At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :). Got caught up playing a lot of golf this summer. I thought I would drop my handicap from 20 to 10 easily, but it turned out harder than expected.

good to have you back ProfessorFlash.

At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :).

I did actually notice, soo welcome back!

At 9/2/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: impressive stuff

Maaan, you work way too hard on your game engines :P

At 8/29/12 09:51 AM, Mattster wrote: Good job on that! I agree that working on something solo is not nearly as fun or motivating, but it pays off in the end to say "Look what I did all on my own!". As long as you are pleased with your creation, I'd call it a success :D

Thanks!

I think is about time I become a bit more active in this thread. . .

Here's a topic for discussion.

Steam Greenlight

Your thoughts? If you haven't heard about it, Steam's creating a new way to submit your games. Instead of submitting directly to their approval team, and getting rejected and whatnot, they're allowing the community to vote for which games get on Steam.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

There was a thread that proved my point on Steam, but it seems to have been deleted. It was a developer who made a game in a free copy of some game maker, and was complaining about how much of a failure the concept of Greenlight is because people downvoted his game. He was also complaining about how no one gave him feedback on his game.

Greenlight's not about giving you feedback, or anything else. It's purely about deciding whether your game goes in or not.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.

I really do feel overall positive about this. At first I thought this meant that only the popular games who have fanbases will get accepted, but the whole Greenlight thing is to help Valve sort through submissions. They'd look at the most popular and choose whether it fits or not. And either way, even if you have a great game but no marketing, then a lesser game with greater marketing may end up selling more anyway. So you're going to need to have marketed your game before putting it up on Greenlight anyway.

Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

At 9/5/12 08:11 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

One of the reasons I like flash is because no matter how shitty of a game you create (and we all have), you can put it on the internet, distribute it and put it out for everyone to see; for free.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.
Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

I think that everybody should be able to create their game and distribute it. The argument that the 'crap' pushes the better games away into a void is a bad one since when we look at youtube (or even this site) we'll see that the crap goes into a void and the good stuff still becomes popular and seen by the masses.

What really is the reason behind this is that Steam has their own agenda regarding what games they want to sell and how they want it represented to the public (bear in mind that even with greenlight they're the judges after all). Its all about Steam wanting to uphold their exclusive library of games.

Nothing is holy, everything is open and connected. There is no reason for Steam to be this 'elite, big business games' only. If I want to make a simple .99$ game with 1 hour of gameplay (which is worth it imo) I should be able to without 'getting x amount of likes and maybe we'll consider publishing'.

Especially as an idie developer you should welcome openness and say yes to things that enhance creativity.

newgrounds has proven to me that a community that rates the games it wants to see can work. To be honest for an indie this is just one more avenue that can be used to help them get their game out there.

Plus with the move to Linux you could get the jump on that if you worked to port your game over.

At 9/1/12 10:04 AM, Archawn wrote: It seems like half the posts in this thread are either people announcing that they're back or people deciding to be more active in this thread.

Haha that does seem true. I am sure many of us never left...
It's always been about the discussions and WIP projects!

I have nowhere relevant to post this, but I just wanted to say that I made the A10 splash animation for Knightmare Tower on the front page right now, and then only found out when it came out that the game is 60FPS, not 30. And I'm not allowed to fix it, and it really bugs me, cos I thought it looked really good.
So-... I'm sorry, internet.

At 9/5/12 08:11 AM, 4urentertainment wrote:

At 8/31/12 05:32 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: I've returned. I doubt anyone noticed, but I'm announcing my return anyway :).

I did actually notice, soo welcome back!

At 9/2/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: impressive stuff

Maaan, you work way too hard on your game engines :P

At 8/29/12 09:51 AM, Mattster wrote: Good job on that! I agree that working on something solo is not nearly as fun or motivating, but it pays off in the end to say "Look what I did all on my own!". As long as you are pleased with your creation, I'd call it a success :D

Thanks!

I think is about time I become a bit more active in this thread. . .

Here's a topic for discussion.

Steam Greenlight

Your thoughts? If you haven't heard about it, Steam's creating a new way to submit your games. Instead of submitting directly to their approval team, and getting rejected and whatnot, they're allowing the community to vote for which games get on Steam.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm mostly pissed at how anyone with a game, no matter how shitty, has submitted and genuinely thinks his game is good enough for Steam.

