Most of gamers use to playing entertaining, funny, or not very engaging games. The aim of such games is pure relax and escape from everyday duties and efforts. But it doesn’t work in all cases this way. Presently, we are seeing very fast growth of the mobile market with more and more variations of apps and games showing up to compete for interested customers. HTML5 gaming became one solution which can change the approach to game production. With the great advantage of cross platform features, HTML5 developer products can work on almost any platform we like. Any interactive standalone or mobile device with browser support can become a platform for HTML5 games. This potential can be used in many ways. Cross platform games can entertain, but they can also teach, help with experiments, or show new solutions to people of all ages. What I’m trying to prove here is that mobile gaming doesn’t have to be only “a pig shooting contest”, but it can also be a journey presenting a great experience for youngsters or allow exploration for the elderly who don’t have as much experience as the younger generations.

Education & gaming – how it would work?

Inspiration for this article came from a blog entry I stumbled across lately. The serious side of playing games unveils how serious games can be. We often hear, ”Games are bad, don’t play them, they make you stupid and aggressive.” I wouldn’t agree with that. Of course we can notice productions that aren’t appropriate for certain age, or the game can be so bad and offensive that it can teach gamers something negative. But here I would like to prove that with the proper approach to gaming, we can achieve much more than many education systems have in the past. Quote from Euro News article by Zachary Sherin, an undergraduate student explains:

“Certain types of education, the old ones using text books are being shoved aside by new, interactive media. Games have an incredible potential to gather people’s interest in topics that they might not otherwise enjoy.”

This MIT student was taking part in a process of “A Slower Speed of Light” development, a game which explains the theory of relativity by enabling gamers to experience it. You can now imagine, how big an influence on young students this kind of education can have. Even an unimaginable process, which in books or on paper or boards would be difficult to explain, can be explained faster in a game because it activates receptors responsible for understanding faster. Students can imagine the most complicated processes in a very cool and plain way. Isn’t that better? Such research is also a great way to lead in technology development. Colleges and schools don’t have to stick to the old methods. I believe that students would be much more interested in science, biology, history, and other school subjects if more smart gaming would appear in classrooms.

Now, how can the HTML5 technology help here? Imagine that on each desk you can find a tablet (It may also be a student’s private device or smartphone), and the teacher enables access to a web application during lectures. All of the students access the application and can be a part of an experiment. For example, they can play a game which explains how the immunology systems works in the human body. They may be divided into teams, in which part of students are germs and the other part are antibodies which defend the body. All of the participants would play this game simultaneously in one gaming area, no matter what device they use. What’s more, they don’t even have to be in the classroom! A teacher can expand this experiment for longer period of time and reward those who have the best scores and understanding of the topic. That’s only an example, but only the imagination can limit us here.

There are already many examples of such educational gaming approach. Especially we see it in Toddlers – which is a term for applications/games created especially for small children. As an example of HTML5 development approach I found Terrabook, a Korean company which specializes in building educational mobile apps for kids. I noticed that there are many native Toddlers already available on the market, and I believe that HTML5 mobile apps/games for kids can be also a great solution. Every parent can access them much faster just by clicking the link and having them always available in any place of the apartment. A web mobile Toddler as a cross platform app can be watched as a bedtime story on a tablet in a child’s room, or it can be used when we need to keep children focused and we can watch it with them on a Smart TV in our bedroom. Sounds really great, and it helps expand a child’s intelligence and imagination. It could be used for example for learning the ALPHABET.

An educational mobile gaming approach can also be used in different situations among a variety of target groups. Elderly people can prevent themselves from dementia thanks to engaging with games and applications that encourage brain usage. The same solution can be used in a special care facility where people with certain disorders can activate their brain activity faster or recuperate. Imagination becomes the only limitation in the process for creating these types of games and apps. I believe that in this situation, many companies can raise or are already raising resources for private and government financed interactive education. Games aren’t only a time wasting monster.. If they are used in a good way, they may bring a lot of benefit to developers and the people who use them. Educational games can fill the gap and create new business solutions for HTML5 gaming market, and in this situation we can see a brighter future for web based gaming.

Image courtesy of [nuttakit] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Immersion is widely agreed to constitute an integral part of the game play experience.” (source: Portable Presence: Can Mobile Games Be Immersive Games?)

Most of us played mobile games at least a couple times in our lives, and we noticed how different this experience is from playing a game on a PC, TV, console, or even on a handheld device. We usually start mobile fun in specific conditions or places, or we are motivated to do that by specific behaviors. Mobile games have many advantages and disadvantages to give us better or worse gaming experience. In the past few years, mobile gaming became a very popular activity. It is also claimed that mobile gaming is set to overtake handheld gaming. According to IDC, gamers will spend more money on mobile games (smartphone, tablets) in 2013 than on handheld games. This is very interesting because mobile devices aren’t the actual gaming consoles, but they have become very popular gaming devices. Why are we immersed by pocket sized entertainment which doesn’t even have convenient buttons or controllers?

