Communicating with Prototypes

For the last month, as I've detailed on this blog, I've been working on a project with the artist brontosaurus.

Both of us are very new at this whole indie game development thing, and we have made plenty of mistakes. And we will make plenty more. But we are learning.

I thought I'd share some of our latest mistakes, and what we've learned from them.

First of all, we've switched game ideas almost every week for the past several weeks. This in itself is not the problem. We change direction because we find problems with our old ideas that prompt us to start anew.

Here's a quick overview of the journey our ideas have taken:

We started with a game based on this picture.

Then we switched over to procedural aliens.

But we couldn't turn it into a game.
We tried to find a game here.

Then we decided to simplify.
We thought climbing would be easier.

But we couldn't make it fun.
So we switched over to suburbia.

And now, we're still in suburbia, but reconsidering.

Why have we had to switch ideas so frequently? What mistakes made it so difficult for us to just stick to one idea and finish it?

It has been a progression of mistakes. We started off trying to randomly doodle a game into a existence. Then we realized that we need to start with actions and gameplay before we start doodling interesting worlds and characters.

Now I'm beginning to see that our process for coming up with gameplay has been flawed.

My specialty is in game design, and programming. I choose to work with brontosaurus because his skills complement mine - his specialty is in world design, and art.

The way it usually works is that someone like me comes up with an idea for a game, and then finds an artist who is interested in making the art for that game idea. But we did it differently. Since I didn't have a particular idea in mind, and I like talking with brontosaurus about game design, we thought we'd just come up with an idea together.

This was not our mistake. The problem started because we were both communicating our ideas in words.

When I try to explain a game idea to brontosaurus, he has trouble understanding how it would look or feel. But the ideas I come up with usually have interesting game mechanics that I could prototype.

When brontosaurus explains a game idea to me, it's always very evocative and visually interesting, and he's ready to create all sorts of cool concept art for it. But I have no idea how to start prototyping it, since the mechanics are too vague.

Because I've been impatient to agree on an idea and get going, I always go with the ideas that brontosaurus comes up with, even though I don't know what the gameplay will look like. But sooner or later the vagueness of the design catches up to us, and we reluctantly decide to come up with a new, more feasible game idea. This is how the cycle continues.

Brainstorming may be fine in text. But when it comes to choosing ideas to work on, it's not really fair to evaluate our ideas until we have experienced them in either a visual or procedural form. I will express my ideas through prototypes, and brontosaurus will express his ideas through concept art.

If my prototypes inspire brontosaurus to come up with a world and an art style, then we can make them into full games. If brontosaurus' concept art inspires me to invent mechanics and gameplay, then we can turn those into games, too. But our starting point must be tangible. Words are not enough.

Let the game designers come up with gameplay, in the form of prototypes. Let the world designers come up with worlds, in the form of concept art. Don't force one to do the other's job.

It may take longer at first, but it's the only way we'll make something that we're both satisfied with.

Let's hope it will work in time for the contest. ;)

Update:
In other words, Less Talk More Rock.

Thoughts on the EXPLORE Contest

I'm working on a project with brontosaurus.

We have seven days to submit a game for the EXPLORE contest at Jay is Games. I like our current idea, and I think we should keep going with it. But even if we can put it together in seven days, I'd want to take at least another seven days to playtest and polish it. In other words, I don't want to rush this for the contest.

We could take a break and make a short, quick game for the contest just for fun, not expecting to win anything. I had a few ideas for that. One is to use our conversation history as the game content, since we have plenty of it, and it's interesting. There are a number of ways we could use it, but one very simple way to do it would be combine it with the Linear RPG. Or the typography could be a physical space to traverse, like Silent Conversation, with emoticons as powerups or something.

I was thinking about the Stick Figures story in Tales from Outer Suburbia, and where the story is, or where you might find a game there. It seems to just describe a scene, a place, without turning it into a particular story. It's hard to identify the protagonist, antagonist, and conflict. Maybe the antagonist is actually the confusion felt by the townspeople, rather than an actual character. Who knows? But you can more easily see little stories inside of it, like a kid smashing a stick figure with a baseball bat and getting frustrated, and uncertainty turning to fear and anger.

I was thinking about games, and how you could have a persistent world that is experienced through short, repeated game sessions. Little stories inside a world. Imagine Canabalt if instead of starting over when you die, you start again in the same world, at the place where you left off, or on the ground where you landed, or as another character somewhere else. It is similar to Calamity Annie, the way the narrative progresses even as you play again, where the gameplay repeats, but the world is fleshed out as you continually revisit it.

I'm also thinking about Zero Punctuation. Our conversation history could take the role of the monologue that narrates the images in a Zero Punctuation review. The only difference is that it is a dialogue, in text and not in speech. But the communication is similar. It does not tell a story, it discusses and explains. However, if we were to do this, we'd need a way to automatically come up with the images based on the text since it is not feasible to generate so much content by hand.

Freedom of movement across an image, linear movement along a text. Text forms the goals, while images are the medium of action? One action per line of text, one visual change. How do you create images from text? How do you combine text and action to get an image? The image and text give rise to the feedback. And the text leads the progression.

I was thinking about Spirited Away, my favorite animated movie. If Canabalt is like The Matrix, what would be the equivalent for Spirited Away? For Canabalt, you take the decisions that are implied and make them explicit. Or rather, you make it explicit, since there is only one decision. What equivalent can be found in Spirited Away? What decision can be made with the press of a single button?

But Canabalt is a linear game. You decide nothing. You act, in order to experience. Can exploration be about anything other than freedom of movement? When does exploration feel linear? A map does not dictate a path. When does it feel linear? A maze might have only one path, though it looks like a map. A labyrinth, even more so. Look at the feet. They never change their rhythm, yet the landscape around them changes. Is that exploration? What if they do change their rhythm?

You could make a game where you press a button to turn and change direction. This could be freedom of movement. Is it linear? If your actions have bigger consequences later on, maybe it is not really linear. If you turn here, you got to the desert. If you turn here, you go to the ocean. In Canabalt, your actions now have their consequence now - they do not change your route for the future. Can you explore without changing your route?

I've been thinking about tension before it solidifies into an emotion. I've been able to notice this tension already several times today, and let it fade away without latching onto anything external and feeding off the imbalance that results. I imagine there could be something similar for positive emotions. It all reminds me very much of Daniel Cook's Constructing Artificial Emotions, and I am intrigued by the idea of incorporating this into a game.

Where will this take us? I don't know. We'll see.

Active Sketch 02 - Ledges

Another sketch.

This time, a prototype. I made it to test out the movement controls for a climbing game.