There was a thread that proved my point on Steam, but it seems to have been deleted. It was a developer who made a game in a free copy of some game maker, and was complaining about how much of a failure the concept of Greenlight is because people downvoted his game. He was also complaining about how no one gave him feedback on his game.

Greenlight's not about giving you feedback, or anything else. It's purely about deciding whether your game goes in or not.

They've announced there's going to be a $100 submission fee which is really good news as it would filter out a lot of the crap. And if you're submitting your game to Steam, you should be expecting tens or thousands of dollars. And you should have already spent a lot (whether money or time) on development. $100 is nothing.

I really do feel overall positive about this. At first I thought this meant that only the popular games who have fanbases will get accepted, but the whole Greenlight thing is to help Valve sort through submissions. They'd look at the most popular and choose whether it fits or not. And either way, even if you have a great game but no marketing, then a lesser game with greater marketing may end up selling more anyway. So you're going to need to have marketed your game before putting it up on Greenlight anyway.

Those are my thoughts. DISCUSS.

I'm on Greenlight! I had a tonne of stuff to say as it was actually coming out and happening over on this forum!http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8052-steam-gree nlight/
Long story short, it's kind of a shakey service, and I agree with you that I read a bunch of interviews as it came out and seeing other developers bitching really annoyed me. One guy was like "It hasn't drawn traffic to my game at all! In fact... I had to SHOW PEOPLE my Steam Greenlight page just so they'd know!" Ugh god dammit...

I think the hundred dollars is a crappy knee-jerk response.

speaking of steam closure's up now
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72000/

Interview with Tom Fulp

Wanna ask the creator of Newgrounds, Tom Fulp a question? Well you can! The Interviewer is putting the power in your hands to ask the questions. Just click above!

Also yes, Tom Fulp has given permission to do this thread.

At 9/7/12 02:47 PM, I-smel wrote: I have nowhere relevant to post this, but I just wanted to say that I made the A10 splash animation for Knightmare Tower on the front page right now, and then only found out when it came out that the game is 60FPS, not 30. And I'm not allowed to fix it, and it really bugs me, cos I thought it looked really good.

Yeah, at 60 FPS it finishes way too fast. What a pain that you're not allowed to fix it.

At 9/7/12 03:02 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: speaking of steam closure's up now
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72000/

I'll grab a copy tomorrow, looking forward to playing it.

At 9/7/12 03:59 PM, The-Great-One wrote: Interview with Tom Fulp

Wanna ask the creator of Newgrounds, Tom Fulp a question? Well you can! The Interviewer is putting the power in your hands to ask the questions. Just click above!

Also yes, Tom Fulp has given permission to do this thread.

Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds, like Ed McMillen or Egoraptor, Hotdiggedydemon, and all the other people who haven't made a noise for a year. They're on Youtube and twitter n facebook, they're still making stuff and talking about it every day, but even Dan Paladin doesn't share those videos of him working on BattleBlock on Newgrounds. I see em on Twitter every week.

Figure I'd mention it on here considering Closure's on Steam now, and this is the thread for people who've been here for years. Like if you're the person who owns Newgrounds do you... try and fix that? Or do you focus on newcomers? Are you totally not worried about it? I'm stressing about that n I'm not even Tom Fulp!

Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

Where'd ya hear about that?

At 9/8/12 06:25 PM, I-smel wrote: Where'd ya hear about that?

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1317780/

Apparently it wasn't supposed to go public just yet, but someone leaked it somehow. Liljim said on page 8:

At 9/8/12 07:31 PM, liljim wrote: I might be missing something here, but I don't think that feature was ready to launch - so there will be problems with it. It's really encouraging to see that so many people have already donated and I'll speak on behalf of everyone on the staff and thank those of you who have already contributed!

Please be patient though - like I said, I think someone may have stumbled across the URL and it's gone public without any of us intending it to be, so expect whatever problems there are with it to be worked out over time.

At 9/8/12 06:12 PM, Archawn wrote: Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

I haven't been here THAT long, but yeah we should do that. For Luis.

Meanwhile, I've confirmed that my artist and writer for my RPG are both still alive, so I'll hopefully have something to show soon :S

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

At 9/9/12 01:42 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

SPEAKING OF SPONSORS.

As I'm wrapping up my first sponsor-worthy game, I was thinking about the process, which I've never been involved in.
If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Also, for anyone that's had a game sold, can you link to the game and how much money you got from the sponsor? I tried looking at some post-mortems for some popular flash games, but hardly anyone mentions how much they got. Are you not allowed to, or is it just taboo?

