At 8/9/10 08:34 PM, Kool-Aid wrote: Someone make a game with me.

Like what?

I don't care. It's been so long since i've made a game and i really want to again. I do art, i would need a coder i just have no ideas or anything. I'm down for making anything except a HUGE game, or an rpg. Too boring and complex. I'm more of a short, simple, sweet game maker.

At 8/9/10 11:58 PM, Kool-Aid wrote: I don't care. It's been so long since i've made a game and i really want to again. I do art, i would need a coder i just have no ideas or anything. I'm down for making anything except a HUGE game, or an rpg. Too boring and complex. I'm more of a short, simple, sweet game maker.

Simple, Sweet? LIKE KOOL-AID?

Kool-aids a drink, right?

Fuck yeah, level 17. Embrace it

At 8/10/10 03:57 AM, Sam wrote: Fuck yeah, level 17. Embrace it

oh yeah well this is my 2,186th post but you don't see me bragging about it

At 8/10/10 02:14 PM, Starogre wrote:

At 8/10/10 03:57 AM, Sam wrote: Fuck yeah, level 17. Embrace it

oh yeah well this is my 2,186th post but you don't see me bragging about it

I'm so jealous :(

jealin'

At 8/9/10 11:27 AM, doctormario wrote: Ok. A friend just posted this video, on my fb, by something calling itself Jedward and Vanilla Ice.

Please tell me this is some sort of inside UK joke.

I kept wishing for the ghost of Freddie Mercury to run the lot of these chavs up the chocolate highway. Fuck's sake. You know you're in trouble when Vanilla Ice is the most credible performer on the stage. Yikes.

That song got second in the UK charts. Those people came 4th in X factor (The British version of American Idol).

This (link) brilliant and totally fair article and it's totally unfair and not-at-all-well-thought-out rebutal (link) have been doing the rounds at deviantArt. Since Newgrounds is also mentioned as a totally happenin place to also hire totally awesome artists in the article, I figure it was only fair to mention it here

Warning. This post by KaynSlamdyke contains enough sarcasm to clog your arteries.

Hey guys,

I've only got a few days left to raise some more funds so if anyone has a few quid spare then you can donate to a good cause here:

http://www.gifttool.com/athon/MyFundrais ingPage?ID=168&AID=1241&PID=153803

Also you can send any loose change you have in paypal to my paypal address and I'll put the funds on with my credit card

My paypal is rustygames@gmail.com

Thanks for your help so far :)

At 8/10/10 03:20 PM, citricsquid wrote:
Newgrounds is a perfect example, when they sponsor a game for $5000 do they think they're going to make $5000 off it? Fuck no, they expect to make a lot more, otherwise why bother sponsoring it?

Insert tom fulp response here.

At 8/10/10 03:17 AM, Sam wrote: Simple, Sweet? LIKE KOOL-AID?

Kool-aids a drink, right?

Lol shutup. I just wanna make a game.

What would be a good salary (per-hour) for a flash game?

At 8/10/10 04:58 PM, Fraxx wrote: What would be a good salary (per-hour) for a flash game?

Salary per hour? What?

I'm impressed by the viral nature of that article. I had at least 20 people feel compelled to share that with me yesterday. Designers, animators, programmers.

I work like this:

I'll tell you how much it costs. If you flinch when I tell you, we're probably not doing business. If you suppose this is a game that everyone else isn't already playing, you've been drinking thermometers. Enjoy that.

The point in the article that is a bit sticky, is the implication that amateur = shite. Not true. In fact, I know more talented people, who are piss poor business people, than shrewd business types with an ounce of creativity.

Sometimes you play it safe, and sometimes you gamble.

At 8/10/10 03:20 PM, citricsquid wrote: Newgrounds is a perfect example, when they sponsor a game for $5000 do they think they're going to make $5000 off it? Fuck no, they expect to make a lot more, otherwise why bother sponsoring it? The "nice" thing to do would be to pay the producer whatever amount they make, but that is not how business works.

I've mentioned this before, but a sponsor doesn't usually make back their investment on a sponsorship that costs more than a few thousand. In isolation, that game would pull in way less (look at what you get for rev share from ads as an example. Even at 30%, you can see that the total it made from ads isn't anywhere NEAR what you get for a primary sponsorship.) It's all about grabbing returning visitors. A great game might pull in $1000 in direct revenue, but also might pull in 100,000 new daily users to the website as a whole (which could generate 2k/m continuously on OTHER games on the site, something you coudn't do without a huge collection of games/movies to keep people coming back).

It's sorta like buying lottery tickets that have an average net gain rather than average net loss. You buy $25000 worth of lottery tickets and make $40000 on them. Most of the tickets are losers, but a few big winners make you all the money back.

