At 1/24/10 08:06 PM, turtleco wrote: ads
They provide light reading material

I loled :P Ads are the flyers of the internet XD

i mean obviously i suppose they ARE, i've just never really thought about it like that XD

good stuff :D

I'll pop in to inject some thoughts on the revenue stuff.

So yeah, if you run CPMStar ads through our Flash Ads system, you get the same deal that a publisher site would get working with CPMStar directly. NG gets a commission from CPMStar's profits. User pages are the same way right now - you have a single 200x200 ad and you get the same deal you would get if it was your own website. When the user pages go wide, that ad will switch to a better paying 300x250 ad and we plan to add top and bottom banners that work the same way - so user pages will actually become as profitable as running your own website.

My goal is for all user generated pages to work this way. Right now you get rev share on your Flash, Music and Art, but it only does so on the 300x250 (or 200x200 in the case of Audio and Art) ad. The long-term plan is for every ad on the page to work that way.

The bottom line is that NG can't run without ads, but I am not happy running ads unless we are a passive beneficiary of the ad revenue. Our core budget will come from places such as the front page and games page and we'll make additional commissions from the content and user pages as well as the Flash Ads system. So really, more people running Flash Ads will speed up the progress towards people earning more money from their in-page ads as well.

And then there is the common complaint that money has ruined the scene...

The problem isn't that you can make money from Flash nowadays, it's the sort of people it has attracted to the scene. The challenge for us as a community is to reward the people who have a genuine passion for their craft and ignore those who just came along to cash in with crap. This is mostly in the games space and they are usually pretty easy to spot because their games are completely devoid of personality.

Money can ultimately help the scene if it goes to the right people. A lot of great artists aren't making Flash because they have taken other jobs that keep them busy. If those guys could make more time for Flash, they would be doing more fulfilling work and probably advancing their skills more than with other jobs. Castle Crashers wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't spent years making free web games. Experience is more valuable in the long-term than any immediate paycheck, but sometimes you need that check to pay your bills while you're gaining experience.

At 1/25/10 09:47 AM, TomFulp wrote: Stuff

I still remember when flash games never made any money and we did it for love. I also remember NG's 'porn ad popup' phase that was needed to keep the site afloat.

I'm personally grateful for what it has evolved into, and hope it continues to grow this way.

I remember spending months on a game only to win 11th place in Games of Gondor contests every time. The prize money was only like 10 dollars anyways haha. but now that I need money and am no longer in public high school, it's definitely a different world when it comes to how i'm going to make the time to make money when building a portfolio and taking classes at the same time.

My first sponsorship was $25 from a Flash game site that never paid me for it. Never worked with them again.

I think my first pay was 600$, I actually felt guilty because the game was a flop. Anyway, only until very recently I didn't know NG's API pays the same percentage as CPMStar. Had I known that any sooner I would've gone with the NG Api for my last game, because in the end I'm afraid I'm the kind of ass who picks those kind of things based on the highest possible pay-out.

Beta Test Idea

Also, now that we're on the subject of games and money: I was thinking of running a little experiment. I'm working on a game that's going to be pretty gameplay centric, so I want that part to be as well-thought out as possible. I know from experience I'm quite bad at that, so I was thinking of posting updates on the game frequently so people can chip in some ideas, critique stuff etcetera. From my experience those kind of threads don't work too well, you never seem to get the amount of feedback you want, so I was thinking of making a little competition out of it. Like, when the game's finished the three most constructive people win $50 or something, to make it worth their while. I've been thinking about doing something like that for the past day or so. Think it would work? Be a good idea? Yay/nay?

At 1/25/10 12:21 PM, Xeptic wrote: Beta Test Idea

Think it would work? Be a good idea? Yay/nay?

you could probably contact friends on AIM/MSN or PM for free and get them to test the game. just tell them to say whatever they want, positive or negative and that you're accepting any type of criticism. (so they're not bias). by that point you could probably release a demo to newgrounds and then get feedback from reviewers. then release the final version after getting more private feedback?