At 9/9/12 09:52 AM, 14hourlunchbreak wrote: If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Yes. From my experience every sponsor (that is interested ofc, that's 2%) will reply to you something like "nice game, how much you want for it?". And if you give them the 'im not sure' kind of answer, they most likely will not reply back to you. Ofc it will be the same case if you price it too high for them. So pretty much you can never win with the sponsors, they got so many games offered to them they can just pick the cheapest quality games they get offered. The sponsorship scene used to be much better like 5 years ago, probably cuz there wasn't so many developers back then. Today if you make a good game (good, not great) you will be fighting for scraps (talking like 200-400$ price range). It's sad :(.

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: I'm stressing about that n I'm not even Tom Fulp!

But you're still Tom, and that's all that matters!

what what

On a more serious note:

At 9/9/12 01:42 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/8/12 03:41 PM, I-smel wrote: Sweet, I asked how he feels about people who grow so much in what they're doing that they dissapear from Newgrounds,

I still enjoy newgrounds, its just I can't really make a living off of flash games anymore since I actually have bills to pay now, and sponsors don't pay enough and ads don't make enough.

That's the thing. I've always seen Newgrounds as a community, not just a flash/movie/game/art portal. I mean I'd probably still visit it everyday if they removed the game and movie portals. It's like the epicenter of creativity of the internet. It's the place that has nurtured and encouraged talents and innovation. The amount of lives Newgrounds has influenced, or even completely altered is astounding.

I mean just recently, after like 2 years, the writing forum has put together and published in a real, hard-copy book, a collection of short stories and poetry whose quality is jaw-breakingly amazing (in my amateur opinion). I mean the fact that this push, this collection, this work would not have happened without Newgrounds is interesting to think about. To think about how many things wouldn't be without Newgrounds, it's bigger than I ever imagined. But it makes me sad to see it not be regarded as such. I mean, NG frikking pioneered the whole user-submission system (if I'm not mistaken) that tons of sites do now. And I could be wrong, but as far as I know, Tom was one of the first, if not the first, to try making games with flash. Back when it didn't even have variables apparently.

But what makes me even more sad:

At 9/8/12 06:12 PM, Archawn wrote: Everyone in this thread should go and support Newgrounds.

It's the least you could do for the website that's likely shaped your lives and careers.

..is seeing this. I started feeling something was weird back when Tom said he stopped sponsoring games because they didn't have the budget. And when Tom made that newspost about whether they should take "Venture Capital" or stay independent, and they chose the latter, I started getting worried.

Now I'm not saying Newgrounds is going to go bankrupt or anything, but just think about how much better Newgrounds could be if they had more staff and more money. If they could offer more contests, if they could get involved in more events, if they could pioneer and innovate with more features.

I see Newgrounds as having the potential to be the creative pool of the internet. To influence so many more and in much greater ways. To create history even. And I think chasing a vision like that is hard to do when you're worried about how you're going to pay next month's bills.

My vote went to taking investors into NG. Sure, you'd have investors who may have certain opinions about your content or whatever, and I don't know that much about how these economics work, but I don't think they'd really assert that much control or would want to ruin Newgrounds.

Kongregate got sold and it's doing fine. And I think large capitals with these sort of things are crucial. I read that Youtube was beginning to lose money before they were sold to Google.

Tom wrote once that he had a vision for Newgrounds' future, and he hoped this redesign would take them closer to this vision. They're still going through the bugs of the redesign. And having a bigger staff is one thing, but again, I think having to not worry about financial issues is a pretty big other thing.

I'd really like to get people's opinions on the state of things.

At 9/9/12 09:52 AM, 14hourlunchbreak wrote: SPEAKING OF SPONSORS.

As I'm wrapping up my first sponsor-worthy game, I was thinking about the process, which I've never been involved in.
If I go directly to sponsors would they want me to name a price?

Negotiating is a game. It's basically "He who names the price first, loses". Because if the sponsor names the price first, it may be higher than what you were expecting, so he's lost some money, and if you name the price, the sponsor may have been willing to pay more.

You have two options really. Either tell them you're inexperienced, and can't really judge the monetary value of your game, and ask them to make you an offer. They'll most likely start off with a low offer, and from there you try to raise it.

Or you give them an offer higher than what you're looking for. So they drop down to around your target price.

Also, for anyone that's had a game sold, can you link to the game and how much money you got from the sponsor? I tried looking at some post-mortems for some popular flash games, but hardly anyone mentions how much they got. Are you not allowed to, or is it just taboo?