Factors

Let’s analyze a couple factors which can be crucial for immersion in mobile gaming, and let’s compare that to other gaming devices, such as consoles, PC’s, etc.

Screen size

The 4 inch mobile screen size can’t replace the experience of gaming with a 52 inch LCD. It is just impossible to feel the depth of the game world. What is interesting is that research has been done with example games called Osmos. Here is an excerpt from a study over immersion of mobile games by T. Lavender, and D. Gromala:

“The proposed study will compare immersion across three different sized platforms (including two portable devices) to explore the relationship between immersion and screen size for video games and the potential for immersive mobile video games… Osmos was chosen because of this need for the player to focus, which is conducive to immersion. Osmos has other immersive characteristics, including challenging and varied tasks, a consistent game world, and visual and audio quality. It was also chosen because the game is easy to learn, and is available on different sized platforms, such as desktop computers (Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows), tablets (iPad) and smartphones (iPhone/iPod Touch, Android). The rules of the game are identical for the different versions, making cross-platform comparisons more valid.”

The hypothesis coming from this study expects that screen size has a positive effect on immersion, and “immersion scores will be higher for players of the iMac version of Osmos than for the players of the iPad and iPhone versions”. It seems to be obvious that a bigger screen gives us more depth and a better “feel” of the game, but it still doesn’t answer the question of why mobile devices are so popular for gaming. The next factor is also connected with this study.

Comfort of gameplay

Mobile devices don’t have controllers (special buttons, joysticks, comfortable keyboard, mouse). A touch screen, qwerty keyboard, an a couple function buttons can work, and it can work for tapping and sliding games, but it will never be as accurate as a mouse. Let’s go back to the study over the Osmos game. One consideration can be interesting: “On the smaller platforms, the player manipulates the organism with their fingers, while a mouse is used as an intermediary on the iMac. It is possible, therefore, that any difference between immersion could be in part explained by these haptic considerations, and not by screen size.” No matter how big the screen is, we would prefer to “touch” the objects in a game and have a feel of control over them, and I believe these may be reasons why we immerse so much into mobile games.

Another factor is the way we like to play. I already mentioned that in my previous blog entry. It comes out that we immerse into mobile game much more, because we can play them anywhere and anytime, wherever we feel comfortable to play. In many cases lying in bed and not being forced to prepare PC or consoles for gaming, make us much more eager to play a game on a smartphone or tablet.

Length of gameplay

Let’s face it, mobile devices aren’t best for huge MMO’s, Strategies, or FPS. They just aren’t good enough for spending more than a couple hours on one session. We usually play casual, quick games, but if the game is more complex, we we play a short session and come back to it later. So basically, immersion here is motivated by not very engaging length  which gives mobile games an advantage in different situations, when we don’t really want to make a long raid to the dungeon bosses.

Audio

The audio experience in mobile games is not as good as the one on PC’s or standalone consoles. It may create a specific atmosphere (horror sounds, spooky or dungeon music, etc), and it helps gamer to be more linked with the game world and feel it’s thickness (especially with surround systems). On a single mono speaker we will not experience this features, we can only hear some clicks, notifications and specific actions sounds, of course there is also music, but only with earphones we can make it slightly better. For example, HTML5 mobile games still have issues with sounds. Personally in many cases, I prefer to play mobile games in silence, no matter what technology it was made with. Despite lack of sound depth, we still like to hear funny notifications, entertaining music, but I believe we don’t really put as much attention to it as in standalone, bigger games.

Conclusions

IMHO, when we start a mobile gaming session we don’t really look for experiences which we can find on the huge screens of our PC’s or TV’s. We are immersed by totally different factors, and we are looking for different feel of the gameplay. We feel comfortable playing this way, because we can do that in our bed (even when the TV is on), on a bench, or even in a tent and no cables limit us. The immersion comes also from the way we want to spend our time with a game. If we don’t really want to sit for long hours over the keyboard, we just take a smartphone and start a short session with a casual mobile game. Mobile games make us eager to buy them, because it is easier and cheaper to obtain the next product, and it is much cheaper than a game for a PC or console. I believe those factors brought success for pocket sized devices. They aren’t the actual consoles, but with a few advantages they became e an ultimate solution for many games lovers.

Image courtesy of [ koratmember] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of previous year, I wrote an article about various ways to monetize HTML5 mobile games. I was describing most popular models, and after that I chose those that may be most profitable for Bushido Games. Best practices we had in that time were based on interesting fixed monthly subscription model and fixed license fees. I’d like to mention freemium too, because one of our games supports it. Although it seems that this system works better with native app stores than web mobile networks. It is caused by a fact that it’s harder to encourage users to use credit cards in web mobile networks than in native app stores. Conclusions of the past year brought us an idea – we needed to find, and test other monetization models. In the beginning of 2013 we made a deep research, and we decided to try out the mobile advertisements.

Expectations & reality.