At 1/25/10 12:21 PM, Xeptic wrote: Beta Test Idea

This isn't very relevant your question, but your post made me think of this and I thought I should share it:

For a game I'm currently working on I've set up a wave (in Google Wave, if someone actually don't know what I'm talking about). In there I have link to the latest version of the game (it can also be embedded directly into the wave, but I think it causes it to lag a bit so I'm keeping it external), instructions, a change log, and different wavelets where people can report bugs and give feedback/suggestions.

I really like the structure of it all, but it doesn't work as well as I had hoped.. Since anyone can edit anything in a wave I'm afraid to invite people I don't know and trust, and those happens to be the very same persons whom doesn't use Wave like at all =/ Hopefully we will be able to set up specific permissions for people in our waves soon, if and when that happens I think it will be an awesome way to get continuous feedback.

that was kind of a random thread lock ... o_o

At 1/25/10 01:37 PM, Toast wrote: that was kind of a random thread lock ... o_o

Yeah I don't think it should be locked just because the starter wants to. Stupid arguments are shared by everyone.

We were having a real nice discussion. Within the first 40min of the thread being posted there was already a dozen of insightful comments. Not to mention the fact that we haven't had any programming related discussions on the reg lounge for quite a while.

Oh well. Back to watching cute puppy vids on youtube.

Democracy rules.

At 1/25/10 01:00 PM, Starogre wrote: you could probably contact friends on AIM/MSN or PM for free and get them to test the game.

I don't have friends... :'(

Seriously though, that's what I normally do. When I think the game's about 95% complete I get a bunch of people to check it out, but most of the time I feel like I'm not getting a whole lot out of it (no offense to the people who tested my games). I thought it would be interesting to see what happens if I let people test it a bit sooner (so it's not too late to make big adjustments), and I thought it would be kinda cool to get a bit of community involvement. I'll think it over for a bit.

At 1/25/10 09:47 AM, TomFulp wrote: I'll pop in to inject some thoughts on the revenue stuff.

why does everything you say turn out perfect?

Ok, so I've got a SWF that works fine when I test it locally, but as soon as I upload it ANYWHERE it just doesn't work. Anyone got any idea why it wouldn't work online? I've tried it on Mac and PC in a number of browsers. I've got the debug player installed and I'm not getting any errors....

Specifically, it loads fine until the game actually starts and the point/click/move stuff just goes up the wall.

This is BULLSHIT

because he's TomFulp. edn.

As I'm sure you are all aware that Youtube has started work with HTML5 which could mean the beginning of a dramatic decline of Flash use on the web.

There are many articles on the subject online like this one.

What do all of you think about this? There have been problems with Flash for years, but at the same time it HAS been an industry standard for the last 15 years or so. Thoughts?

At 1/25/10 04:29 PM, Senti wrote: As I'm sure you are all aware that Youtube has started work with HTML5 which could mean the beginning of a dramatic decline of Flash use on the web.

There are many articles on the subject online like this one.

What do all of you think about this? There have been problems with Flash for years, but at the same time it HAS been an industry standard for the last 15 years or so. Thoughts?

I think what they mention in there about protecting videos from copyright infringement and piracy is the biggest hurdle they'll have to jump before big devs really start considering it.

At 1/25/10 04:29 PM, Senti wrote: What do all of you think about this? There have been problems with Flash for years, but at the same time it HAS been an industry standard for the last 15 years or so. Thoughts?

I feel ok about it, tbh Flash has been used as a swiss army knife for years, and not all the solutions that its used for even make sense or provide the best user experience. Video players is one of them, the other would be flash websites.

Flash is cool and can do many things, but it cant do eeeeverything and the sooner you become aware to that brutal reality, the better off you will be.

I see it as a positive thing, where it will suck out all the developers and users who were just using flash incorrectly anyway and get back to its roots in animation/casual gaming.