In our effort to make a cool intriguing game, the artist brontosaurus and I have been coming up with concept art and procedural sketches that we could combine into something interesting. But we've realized that our approach is in need of a slight course correction.

Procedural trees and space invaders may be cool to look at, but that's not the same as a game that's fun to play. If you create a bunch of cool things, you don't automatically end up with an interesting interaction when you put them all together. But if you start by creating cool actions, things to do, then you're more likely to end up with something that's fun to play.

Daniel Cook put it this way, when asked for advice:

Typically what I'd suggest is working on a core mechanic and seeing if you can 'find the fun'. I see you focusing more on artwork...which is pretty, but doesn't find the fun.

Given this suggestion, I realized it might be more appropriate to spend less time creating procedural art and more time prototyping gameplay.

This doesn't mean that I shouldn't spend any time creating procedural art. It just means that before I come up with things, I need to come up with the actions first. If I have the gameplay down, the stuff you do, then I'll know what sort of things would go well with those actions, what would make them more fun or meaningful or interesting.

So this is our new doctrine: design the verbs first, then the nouns. Not the other way around.

Thus, this climbing prototype.

Active Sketch 02 - Ledges

It's simple. Use the arrow keys to move the climber around. You can press up to jump, or down to drop from a ledge. The interesting bit is that you can hang on ledges. Maybe not quite as interesting as jumping off walls, but hey, it's an experiment. :p

I used the Flixel engine to make it. Flixel is awesome. It's perfect for little games like this, especially if you like pixel-y graphics. I wholeheartedly recommend it. I'll write a blog post about it sometime.

However, brontosaurus and I probably won't be taking this climbing concept any further. We had thought it might be a good idea to start with a simple action like climbing, and build up from there. And we started creating some concept art for such a game, which you can see here.

But after trying out some movement controls in this prototype we decided that the gameplay wasn't strong enough to carry an entire game. And that's the whole point of a prototype - to tell you whether the game is worth making or not.

So we're back to the drawing board.

And with some inspiration from Shaun Tan and The Little Prince, hopefully we'll come up with something even better. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

Game Idea Giveaway - Garden Chomp

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by freelanceflashgames:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  Something fairly simple and easy to code, yet fun. The game would probably feature achievements and upgrades, but it isn't required.
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  To make a good game that will be different from others and people will have fun playing.

The normal idea: Lava Land

The weird idea: Garden Chomp


In short, the idea is a simple arcade collection game where you try to balance your needs with those of the surrounding ecosystem. You are a little guy running around a garden, seen from above. There may be a few scattered rocks or plants as obstacles, but generally the playing area is unobstructed. Your goal is to survive as long as possible without getting eaten or starving to death.

You have an energy meter that constantly decreases. To increase your energy meter, you eat mushrooms. Just move around with the arrow keys or the mouse, and touch a mushroom to eat it. Like collecting gold in N, you have to eat these mushrooms often enough that your energy stays above zero. Otherwise, you die.

Where do mushrooms come from? To answer that question, we'll have to introduce you to your delightful companions in this little garden - the chompers. A chomper is basically a big mouth that can walk around - like Pac-Man with teeth and legs. Their entire function is to eat and produce manure. As luck would have it, chomper manure is the perfect fertilizer for mushrooms. As the chompers amble around the screen, they leave a trail of manure in their wake, which soon sprouts a delicious bouquet of mushrooms for your consumption.

To produce manure, chompers must eat. If they're especially hungry, they'll try and eat you. Don't let that happen - keep them well fed. Like an aphid, you produce honeydew, a sweet delicacy much enjoyed by the chompers. You can click the mouse or press the space bar to produce honeydew and toss it in the direction you are facing, preferably into a Chomper's perpetually open mouth. Producing honeydew subtracts from your energy meter though, so make sure you are eating plenty of mushrooms!

It's not that complicated. If you touch a mushroom, you eat it and increase your energy. If you touch a chomper, you get bitten and lose a large amount of energy. If you touch manure, you get kind of sticky and move slower for a while.

What?

• You eat mushrooms and make honeydew.
• Chompers eat honeydew and make manure.
• Manure gradually sprouts into mushrooms.

It's a nice little cycle. And the timing and conversion rates will take a lot of balancing in order to feel right.

Even though the game is about surviving as long as possible, it might be a good idea to break it into levels. The first level might have one chomper, lots of mushrooms, and few obstacles. The next level could have two chompers, and maybe the next level has two chompers and a bunch of obstacles arranged in a sort of maze. To beat a level, maybe you have to fill up your energy meter all the way, where each level might require a different amount of energy. Or you could just make it about surviving for a certain amount of time, though I could see that being annoying in a level-based game.

And there are plenty of things you could do with random goodies and powerups, changing how fast you move, making mushrooms grow faster, giving you temporary invincibility, or just giving you extra energy. Aiming the honeydew could be made easy or difficult. I'd probably go far something fairly easy, where the honeydew travels in a straight line until it hits an obstacle or goes off the screen. If a chomper is facing you with its mouth open then you can toss some honeydew straight in without worrying too much about aiming skill.

There could even be different varieties of chompers - some completely harmless, some that get hungry quickly and will chase after you, some that move fast, some that move slow. If you want, you even could do some weird things with Langton's Ant and patterns of manure. Maybe the player could push the manure around to change how the chompers walk. But I'd suggest starting with simple random movement and going from there.

Good luck! :)

Want an idea? Make a request on The Game Idea Giveaway Thread!

The Invader Ecosystem

Humans, invaders, and trees.

For my first project since going indie, I've been working with the artist brontosaurus on a little game. The specifics of this project change around a lot, since we're taking a loose, spontaneous sort of approach to developing it. Lately we've been heading in a space invaders-ish direction, and we've been trying to think of how we might extract some actual gameplay from the procedurally generated toys we've been playing with.

In order to focus in on something simple, we've decided to base the entire game off the feel of the concept art above, I Have You Now.

We thought that might mean creating a little ecosystem of invaders that the player, a human, could observe and mess around with. Like, the invaders eat each other, maybe reproduce a little bit, and maybe you can help some invaders fight off some other ones, maybe do a bit of genetic engineering, and it would be all cool and stuff.

But I'm realizing that it would not really be all cool, or stuff.

So...

In general, the full artificial life approach with procedural terrain, trees, and invaders is both too big and too bland. It's too big for us to finish quickly. And it doesn't have enough human interest. We've got to put the feeling in it, the fantasy, the thing that makes it worthwhile to participate in the experience.