At 8/10/10 04:58 PM, Fraxx wrote: What would be a good salary (per-hour) for a flash game?

This really depends how good you are, how efficiently you work, and how much demand there is for your work.

If you can work twice as fast as someone who charges $60/hr, then you should easily be able to charge $100/hr ("ah, I charge more, but it'll only take me half the time, so you actually save money"). If your work is higher quality AND you can work fast, you can charge quite a bit per hour.

Charging per-project tends to work a little better for flash games, cause then you can't sit back and slack while still technically "on the clock". There's an incentive to finish fast, as more output = more profit. If a performance bonus is included, then there's also incentive not to cut corners on the actual development.

You can get an idea of your "hourly rate" after doing a few sponsored projects (i.e. this game took 3 weeks and netted 5k. 5k/120hr = $41.67/hr. This other game took 2 weeks and got 7k. That's $87.50/hr. This last game took 2 months and made 8k. $25/hr?)

Hence why you see so many "small" flash games and not too many "epic" flash games.

At 8/10/10 03:20 PM, citricsquid wrote: Newgrounds is a perfect example, when they sponsor a game for $5000 do they think they're going to make $5000 off it? Fuck no, they expect to make a lot more, otherwise why bother sponsoring it?

Hmm, thats kind of a bold statement.

Last I checked NG is probably one of the only sites that also sponsors animations as well. Im sure we're rolling in money from sponsoring those.

Maybe part of it is that NG feels a sense of commitment in the medium and culture its helped build. It stays competitive by investing in its talent, for a payoff beyond the single episode of nameless or the next egoraptor incarnation. Its just kind of an insulting baseless statement and im kind of annoyed about it.

======================

As for that article or that guy. Business is definately cut throat, and there are people who function like that guy and have little to no respect for the profession. Why should they? they have their goals and their methods. I think one of the most painful lessons one learns as an amateur or up and coming professional programmer/animator is that you do need to learn a little bit about the business. One of the most common mistakes people make is thinking that pure talent in what they do will clear their way. You gotta be able to take care of yourself out there. I think the article is positive in that it should serve as an eye-opener to naive creative folks out there. Theres establishments like the Creative Artists Guild and other organizations that you can join as you get more serious about your profession that can be of great resource in getting into the business of design/animation/whatever. Even if we managed to rip that guy apart, theres millions more just like him. Fact of life.

At 8/10/10 10:23 PM, Luis wrote: Hmm, thats kind of a bold statement.

Last I checked NG is probably one of the only sites that also sponsors animations as well. Im sure we're rolling in money from sponsoring those.

Maybe part of it is that NG feels a sense of commitment in the medium and culture its helped build. It stays competitive by investing in its talent, for a payoff beyond the single episode of nameless or the next egoraptor incarnation. Its just kind of an insulting baseless statement and im kind of annoyed about it.

does Tom pay you to do speeches in the reg lounge for him? this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've done this since you were hired.

At 8/11/10 12:29 AM, turtleco wrote: does Tom pay you to do speeches in the reg lounge for him? this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've done this since you were hired.

He's changed man... he's changed.

I think we should note that, the guy behind that article is 16 years old, and he's already made $60,000 from his games.

Now I think that's *really* impressive, as only 3 of his games make up the majority of that money.

At 8/11/10 12:29 AM, turtleco wrote:
does Tom pay you to do speeches in the reg lounge for him? this is the 2nd or 3rd time you've done this since you were hired.

not really. i visit the lounge like any other flash person here, i just happen to also work here now and get am inevitably immersed in the way the site functions as a workplace since i have to sit here in the office. I'd be making way more than 2 or 3 speeches if I was on a commission based system believe me.

Since the forums are more fragmented now, i dont often find the opportunity to barge in on the banter, i mean after all the flash forum is more programming slanted now and well im not a programmer. I still like to stalk this particular thread, because alot of people here i consider friends and colleagues.

At 8/11/10 04:08 AM, citricsquid wrote:

At 8/10/10 10:23 PM, Luis wrote: Last I checked NG is probably one of the only sites that also sponsors animations as well. Im sure we're rolling in money from sponsoring those.

Maybe I don't understand business as much as I thought then, but unless Newgrounds is losing money to be "nice" it seems strange they wouldn't make back their money. I don't necessarily mean directly from adverts for that specific submission, but also "residual" visits and ad views.

It is strange. Some shit pans out, some doesn't. Either way its hard to really do hard-line numbers on when exactly a particular submission has made back what you originally sponsored for it. Maybe there's other companies who are more maniacal about keeping stats or maybe Tom has a secret vault of some supercomputer tracking every investment but as far as I know the site has run with Tom's gut being what drives it and for whatever strange reason its worked for 10+ years. Some animations/games do hit big and some dont.

