Hi all, I've finished a flash game, and I've posted it on FGL and have been sending e-mails to flash sites every day inviting them to check it out. What I've noticed is a small percent actually even look at it, and I think if more tried it out I'd have a better shot at getting it sponsored for the right price. I was just wondering if anyone knew any more marketing techniques in getting sponsor attention?
I'm in the same situation and there's no magical recipe. Unless you have a game that managed to get an 8+ rating then you're a tiny drop in the ocean as the competition is fierce. This post has some interesting stats. Sometimes it's just a matter of waiting. One of my not so great game took 4 months to find a sponsor for $600 (actually higher than I expected). Sponsor saw the game from one of my mails and bid on it a month later. Sometimes it's a matter of luck. One of my game which the icon was 2 points from making the top 100 of "best icons" received 0 views from the automated mail FGL sends while I always had at a minimum 4-5. After 1 month if you have under 20 views FGL staff usually invites devs to contact them and they will check what they can do to help you. That's probably what I'll do later but I'm not holding my breath. I was curious about this market so I gave it a shot but I'm not making any long term plans about it.
Thanks OverOO, I was thinking that since my game had an editors rating of 7.5, it'd get a lot more exposure then it did. So far it's been a little over a week, and the sponsor views have finally come to a hault with just 2 bidders.
I was thinking that too. Game #1 rating 7, 16 views. Game #2 rating 7.5, same theme as game #1, 7 views. For both games the majority of views came from my own mails so FGL wasn't quite helpful. That's why it might play in my favor to have FGL help me a bit but then again there are so many games rated 7 that it might take a while.
Interesting. I didn't think of contacting FGL about this. I've had 8 Sponsors look at my game from the New Games Feed, one of which is well established with a market score of 9 and only wants a site-lock. Another from the new-games has placed a bid. Since then I have contacted all the sponsors from the big list of sponsors via email/ contact forms and only 7 of them have viewed the game. One of which has placed a bid as well. I have also posted on Mochimedia that I'm looking for a sponsor, which prompted one to take a look. Then 3 more looked at the game because I was in the FGL Chat room. I'm not sure what else to do, but just wait it out since there aren't any more avenues to take. Only other thing I've added is a custom Google alert to the phrase "new flash games" - which prompts me when a flash game site releases a game. I'm using that alert because it reveals more portal sites that I can contact.. However, I'm not getting much from emails.
If the current bid you have is interesting hitting last call should bring more views as well as long as you don't hit last call in the weekend. For my game that sold for $600 I hit last call when the highest bid was $250. After 4 months I didn't thought I'd get more anyway. Was pleased to double that on last call.
FGL is over saturated with games in the 6.5-7.5 range. Unless you get a 8+ rating you're looking at a very long bid cycle with bids maxing out around 2k. I'd shoot for 8+ quality games, those games are still getting 5 digit bids.
We're going to finish out trailer for the game soon, then I'm going to market the trailer and hope for more interest! After that, last call will be coming soon. Probably in a couple weeks. Our next game we hope to get that 8+
A trailer helps a lot, because it allows you to present all the strong points of a game and it can definitely give an edge. Once I posted a trailer for the flash game the bids shot up quite a bit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E8kx1MSDUo), and also its rating went up. I think it made about a $6k difference on the final bid.
A trailer definitely can't hurt. Even if it doesn't attract a sponsor it will still give your game exposure to potential gamers. Just try not to open with "In a world..."
@Dogma, you're game sold for $6,000 more because of a trailer?!?!? :O Well, we're finishing it up. I think next time trailer must be done before it's posted for bid.
Yes, the game was already there, we just needed to show it from its pretty side. We actually did not finish the trailer before the game, but instead released it when the bidding was slowing down after about a week or two. Then we waited another week or two for the bidding to slow down again and accepted that bid. I only have limited experience though. We only built that flash game as a teamtest before starting on a much larger project, and the money was a nice bonus. So I can't say if a trailer is important for every game, for us it did make a difference though.
Cool! That's a great deal and Nomnom adventures looks awesome. I've just sold a Primary for $1500 after negotiating with a sponsor. The 350 bid just sat there for a week and after the bidder asked how much I wanted for it he obliged. Originally we were talking about a 2k exclusive, but he wanted his ads on there too so I said I'd like 1500 for a primary. He said he had to sleep on it but after I warned him that if anyone else wants the game I'll sell it to them instead he bid right away. After that I kept my end of the deal and accepted his bid immediately. I also just sold a sitelock to another sponsor who was interested for 1k. So, so far it's at 2500 for an epic space shooter. FGL Bidding system was not what I expected. I thought the bids would just come in, but really it was more PM's then bids. Even as the bid was sitting there for 350 for a week, getting the deals we needed required a lot negotiation. Definitely a learning experience.