It's too big in a lot of ways, but the main problem is artificial intelligence - how the invaders behave. Adopt an Invader is an elegant design because the core behavior of all the invaders is the same - a simple flying, shooting ship. Additional behaviors and personality, like dropping goodies or flying in a certain pattern, are manually added by the players. Computers do what they're good at, and the players do what they're good at. Everyone's happy.

The problem with this approach is technology. We can't make Adopt an Invader right now, since we don't have time or resources to set up a database-driven web site. But we could incorporate the core idea into a single player game. That is, take generic invaders and manually add personality to them through playing the game.

It's like Pokemon. But instead of collecting the creatures so you can fight better, you collect them so you can start building onto them. Not physically, but mentally, in terms of behavior. Each invader is like a base for your LEGO pieces.

Now you have a goal - find and acquire invaders to build on, as well as the raw materials with which to build. And now we can start turning this into an addictive loop. And so now we're getting somewhere, with this game design.

We'll see where this idea takes us. Both brontosaurus and I like creating things, so hopefully we can turn the process of creating itself into a game. Creating, as well as collecting things with which to create, that is. It's a lot like what we're doing right now - collecting inspiration art, trying to build on that to create a game. We'll see. :)

Any thoughts?

walking along...

Game Idea Giveaway - Lava Land

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by freelanceflashgames:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  Something fairly simple and easy to code, yet fun. The game would probably feature achievements and upgrades, but it isn't required.
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  To make a good game that will be different from others and people will have fun playing.
  

• what games you've made already
  whack-a-mole, a sort of falling game, an unfinished platformer, unfinished climbing sort of game, and pong
  

• your favorite Flash games
  Onslaught 2, amorphous +, hedgehog launch, the last stand, bubble tanks 2, fancy pants, bowmaster prelude are just some that I could think of.
  

• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Good game design, decent programming, pretty good art, and alright at finding sounds.
  

• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
  I'd say most is art, then programming and game design. I can't make my own sounds, so I usually go looking for them.

The weird idea: Garden Chomp

The normal idea: Lava Land


In short, this idea is a simple arcade collection game (like Pac-Man) on a shifting field of lava. You are a little guy running around on the field of molten lava. Your goal is to collect the crystals that form as the lava cools, without getting burned by the rock-meltingly high temperatures underfoot.

It's basically an enhanced version of Acid Rain, a game I made several years ago for the TI-83 graphing calculator. It's what the game always wanted to be, freed from the limitations of the calculator's tiny screen and slow processor.

The focus of the game is on the environment, and how it changes. The entire map is a 2.5D isometric grid of tiles, and fits on one screen, without scrolling. Each tile has a height and a temperature. Cool temperatures mean that a tile is solid rock, safe to walk on, while hot temperatures mean molten lava.

Blobs of molten lava constantly rain down from the sky, as if spewed out by a nearby volcano. Each blob lands on a random tile, raising its height with the added material and raising its temperature to molten levels. Molten lava will quickly cool and harden to become rock, but you don't want to be standing on it while you wait for that to happen. Sometimes a blob will cool and turn into a crystal instead. When that happens, you can walk onto that tile to harvest the crystal.

The net effect of all these blobs raining down is to continually raise the height of the lava field, forming an interesting landscape of peaks and valleys. To compensate for this (we can't make things too easy) the whole field is also sinking at a constant rate. All tiles sink gradually, and when their height drops to the lowest level, they go permanently molten, submerged in lava. Of course, they can be raised up again if a new blob falls from the sky.

The fun of the game is in making your way through this shifting landscape, avoiding danger and plotting your path to the crystals that pop up. All you do is move, with the arrow keys or the mouse, and jump, with the space bar or the mouse button. To collect a crystal or a powerup, just move onto it. Your protective suit gets damaged when you touch a molten hot tile - the hotter it is, the more damage it does. If your suit gets damaged too much, you lose the game.

That's pretty much it. It's meant to be a simple game, like something you might find on Orisinal. There are a number of details you could add, like crystals of different types and rarity, shields that recharge, a time limit, powerups, upgrades, or achievements. But that's up to you. Attractive artwork and well-tweaked numbers will be important for this game, as well as making sure the controls are easy to use. I'd be glad to help advise on the design once you've gotten something going. Let me know. :)

Want an idea? Make a request on The Game Idea Giveaway Thread!

Active Sketch 01 - Invaders

An update! :D

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm going indie.

And for my first project, I'm working with the artist brontosaurus to make a game showcasing his unique blend of pixel art and intriguing world design. In order to make the most effective use of his talents, we are trying to make developing a game as much as possible like doodling random pictures.

This means that we're creating little sketches in code, implementing one concept at a time in order to mix and match them into, hopefully, a cool game. We talk about our ideas, brontosaurus creates some concept art, and then I take the art and try to turn it into something procedural.

We're calling these procedural things Active Sketches, and I've just released my first one.

Active Sketch 01 - Invaders

This is just a tool to generate a bunch of random space invaders, based on the invader fractal. It's amazing what the human brain will do with bilateral symmetry. :p

It's fun though. You can find some nice pixelated images quickly with this thing. Need help creating sprites for your new graphing calculator game? Just set the dimensions to 8x8 and click Generate until you find some that you like.

Next up - fractal invaders, colored invaders, procedural trees...







Ahh, trees.

Going Indie

I've graduated, left my old job, and now guess what...

I'm going indie! :D

I'll be making my own Flash games full-time, finally.

I'll be using this as an opportunity to experiment and learn - about design, about programming, about collaboration, and about monetization. And I'll be focusing on rapid development cycles, to learn as much as I can in a short period of time.

As the great Daniel Cook once said,

Experience comes from finishing multiple times. By doing shorter projects, you get more finishes under your belt.

Starting projects is easy. Getting into production is easy. Spending other people's money is easy.

It is only when you go beyond that to wrapping up a project and trying to make money does reality hit and strong lessons are learned.

This is really an opportunity to put many of my ideas to the test - not only game ideas, but ideas about process and how to do things. I'm especially eager to test some ideas about using micropayments and metrics in online games.

To start with, I'm working on a project with brontosaurus, a talented pixel artist and map designer. We're trying out a new process for "doodling" a game, one piece at a time. Every day, brontosaurus will come up with a new concept, like a procedural tree, or a movement animation, and the next day I try to implement it in code. We're hoping that this will allow us to organically build a game out of pieces, and quickly try out ideas, in a similar way to how you might create something spontaneously awesome by doodling.

You can expect to see updates soon. :D

Wish me luck! ;)

Notes on 21st Century Game Design

I thought I'd post a quick summary of the player model presented in the book 21st Century Game Design, by Chris Bateman. He has since come out with a new player model, but the old one is still interesting to think about.

