Over the years, we are working with developers and platforms around the world to remove obstacles in the field of web game publication. Through this visit, our team learned a lot and I want to share some of these findings and organize these highlights in a series of articles. We are going to talk about distribution, mudification and production of web games.
In this first post, I want to discuss the HTML5 games and where to sell them. This is our first thing on this complex problem, and if you find it useful, stay up to date with the rest of the series.
So you have a game, ideally many, and all of them are hosted on one platform. Perhaps a couple of platforms. Usually when we talk with developers, these are the reasons they give to choose specific hosting services:
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Organic Traffic- There are a lot of users in this platform, who are searching for our game and spending a lot of time with it.
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A lot of visibility – Thanks to the strange position of our platform, we are receiving additional eyeballs on our game!
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No marketing expenses-we do not spend any money on we marketing, which is crazy in mobile stores and era of over-superants. This is clearly, a dream.
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Mudrajan- We are getting this revenue right now.
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Easy- We can create a hyper-casual game within a month and start earning immediately.
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Everyone using web-platform can start playing on any device in no time.
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No area restriction – no question here. It only works where I live.
Okay, so all this is fine and dandy, but the question is still made, what should I do with all those games? Do I just operate them forever? Well, there are always some challenges, here are just something:
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The long tail is not long.
There is no way to go down. We have learned it in a difficult way. Most devas will look like this (which they will be very reluctant to show you). A spike and then a slow death.
Image through the author.
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Hard moderation and competition
Publishing a new game on the stage of our choice is becoming more and more challenging. The growth of requirements and restrictions is mostly due to the development of competition. More and more games are being uploaded on the platform every day, and our games are simply being squeezed.
You can say, “Okay, I am just going to create a new game, and I will keep creating these new games, catch waves and capitalize on them.” However, construction of a new game requires time and money. Even if you work alone, it takes time to do it and there is no guarantee that your thought is going to work.
The fourth reason is that you do not know what is going to happen. You are not just. Instead of keeping all your eggs in a basket and expecting for the best, try not to diversify, and help yourself make more money in new places.
Let’s do yoga. You have many games, they are localized in English, and can work on the web. You know that they are beneficial, you know that there are enough retention and advertising scenes, and you know people like them. So here the next question comes – what can you publish?
Where can we publish?
I am not going to ruin the air that persuads you to create a game for the web. However, I want to give you some numbers to use because you see fit to find out what to publish.
Develop time: 1-3 months. Including tests.
Cost: Under $ 10 000.
Competition: Bandar Mart (300m Play), Level Devil (83m Play), Stickman Hook (574 M Play), Subway Surfers (1B Play).
The last line of numbers was taken into the defold community from the presentation made by Poki Representative. Yes, the subway surfer is there, but other games in the list are very small. Although they have good quality, remember, when you get older – try to maintain.
Where can we publish?
I think of the web game distribution market as a reverse pyramid.
Image through author/related brands.
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The top level is that includes platforms such as poction and crazy games. Poki has about 30 million monthly active users (MAU) – this is the metric that is traditionally used to calculate the normal audience of the stage. 700 billion gameplay/month on Poki. The Crazy Games has 30 MAUs and 300 million sports monthly numbers.
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The middle layer is of all other platforms of all types. This includes the choice of Y8, Kongregate and Newgrounds.
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And then these are aggregators, such as gameMonitizes, gamepix, game distribution. For example, there are more than 2000 web publishers on their platform by Gamedistribution.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This reverse pyramid is the one who wants the platform to think about the web game market, so you do not run from that platform. The reality is that there is another place for the web game below that peak that has been invisible over the years.
Image through author/related brands.
Then, let me take a moment to break it.
First we have websites. Look at the graph from the statista below. In the year 2021, 1.88 billion website was launched. All these websites launch and die, with large numbers growing, mature, and gradually reduce their effects. This last part of his journey is something in which we are the most interested!
Image through author/related brands.
When businesses understand that the lifespan of their website is close to its end, they need to find ways to revive their user base. Another reason for pushing them to sports- they need to find new ways to show advertisements. Sports often become an ideal medium for this, attract users and increase return to advertising expenses (ROAS). It is not only becoming a part of strategy for small websites, but also large media platforms like New York Times.
Social media platforms, chat platforms, streaming platforms- all these location are hugging games! Discord has games, Viber has games, even LinkedIn has games. This is possible for HTML5, and the way this material can be easily integrated into any online service. Even places like Wikipedia can potentially find space for sports.
Pay attention to mobile store
In addition to these common platforms, there are also web-app stores like Chrome web stores, where you can potentially distribute games yourself. For this, you can use packaging tools such as electron. You can also visit mobile stores like app store and Google Play. Currently there are 250,068 mobile games on Google Play, of which top earnings are supported with deep pockets by big publishers.
Here is mathematics for you. If you publish on mobile, you need to invest the budget in at least 25% marketing, as well as pay 15-30% service fee for each dollar revenue. If you choose to sign up with a publisher, be prepared for a split of 30/70, where 70% of the publisher goes to a pocket. Such expenses are completely impossible for many developers.
Keeping this in mind, the underlying opportunity seems humble. With billions of websites around the world and easy spontaneous integration, why do we limit ourselves to chosen platforms, and do not diversify our distribution?
Out of that path. How do you get that sweet new audience on the web?
Self-consumption challenges
It should be easy on paper. You go to Poki and Crazy Games, they approve your game, and you take advantage. However, physicians will find out that almost immediately they will be hit with an refusal, or they will simply ignore you and never get back. This is mostly caused by quality issues.
Moderation on these platforms is usually being done at two levels: technical compatibility and IP compatibility.
Technical requirements are usually quite rigid, and require important features such as a sev system, player progress, advertising mudification (banner, interstitial, rewarding), in-game purchase, social facilities (shares, inviting a friend, adding, etc.), and distance of devices, and distance.
The IP compatibility game has an observation of all the materials you have. The forum needs to ensure that there is no material that violates IP rights from their legitimate owners. This can be quite restrictive, especially for titles without any original material.
It is worth noting that even if you go through the moderation process on a platform, you will still have to do it for the competitors: big and small. The more you go, the less requirements are made, but the higher the project that the project will not earn any money.
Don’t remember on the occasion
No matter how you are solving these challenges, I will encourage you to do it. The longer the main reason you wait, the more opportunities you remember. The way web games are progressing today, they have the ability to build gateways for new markets and are amazing new adventures for the industry.
How to do this – this is another question. I see three options so far:
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You can do it yourself. Get a separate employee, or become an employee who is going to attack each stage, look at each store and aggregator, and try to get there yourself. This is the time to take, but you will learn a lot.
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Publisher. The publishers are expensive, you will lose a lot of money, but if they raise you, you will know that your game is worth it and you will earn money. But note that the publisher will probably take more than 70%.
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Sports Distribution and Mudification Forum. To work in such a huge and fragmented market, new and efficient equipment are necessary. On Playgama.com, we are bringing such vision into life-an integrated platform that connects the entire web and serves as an entrance to the wide possible network of distributors and platforms around the world (we talk thousands), both gaming and non-gaming. I believe this is the future, and it is coming very soon.
We enter a new platform in the way you consume entertainment. This new phase will not only disrupt the way we reach the games, but also in those ways that we mudly and distribute them. We are on the verge of a huge opportunity for game developers and publishers. Pie is bigger than you!
Image through author/related brands.
