersburg). In addition, again - they did not decide how to pay for it. Perhaps the best solution would be an artist in the office, working for a fixed% profit. Not even by the fact that it is cheaper at the beginning (and after all after the “shot” of the project, this can be very expensive), but by the fact that such a person will be much more interested in the final product and will try to the maximum. We will think on this topic after NG. But if there are interested people (artists-trides) from St. Petersburg with free time and the desire to risk their time - welcome to the PM!