On Kongregate And The Future Of Indie Gaming
Over at his always solid Hollywood Reporter column, Paul Hyman has been discussing indie game site Kongregate.com, with comments on the neat Flash game portal from the site's founder Jim Greer, Manifesto's Greg Costikyan, and myself.
While I love the site, I'm cited expressing a little skepticism on long-time monetization for the site: "I don't know how much Kongregate.com is making from ads... but, for the developers who supply the content, I'm pretty certain that revenue is pretty incremental compared to what one might make selling individual games at $20 a pop. From an independent game advocate's point of view, I do wonder whether giving away games for free will ever make people enough money to live on."
However, don't get me wrong, for game makers who just want to have fun, get noticed in the biz, and make personal art - and those who want to make free Flash games that might turn people on to other paid games - Kongregate (alongside Newgrounds) have a great, swift, easy YouTube-ish angle that encourages a massive variety of games.
In addition Kongregate is looking at alternate monetization ideas, including micro-transactions, according to Greer ("We're considering working with our best developers to create exclusive games for us... which may include a few free maps and then we'd charge $2 or $3 to unlock an additional 10 maps.") This is a really interesting angle to make things even more viable, I think.
Comments
One thing a lot of people overlook is that Kongregate gives developers the freedom to interact with their players in any way they want to.
This means that unlike a lot of other game sites, games on Kongregate can re-direct players to the game maker's website; ask for email addresses; promote other games; and make other special offers.
Game developers who really want to get the full benefit of what Kongregate has to offer have to take advantage of this freedom.
Personally I find that a lot more interesting to a developer than a Big Fish style site where you need to sign a contract and have all sorts of restrictions on what you can and can't do in your game.
I've written more about them here:
http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2007/01/25/kongregate-a-potential-disruptive-indie-game-publisher
Posted by: hanford | July 7, 2007 1:15 PM
I agree, it is a little tough looking at places as cool as Kongregate and realizing that you won't be able to get paid enough to work full-time. Especially when you have a team of 4 devs like we do.
Hopefully, the $2-3 route will become another established revenue model so developers like us can create a nice game portfolio and still be able to pay the bills while doing so.
Our journey while searching for such an opportunity can be followed here:
http://intuitiongames.blogspot.com
Posted by: torncanvas | July 7, 2007 8:00 PM
I find it pretty annoying to hear Kongregate described as "YouTube-ish". It seems to be something they want to label themselves as, but as they're paying developers the model is really very different. Especially annoying as there are sites out there genuinely trying to create a YouTube for games, with exclusively user driven content, like YoYoGames.com.
Posted by: Nikaru | November 15, 2007 8:04 AM