If you want to learn more about the book, you can read the review on Lost Garden.

In this model, the audience is grouped into four types of players:

• Conquerors care about Challenge
• Managers care about Mechanics
• Wanderers care about Worlds
• Participants care about People

The system is based on the Myers-Briggs personality types:

• Purpose- where you get your energy
  Introverted (I) - long sessions
  Extroverted (E) - short sessions
  
  
• Learning - how you process information
  Intuitive (N) - hardcore
  Sensate (S) - casual
  
  
• Motivation - how you make decisions
  Thinking (T) - competition
  Feeling (F) - simulation
  
  
• Structure - how you manage your time
  Judging (J) - goals
  Perceiving (P) - process
  

The four player types are defined in these terms:

• Conqueror (TJ) - competition (T) and goals (J)
  
• Manager (TP) - competition (T) and process (P)
  
• Wanderer (FP) - simulation (F) and process (P)
  
• Participant (FJ) - simulation (F) and goals (J)
  

There are also four types of skills:

• Strategic (NT) - think ahead, invent, coordinate others
• Diplomatic (NF) - resolve conflicts, find similarities
• Logistical (SJ) - meet needs, organize, optimize
• Tactical (SP) - read the situation, take action

The four player types prefer using certain skills:

• Conqueror (TJ) - strategic (NT) and logistical (SJ)
  
• Manager (TP) - strategic (NT) and tactical (SP)
  
• Wanderer (FP) - diplomatic (NF) and tactical (SP)
  
• Participant (FJ) - diplomatic (NF) and logistical (SJ)
  

Hardcore and casual players also prefer certain skills:

• Hardcore (N) - strategic (NT) and diplomatic (NF)
• Casual (S) - tactical (SP) and logistical (SJ)

I've been finding it interesting to analyze my own game ideas in terms of what play styles and skills they support.

For example, I came up with a way for Adopt an Invader to cater to all four player types in this model - conquerors, managers, wanderers, and participants. And in doing so, I realized that trying to appeal to all four types would make the design much too big and ambitious to actually create. So I decided to focus on the conquerors and participants, and make the experience as enjoyable as possible for those two types.

In case you're wondering, my favorite style of play is probably that of the Wanderer, which makes sense, given that I also tend to prefer Explorer and Seeker play. I tend to care more about the overall experience and fun than about competition and challenge, and I like to focus on the process instead of worrying too much about goals. But in real life, I am extremely goal-oriented. Which is interesting. :)

However, these player types are not clear-cut boundaries. They are fuzzy generalizations about the average behavior of large groups of people. As the book says, "The four play types are not mutually exclusive; one or more can be enjoyed by each individual player."

Just keep that in mind and you'll be fine. ;) I hope you have as much fun as I have digesting this new player model! :)

Quotes of Eastern Wisdom

Doesn't that sound corny? Eastern wisdom? Almost as bad as saying Wisdom of the East. Horrible.

Anyway, last year I had one of those calendars where you get a quote every day, and it was called Wisdom of the East. Surprisingly enough, there were a few good quotes in there - which I saved so I could read them again every so often. I thought I'd share them with you here.

Who knows if you'll get anything out of them, but they are actually meaningful to me. Here we go!

"Praying is not about asking; it's about
listening... It is just opening your eyes to
see what was there all along."

- Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche


"If your desires do not accord with
your spirit, sacrifice them, and you will
come to the end of your journey."

- Attar


"Do not dwell in the past.
Do not dream of the future.
Concentrate the mind on the
present moment."

- Buddha


"Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit."

- Kahlil Gibran


"To get rid of your passions is not
nirvana - to look upon them as
no matter of yours, that is nirvana."

- Zen saying


"Whatever you want to be, start to
develop that pattern now. You can instill
any trend in your consciousness right
now, provided you inject a strong
thought in your mind; then your actions
and whole being will obey that thought."

- Paramahansa Yogananda


"You are unique as you are here and now.
You are never the same.
You will never be the same again.
You have never before been what
you are now. You will never be it again."

- Swami Prajnanpad


"The resistance to the unpleasant
situation is the root of suffering."

- Ram Dass


"...don't make any conjectures on good
and evil! Don't try to stop your thoughts
from coming. Ask yourself only this
question: 'Which is my own spirit?'"

- Bassui


"Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of
plain living and high thinking the moment
he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment."

- Mahatma Gandhi

One at a time.

The Story of the Mountain Climber

Over the past few weeks, I've realized that I enjoy working in the domain that I have become fluent in, but find it frustrating to untangle a new, unfamiliar system while simultaneously trying to build something with it. I like exploring permutations and connections, rather than untangling difficult puzzles. And I am able to focus much better and use my time more productively when I am doing something I like.

And all of this has helped me realize that I don't want to be a game programmer. I want to be a game designer.

I like to explain this in terms of the Explorer and the Achiever player type. I am an Explorer (or Seeker). Programming, or engineering in general, tends to be most rewarding for Achievers, not Explorers. Achievers feel a rush of pleasure and energy when they finally solve a difficult challenge. I, on the other hand, tend to feel relief rather than excitement. What I like is the part that comes afterward.

Here's a little story to help visualize the situation.

Imagine climbing a mountain. I'm part of a team of engineers, laboriously lugging a heavy load of code up the mountainside. It's hard going, and we have to keep our heads down, focus on keeping a solid footing, freeing our load from snags, climbing over or around the boulders in our way. All the while, we have to stay coordinated and make sure the whole team is making steady progress up the mountain. Our determination and caffeinated beverages keep us going.

But I tire of this more quickly than my companions, and often turn to look out, away from the rocks and mud and out to the valley below. Something about this valley excites me, in a way the challenges of the mountain never could. But I turn back, grudgingly, to my teammates who still depend on me to carry my share of the load.

Eventually, finally, we reach the summit. Cries of triumph can be heard from all around, and a jubilant energy fills the air. I, too, am excited - now, with all that hard work and preparation out of the way we can finally begin! I look out across the magnificent vista spreading before my eyes and the terrain comes alive with plans and possibilities. I see empires rise and fall, resources flow and networks grow.

Then, I turn back to see my fellow engineers putting the last load of code into place, heaped atop the mountain, waiting for the designers who will be arriving tomorrow morning. Time to head back down! We'd better be on our way if we want to reach the next mountain in time!

Wait a minute - we're leaving already? The fun part was just about to start. No - but the others have already started down the mountain, caffeinated beverages in hand. Can't wait to conquer the next challenge. I turn to follow, reluctantly, with one last wistful glance over the vista that had so captivated me earlier.

Just another day in the life of an engineer.