The only way to make sure it will work, was to get as many data from the market as we possibly could. After that process we decided to start implementing mobile ads into our games. Publishers provided promotion, and a good traffic which is a crucial factor in the means of obtaining revenues. We were a bit skeptical in the beginning, since we treated this model as an experiment. We started with two of our titles in one network to see if the results will be satisfying. Numbers were promising. After that we could plan further steps to make the revenues grow.

How we actually approached this model?

Google Adsense is most common advertisement service, and for now it is our main source of incomes. The most important are service rules which should be really carefully read and remembered. If you will not follow them, Google will block your account. This service offers various sizes of mobile banners, and if you have enough traffic this can be a nice, profitable income source. In our case we didn’t put the ads randomly. We needed to find out what are best placements, and they also needed to planned, so the gamers would still have fun from the game. We chose couple placements and sizes. Using them also depends on type of the game:

• a loading game screen – (300 x 250)

• a bottom of main game screen – (320 x 50)

• a bottom of main menu – (320 x 50)

• a bottom of the game screen (while playing) – (234 x 60,  320 x 50)

• special actions in game (that includes using a speed up, or a screen when player is informed that he lost the game) – (300 x 250)

Take a look at one of examples below. If it’s possible, try to use graphical advertisements, they are more attractive, and users are more eager to click them.

It is good to diversify your incomes, so we decided to test one more advertising service – Leadbot. But for now it was only implemented PhoneGap version of Animory game, so we can’t tell much about the results now. You may also test this system yourself by entering through our reference link

Web mobile gaming portal based on advertising revenues.

Additionally, we came up with an idea based on our current experiences with mobile advertising. We created is a small, web mobile gaming portal – Play Bushido Games. Depending on partner’s proposal, it can for example become a part of gaming/social portal (branded with partner’s logo and assets). Games and portal can be also rebranded for the advertisement campaigns (with new graphics, additional elements, etc) What is the aim of that? As we noticed, advertising revenues in web mobile games can pay off. With our solution and proper traffic from the partners side, it may bring profits for both sides. We believe that this kind of web mobile gaming can help to monetize the mobile traffic in more unique and fun way.

Conclusions & results.

We are satisfied with the results, and it came out that couple networks with couple games can bring pretty good revenues. Advertising system became one of our main income sources at the moment. The daily incomes are stable since January 2013, and it seems they will keep at this rate as long as the promotion and traffic stays on the same level. We predict a growth but only when we will release a new product, and that may happen every month according to our plans. I cannot provide any statistics here, but I can tell that Animory game which was released at couple networks of our partners, managed to earn 1100€ in the last 30 days in this model.

I’m sure that there are other possibilities (in the means of mobile ads), and I’m sure I will mention them other time, when we will decide to test them in our gaming environment. The idea of this entry was to show that mobile advertisements are a good and working alternative for other revenues models we can find on HTML5 mobile gaming market. I’m aware also that advertisements cannot be the only solution, but results we achieved can confirm that it is another and stable income source.

Image courtesy of [KROMKRATHOG,] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Before our new game showed on market, we played it a lot to be sure that it is well tested. Tests took place in many stages of game development, in different places and hours. One day I took my smartphone, I launched the game to do another test, I laid on the bed… and in this moment a thought showed up in my mind. “I’m playing a mobile game in my bed, so my behavior is dictated by a specific habit, or an accommodation to a specific situation. Have there been any surveys or researches connected with behaviors of mobile gamers? Do we realize how often, and where we usually play mobile games?”. Nearly after I asked that myself, I decided to do some researches to find the answers.

Nowadays, gamers spend more time with their mobile devices than in the previous years. The survey made by Mocospace with results posted at Venture Beat shows that 46% of surveyed played more often on their mobile devices than they did in the past.  One of most interesting facts which comes out from this survey is that most of mobile gaming is done actually at HOME.  Same conclusion came out of an article by mobile-ent.biz, where it is said that “… a new survey by PopCap games has revealed that an amazing 50 per cent of all US and UK mobile gamers regard mobile devices as their primary home game platform (…) The research also found that most mobile gamers say their favorite place to play is either on the sofa or in bed. No great surprise there”.

Another conclusion that comes out of those researches is that mobile gaming is much easier and less demanding. We would probably prefer to comfortably lay down on a couch to knock off pigs in Angry Birds, rather than doing something more complicated (eg. sitting at a desk while steering the game with keyboard and mouse). Of course not everyone would agree, but in the case of mobile gaming this seems to be obvious.

So, where most of mobile gaming takes place? Mocospace did another survey among its users. Take a look at the summary below:

• 96% of surveyed played mobile games at last once at home
• 83% responded that they play while waiting for an appointment
• 72% while commuting by train, bus, or car (of course while not driving)
• 64% play at work, or when being with friends
• 46% in class, and 25% at gym

Infographics courtesy of SponsorPay

My last blog entry brought some questions and suggestions from developers and other people from gaming industry. In most cases they concerned: steps of game development, promotion, distribution, finding partners, and rest of activities which lead to a final product release. The previous entry gave a basic overview of what basic factors an indie HTML5 developer should focus on. My intention wasn’t giving out a full, long guide, since it’s rather pointless to do that in one article. This kind of development guide requires division to parts, or even a compendium in a form of e-book for example. Many suggestions I received were informative, well pointed, but some didn’t fit the HTML5 gaming market specificity. What I will do this time is to show you how you may approach the HTML5 mobile game development on basis of our experiences. As an example I will describe production of our last game, simple and lovely looking Animory. I will not show how to write your script, but I’ll try to indicate what approach, and methods worked out best for us, and what we learned from this production process. Possibly with this “Case study” you will find some solutions and ideas for your own production process.

