I want some honest answers to this question...

[Adam Schmelzle]

OK, so I was checking out the top games in the "Action" category of gamejump.com. I do this every once in a while to see what people are playing. I came across "expansion", which is a fairly poor Qix knockoff. Being a knock-off doesn't bother me, there are a million poor remakes on gamejump. What bothers me is that the game exits if you die. This means that anybody who wants to play a few "games" will need to run the game for each try. Not only that but since it forces you to exit, you see the 'exit' ads.

Does this bother anybody? If I did this type of thing in a game, would everybody hate me? It could very well quadruple my income for any one game. Maybe I'll experiment with one, and see how it goes. If nobody comes on to yell at me here, I may well do it.

As much as I'd like to say that the money doesn't matter, 4x the money on any of my games would make things a lot easier for me and my familly.

[kyle2]

I personally would not like to have something like that in the game and would probably stop playing it quickly... One thing I wouldn't mind would be if you could have ads when High Scores loaded or maybe once every few deaths but loading the entire game over again would not be fun to do every time.

[Adam Schmelzle]

I would like to be able to have the odd extra add while playing, but for now the guys at gamejump.com don't want that in any of the games. I think this is the only way to get more ads in.

My problem is that my games AC1/2/ABP get played for a long periods of time, but people only see the ads at the start. Other games out there that people only play for a minute. but re-load it several times can make 10x as much money for the same amount of play-time.

I think I've done a reasonable job of making games people want to play, but need something that people want to re-play often, not just play for long periods.

Attack Breaker Challenge is waiting for release at gamejump.com. I really only worked on it for a day, 'cause it's only an experiment to see how well a poor game that forces you to reload will do. I hope people don't like it.

[mc3]

you have to pass through two ads to play AC2, and two ads to exit, but its all yours in the middle. it would be nice to see Yahoo One Search or Go vary the ads but a search engine is often convenient and its nice to know its there. Mabey some U.S. MILITARY CHOPPER SCENES WOULD BE INSPIRATIONAL, what do they attack with currently?

[Adam Schmelzle]

Honestly I don't know anything about real helicopters

I don't have any control over the ads at all. Also, greystripe(my ad company) doesn't have any way to target specific games at the moment, so we arn't likely to see military recruiting ads in AC1 or AC2 any time soon.

Every time I bring up things like this with my advertiser, they assure me that more features are on the way, but they are still a small yet fast growing company. We just need sompatience I think.

[MrDee]

Part of the ad problem (from your perspective) is that AC2 is sooo huge you leave it in memory - therefore no ads to see

how about a coin op concept.
every ad I see 'buys' me 10 minutes
I can up my balance (to a max of say 30 minutes) from the map screen every now and then so I don't get nagged 1/2 way through a vital bit

IF AC3 could chop the current map size down to say 5 maps 20% of the AC2 size then ads could be level based.

BTW this is my feeling for map size in AC3 anyway. AC1 too small - AC2 too big, you have to wait hours before you are back at a favourite bit again.

[kyle2]

That sounds like a really good idea to me. you could even make another program that just adds credit to an account tied to your cell phone that works for any game of yours. with my phone (sanyo scp 2300) the loads take a good minute or more for most of the games not including ads and thats why i dont like the forced exits. this could also be used in an updated ABC. possibly rewards could be implemented for credits in future games such as upgrades in chopper or paddle size in attack breaker.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Well, I don't make the ad code guys. I upload my game to the advertiser's computer and it auto-wraps the advertising around the game. I have no control over it at all. So unfortunately, there's no way I can implement any of those ideas.

I know it takes quite some time to load on the Sanyo-2300, but I'm starting to move to expecting more power than what that phone can offer. That phone has the processing power of a 5/6 year old mobile, and only the cheapest pay-as-you-go phones are around that level of performance. Unfortunately, also almost nobody with low-end phones even plays games. This kinda surprised me when I first bought my 2300 2 years ago, but I guess the types that play games spend more up-front on the fancy phones.