The business itself, particularly for animation is in a weird spot. Because the gaming is more lucrative, and Adobe seems to be slowly pulling the rug on the animation aspects of it. I mean the last whatever versions of flash, have done little to nothing to really cater towards the animation sensibilities of flash. Yea they added bones or whatever other garbage. yea garbage. but for the most part have just let that group just kinda hang out. So you have animators trickling out, finding themselves using After Effects, Toon Boom or whatever else to compliment the features that Flash has turned a cold shoulder on. The problem with that is that NG is still shackled to the swf aspect of things, and its becoming increasingly difficult for an animator to build his whole shit with a suite of programs and hack it back into a lump that somewhat resembles an swf. It becomes a chore to upload to the site in my opinion. A chore you eventually see as too much trouble to be worth it.

Anyway i went off on a tangent. sorrrry

At 8/10/10 09:54 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Hence why you see so many "small" flash games and not too many "epic" flash games.

If I may disagree, I think the reason for that is that "epic" games are exponentially harder to create then smaller games. It's not about how hard it is to code specific engines for "epic" games, but about how fucking complicated it becomes when you got a freaking huge disorganized plate of flash-puke in front of you.

At 8/11/10 11:36 AM, Toast wrote: If I may disagree, I think the reason for that is that "epic" games are exponentially harder to create then smaller games. It's not about how hard it is to code specific engines for "epic" games, but about how fucking complicated it becomes when you got a freaking huge disorganized plate of flash-puke in front of you.

Well, if there was a market for it, you'd definitely see a lot more of them. There are tons of amazingly skilled developers in the professional community, but fact of the matter is, big epic games just aren't worth the time and effort put into them, when they can make a bunch of small games that would earn more.

it's good that there's people that do both. i've seen games that are successful in both categories. (canabalt vs dinowaurs for instance). the more depth there is to the game, the more addicting it has to be (in any sense of the word) for me to come back to play it. there's a lot of stuff on the internet i can be looking at, and there are other games i could be trying out.

on a video game console, people have at most a few different games they spent good money on to play. on the computer and internet, all these games are practically free for me to play so i feel no obligation to stick to any one game.

but i'm glad people do both small and big games, no matter how profitable, because some flash game ideas aren't pushed far enough in the little games.

At 8/11/10 12:14 PM, Starogre wrote: it's good that there's people that do both. i've seen games that are successful in both categories. (canabalt vs dinowaurs for instance). the more depth there is to the game, the more addicting it has to be (in any sense of the word) for me to come back to play it. there's a lot of stuff on the internet i can be looking at, and there are other games i could be trying out.

No of course, there's a lot of developers out there that care about artistic integrity more than they do about money (although there is a balancing act, cause you need money to survive if you want creative freedom). There's even some publishers and portals that do that too. It's just not as common as the ones who want to maximize profit.

You see it all the time with mainstream games nowadays too. Devs will want an extra 50% time to work on the game, and publishers won't allow it cause 50% more time invested won't result in 50% more sales for them. If there's a major overlooked issue that will dent sales? Well hey, that's what patches are for now.

how i can haz make moneyz by flash gamez?

At 8/11/10 08:43 AM, Luis wrote: So you have animators trickling out, finding themselves using After Effects, Toon Boom or whatever else to compliment the features that Flash has turned a cold shoulder on. The problem with that is that NG is still shackled to the swf aspect of things, and its becoming increasingly difficult for an animator to build his whole shit with a suite of programs and hack it back into a lump that somewhat resembles an swf. It becomes a chore to upload to the site in my opinion. A chore you eventually see as too much trouble to be worth it.

I'm interested now - what kind of advancements to you get in animation that Flash lacks? I know that it's relatively basic, but I would have thought that animation more than coding would require the same basic skills and tools rather than advanced software. That's not to say that animating in Flash is without annoyances.

Also, what's been going on in Flash since CS3? I decided against upgrading :p

At 8/12/10 05:56 AM, Paranoia wrote:
I'm interested now - what kind of advancements to you get in animation that Flash lacks? I know that it's relatively basic, but I would have thought that animation more than coding would require the same basic skills and tools rather than advanced software. That's not to say that animating in Flash is without annoyances.

Also, what's been going on in Flash since CS3? I decided against upgrading :p

Flash could have customizable things that make workflow faster and more efficient. I've never used ToonBoom, but for example, I know it has customizable onion skinning, and it also has customizable real-time color palettes. You make a Pants color in the palette, name it 'pants', color all your pants in all the frames the 'pants' color, and from then on you can change the color palette's 'pants' hue and it changes it in all the frames. Stuff like that, that just makes everything but the actual animation/drawing part faster.