1. Idea & prototyping.

The first thing that is the key to a production process is an idea. You may of course have already some code or libraries prepared with certain in-game actions, but there will be always an idea to built around it. In the case of Animory game we used the graphical ideas from our previous game Animals Puzzle. We had some graphical assets we didn’t use in this game, and we decided to build a new code around them. Those tiny pieces with different drawings of animals gave us a thought: why won’t we use them in a memory game? And we did! The next step was to create a working prototype. For this process we used uxpin.com prototyping tool which is very easy and intuitive.

You may ask how we approached a prototyping? We started with prepared graphics, and after that we wrote a code of a working prototype. A conclusion: we can say now that we learned one important thing about this process: it is better to spend more time to create a prototype without a graphics first (a “net of the game” like on screenshot above), and then you should create graphics, and in next step a working, playable prototype. For example try to use some default red squares for game elements, a simple backgrounds, etc. Why? Just imagine when you have loads of graphics, or functions prepared before you test them, and then it comes out that they won’t actually work with the game… That may cause many issues, and unnecessary coding.

2. Coding process.

The whole game was finished within a month – here I’m talking about all the activities along with the graphics creation, testing, coding, etc. Now, you may think “What? A whole month for such a simple game?” It may take so much time because we put a lot of care into details, game logic, and code quality. Our programming approach is based on our own libraries and engine. At the moment we are still developing and modifying this engine for the needs of other games we are about to release soon.

The main core of the game was the easiest part, this process actually took around 2 days. Here we needed to make a component that turns, draws the tiles, and checks if the tiles fit to each other. Next step was creating a game logic which consists of unlocking the bonus pictures, acquiring points, or possibility of turning on/off the sound. This part took around 3 days. It is worth to mention that simultaneously with coding, we’ve been adding the graphics to the game core. The longest process of game development were modifications of HTML and CSS so it would look as best as possible on IE9, IE10, Chrome, Firefox, Android browser, iOS browser, mobile Chrome browser in any possible screen resolution. This was most demanding process of coding, and it took us around 3 weeks.

It is worth to mention that we had to perform some changes in the game core during this process. This is a lesson where a good prototype can speed up your process, and helps you avoiding some issues. When the game was being developed we needed to change the gameplay couple times. Why? It came out that the balance wasn’t well designed.

• In first version of game it came out that player could win the game every time he played, but he didn’t get the game bonus if he exceeded the defined time.
• Secondly we changed this feature to less complicated, where player would loose the game if he exceeded the defined time, but he won if he fit in the defined time.
• Third and final version is the clearest one, and we believe it’s the best approach for the Animory gameplay.

As you can see the prototype is the most important thing. Without it, and without testing it you may meet too many issues to cope with. For sure we will keep up this line of thought in the next projects.

3. What about the graphics?

In the beginning of this article I mentioned that idea for the Animory game came out from some graphics we already had. Actual process of arts creation was almost as long as the whole game production. It took around 3 weeks for our designer to finish all the assets. Whole process was a sum of concept sketches, team brain storms, prototyping, and fitting a final version of each element with CSS. We put high pressure into graphics quality because it’s the first visible element of the game, and it’s role is to attract gamers. The graphics was created simultaneously with the game code, so almost every day we could see changes in the game.

Most of the results here really depend on the designer, the skills, talent, experience, and ability to create cool, colorful graphics. As you can see our designer tries to achieve a specific style. The game looks very attractive, there are no random elements. There is a story into it, a specific a line of thought. We find this well fitting to our idea of HTML5 gaming, where games are providing fun and visual joy.

4. Sounds?

At the moment HTML5 mobile games have sound support along with newer systems versions. Sounds make the game more attractive, and fun. The interaction with the game is stronger, and sounds notifications give clearer understanding of what player did wrong or right during the gameplay for example. We were using free game sounds libraries which are easily accessible in the web. For the music loops I recommend Incompetech Royalty Free License, but you have to remember about copyrights and inserting credits in your game.

5. Testing.

Basically, this process was taking part in every stage of game creation. Along with building up each game feature (whether it was graphics fitting, or game logic coding), we were always checking them before adding new parts of the games. Initial tests were a part of production process since the very beginning. Usually they took around 30 minutes. If there were any bugs detected we planned corrections, and next small tests until we reached non-faulty version of game features.

When we made a version of game which contained all planned elements, we could start internal testing of a final game version. The time spend on those tests was similar to the initial testing, and same as before, firstly we were fixing the bugs, and performing tests again until we reached satisfying results. For this, we have a base of devices in different range of mobile systems (iOS, Android, BlackBerry).