People just don't like talking about how much money they make, but there are a lot of post mortems out there that mention prices. Here's a nice collection:

http://www.radicaldog.com/blog/?p=94

At 9/9/12 11:22 AM, ProfessorFlash wrote: they got so many games offered to them they can just pick the cheapest quality games they get offered. The sponsorship scene used to be much better like 5 years ago, probably cuz there wasn't so many developers back then. Today if you make a good game (good, not great) you will be fighting for scraps (talking like 200-400$ price range). It's sad :(.

It's not necessarily sad. It's true that there are a lot more developers now, and it's true that the bar of quality has risen, but that's an overall good thing. It means people are making better games.

What that means for the individual is that you need to raise your own bar of quality and try to make better games. A "good" game by iOS standards could flop at $500 or something, but that same game may earn $3k or more in flash, just because the bar of quality of mobile is much higher.

What I can say for sure is that there's still a lot of money in flash games. The money is now being shifted towards the top tier of games. A friend of mine just told his game some time ago for $20k, and there are still deals on FGL every other month that go upwards of that. A ton more money is also being made from micro-transactions, that being much more lucrative than the ad/sponsorship model. (Although riskier, as you need to develop a game keeping in mind that you expect people to pay for it)

And I leave you with this article about microtransactions:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ColmLarkin/20091008/3257/You_
Should_Be_Making_A_Premium_Flash_Game.php

Oh there's plenty of stuff Newgrounds could change if they're ever under the thumb from investors.
They could introduce buying credits to spend on games, replace half the Featured Games and Movies with sponsored links for free-to-play MMOs, post what medals you get to Facebook, take Artist News off the front page, ban people for swearing-... Audio and Art only get like 1% of the hits that games get, so from an investment standpoint, why are you spending time and money on that, right? I'm basically naming what every site similar to Newgrounds has already done.
Seeing Kongregate and how much it basically looks like the Flash Game Licensing website, that's personally the best example for why Newgrounds SHOULD stay independant.

But yea, on the other hand looking up Newgrounds on Alexa is fucking depressing.

Ugguuuuhhhh I just hopped in chat and asked if anyone bought the Supporter thing, and one guy said "Newgrounds, more like Fewgrounds"

SO sad after looking up Newgrounds' traffic history over the passed few years :(

At 9/9/12 04:15 PM, I-smel wrote: Ugguuuuhhhh I just hopped in chat and asked if anyone bought the Supporter thing, and one guy said "Newgrounds, more like Fewgrounds"

SO sad after looking up Newgrounds' traffic history over the passed few years :(

Especially in those periodic interviews, it seems like a lot of people just randomly found this site. I think I StumbleUpon-ed some game that just happened to be on this site. Too bad marketing costs money too

At 9/9/12 03:58 PM, I-smel wrote: But yea, on the other hand looking up Newgrounds on Alexa is fucking depressing.

I'm not 100% sure how it works, but from my understanding they only count a website's traffic based on how many people with an Alexa toolbar visit it. So in reality Newgrounds traffic is much higher than the estimate Alexa provides. You can ask liljim about it, he's always in threads where Alexa pops up.

Oh you're right, I remember hearing that was a thing.

At 9/9/12 05:11 PM, 14hourlunchbreak wrote: I'm not 100% sure how it works, but from my understanding they only count a website's traffic based on how many people with an Alexa toolbar visit it. So in reality Newgrounds traffic is much higher than the estimate Alexa provides. You can ask liljim about it, he's always in threads where Alexa pops up.

Why have I always heard of this as an accurate reading for traffic if that's the case? It can't cater for all audiences, surely.

Just this past week I was wondering how Newgrounds was doing, with the rise of apps and the decline of Flash and whatnot, I come here and I see the 'Support Newgrounds' thing. Kinda depressing.

Hey sorry if you guys have already discussed this sort of thing...

I think about how the forum that would personally interest me would be discussion about straight up game development and design. It doesn't matter what programming language or platform, game design is game design. The closest thing to it is conversations that take place here in the Flash Reg Lounge.

So it makes me wonder, what if we closed down the Mobile forum (because it's a flop), changed the entire "Developers & Programmers" category into just "Programming", then added a "Game Design" or "Game Development" forum under "Artists & Creators", officially representing game makers among the Animation, Art and Music categories we have now.