Achievers get a big rush of pleasure upon reaching the top of a mountain. The bigger and more difficult the mountain, the bigger the rush. Explorers, like myself, enjoy looking out from the top of a mountain onto the world below. Just drink it in. Getting to the top isn't pleasurable in itself, it just means that the fun can finally begin.

The more patterns, the more connections, the more fun. That's what being an Explorer is all about.

I guess that should give me an edge in the next Casual Gameplay Design Competition. The theme is EXPLORE! ;)

BrainHex - A New Player Model

You know Richard Bartle's four player types - like Achiever, Explorer, Killer, and Socializer?

Well, I just found out about a new player model being tested right now, from Chris Bateman, author of 21st Century Game Design.

It's better, because it has seven player types instead of four! :p

But seriously, I like it. I think it has the right amount of detail to be descriptive, while also being simple enough to easily grasp and use. And it's supposed to be based on neurobiology, more or less.

Thus, it is called BrainHex. Yay! :D

What's it good for? One useful benefit is, if you're making a game with a team of other people, you can more easily anticipate arguments about the design if you know the type of each team member. You can predict what biases each person will have, and what sort of design decisions they'll be more inclined to support.

Even if you're working on your own, it can help you understand what sort of games you'll be better at designing. What sort of fun do you get out of games? That's probably the kind of fun you'll know how to make.

Plus it's fun to find out what type you are, in a silly kind of astrology way. You know.

You can take this really quick survey to find out your player type.

I'm a Seeker. A Seeker-Socialiser, to be precise. :)

"You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as hanging around with people you trust and helping people."

That means I'm a cat and a dolphin. :)

That there's an iconic representation of my hippocampus and hypothalamus. Apparently my favorite parts of my brain. :) Endomorphin and oxytocin for the win! :D

I always knew I was the Explorer type. But I'm also very introverted, so until I took this test, I never seriously suspected that I could also be a Socializer. But I am. I derive great pleasure from cultivating connections and collaborating with talented awesome cool people. And realizing this is an eye-opener for me. I feel liberated at last! :D

When I first posted about this on the Mochi forum, I found that a lot of developers there are either Conquerors or Masterminds, or both. I wonder why that is.

What are you?

Find out and let us know! :D

Zero Punctuation Interactive

I've been watching Zero Punctuation reviews. What are those? "A short experimental film in which I attempt to make a video using only recorded speech and static images." Like this.

I saw that a Zero Punctuation contest has been announced, with really poor terms - basically, they own everything you submit, and you get nothing, except maybe some publicity, if you happen to be the one winner.

However, I am inexplicably intrigued by Zero Punctuation, and would really like to come up with a way to combine its "static images" and "recorded speech" in an interactive format. Like a game. Recorded speech wouldn't make sense directly in a game, but the still images, as conceptual, pictographic communication kind of like comics, could have a lot of interesting potential.

I just don't know how. A game where you compose images for a review? A game where you are a character inside a review? How do you translate the experience from the linear format into something interactive? Magic crayons? Miniature gardens?

The recorded speech is what you create in your head, your train of thought, while interacting with the static images. Static images are to animation as what is to games? Animation is essentially many still images strung together in sequence, but Zero Punctuation slows it way down, down to the bare minimum. Hmm.

You put those images together in space, rather than time, and you have comics. Instead of recorded speech, you have text. But you also have the reader's mind filling in the gaps. You have the viewer filling in the gaps in Zero Punctuation, too. And the way the images play off the speech, and the way the mind bounces between them gives it a certain flavor that is very interesting. How do you describe that dynamic? How do you recreate it in a game?

Back to animation and static images. What are games made of, if animations are made of static images? Choices? "A series of interesting choices." But what happens if you slow those down - are we back to text adventures here? Whatever happened to information density?

But in Zero Punctuation, it's all about the timing. Comedy is about timing, animation is about timing, and Zero Punctuation is about comedy. The images in Zero Punctuation aren't slower versions of normal animations - in fact, they feel faster. They cut out the slow stuff, the stuff that makes things feel detailed and coherent, and it still feels good. It feels unique, it has its own style.

It suggests, connotes, implies detail like digital speedpainting. It does not elaborate. What is the equivalent for games? In terms of pace I'm thinking WarioWare or any number of Flash clones. But what would it look like to have these compressed choices, only the important or amusing stuff, maybe random and incoherent, but always contributing to the pace and feel if not the plot or the main goal?

What would it look like? How could you make a game like that?

Game Idea Giveaway Resurrected

Remember The Game Idea Giveaway Thread from earlier this year? I'm about to start a new round of giveaways, in the hopes of filling all the remaining requests I missed on the first round.

So far, 13 developers have requested an idea.

There are 8 requests left to fill, with 15 ideas.

If each one takes 3 hours (an estimate based on my previous idea giveaways) that's a total of 45 hours I'll have to spend to fill all these requests. You better appreciate it! ;)

Status Summary

• venomblood: Bubblebomb, Selexion
• kcaz_rel: Monk Tactics, Paint Physics
• Mini Chris: Swan Song, Bacon Frenzy
• Oknavi: Drifter
• Incrue: Pique
• freelanceflashgames: Lava Land, Garden Chomp
• TobiHeidi: Gridslime, Random Lulz
• triqui: City Basher, Bonobeans
• IvyGames: Randori, Salmon Song
• FullerGames: Tumblestack, Collink
• rudy_sudarto: City of Reeds
• kokosan: Freetrace, Prejudice
• Cam: Can Has Cake, Knives'n'Candy

Looking forward to getting this stuff done... Let's hope I don't get any more requests in the meantime! :p

Yet More Intriguing Ideas

These will probably be the last new ideas I post for a while. Hope you enjoy them:

2009/07/14
A game where all magic is created by playing music. You have a flute that creates different magical effects depending on what note is playing as a drone in the background. Flutes in different keys would interact differently with the same drone. You can supply your own drone, but more powerful would be to use a drone that is already sounding in the background, like the electric hum of a generator, or the rushing sound of a waterfall. In a mechanical or steampunk world, droning sounds would be easy to find.

2009/03/30
A game about visual hierarchy, where you can create, modify, and arrange graphic elements in order to achieve certain goals about the way a viewer would look at the composition. Different elements might draw attention more strongly, or hold attention longer, or direct the flow of attention in different ways. It could make a good puzzle game. People could play it to learn graphic design.

2009/03/07
A game about software development, but abstracted, so you are building a system of interacting parts to accomplish some goal. You may add pieces to it, and you may factor out identical or similar components. These pieces would most likely be physical shapes that link together rather than actual code. You may also reorganize or refactor the system to make it possible to factor out more pieces. There is a tension between adding more, for short-term benefit, and refactoring, which is better in the long run.