• Samsung Nexus S
• HTC Wildfire S
• iPhone 3GS
• HTC Magic
• Samsung Galaxy S Plus
• iPhone 3G
• Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
• BlackBerry Playbook
• Samsung Nexus S

That ensured us that game is ready for next stage. It is worth to ask your friends, work colleagues or anyone willing to help you with this process. The more devices you have the bigger the chance to have well tested version of game. After that we could prepare the game for release.

6. Sending a game to the publisher.

In our case we already have a publishers base. It takes some time before you will find a reliable network for your games distribution. You need to experiment with various models proposed by publishers to find out what suits you best. As you know HTML5 mobile market is a niche, and it is not so easy to find proper traffic and revenues for your products.

A demo version of Animory was ready. We contacted our most active publishers, and interested them with the new game. Thanks to well prepared version we instantly could plan couple integrations after the publishers said “Yes, we like the game, and we would like to promote it in our networks”. Of course publisher needs to perform his own test before he will put the game live, and this usually took up to 2 weeks since we sent the demo. As the game was well tested by us internally, we didn’t meet practically any problems from the side of the publishers, and Animory could be finally released.

We prepared various versions of the game, but we didn’t prepare all at once. We gave it some time to see what are the first impressions for the game, and after that we could work with different platforms and promote them.

• web mobile version for social mobile networks (free to play advertisements model/subscription model)
• Chrome Store standalone version for desktop browsers (free to play desktop version with advertisements
• wrapped, downloadable version for Android (free with advertisements, and buyable version)

7. Tell the world that your games is online!

Relying only on the publisher won’t boost interest of gamers and publishers in your game. You need to make some activities to raise up a fuss around it. If you run a blog, Twitter or a Facebook fanpage you get an additional promotion. You may also find other useful tools, networks. Try to promote your game among your friends, friends of friends, indie gaming groups or places which support HTML5 gaming such as MarketJS or HTML5Devs forums. The more you do that the higher the chance that the game reaches more gamers and publishers. If you have a budget for your marketing, you may as well plan a campaign based on banners in big blogs or gaming pages. That is up to you and your capabilities!

8. Final thoughts.

Whole production process which took us around one month, needed to be built around a certain plan. We learned the most important thing is predicting and prototyping precisely each part and action in the game. To make it all go smooth each step has to be carefully measured. Brainstorms, tests, and specific approach to the code and graphics give proper results. We have to admit that the prototyping process still needs improvements, but we are very satisfied with the final results. What’s more the game was accepted by gamers who are our audience and final judges. If they like the game and they find it fun, it means that the game is produced well.

I believe that this long blog entry will help you understand more our approach to the game production, and maybe you will find some solutions for better organization of you work.

Before producing (your first) HTML5 mobile game you need to decide on what type of game to make. First thing that comes to your mind are performance issues which may limit you in the means of animations and physics. Let’s face it – we can’t reach performance of native mobile games yet. But it’s not a reason to cry, and giving up – especially that trends are changing, and technology is moving forward. We are at the edge where after 2 years of development HTML5 mobile game achieved more than we could expect. At the moment if you really want to make mobile HTML5 game you should think about three important factors: performance, fun, and visual appeal (now, you can even add audio to make it more attractive). I want to focus on present possibilities, and types of games currently may work out best and bring you revenues if you make it well. Of course upcoming trends, and performance solutions can make production better and easier I believe, but let’s focus on what we know now, and on those factors that for sure will pay off.

Is there a recipe for a profitable game?

Maybe the HUGE companies have it, but as a small indie developer you don’t have experts in any aspect of the game, you don’t own team of 120 specialists who build the code, solve the problems, create tons of graphics, write stories, and oversee the whole work. Still, you can make an awesome and fun game which can earn money for you, and pay off the hard work you put out.

Who knows maybe it will become even a Top Selling Game if you put it into App Store? Types of games are practically unlimited – while you can make a remodeled version of classic Tetris,  Snake or whatever you like, you may as well create your own story and gameplay. If you don’t have any experience in HTML5 games coding it is best to use some tutorials, or guides. Luckily, many developers share their knowledge. You can for example start with this simple GUIDE. But let’s leave the technical details, and start with one of most important factors…

…make it simple, if you want to monetize it faster.

I know that it can make you wonder – why should I do that? I can as well make a huge, social game with freemium features, with long gameplay, and possibly better monetization capabilities! Yes that may work, but imagine – you have team of 4-5 people, or even there is only you and a graphic designer. If you want to create huge game, it may even take you 6 months, a year or longer! Think about it. Of course if you have time, bigger team – it’s up to you. Those advices are directed mostly to smaller developers. It is best to go simple in the beginning to avoid some issues connected with finances, time and effort. The best way to choose the game type is to do some research. Try to look around in top played flash games, or App Stores for inspiration. The most important factor is that game has to be simple and fun – easy to play but hard to master.  A fine examples are our two games: Crazy Gems 2 was released over a year ago, and it still earns really good revenues, and holds a traffic of couple thousand visits per day! It is a clone of popular Bejeweled game with growing difficulty level and timer. Publishers still promote it and asking for a license. Thanks to this game we learned that you don’t really need huge production to earn money. Following this experience recently we released a new game, in similar business model. Animory is also simple game, based on popular memory game type with three difficulty levels. To make it more spicy, we added couple features. Driven by past experience, we used the same model, and it worked out for us well since the first day of game release! The conclusion is a KISS principle plus fun of the game itself. Make the game a way you and gamers will like it! The other key to well made HTML5 mobile game is….

