Popcap Games announced last week that the long popular game, Bejeweled, has sold over 50 million copies since it’s creation 10 years ago. That works out to somewhere north of $300,000 over the last 10 years.
Bejeweled
With the free play game model gaining more and more traction it may be hard for Popcap to capitalize on its success with a continued pay to download model. They were, however, able to raise over $22 million in funding last fall, so I’m not too worried about them being able to feed themselves at this point.
It will be interesting though to see how they evolve with their entry in to social gaming with games like Bejeweled Blitz.
Welcome back to the game of week here at FFG. We hope that you all had a great Christmas and New Year.
This week we released several great games and picking a best game of the week was, again, a challenge. Our 2nd runner up this week is Wheel It. I like puzzle games. Especially ones with a cool steampunk look like Wheel It. Our 1st runner up, and the game that will take over as Game of the Week should this week’s winner fail to live up to the standards we desire, is Chronicles of Raynor. Chronicles was a very close 2nd to our GotW, but in the end it was just a side scrolling shooter. And we’ve seen this done to death, maybe because its fun, maybe not.
Back2Back
This leads us to our Game of the Week, Back2Back. In Back2Back you are a squad leader trying to get yourself and your men off planet. Each level begins with you picking your men and assigning them to areas of camp where they have a limited field of fire. You have 6 unit types to choose from, and they can all be upgraded. Most importantly you can move men around during combat to take advantage of their different weapons or to move injured units out of immediate danger.
I like the game a lot. It reminded me of some of the unit combat games from the ’90s. Back2Back scores a 4.5 dead insects out of 5.
Tis the season for wrap up posts and prediction posts all around the net, and not wanting to be left out I thought we should do a little prediction for 2010 as well.
I would love to say that we are going to be seeing a lot of new and original games this year, but that’s not very likely. What I do expect to see a lot more of is games that combine two or more elements of more traditional styles. Most notably I think we will be seeing matching games merged with more and more strategy games and tower defense games. Your resources will be directly tied to just how well you play the matching game.
A recent example is Stone Masters. Stone Masters combined a basic matching game with spell combat. You earn the points needed to cast spells by matching up stones and then use those points to attack with. BTW, you can burn through the game pretty quickly if you make poison your first spell and then pump up your earth mastery. It’ll be level 8 or 9 before you have any real competition that way.
2010 will also see a lot of sequels. Sequels have always seen good returns for the developers and I expect to see some great follow ups from some of the better developers out there..
I’m really hoping to see something original this year. There were a few great games in 2009 that broke the mold, Small Worlds comes to mind right away, but for the most part we saw a lot of tilt racing games, yawn, and more zombie games than you can shake, well,a zombie at.
If you are a developer and are coming up with something really unique, let us know. We are still working on our game developer uploader, but in the mean time we can post it manually for you.. Games that hit our featured list are seeing more than 10k plays a month, so it might be worth your time to let us know about your game.
And with that, everyone here at FFG hopes that all the gamers out there have a safe and happy new year!
Adobe, Mochi, Newgrounds, and several others have produced the 2009 Flash Game Market Survey.
Several key issues brought up in the survey include:
Flash game developers are almost exclusively male (97%)
70% of developers are hobbyists (not full time flash game devs)
Many developers are also publishers (37%)
2% of the games made see 10 million + game plays
56% of developers make less than $500/mo while 4% claim incomes of over $5,000/mo and 1% claim incomes of over $25,000/mo
The big thing I did notice while reading the results of this survey is that there is still a lot of room for truly professional developers and publishers to enter the market and grab large chunks of market share from the hobbyists. And while hobbyists constitute the vast majority of developers and publishers, many have yet to take the leap from hobbyist to professional.
Another thing I noticed in the survey was where the income comes from. Most developers use at least 2 methods of income generation, in game ads (58%) and game sponsorship (43%), with licensing showing up at 26% and site ads at 20%. What did intrigue me is the number of developers making games on spec hoping to make a little money later off of the ads. Only 20% of respondents generated revenue from custom game development.
The full survey is an interesting read for anyone in the flash game market, publisher or developer. You can read it here or at Slideshare.
Wow, this week sure went by fast. It may be because of the great games that game out this week, or it could be all the work behind the scenes that is going on as we try to sort out the FishFlashGold system, it really is coming soon.
In Dale and Peakot you are on a mission to save your chickens from the wolves that have taken them. You start out by grabbing your trusty shotgun and Peakot, your last remaining chicken. Somehow though, you have acquired the ability to control Peakot simply by waving your hand. This allows you to use him to help you get past traps and puzzles that would be unsolvable without him.