At 1/25/10 05:54 PM, zrb wrote: So reading through everyone's posts in Mike's thread, I gathered this:

As long as it doesn't affect flash games and movies, i'm fine with it too :P

At 1/25/10 07:54 PM, zrb wrote: Canabalt for iPhone:

Apparentely it used Flash CS5's iPhone app publishing and it works great.

I have actually been wondering about how Adam ported it (working with a 'lil flixel game as we speak, not iPhone friendly, but still). You don't happen to have a link with more info?

At 1/25/10 08:04 PM, knugen wrote:

At 1/25/10 07:54 PM, zrb wrote: Canabalt for iPhone:

Apparentely it used Flash CS5's iPhone app publishing and it works great.

I have actually been wondering about how Adam ported it (working with a 'lil flixel game as we speak, not iPhone friendly, but still). You don't happen to have a link with more info?

Adam is an iphone programmer too, I'm pretty sure he wrote something underneath flixel so all he had to do was change the syntax from actionscript into some form of C on top of a different backend.

When you write a framework, it makes it easier to do that.

Flash to iPhone porting is super crappy btw, don't expect anything great out of it

At 1/25/10 05:05 PM, Luis wrote:

At 1/25/10 04:29 PM, Senti wrote: What do all of you think about this? There have been problems with Flash for years, but at the same time it HAS been an industry standard for the last 15 years or so. Thoughts?

I feel ok about it, tbh Flash has been used as a swiss army knife for years, and not all the solutions that its used for even make sense or provide the best user experience. Video players is one of them, the other would be flash websites.

Flash is cool and can do many things, but it cant do eeeeverything and the sooner you become aware to that brutal reality, the better off you will be.

I see it as a positive thing, where it will suck out all the developers and users who were just using flash incorrectly anyway and get back to its roots in animation/casual gaming.

Flash is the #1 plugin for the web with some super high 99% of the internet connected world having it installed

I wouldn't count too much on the HTML5 stuff catching on any time soon, after all like 70% of the internet still uses internet explorer, and we all know how good microsoft is at supporting standards

IMO it's kinda crazy the number of things flash has a use for

I know this is off topic, i hope it doesn't kill the HTML5 chat, but am i the only one who is totally not used to the traditional orange NG? I got so used to the blue lol!

Maybe they could make NG a seasonal thing? Blue for winter, Green for summer, etc etc?

At 1/26/10 12:07 AM, Duchednier wrote: I know this is off topic, i hope it doesn't kill the HTML5 chat, but am i the only one who is totally not used to the traditional orange NG? I got so used to the blue lol!

Maybe they could make NG a seasonal thing? Blue for winter, Green for summer, etc etc?

I prefer it when it's orange, it looks a lot more natural that way.

At 1/26/10 07:29 AM, zrb wrote:

At 1/26/10 12:07 AM, Duchednier wrote: I know this is off topic, i hope it doesn't kill the HTML5 chat, but am i the only one who is totally not used to the traditional orange NG? I got so used to the blue lol!
Maybe they could make NG a seasonal thing? Blue for winter, Green for summer, etc etc?

That would be fun, I am so not used to seeing this color after all the blue :P
And no more side banners :(

If by side banners you mean tom's news, recently submitted, artist news, etc etc etc on frontpage... ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?! ;)

I think the site would be waaaay too cramped without them lol

I think he means the bar adverts on the side of the page. They dont bother me too much, the Dragonica ones were pretty cool because I love the concept art style and characters, which were always an inspiration. The games shit no doubt though :)

I just started working on a quick game with Joeybetz for ArmorGames which should be a fun little break from my big RPG. Im getting seriously sick of animating the characters frame by frame now, kawaii cats are a welcome change!

I love the fact that the annoying ads at the sides of the homepage are gone, mostly because I usually have a lot of shrinked windows, so when I wanted to select my Safari window, I'd end up opening a new one for the ads. Good riddance.

im wondering if the new forums means this lounge is finally done and we part ways