…lovely, HD graphics.

Put yourself in a position of a gamer or a publisher, and think what would be the first thing they would notice – your polished code of engine, or the graphics? Of course answer is simple as the game should be! This is the first factor everyone will see at first, and it will surely affect gamers choice. Nicely drawn game with polished buttons, crystals, monsters, balls, etc. will be the key to give you better chance to be noticed and probably successful. Take an example above of Animory game menu screen – our artist took a huge care of details, colors, even the logo is fantastic. Don’t you feel like you want to see more? I’m sure you do

So can we say that it’s “the recipe”?

It’s quite difficult to say that this may be a 100% successful recipe for HTML5 game production model. It is rather based on experiences which developer had for last months in the means of web mobile games production and distribution. I think it’s rather a simple and reasonable guide which says on which factors developers who want to make mobile HTML5 game should focus on. Those three factors mixed with well written code, loads of tests, established publishers network, and well fitting business model, may give a good base for a good start for a developer. Starting with several smaller, well earning, and popular games can establish your position for a future, and bring more comfort to create much larger games.

Monetization of mobile HTML5 games – this is by far most important and vast topic discussed by many web gaming developers since the HTML5 mobile games showed on market. Recently I wrote an article which pointed out the most common, known, and accepted monetization solutions.  Much in the same way, other developers, and publishers were describing their own point of view. Here I refer to known entries by Richard Davey of Photonstorm or Ben Chong of MarketJS. Despite the potential, and higher effort, there are still not enough solutions to give developers peace of mind about future of their business, and games monetization. Many times I have mentioned the lack of market awareness which causes low interest of big companies into investing more resources and support into HTML5 gaming, as there is still a lack of safe space to distribute and monetize games for many developers

Are there any other ideas?

We know well of monetization opportunities of most known publishers. Every developer who has some experience, and was researching the market, knows that only a handful of publishers can really bring potentially safe revenues. Games rental, subscription revenues, advertisements, games licensing or freemium are common solutions. But, are those all possibilities? Let me try to fill up the knowledge we have already with couple solutions that may in my belief give more potential to HTML5 games monetization. We don’t really need to limit ourselves to most known/’tried and tested’ ways – we should seek, and experiment IMHO.

Your knowledge and skills from game development are your precious treasure.

I noticed that many developers use pre-made engines such as CooconJS, Impact, and many others. From our point of view, we prefer to use own, custom code. Why? No limits, no additional costs, except maybe that we may spend more time on coding. But, thanks to that we can always find new and cool ways to solve problems or find new ways for the game development.  Having your own libraries can be a really good way to monetize part of your knowledge. The libraries you create could be also licensed to others, same as game engines are don’t you think? This is actually your work, your effort, and experience that can be also used by others. Who knows, maybe your skills are a perfect solution (or a quicker way to achieve the same) for those developers who cannot solve their coding issues? In a funny, and smart way you may create a mini shop with “Coding solutions for your HTML5 games” – just like the IAP shop in freemium games. That’s just imagination working, but do we need to limit ourselves?

Moreover using knowledge you gained on coding your own games, can be also used in getting a client work. This solution requires a vast number of contacts, and a higher experience in a field of development. But overall this is a perfect way to fill your need for more resources to go on. You may produce new innovative code, get more experience while preparing a game for a client. You are always gaining on that!

There is one more way you might consider profitable from a point of monetizing your skills. If you think your skills of game development are high enough to easily compete with others, search for game developers contests! Actually this is really good idea because of one reason: being a winner of such contest can bring you more money than you would get sometimes in a year or two of licensing/advertising /renting your games. But, there are two disadvantages: 1. there aren’t many contests; and 2. most of them strictly forbid developers to enter with a game  already released officially.