If we did this, I feel like I would need to walk the walk and put myself out there on the forum more. I would try posting about failed projects, including playable demos. I would post about games in-progress, which is something that always makes me nervous because I've become ultra paranoid and protective over the years when it comes to stuff I'm doing. I really need to get over that and just start talking again.

We could also have AMAs with developers. I (hopefully we) would want to make an effort to pull in guys from the scene and get them to have AMAs, post-mortems, etc...

I was always excited to have post-mortems on NG, as a category in the Writing Portal. The thought was, you could append it to your game project - so when you play the game it links to the article with the post-mortem, and if you read the post-mortem is has a link to the game, all cross-connected between portals.

Some guys like I-Smel and Hyptosis have made posts like these on their user blogs. They are always my favorite thing to read in the Artist News section, I would love to see more posts like that. So that begs the question, is it better to do it on user pages where it gets all fragmented, or would it be best in a centralized forum where everyone shares the same interests? It could be a mix of both, like making a big post in the forum, then using the front page Artist News to give the public a brief synopsis and link to your post - thus promoting the forum and bringing in more activity to the benefit for everyone who hangs out there.

The forum would only succeed if a good number of interesting game developers actually like hanging out there and talking. Do you guys think it has potential?

At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: So it makes me wonder, what if we closed down the Mobile forum (because it's a flop), changed the entire "Developers & Programmers" category into just "Programming", then added a "Game Design" or "Game Development" forum under "Artists & Creators", officially representing game makers among the Animation, Art and Music categories we have now.

In my personal opinion, the less boards we have the better when it comes to game design. Game Design includes programming, animation, art, and music, and having all these boards just spreads out the conversation and appears to slow down activity. But, I'm all for whatever solutions you can consider.

I was always excited to have post-mortems on NG, as a category in the Writing Portal. The thought was, you could append it to your game project - so when you play the game it links to the article with the post-mortem, and if you read the post-mortem is has a link to the game, all cross-connected between portals.

Sounds like a sound plan to me. I would love to see post-mortems from the games I play, getting a little deeper conversation than the comment system provides.

The forum would only succeed if a good number of interesting game developers actually like hanging out there and talking. Do you guys think it has potential?

I say go for it.

Good luck.

At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: I think about how the forum that would personally interest me would be discussion about straight up game development and design.

I was seriously thinking of PMing you about this. What would the ground rules for discussion be, though? I can already see the "I'm developing a game and I need help with this code" posts. Should it be limited to things that go in a game design doc? Or what?

We could also have AMAs with developers. I (hopefully we) would want to make an effort to pull in guys from the scene and get them to have AMAs, post-mortems, etc...
Some guys like I-Smel and Hyptosis have made posts like these on their user blogs.

I didn't even know they had written anything...so yeah, a forum would be good. Or maybe a subscribe-able list of all user page posts about dev-related stuff?

The forum would only succeed if a good number of interesting game developers actually like hanging out there and talking. Do you guys think it has potential?

Yes, but you'd have to promote writing posts. Like maybe a few days after someone releases a game, prompt them to write a post-mortem for it. Or in the project system, have a spot for a (substantive) "how's the game coming along?" post. Maybe some devs have never thought to do a post-mortem, and that prompt may generate some good ideas.

I was definitely one of the supporters of dividing the forum into more specific sub forums. I still do think that collabs should have their own section, but apart from that I've come to think the segregation got too out of hand.

It also seems the forum as a whole has been less active during the last year or two. Maybe the forum changes played their part in that, but either way the low user count probably should result in fewer and more broad forums.

At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: I was always excited to have post-mortems on NG, as a category in the Writing Portal. The thought was, you could append it to your game project - so when you play the game it links to the article with the post-mortem, and if you read the post-mortem is has a link to the game, all cross-connected between portals.

That sounds like a really really good idea.

Not only would it get more people involved in seeing how the game was developed and monetized, because right now post-mortems are pretty few and hard to find, and you'd only stumble upon them if you hang around development forums and developer blogs. Players have no idea they exist and perhaps seeing it might spark someone's interest into creating something.

But not only that, I think having that option to append a post mortem to the game submission would also encourage more post mortems to be written. Which I think is an awesome thing.

About a Game Design forum, I do agree that the forums that aren't very active should be grouped (like anything related to mobile can be asked in the Flash forum) however the existence of a game design forum will get people to talk more about game design, and get people to understand what game design actually is. It may not be very populated at first but I think its existence alone will entice a lot more discussion about it, and I think that's a good thing with game design being a pretty crucial thing and all.