2009/03/03
A game where you can snake around as if controlling one end of Noby Noby Boy. But you also want to come back to your center, your foundation, so that you can move your center instead of just getting caught up in your head and hands. There is a tension there between continuing to snake around and collect stuff and deal with stuff, and taking the time to come back to your center and move from there, to reset.

2009/03/01
A game where you are a small aquatic creature dwelling near the surface of a small pond, perhaps an artificial pond or pool in a garden.You spend your time close to the edges of the pond, as the open water in the center is more dangerous to you. The water is dark, but full not empty, and its depths are warm and reassuring. Sometimes it rains, rippling the surface and bringing colder water to the pond. It is always overcast. The surface colors are black and shiny gray, turning to orange and brown below and at the edges, the color of the soil and water. On land are the muted grays, browns, and greens of winter plants and stone.

Yay. Let me know if you have any thoughts to share about these ideas. :)

Several Intriguing Ideas

More ideas? Yes, indeed! I'd like to share with you several intriguing gems I've recently unearthed from my idea notebook:

2009/07/12
A game about guerrilla gardening, where you collect seeds and construct seed bombs. You would go on bombing runs where you try to turn vacant lots into gardens or break open pavement by putting certain kinds of seeds in the cracks. Like a collectible card game, it would support a variety of play styles that would appeal to different kinds of people. But instead of collecting cards, you collect different types of seeds, and instead of building decks, you strategically construct seed balls, and instead of dueling, you go out and try to plant your 'bombs' without getting caught. The concept also makes use of a slowly evolving world that changes as the plants grow, much like a turn-based strategy game such as Civilization. I think it could really fun.

2009/07/02
Try making a physics-based strategy game that derives its gameplay and complexity from the basic physical rules rather than a complicated set of components and interactions. The purpose of this approach would be to make the game intuitive enough to pick up and play without a tutorial, which is very difficult for the typical RTS.

2009/05/26
A game to help you notice the weather and how it changes. In this game the weather would have a big impact on the gameplay. Your character could be warmed up by the sun, or rained on, or snowed on. There would be a sort of 2D map of clouds blown around by the wind, so if you look up into the sky and see which way the wind is blowing, you can predict what sort of weather will be coming your way.

2009/05/17
An art tool where you manipulate shapes or direct streams of particles, but instead of choosing options and colors with a toolbar, there are 'seeds' that appear. You can either ignore these seeds or cultivate them and use them as new colors or shapes in your drawing. There would be a sort of genetic algorithm at work, where new seeds would appear based on existing elements on the screen, while neglected seeds fade away. The idea is kind of similar to the way that new goo balls are actually crawling around on the structure itself in World of Goo, not in a menu.

Like the sound of these? Let me know what you think! :)

I especially like the first one, about guerrilla gardening, and I'll probably try to make it into a real game some day. Let me know if you want to help.

A Few More Interesting Ideas

Did you like the ideas from last time? Here are a few more ideas from my idea notebook:

2009/06/19
A game where you are a janitor at a big, explorable place with interesting characters. Cleaning would be made into a fun, satisfying activity, so you go around doing your job and end up seeing a lot of different places and characters. As you explore, you encounter all these different stories that you can observe or ignore or interact with, that arise from the characters you encounter and the larger situation itself. Like in Spirited Away. Or a place like Hogwarts, or the hospital in Scrubs, even. I'd really like play a game like that.

2009/06/14
Web startups seem to be obsessed with metrics and analytics to direct their efforts. It's a lot like the feedback in games telling you what works and what doesn't. Why not make a Web 2.0 startup game based around developing a business around these metrics? Usually in a game the feedback tells you one specific thing, or leads you to some specific understanding, but what if instead each new game had different feedback rules, like a random map? Then you're not simply learning one particular model through the feedback, you're learning a general strategy for how to use metrics and listen and adapt to feedback.

2009/05/09
A game about eating your cake and having it too, where you must eat cake to survive, but your social status is based on how much cake you have accumulated. Then there could be a special powerup that lets you eat cake while having it too, for a limited amount of time.

2009/03/16
A game or environment sketch where some people are walking by, on a street perhaps or in a variety of environments. But you can only see them from the knees down, only the lower legs and feet. The challenge is to make the walkers as expressive as possible within this limited representation. One effective way to differentiate between characters could be size, like a parent and child. More interesting could be using differences in dress or gait to distinguish between the characters.

2009/03/07
A game where all each person is rendered as a single sketchy line, redrawn each frame or so to show the gesture and pose of the person without necessarily showing what they look like. The line would be more or less straight, not looping around, and usually tracing a path from the head to one toe.

Just a few random ideas. :p

What do you think? Let me know if you want to try making or collaborating on one of these ideas. I'd like to hear from you. :)

A Handful of Interesting Ideas

I keep an idea notebook, which I make sure to write in every day. Sometimes I come up with some interesting ideas for games. Here are a few I thought I'd share:

2009/07/03
A story or game about someone who is used to living lightly and is very self-sufficient, who finds a child or animal and chooses to care for it. That could result in some interesting tensions, where one's way of living has been optimized for solitary life, and then must suddenly change to accommodate another. It could be interesting as a minimal game like Passage or Gravitation. Another interesting twist could occur when for some reason it is time to give up the child, and discover what it's like to go back to solitude, or create a new lifestyle.

2009/06/29
A game about freedom and proactivity and breaking out of the control of the game itself, based on the idea that you should "vote with your money." It could be a shooter where you can buy upgrades and such, but the money you spend goes to whatever faction that is selling the item. Different factions control and deploy enemy ships, and the more money they have, the more powerful they are and the more the other factions seek to imitate them. It could be a genetic algorithm influenced by your spending choices. When you first start the game, it seems that you have no choices, where one wrong move means instant death. But you can slowly expand your circle of influence by spending your money wisely.

2009/06/26
An iPhone game to promote basic visual awareness, where you choose a color for the day, and try to notice all occurrences of that color as you go about your activities. When you see the color, you show it to the iPhone's camera to have it counted toward your score. The more the better. Difficulty could be varied by changing the threshold for detecting equivalent colors. The more precise you have to be, the harder it is.

2009/06/22
An audio-only game where there are objects positioned along a horizontal line, whose positions can be determined by the stereo sounds they make. You could move a turret left and right and shoot, like Space Invaders. Your turret and all projectiles would make sounds also, so you can track where they are and get a feel for how the sound and input map to the virtual space. Distance could be represented by volume. Maybe even pitch and texture and other things could play a role, in the background. It could be a full shooter in sound, without graphics. Maybe it could be made musical, to be like music with meaning. And when you upgrade your weapons or your turret, they would sound cooler than before!