This is a fun little game and I spent WAY too much time playing it this week. I hope you like it as much as I did.
Its Friday again and time for us to announce the game of the week. It might not be too hard to guess which game gets this weeks award, but before we announce the winner, let’s take a look at a few other great games from this week. First up is Paintball Babes. Not so much for the amazing game play, but for the effective use of bikinis as paintball protection. Another game we really liked this week was Red Storm. In Red Storm you pilot a mecha in this top down shooter. The game actually gets pretty challenging when you get to levels with holes in the floors. And finally, the game that almost took the #1 spot for its originality, Battle of Lemolad. In BoL you find a combination of a matching game to gain resources, and a strategy game to help defend your castle.
Quake
But, this week’s game, without much surprise to anyone, is Quake. I loved quake years ago when it came out, and I love it now. This is a faithful reproduction of the original game and when played in HD mode here at FFG you get the full effect of a great game.
It was a good week for games, especially old school games, but be ready for next week, we have even more great games in the line up.
This week has been another great week for games here at Fish Flash Games. Siege Master is a catapult game where you can score extra points by not killing the right innocent people in the castle. Red Fluxion is a very fast paced action arcade style shooter that will drive your trigger finger crazy. And The Last Village is a great strategy game where you need to build up your people’s last village to fight off the advancing evil forces.
Revert to Growt
My favorite game this week is Revert to Growth. This is a very challenging puzzle game where you must explore each level finding a way to recover the parts of your broken spaceship. You can create new paths and move objects by triggering plants and trees to grow in the right locations. Just remember not to trap yourself, and a little hint, you can use the plants to push you as well.
Looking for more great games in the coming weeks. We are in the planning stages for our own unique games and would love to hear what you think we should make first. And be sure to friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. We will be making special announcements and offering FFG Gold bonuses in the future to our friends and fans.
I just read a great interview at O’Reilly with Jason Kapalka. Its a great read about how Popcap has been developed and the method behind the madness that is one of the best time waster developers out there.
The Telegraph Uk published what they ranked as the top 20 flash games for the internet. While much of the list is great, there are a few that stand out make me go, hmmmmm.
Obvious winners, at #1 is the flash version of Doom/Hexen/Heretic. I have to admit that I loved Doom when it came out.. It was ground breaking.. It was industry changing.. And it scared the crap out of me.. I loved it.. And it will always have as special place in my heart.. Right next to the original floppies.
Other top 20 notables include Desktop Tower Defender Pro, Boomshine, Puzzle Bobble and Super Mario World. All very great games..
Then comes some of the strange winners.
Free Rice? Really? A simple quiz that donated 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every correct answer?? Really?? Pure link bait and marketing on their part, and the ‘game’ pretty much sucked.. Just give the kids the rice instead of making me play whose smarter than a 5th grader.
Another strange top 20 is The Killer Flu Virus released by the UK Clinical Virology Network. The goal is to stop the pandemic before it wipes out the world and is intended to be an educational game about how the flu virus is spread. Really?? No zombies to kill? Or zombies to create, now there is an idea for a game. Except I think we did that in Resident Evil. That would make a great flash game.
In any case, check out their list and see how it compares to your personal favorites.
We added a lot of great new games this week. A couple of my favorites include Galaxy War, Imperium II, and Backyard Boxing. But hands down, my favorite of the week is the very cool and excellent time waster Fly Me To The Moon, a most excellent Friday time waster.
In Fly Me To The Moon you are a simple mouse. You leap from spinning wheel to spinning wheel to gain momentum to leap higher and higher until you reach the moon. Its a simple concept that gets more and more challenging with each level because the more time you spend on a wheel the more the doorway to the moon closes.
Large wheels give you the most speed but also burn the most of your allotted time. And timing the leap from the smaller wheels can be hard enough that you end up going the wrong way and having to retrace your route.
As far as time wasters go, FMTTM is right up there with some of the best out there. Give it a shot, just don’t do it at work if you want to get anything done today.
Obvious winners, at #1 is the flash version of Doom/Hexen/Heretic. I have to admit that I loved Doom when it came out.. It was ground breaking.. It was industry changing.. And it scared the crap out of me.. I loved it.. And it will always have as special place in my heart.. Right next to the original floppies.
In Fly Me To The Moon you are a simple mouse. You leap from spinning wheel to spinning wheel to gain momentum to leap higher and higher until you reach the moon. Its a simple concept that gets more and more challenging with each level because the more time you spend on a wheel the more the doorway to the moon closes.