Let’s go back to revenue shares for a moment…

Here we know that we can share profits with publisher basing on in-app-purchases, advertisements or subscriptions. Is that all we can do? Actually no. The creativity of publishers, and cross-platform possibilities of HTML5 games brings another interesting way to earn gaming revenues. Recently I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Rob Smith, Legal and Business Affairs Manager at Odobo. During a chat, I learned that gambling based revenues may be also be a lucrative ways of income, and a great opportunity for developers to use theirs skills in completely new environment, far different from closed world of native apps, and social networks. “… the regulated online gaming industry alone is worth around $35bn today and the player values are significantly higher than those available to the social or casual gaming industry (some research journals place this well in excess of $100 average per user) (...) yet the regulated gaming sector has traditionally held a number of barriers of entry to the wider development community. Odobo’s model for example removes this limitation by offering developers a certified server-side technology stack that allows developers who are new to this sector the foundations to build creative and innovative regulated games, without having to be experts on certification. This is complimented by a platform that empowers developers by removing the need for developers to manage credit control, business development and legal resource, as Odobo as the platform holder provides them with the established downstream channel. We want developers to create great games and push boundaries of innovation and yet it’s harder for a developer to warrant this investment if they are continually finding their time is spent on corporate support services”. This actually brings not only a new opportunity to earn money on Black Jack or Slot Machine games revenues, but also creates a new, and independent market for developers. “… it offers developers not just a standard licence royalty but equally the ability to send their own social game players to the Odobo games on Odobo Play and gain affiliate revenue on-top of the standard game licensing royalties“. IMHO this may not only be a good alternative, but also can make live of developers easier. I believe there are two directions of this idea: going the same way as FGL did for flash games, and bring a network based only on HTML5 games, with full support to them.

Conclusions.

As we can see not only the developers want to find out new solutions for HTML5 monetization. We need to focus on a creative side of our businesses. Trying to find new solutions for monetization keeps us active in searching, and brings more ideas. Researches proves that the standard ways to monetize HTML5 games aren’t the only way. There are more and more opportunities coming soon I believe and more enablers for developers to reach greater returns for their games. I think that I may fill up the knowledge shown here with more cool, and profitable solutions soon.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Selling a game license, finalizing a deal for revenue shares from IAP or subscription revenues is always connected with big portion of time spent on negotiations, and setting up an agreement conditions. Since the beginning of finding new business opportunities there is always the same process which in many cases may be hard, exhausting, annoying, and it can take away the time you could spend on developing parts of the game you started. Unfortunately, if you really care that your game will be safely licensed to a sponsor/publisher, you should really put highest focus on this process. The time spent on reviewing the agreement itself very precisely will give also you an overview that many publishers are working in a very similar way. Yes, you may get more experience, more knowledge, and with time it can be even easier, and faster process. But, does it always have to be done the same way? No, what’s more you may come up with an idea to make your life easier. How? There may be couple really easy, and helpful ways.

After reviewing loads of agreements you may come up with an idea of creating a “document of standards“ you should remember for each agreement you will sign in a future. Collect all your experiences, doubts in one place, and write them down. Believe me, it is really helpful, and speeds up the process a lot!  As a developer you have full intellectual rights to your product: graphics, code, sounds, title, logos… Remember about that, you are the person who sacrificed a lot of time polishing your “baby”, so it could come out to give a lot of fun to everyone who will play it. In the license agreement, there are lot of things that you should really consider as “PRIORITIES” before saying, or writing YES to the publisher. Publisher is a company who should give you a guarantee that your game will be promoted well enough to pay off your coding effort. Just think about it, and find couple rules that may be really helpful:

• Always remember to check if your company data are correct (to avoid bank transfer problems, or international TAX policy issues).
• Date of signing is really important when you sign a term based agreement (thanks to that you may avoid issues with revenues payments if the agreement was terminated for any reason).
• You need a clear information on what model will you cooperate with publisher, and on what rate, or fee (eg. revenue shares from IAP 50/50, or 500€ per game license)
• Always remember about type of license, do not get in a trap where you will accidentally forget to check if the license was exclusive or non-exclusive (you may loose your chance to reach more markets!).
• Intellectual property rights clause should clearly state that you own the game as whole, and publisher or any third party associated won’t have any rights to modify the code or any part of the game without additional article in agreement or your permission.
• There should be statements allowing you and the publisher to use marketing materials about each of you for promotion purposes (for example you wish to tell that you cooperate with certain company in an article of your blog, or on your site, but you didn’t have permission – often such clause can boost an interest of others in your company). Same thing concerns logos, trademarks, etc.
• In the financial terms never forget to set a NET amount you would receive every time you would invoice the publisher (it is crucial if you want to avoid troubles with taxation, or unclear conditions). There should be a clear information how the amount you receive is counted. If you wish to have everything clear, the publisher should be obliged to explain how the payment system works.
• There is no 100% bug free game – watch out if you find a clause saying that the game should be 100% free of bugs. Same way the network of publisher should be bug free, but he cannot guarantee you that. But it is better to state that the games are acceptable for release in network after publisher test them.
• The confidentiality of exchanged informations concerns both sides of agreement – so keep in mind that you and publisher should have same rights.
• Same thing concerns responsibility for faults, bad code, bugs, etc. – each side of agreements gets equal responsibility conditions.
• When you wish to terminate the agreement you should have an option to exit it in every moment when you feel it’s not good for you. This also concerns situation when any of agreement Party works in an inappropriate way.
• When the agreement is somehow terminated you have full rights to have your revenues paid out till the last day of your games activity in publishers network.
• In the moment of agreement termination you have full right to have all your games, and content removed from publishers network and portals.