Any thoughts? I particularly like the "vote with your money" game and the audio-only shooter. Maybe I'll have a chance to make them sometime. Let me know if you want to use the ideas yourself - maybe we can collaborate!

More cool ideas on the way! :)

The Coming Revolution in Flash Games

This will be our manifesto. Daniel Cook of Lost Garden has just posted the first installment of his epic Flash Love Letter, an attempt to provide an answer for why Flash game development, despite its amazing potential, fails to produce awesome, world-changing games. And of course, a plan to get Flash games back on track.

"I think that you, Flash game developers, are some of the most talented and inspirational people working today in game development. Your passion for building games burns so incredibly brightly. Your ability to quickly make and distribute games is second to none. You hold immense potential to transform the future of games."

The first part is about making money with Flash games. A popular subject these days. When developers can't make a living making Flash games, there's going to be a lot fewer people making games, and a lot fewer good games out there. So, why don't Flash games make much money, and how can we change that?

"There is one obvious fact: the entire flash ecosystem is driven by low quality advertising. Piddling amounts of ad money flows into the developer's pocket through a variety of obfuscated middlemen."

Daniel Cook is definitely in favor of just asking players for money, instead of getting them to click on ads. It's easier than you'd think! And it pays a lot better than ads. You might even be able to make a living off of it.

"When game developers ask for money, they are usually pleasantly surprised. Their customers give them money; in some cases, substantial amounts."

"Many Flash developers insist on giving away everything for free. Stop devaluing your work and start creating a premium offer."

"We live in a capitalist society so people understand the concept of buying something. Don't ask for a donation. Don't ask players to 'give you what they feel like giving.' People will think you are a charity case and in my experience your revenues will drop by 90% or more. Give the offer a specific price, be it $10 or 200 gold in your favorite virtual currency."

So how do you actually get the money? On the subject of payment providers and portals, Daniel Cook has some advice, and some excellently developer-centric opinions...

"A payment provider should be a reliable commodity service, not a major business partner."

"The ideal payment service is one with low margins, low switching costs, no branding and APIs that let you cheaply and easily tie into generic, developer controlled login and storage services."

"The market is highly fragmented (30,000 portals!) and no portal owns more than 5% of the players. At this point in the market, developers have the ability to walk away from the greedy minority. Suggest reasonable terms where portal keep their existing ad revenue and you keep all in game revenue. If they balk, leave the bastards to rot."

Oh snap! Take that, portals! ;)

The most important takeaway from Part 1 is this:

"If you make a great game played for hours on end by millions of people, you deserve to be paid. Stop worrying about how people 'might' react. Ask a fair price for the value that you provide."

Can't wait for Part 2. :D

Ten Ways to Monetize Your Flash Game

I'd love to be able to make Flash games for a living. But the way things are right now, only the biggest success stories are able to sustain themselves on Flash alone. The rest of us must approach Flash game development as a hobby, on the side of school or work.

Part of the problem is that while Flash games are amazingly popular, there are very limited opportunities to actually make money from them. The vast majority of Flash games make money through ads or sponsorships or both. Originally, sponsorship was the main way for developers to make money, through sites such as Armor Games. Then in-game advertising became widespread, with the emergence of easy-to-use services like MochiAds. But so far, few games have succeeded in taking the next step - taking money from the actual players.

Lately I've been doing a lot of research into how games can make money, particularly Flash games. I've come across some very intriguing new monetization models, including some that have been successful in other games but have not yet been widely applied to Flash. I'd like to share what I've found, and hopefully inspire you to try some of these new strategies in your own games.

Before we get started though, this guy has one piece of advice for you: decide on your monetization model before you make the game! When you know how you're going to make money, you can design your game from the ground up to support your decision. It's a lot harder to tweak an existing game. Just think of monetization as just another component of your design, along with interface, progression, gameplay, graphics, and so on.

As this guy says, again,

"New monetization models open up new design possibilities."

You should be excited. This is exciting. New ways to make money equals new stuff to design.

Let's get started.

1. Advertising model

This is the most common way to monetize a Flash game. You can put ads in the loading screen of your game with services such as MochiAds or CPMStar, or just stick the game in a web page and put Google AdSense around it. You get money based on how many times these ads are viewed, so the more people playing your game, the better.

With ads embedded in the loading screen, you'll get money whenever your game is viewed, no matter what site it's on. If you have your own web page ads, these will only give you money when people play the game on your site, though they usually pay more per view.

2. Sponsorship model

Another common way to make money is to have your game sponsored. This means that a game portal, such as Kongregate, will pay you to put their logo in your game along with a link to their site. This helps bring more visitors to the portal site, which means that they get to make more money from their own web page ads.

Sponsorships are a good way to get a lot of money upfront, but you can only sell one sponsorship per game, and often your sponsor will not let you put your own ads in the game. This arrangement is called an "exclusive" sponsorship, because you can only have one sponsor. But other options are gaining in popularity, such as the primary sponsorship, where you still have one primary sponsor, but you are also allowed to sell restricted licenses to other websites.

3. Licensing model

This brings us to the next monetization model, licensing. Here, a game portal will pay you to make a special version of your game with their logo in it, and maybe connect up with their high score system. They will then host this special version on their site, but you are free to use a different version when putting your game on other websites. It's site-locked and non-exclusive. That means that you can sell separate licenses to a bunch of different websites, and make money from each one.

Individual licenses bring in less money than a typical sponsorship, but they are much more flexible, and they add up. You can combine them with advertising, with primary sponsorships, or both. You can also combine them with hosting a version on your own website.

4. Portal model

How can game portals afford to spend so much money sponsoring and licensing games? They must make even more money somehow, and that somehow is through web page ads. Some say that the best way to make money is to make your own website and host your game there. Lock the game to your site so no one else can steal it, and put some AdSense around it. Then spread the word about your game and hope it becomes popular.

If you don't have enough games of your own to keep people on your site, you can easily add other games with the MochiAds Publisher service. There are a number of tutorials out there explaining how to build your own portal. Here's one of them. This may help too. You can then sponsor your own games, by putting your logo in them with a link to your site. It may take more work, but the payoff can be greater than simply getting a sponsorship with an existing portal.

5. Premium model

Now here's where things get interesting. The methods we've discussed are all very indirect - your money comes from advertisers or portals. But now let's talk about taking money directly from your players.

