by  Dan Hoelck

 

I’ve been interested in selling premium editions of flash games since I first played Fizzy’s Swords and Sandals- Gladiator.  When I began development of my latest game, Drunken Masters, I knew from the start that I wanted to sell a “Deluxe” version of the game that offered a bit of additional content for fans.  I sent out quite a few e-mails and spent a good bit of time searching online forums and articles, but couldn’t get any clear, helpful information about the potential of this model.
Hopefully this article will give you some insight into selling premium editions of your flash games.  It’s important to note that I went into this blindly and the approach that I took was far from ideal.  I’ve learned from these mistakes, and at the end of article, I’ll provide alternative methods and recommendations based on my experiences.

Part 1: Case Study

The Plan

Initially, the only extra feature in the Deluxe Edition was a cheat system.  I included cheat menus in the UI of the standard game, and when players clicked on these menu items, they’d be encouraged to visit my website and buy the Deluxe Edition to access the cheats.  It wasn’t much, but I didn’t plan on charging much for it, either.  Originally, the price was set at $1.00.

 

Near the last month of development, I was facing some serious deadlines, and had to cut a few unfinished features from the standard game.  It was easy making the cuts, because I figured that I could always finish them and stick them in the Deluxe Version later on.  To give myself some time for this, and some time to set up an automated payment system on my website, I scheduled the Deluxe Edition release twenty five days after the free version was released.  Any purchases made in the meantime would count as “Pre-Orders”.

Transactions

When Drunken Masters was released, I had a very simple system set up to handle orders.  Customers clicked the “Pre-Order Now” button on my website, their $1.00 was transferred to me via PayPal, and I put the payment notification e-mail in a separate folder so that I could e-mail the game to the customer when it was ready.

 

The first major problem I ran into was PayPal’s transaction fee.  I hadn’t even thought about it, but in addition to the small percentage that PayPal takes from each transfer, there is a flat fee of $0.30 per transaction.  At the $1.00 price, I was losing about 32% of each sale to transaction fees.  By the third day, I raised the price to $1.50 to offset the charges, but PayPal’s still taking $0.35 to $0.36 from each sale.

Pre-Orders

When the free version of Drunken Masters was released, the Deluxe Edition wasn’t finished.  I posted the release date on my website, and encouraged visitors to pre-order their copy of the game.

 

The number of sales per 100,000 plays was noticeably higher after the game was available for immediate download.  From March 5th to March 29th, there were an average of about 6.5 sales per 100,000 plays.  From March 30th on, the average has been approximately 10 sales per 100,000 plays.

Delivery

After the Deluxe Edition was released, I finally built an automated subscription system so that customers could login to my site and download the game as soon as their PayPal transaction was complete.  For the 300 or so pre-orders, I manually added user accounts and e-mailed the login information to the people who had pre-ordered.  That was about four hours of ridiculously tedious data-entry.

 

I’m a complete novice when it comes to setting up anything web-related, so putting the automated delivery together was a challenge.  Now that it’s in place, however, there’s no maintenance required, and it’s very effective.

Was it worth it?

 

 
I’d estimate that I spent around thirty hours putting together the extra features for the Deluxe Edition.  In addition to the cheats, the Deluxe Edition also included a sandbox feature, in which users could play with the global settings of the game, three storylines for each playable character, a custom drink creation feature, and three additional bonus rounds.

 

Building the website with Joomla took around five hours, and implementing the various Joomla extensions that made up the automated subscription system took another five hours.

 

Not counting the time spent dealing with the delivery of pre-orders, the Deluxe Edition and website took me around forty hours.  To date, I’ve sold nearly four hundred copies of the Deluxe Edition and taken in around $470.  It’s better than minimum wage, but not nearly as much as the revenue from the sponsorship or from the advertising.


Part 2: There’s Always Next Time

The Pitch

If you’ve played the free version of Drunken Masters, you know that it’s huge.  Ridiculously huge, and filled with so many different modes of play and levels that you’d probably be sick of it by the time you actually ran out of things to do.  The free version isn’t limited by any means, and the premium version only offers a few superficial bells and whistles to play around with.

 

The game that inspired me to sell a premium version, Swords and Sandals 2-Crusader, is almost the exact opposite.  The free version of the game is limited to just a few levels. Just as you’re getting into the game, it stops.  Almost every player is left immediately wanting more, and the premium edition of the game is marketed to fulfill that desire.

Without any sales data for Swords and Sandals 2, I can’t really say which technique is more effective.  I’d guess that their sales per play ratio is much higher, but releasing a demo of a game- particularly a flash game- has negative implications as well.  First of all, it would be much more difficult to find a sponsor (not a likely concern for the SS2 team, but it is for most of us).  Then there’s the obvious backlash from the players.  SS2 is a brilliant and professionally developed game, but its average review score at Newgrounds is only 7.2, and its rating is just 3.93.  That’s not horrible, but for a game as fun as SS2, it’s clear that most of the negative feedback has come from players that felt cheated by the demo’s limitations.

