Serious or not?

It's been months since my latest post to this blog, even though I have done something related to game development too. My day job related to semiconductors keeps me busy at daytime (and sometimes evenings also). I have got new responsibilities and at the moment I am very happy to my job.

However, I started semi-seriously game development activities with my brother about 5 months ago. Our target was to learn how to develop and publish games, and even make some money besides that. To date, we have published seven small and simple flash games via Mochimedia (edit: Mochimedia does not exist anymore). 

I can honestly tell you that only 2-3 of our games meet the characteristics of proper game. Rest of them are more or less stupid demos, but almost all of them work as originally planned. Every game has been better than the previous one, both from technical and visual point of view. 

There has been thousands of players for our games, but still the ad revenue from Mochimedia's advertisements has been quite low. But it was expected at this phase: for substantial income you must get hundreds of thousands (or even millions) players for your game. And it is not easy to reach such volume even if you are experienced flash game developer: The game must be excellent (or at least good) and you must market it effectively to get players to find it. Also, some luck will also help. 
gamaan.com frontpage

Besides pure game development we have started a flash game portal. Our target is to screen out fun and interesting, but not necessarily the most popular flash games from Mochimedia's catalog and put them to our site. Also, we are also promoting our own games among the others. 

Currently, our biggest problem with the portal is how to get more visitors there. So far we have done search engine optimization (SEO) to get better visibility in major search engines. We have also set up social media accounts (facebook, twitter, google+, youtube) and started promoting our latest game with them. So far, the results have been weak, but the situation seems to get better bit by bit. 

Our latest game was released yesterday at our own flash portal, and I am currently trying to get it approved to Mochimedia's distribution. There was something wrong with the initial ad placement and timing, and the first attempt was rejected. I did some repairs, and now I am waiting for the approval notice. Let's see how it goes. :)

Edit 2.2.2014: "Turbomole Trial Run" got finally approval for Mochi ads and distribution, so it can be found from several flash sites. 

-Jussi

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