The premium model means that you make a free game, and then you sell some extra, premium content to players who want more. This approach is slowly catching on, from an early, well-documented experiment with Drunken Masters, to the more recent success of Fantastic Contraption, making over a hundred thousand dollars in premium content sales. If you can make a game that's as good as Fantastic Contraption, and it makes sense to charge for extra features like a level editor, then selling premium content directly to players can be much more lucrative than advertising or licensing alone.

Just keep in mind that there is a very delicate balance between how much of the game you make available for free, and how much you reserve for paying players. If you are charging money for an experience that people could get for free somewhere else, then you will not be successful. But if the premium content doesn't feel valuable and 'premium' enough, few people will choose to buy it. This article suggests that you make the most popular parts free, so more people will try it out and like it, and only charge for specialized, niche content that very dedicated players will want. Advertising will pay for the free players.

And don't be afraid to charge a lot. Make the extra content worth it. Drunken Masters charged $1.50 for its premium content. Fantastic Contraption charged $10. Which do you think made more money? The hard part is getting players to pay at all. The difference between paying a dollar and paying ten is very little, once you've got your credit card out. Make your game worth ten, and ask for as much as you can.

6. Subscription model

So you've gotten your players to pay for premium content. But they're only paying you once. Wouldn't you rather have them pay you again and again and again? That's what subscriptions are all about - recurring revenue. Make premium content and special features only available to players who pay every month.

But hardly any Flash games are meant to be played for more than a month. If you want to get into subscriptions and really make some money, you need a different kind of Flash game, one that players can invest in, with their time and money, and feel like they are accomplishing something worthwhile. By far the easiest way to create this sort of feeling is to build a community around the game. Social bonds connect a game to reality, and can make a mediocre experience much more compelling.

This doesn't necessarily mean multiplayer, but if you want community, there has to be some way for players to interact with each other, whether that is by sharing custom-made levels or racing in real time. And there must be some form of persistent, saved data from the game that players can build up over time. Achievements and high scores are simple examples of this. But for the subscription model, you will need something more significant, such as a virtual world, customizable characters, or an in-game economy. You provide this larger context where the gameplay means something, and you charge money every month for players to get in.

But how much do you charge? If you set the price too high, some players might just give up and play something else. If you set the price too low, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. But there's an alternative! Make the basic game free, the same way you would when selling premium content, and then have several "stackable" levels of subscription that players can buy. Maybe if players buy the first level subscription, they get access to some special clubhouse but they also get twice as many coins from playing the game as a free player would. Then players who pay twice as much and buy the second level of subscription get four times as many coins, and so on. Let players spend as much or as little as they want!

7. Micropayment model

This philosophy reaches its extreme in the micropayment or microtransaction model, where the game is largely free to play, but players can also spend real money in the game to buy special items. The way it usually works is that there are at least two different currencies in the game world: one earned by playing the game, and one that players get by putting in real money. Some items can be bought solely with currency earned in the game, and some can only be bought by spending real money currency.

You must be very careful when designing for this monetization model, or else free players will feel cheated when their skill and effort is thwarted by someone who simply paid to get ahead. For this reason, micropayment games often sell only decorative items for real money, and require players to earn the items that give them an advantage over other players. This works if there is a strong social component to the game. But in a cooperative game, players like it when someone else pays for a powerful item, because it will help them out too! Take a look at this article if you want a more detailed discussion of the design considerations involved.

If you're going to make a micropayment-based game you're going to need some sort of payment system, so players can spend money in the game. Fortunately, there are a number of payment providers all ready to be plugged into your virtual economy. Gambit is one example. But if you're looking for something even easier to integrate, a bunch of new virtual currencies have popped up for Flash recently. If you don't mind sharing your currency with other games, one of these might be the right choice for you.

8. Rental model

This model is crazy. It's a variation on the micropayment model, but adapted for a highly skill-based competitive style of game, such as the first-person shooter Combat Arms. In the rental model, you earn points and use them to buy items, but as the name implies, these items only last for a limited amount of time before they expire and you have to buy another one. Because players always return to the same baseline of power as their items expire, these rental items can provide significant gameplay enhancements without making the game feel too unfair.

You could allow players to pay real money for these items directly, but to make the game feel more fair you can instead let players spend real money on enhancements that help them earn points faster. That way everyone still has to play and earn their way through the game, but players who pay won't have to work quite as hard. And of course this can be combined with a more typical micropayment approach, selling purely cosmetic items for real money.

The advantage of the rental model is that players will keep buying the same items over and over again, so you can produce a smaller set of items than you would if players were buying a different item everyday like they might in a typical micropayment game. It also makes it feasible to charge lower prices for a given item, since each player will buy it more than once. Overall, the rental model may prove to be the most appropriate for a multiplayer game too small to justify a subscription or a huge number of items to sell.

9. Ransom model

If integrating a real money currency system and creating a bunch of items for your game seems like too much work, you could always just hold your game for ransom. In this model, you set the amount of money that you want to get from the game, and then you don't release your game until you've received that amount in donations. Once you release the game, though, it's free for everyone. And if you want to be nice, you could refund everyone for their donation if your ransom isn't met. This is called a threshold pledge.

The nice thing about this is that you don't really have to do any extra work. Just start making a free game and get donations for it. There's a nice little site called Kickstarter that takes care of all the details for you. Of course, you have to have enough of a reputation that you can get a bunch of people to pay you to release your game in the first place. It probably won't make you rich, but if you can attract enough support it could be perfect for small projects.

10. Patronage model

Last but not least, we have the patronage model. Like the ransom model, it is based on donations. But here, people are encouraged to donate larger amounts in exchange for exclusive and personalized recognition. A recent example of this is the donation system Daniel Benmergui set up with the release of his artistic game Today I Die. If you donate a certain amount, you get your name in the credits of his next game. If you donate one hundred dollars, you'll get a poster of one of his games with the characters replaced by whoever you want. And the first person to donate a thousand dollars gets to choose the characters and a new ending for a custom version of the game. Judging by the donation page, the game has brought in at least two thousand dollars in donations so far.

The key here is to make the people who donate, the patrons, feel special. People will pay more because they've gotten something unique and personalized. This approach requires that you give a lot of attention to your fans, and that you can attract enough of them, first of all. If you want to be an artist, and you are prepared to cultivate one thousand true fans, patronage may be the best option for you.

Want to learn more about making money from Flash games? Have a look at some of these other articles on the subject. Let me know if you have anything to add!

Update:
The ultimate treatise on Flash game monetization has arrived, in the form of Daniel Cook's Flash Love Letters! Make sure to read both Part 1 and Part 2. Oh, and don't miss the music video, either! ;)

If you like those, check out Cash Cow Part 1 and Part 2, an excellent set of articles on how you might put the Flash Love Letters into practice.