Basically this is a small guide with the things I consider most important. Thanks to that it is much easier and faster to finalize the agreement terms. Every agreement has similar conditions, but there may be clauses that I have not mentioned here – these are just some universal and very important statements. This way you can create your own standard for an agreement.

There is other way though which in the case of  HTML5 games could change a lot. Flash Game License brought a perfect and easy solution for Flash games developers. It helps you to not worry about the license terms, about the agreement, about taxation, about the laws – you just simply showcase your game, and negotiate on what condition your game is published. The rest of process along with payments is in the hands of FGL on terms of Easy License. Why am I mentioning this in HTML5 gaming blog? Because actually you can already sell your HTML5 games this way! Yes, recently FGL has opened it’s gates for HTML5 developers. This way a process is minimized, and you don’t need to worry about checking all the clauses of each new agreement. Although I wouldn’t rely on FGL only, at least for now. It is still uncertain how many deals are finalized this way. But for the agreement/licensing process this may be a good alternative. Some of you heard about MarketJS too. It’s like FGL but it doesn’t provide such support in terms of licenses and agreements. So, would that work out as well as it did for Flash games? Well, we still face one problem – lack of AWARENESS, and distribution issues for HTML5 gaming market. For now search out for the solutions you feel are best for you. I believe that this short guide will help you a bit, or maybe you have your own way to make this process easier, or maybe there are far better solutions than the ones I showed?

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lately, someone who doesn’t have much knowledge of gaming business, asked me: “What is cloud gaming?”. I addressed him directly to the Wikipedia definition which says: “Cloud gaming, also called gaming on demand, is a type of online gaming that allows direct and on-demand streaming of games onto a computer, similar to video on demand, through the use of a thin client, in which the actual game is stored on the operator’s or game company’s server and is streamed directly to computers accessing the server through the client.” At the moment cloud gaming networks allow gamers access the games streamed online (to various devices), and have fun without installations, and other inconvenient actions. This kind of service don’t require space on hard drive, or uses less power of gamer’s PC. Simple as that? Yes, just check couple example networks to ensure how it really works. We have: Gaikai, Square Enix or OnLive - they require internet connection, a special app download, and setting up a device you will use for fun. But, since the question was asked to me, and I actually deal only with mobile HTML5 gaming, let’s find out, what…

… does it really have to do with HTML5 games?

Basically cloud based gaming may be a natural definition of cross-platform capabilities of HTML5 games. In almost the same way they may be distributed through cloud gaming services. Why? Because, “ The streaming game service allows consumers to play games across a variety of devices, similar to the way Netflix enables consumers to watch movies across their phones, tablets, computers or TVs.” (excerpt from allthings.com article). The only difference is that the HTML5 gaming actually runs through a browser.

Would that work, and be popular?

With the higher popularity of streaming gaming, HTML5 games and their capabilities to work in a cross-platform environments may become another type of games attractive for cloud gaming portals. I found couple examples that prove that this trend actually may become real, and hopefully may grow in the nearest future:

• Big Fish Games plans to acquire HTML5 games for their universal cloud platform.

• EA announced a multiplayer game written in HTML5 to allow a browser gameplay.

• Cloudmach announced 3d HTML5 gaming platform.

Obviously, we see that web based gaming may be a very natural way for HTML5 to become more popular not only within mobile web gaming publishers, but also within cloud gaming networks run by big companies. Similarly to (PC/console) cloud games, there is practically no limit of devices on which gamers can launch cloud games based on HTML5: Smart TV’s, PC’s, smartphones, tablet’s or some consoles (like PS Vista). The only question that remains is: when would that happen in a larger scale?

Image courtesy of [nirots] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New year brought us new ideas, new projects, and new approach towards business side of our activity. This time we researched the market to find and develop other opportunities. The idea we came up with is closed within a new product, based on games we already created. Play Bushido Games is a mini portal for mobile devices (iOS, Android, BlackBerry). It is a base for development of a platform which can bring new business opportunities. Our project is designed especially for publishers, operators, portals, social networks who want to enlarge their audience, monetize their traffic better or make their entertainment section more attractive for existing users.

Play Bushido Games can be connected to any existing mobile network. It doesn’t require plugins, games downloads, or updates from client’s side. Player enters a game, and can have fun directly after clicking a “Play” button. The great advantage of this solution is that portals who have it connected, don’t need to send player outside of network (as it is usually done with native games).

The business opportunities, and ideas based on our solution are practically endless. Publisher may place it within his network as a separate “Games” section, or as a part of a mobile social network. Version shown here is very basic – but imagine it designed for a specific network, or partner. In this situation it may change it’s looks, functionality, and have much more games included. Everything will depend on business proposals we would receive or negotiate.

The business model we base our idea on for now are mobile advertisements. Portal can be tailored for needs of any business partner including:

• Customization of page (footer, logo, colors, localization,)
• We can connect various kinds of mobile advertisements (static, rich media, etc)
• We can rebrand our games to advertise partners products

We welcome any concrete, and promising opportunity of cooperation!  To learn more, and evaluate possibilities, please visit our portal HERE.