Attack cannon challenge runs fine on the 2300, and hopefully will be out within the next week. I'm waiting on the advertisers for it's release now.

I find it odd, that I can get thousands of people to play my games, but almost nobody will ever buy one.

[Adam Schmelzle]

Something I'd like to do, would be to have a game with downloadable levels, and it says 'this level brought to you by the following sponsor...', or something, and shows an ad while it downloads.

Maybe a racing game where you get 'sponsors' for your cars, and the winner's sponsors ads are shown after the races, upping their pay(in-game), and mine(in-bank) at the same time. That would offer incentive for the players to sign up a whole bunch of advertisers, so they get more in-game money.

Oh well, maybe we'll have more features in the future. My advertisers (greystripe), and still a small yet rapidly growing company. I bet they will eventually they'll shift their focus away from expanding distribution back to their services again. At the moment, the we see the biggest gains from increasing downloads through more sites offering the games.

I'd really like to have an option in my games to remove ads for something like $0.50(or less). This isn't possible at the moment, because all available payment systems have minimum fees around $0.50. So it makes no sense to offer a game for $0.50, when I'll make nothing from it. Also, the way you pay is wacky through sites like mobilerated.com, so it deterrs people.

[kyle2]

I dont think you really understood what i was getting at... i was suggesting having 2 seperate programs. the first program would launch, show the ads that your ad company provides, then send a message to your server. this message would tell the server to add 10 mins or so to an account tied to your phone. then, that program would close. this would be its only purpose. afterwards, you would start up the game. the game would then ask the server how much time you have left. after every level or so, the game would check he you have enough credit left and let you play on if you did. otherwise you would not be allowed to play and would have to use the first program a couple times again.

[Adam Schmelzle]

I suppose it would technically be possible, but it would just not make sense to the general public. There's 2 big reasons why it just wouldn't be practical:

1) This 'add time' application, that has no gameplay built in at all, would be listed as a game on Gamejump.com. I can't help this, if I took the time to explain why it shoul not be listed, the guys at gamejump.com would simply tell me to forget the app completely.

2) I'd need to have something in the 'add-time' app that tells people where to get the games that require this to run. Since it's only usefull for people with slow low-end phones, that means those phones do not support the ability to link to a web page from within the application. So the user would need to write down a website address, and then type it into their browser to find the games to play.

To solve these issues, I'd need access to the advertiser's servers. I could intercept the request for downloading ads and simply find out how much game time is already credited. If no time left: download more ads, then ask if the user wants to play or not. If the user just wants to build credit, they can re-run the game as much as they want and simply chose not to play until they have a bunch of credit built up. With this kind of functionality, we could list all the games on gamejump.com still, and the games themselves would have the functionality of the 'add-time' application.

As always, thanks for the input. Healthy debate is the best way to refine simple suggestions into great ideas. Keep it coming!

[kiechb]

You know, the game downloader you are working on is pretty much the same thing that Kyle was talking about. Except people will actually want to use it.

It does get a bit annoying looking for games from your phone...I can't wait to see how the program works.

[ahvena]

How much money do you actually get monthly from our playing?

[Adam Schmelzle]

Money is all over the place right now. I'm not really willing to talk specifics, but I'm making 1/4 as much as I was in the summer, and that was before I had any iPhone games out.

Yesterday I only made $60. Few days ago I made $160. I have no idea how much I'm making monthly because of the large swings in revenue.

[ahvena]

Dollars? Then that's a lot of money!

[Adam Schmelzle]

Re: Dollars? Then that's a lot of money!

Not if you're doing it for a living.

[ahvena]

But still really much. And that got me interested in making phone games.
Can you like help me get started and I'll ad you for free in return. Deal? As I really would love to make mobile games, even for free, but if I can get money, of course I want some

[Adam Schmelzle]

There are some threads about getting started in the "J2ME development" part of the board. It's a good place to start

[ahvena]

Thank you really much!