Ninja Robot Dinosaur

Branding is extremely in the entertainment world.

A solid brand will give your game an established identity. That identity will help your players relate to the game. That relationship will give your game legs and make it easier for players to spread the word about your game. As a result your game will have more players and have a greater chance of becoming a franchise upon which other games can be built.

Many will say that you can’t have a successful piece of entertainment without effective branding.

While everyone can recognize that branding is important in the traditional gaming world, branding in the Flash world is not so black and white. The primary reason for this is that in most cases, the only tools you have to sell your game are a thumbnail image and the game’s name.

To stand out from on the crowded landing/search pages on Flash portals, a Flash game needs solid branding.
Read the rest of this entry →

The the most common question I get after “You’re doing WHAT?” about why I’m making Flash games is ‘Can you make money doing that?’, or even funnier is when a hippie artist type asks me ‘How are you monetizing your content?’

In the traditional games industry, we are so tied to the business model of “Putting a game on a box on a shelf” that the simple idea that money can be made from games in any other way is completely outlandish. The real “radicals” in the traditional industry are doing ‘digital download’ on XBLA and WiiWare.

But the times, they are a changing. And I love free stuff and I believe that the future of entertainment media is that everything we create will ultimately be available for free in some way, shape or form.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

While I was on the free bandwagon long before Chris Anderson released his book Free, Anderson helped me cement my ideas and gave me the courage to move forward with my dream of being an indie developer.

I believe that the future of digital media is free. I make digital media for a living and also like having a roof over my head and food in my belly. WIth all of this considered, I decided it was time for a change of tactics in how I approach the business of video games.

I asked my self (and continue to ask myself): What can a game developer do to make a living if their games are free?

Flash and the web are wonderful and fantastic in this regard and in this article I’m going to dip my toes into a few different ways a free Flash game can make money.
Read the rest of this entry →

Eskil Steenberg’s online multiplayer game Love has gone live. It is a collaborative, procedurally generated MMO that looks like nothing else (gorgeous!)

Here is a video to give you an overview of the game and gameplay:

In two days I leave for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. GDC is hands-down my favorite event of the year. Yes, Comic-Con is fun, PAX is going to be awesome and so are all of the smaller events that happen in the Vancouver area. But GDC has a special place in my heart.

GDC is where the shroud of secrecy is broken.

It’s an event where developers from around the world come together to celebrate their love of making games. Want to know how BioWare tackled cinematics in Mass Effect 2? Go check out Armando’s talk. Interested in the latest AI developments, there’s a WHOLE summit just for Artificial Intelligence.

Every time I go to GDC (I think this will be my 8th time), I’m amazed at how open and candid the other developers are. These are trade secrets, their companies competitive advantage, that they are sharing.

While it’s true that some of the sessions are pretty light and filled with marketing and PR buzzwords, but if you have ever been at a Clint Hocking GDC presentation, you will leave that room with a better understanding of how to design better games, if it doesn’t all go over your head.

And the candor doesn’t end in the presentations. If you want to know more, chances are that a deeper discussion into the topic at hand is only a few beers away.

On top of this assault of information, there is the added bonus of a little thing called ‘Friendship’. While some people will degrade the term by calling it ‘networking’, GDC is a place where I can meet up with past co-workers who have drifted to all corners of the globe, as well as meet new friends.

This year also marks my first trip to the Flash Gaming Summit (which, after being a HUGE success last year, I’m surprised isn’t a part of the official GDC this year) and it will be great to see what the big movers and shakers in my newly adopted Flash world are thinking 2010 has in store.

I’ll be posting pics and stories from GDC on my Twitter @shaneneville .

And if you are going to be at GDC, and you don’t know me, please come up and say hi (I’ll be the guy in the NinjaRobotDinosaur shirt) or hit me on Twitter to meet up.