As a member of several game development communities, a contentious (yet popular) topic seems to be the 'M' word: monetisation.
UPDATE: I'm flattered this post got so much traction. Please visit my personal website at www.nickhatter.com for more great posts like this!
As a member of several game development communities, a contentious (yet very popular) topic seems to be "How can I monetise my game?" or "Where can I find game publishers?".
Generally, this type of question ends up segregating a game dev community into two camps:
1) The "Make games for fun, not money, you soulless person" Camp
2) The "Nothing wrong with doing what you love whilst making money, you hippie" Camp
I personally probably fall more into Camp #2. However, I do have a lot of admiration and respect for Camp #1. And I strongly sympathise: some games are a clearly just a money-grab exercise. Ironically, this can severely backfire if you use too aggressive in-app purchase mechanisms (such as "energy recharge" systems) or too intrusive in-game advertising. On the other hand, we all have bills to pay, and some of us want to do what we love full-time.
(Below) Monetisation discussion tend to lead to ad-hominem arguments. And duelling.
Image (left) from Flickr, "Fencing duel" by uwdigitalcollections, licensed under CC-BY-2.0.
So, the million dollar question is:
What's best way to monetise whilst keeping a fun and immersive gaming experience?
On April 29th to 30th, Game Monetisation Europe (run by Video Games Intelligence) is coming to London, and this could be your chance to learn about literally everything you wanted to know about monetising games, from legals, F2P ethics, in-game ads, marketing, player acquisition and retention, to utilising advanced data science.
Executive-level speakers from the likes of Sony Computer Entertainment, Bigpoint, Facebook, Nautral Motion, Jagex and Miniclip will be in attendance, and I can only imagine there will be some clashing viewpoints... which will make for an exciting discussion.
Love or hate big game companies, there is a reason why these companies are big and stay in business. But there's also a reason why some of them have global fanbases, and have repeat buyers. So regardless of which camp you fall into, it still may be worth your while going along to this event. And of course, you can hear more pearls of wisdom from the famous Peter Molyneux, Creative Director of 22 cans, who will also be speaking.
I will be attending Game Monetisation Europe if you want to discuss non-intrusive ads for your games. And of course if you want to just do your thing, and not make any money, or if you can't afford a ticket, that's also cool with me. You have my respect either way; it's tough out there.
The author of this blog post, Nick Hatter, is the CEO at giftgaming, a non-intrusive in-game advertising platform that delivers surprise gifts containing power-ups and coupons.
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