Recommendation:

Most of us are developing these games independently, and releasing a demo version is risky.  Expect a lower sales-to-play ratio by releasing a full free version, but expect a higher number of overall plays and a much easier time with sponsorships.  With this approach, it’s important to reassure players that the free version isn’t crippled or inferior, and to convince them that the premium version will provide even more entertainment.


Timing

Releasing Drunken Masters before the Deluxe Edition was ready was not the best move.  If the Deluxe Edition had been available for immediate download, rather than pre-order, I probably would have sold at least one hundred more copies than I did.  I was a bit concerned about the game’s sponsorship potential because of the Deluxe Edition, and I waited until I’d secured a sponsorship before actually investing serious time in the extra features.  In the end, only one potential sponsor gave me a hard time about selling a premium version on my site, and his offer wasn’t that great in the first place.

Recommendation:

 

Before you release the free version, finish the premium version and set up your sales site and your payment system.

Transactions

To date, PayPal’s made about $140 from sales of the Deluxe Edition.  They continue to take 24% of the profit from each sale.  That’s exorbitant, but I haven’t found many options that are much better for independent developers.  PayPal and Google Checkout both offer sales systems that charge a smaller flat fee per transaction, but these options can cost hundreds of dollars for initial setup, and charge monthly fees.

There is another potential method of selling premium content that I’m definitely interested in, and I’ll be following this report up with a proposal that goes into more detail on that.

Recommendation:
Getting cash in your PayPal account on a daily basis is nice, but it’s just too expensive.  There are some alternatives, but none are very practical for an independent developer.  Hopefully there will be better systems in place in the near future.

Delivery

I set up a sales website based on the free Joomla Content Management System.  It doesn’t require much technical knowledge, and if you’ve already got a server somewhere, you’ll be up and running in a day.

 

Setting up automatic delivery to customers was a little trickier, but if you can make a flash game, you can set up a system like mine.  I used two free Joomla extensions for the job. The AEC Subscription Manager receives notification from PayPal whenever a customer makes a payment, then automatically creates an account for the customer and e-mails the customer with his or her login information. The DOCMan file management extension allows customers to download the Deluxe Edition, while preventing unauthorized downloads.

Recommendations:

If you’re experienced with internet applications, then you’ve probably got this one figured out on your own.  If not, the system I used has worked out nicely, and I recommend a similar set up, at least until something better comes along.  Keep security in mind as well- I included “sitelock” code in the Deluxe Edition that would disable the game if it ran from any address beginning with “http”, and created a MochiBot specifically for that version.  It’s only been uploaded to one game portal so far, and it was removed by portal administrators the same day.

Part 3: There’s a Better Way

The Deluxe Edition of Drunken Masters won’t pay the bills, but it’ll definitely buy a few six-packs.  The profit from a premium game is a nice addition, and makes the extra development time a worthwhile investment.  The transaction costs, however, are a huge expense, and setting up a billing and delivery system is inconvenient.

 

There’s a better way to do this, and there are several companies already employing that method– it’s just being used for other platforms and other content.
    
The ideal system would involve one website that sold premium versions of several different games.  In the game, players would be encouraged to buy the premium version to unlock additional content and features, and would be directed to the sales website.
At the sales website, the customer would be able to access the premium version of the game by spending credits.  As an example, the Deluxe Edition of Drunken Masters on this site would cost one credit.  The customer could purchase credits from the sales website in bulk amounts.  For example, a single credit would cost two dollars, a pack of five credits would cost five dollars, ten credits would cost nine dollars, and so on.  After purchasing credits, the customer could then spend them on the premium version of the game.

 

The first benefit of this system would be the reduction of transaction costs.  A larger website selling multiple games could afford to invest in a more cost-effective payment processing system.  Any remaining transaction costs would be spread over multiple credits (when bought in bulk “packs”), rather than being deducted from each game purchase.

 

The second benefit is in additional sales.  Customers interested in getting a better deal would inevitably purchase larger credit packs.  After buying the premium version of the game that they originally came to buy, they’d have credits left over to purchase additional games.  This means more sales for the developers of later purchases. It also creates another stream of revenue for the developer of the initial purchase, who could be paid a commission on the “referrals” that his or her game generates.

 

Finally, this sort of marketplace eliminates the need for developers to set up their own sales sites.

This isn’t a new concept.  It’s been used for downloadable PC games, for MMO’s, and for the latest generation of game consoles.  It’s time that we had something similar available for Flash game developers.  If you’ve got the technical resources and the capital to build a system like this, you can sign me up.