Blurb.
Age 33, Male
Procrastinator
Glasgow University
Glasgow, UK
Joined on 6/12/04
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Why EBF4 was a failure and Flash is dead.
Comments
Okay, so the game didn't sell very well, and as a result it was a failure? I wouldn't say that, but if your main purpose was to make money off of it, then I can see where you're coming from. But the game was still very good, so don't beat yourself up over it. This didn't work through a lack of knowledge, and this can be applied again. Don't think of it as a failure, think of it as a way to learn with minimal drawbacks. A lot of people aren't this fortunate.
Well the Flash game market is also dying, so things are only going to get worse.
Well, it sucks that you didn't hit the target that you were aiming for. However, it still got high scores on here and Kongregate, which is worth something. Oh, and here's something even more disheartening:
<a href="http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=15110.0">http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=1 5110.0</a>
I've always thought that you make amazing games, and didn't really understand some of the things you said (as I am not a game developer myself). What I do know is that you make good games, and I (as well as many others) would be disappointed if your talents were wasted. Whatever happens, I just hope that you keep making games that are successful.
Well, I for one would buy your game if you put it on the mobile market. I thought the game was great, but yes, from a monetary standpoint I would have thought it would have gone better. If flash is dying, then I'll be sorry to see you go. I know that the mobile market can be tough for an independent/new developer, but if you can make a name for yourself (Away from Newgrounds and flash websites), you can probably achieve moderate success.
One thing that did jump out at me is that you said that you're more or less sick of the EBF series. I can certainly understand that it would get tiring after a while. You need to make a game that you can enjoy making, it would be sad to see your series meet the same fate as Final Fantasy (Post X).
One last note I'd like to point out; Cave Story. A highly acclaimed title that has sold millions, and now has a 3ds version. It is 4-5 hours long, and they are charging $40 for it. If you can get a major fan base you can go pretty far. There is certainly a market for inde games, whether they be 4 hours long or 27.
Stay away from XBLA.
C'mon Matt, EBF4 wasn't a complete failure, even though the steam greenlight thing didn't work, the profit wasn't that high, and everything on that massive list of things that has gone wrong with EBF4, that doesn't means that it was a complete failure.
In fact the EBF series are still a best-seller and a very popular game amongst the flash comunnity, and you are still a top-class animator/programmer, so don't worry better times are coming.
Anyways, please don't give up on flash, even though its true that is a dying market but, it would disapoint too many fans, but you are the only one who can save it ( :
After reading your blog post, all I can really say is that from a quality standpoint, the game was by no means a failure. It hit a lot of right notes, probably all of them, in my book. From a marketing standpoint, eh, you live and learn.
I for one would be really downhearted to hear no more EBF games will ever come to creation, but that said, I don't want to be one to push you to create something you have no interest in doing anymore. As a mood based gamer, I understand the feelings of just simply not wanting to do something, and no amount of FORCING myself to play it will get me to enjoy it, and I assume that feeling can translate into game creation.
I really wish I could have supported the game monitarily, but with no job and an exceptionally rough time finding one, I just couldn't. I'll support your choice regardless of your decision.
Even if you decide to stop with the series and stop with flash and all that, you did still produce four AMAZING flash games, and a buncha AMAZING spin-offs, that have endless replayabliity. That isn't a bad legacy to have, in my opinion. You made a ton of us laugh, think, and rage (at Epic Diffculty), and that is more than MANY other flash game creators have ever really got us to feel. To me, in all honesty, Epic Battle Fantasy is probably the best, highest quality flash game I've ever played in my life. There are some I enjoy a ton, but never any quite as charming, or downright hilarious as EBF has been. And it shows through all the submitted monster artwork, fanart, even freaking cosplay!!
You have some diehard, hardcore fans, all of whom, I'm sure, will support your decision, regardless of the outcome. And even if I can't draw well, or cosplay, or whatever, I am certainly one of them, dood!
~Chaos Sorceror Davidicus
Bro, I only know 3 reasons why people dedicate their time into making games;
1. to make money
2. to entertain people
3. try and change something big
Unfortunately if you don't achieve the thing you were going for then you will feel disappointed even if you excel in the other 2. So try and think differently, maybe your games are a bigger success than you think.
60,000 is more than I made in a year with a full time job, at least you didn't lose money, counting computer, tablet, software, headphone, speaker costs. At least I would hope not. I mean when I count that up in my head it wasn't a loss, and you probably already owned those.
Anyway I beat this game and got a LOT of the medals, and I was gifted a copy of the soundtrack, I really think it's something to be proud of. At the very worse it'd be great to have in a portfolio. I imagine you also have all the art, personally if you think phones are taking over browser games, take the art and rewrite/program the game for iphone/android, or if you're sick of that, have someone else do it for a % of profits.
Yeah, it's not a bad income, but the way things are going, it'll be really hard to earn that much from Flash games in the future.
60 grand from a flash game is a lot, especially in today's market. I don't see what you're griping about. Did you expect to retire on this one flash game?
There are always things to learn and improve on, but calling it a failure is a bit of an overstatement in my opinion.
It is quite a lot, yeah. But I wouldn't be able to make that much if the game came out just a bit later. Sponsorship deals are quickly getting worse, and there's less players.
Your pessimism toward your game seems pretty unnecessary to me. To have started and completed a game of the scope that you did (by yourself too) is an impressive feat. 60K is fucking stellar in terms of flash games; I'd be happy with half that for a year's worth of work.
At any rate, its all a learning experience. You make some gems sometimes, and sometimes things don't hit expectations. I'm sure you learned a shitload from this and improved as a designer, understand your market better, etc etc. You definitely gained a lot from this; don't view your work as a "failure" ever.
A cloud saving feature is something NG should have incorporated into the NG Passport system... but probably doesn't :( Backing up Flash game saves on a desktop/laptop kinda sucks, but is a necessary evil for the end-user (unless they just let all the crap build up in the browser cache).
I think having the extra languages is a darn good thing, and extends the range and age of the work.
Considering how tough making money online is, I'd say you did pretty good, and you learned even more!
$60k! That definitely seems worth the work, it's much more than I make in a year. It doesn't sound as bad as the title made it seem, more like a series of unfortunate events in terms of data mining/sponsorship/etc. It would be nice not having to worry about savegames though, I make backups of all flash saves occasionally, but cloud storage would simplify a lot.
As for translations, I'd go for English regardless of if there are translations in my main language or not, but if you ever need a future game translated to Swedish I'd be happy to help out, getting a credited name in a game of such caliber would be rewarding enough.
Damn, 60k, thats good man!!!!1111!!!
Even though I enjoy the series, I stopped liking them up until 3 and 4 because of the addition of real RPG exploration. The game is not bad, but I didn't realize in EBF4, I had to commit, but I didn't want to.
so like what you said people only took it as a browser game and expected something simple.
Exactly.
As many others have said, 60k isn't a failure. Nor EBF4 was. It was a pretty good game from my point of view. You made some errors; but only on the marketing point. I'm sure you will learn from that.
First, I'd like to suggest something practical for the save problem, something that you could use, if not in EBF4, in your next game: basically, it's a save system which has the possibility to store saves not into browser cookies, but in the player's computer. Strike Force Heroes 2 (check Armor Games) already uses that system; and I think that Legend Of The Void 2 does too.
Second, you mentioned that the bad distribution was due to the game's long loading time: what about making the next game area based? In short, the game loads one certain area of the game at a time, and when you enter in another one, it loads the second one. I personally think that most players would close the page when they see that the game doesn't loads, but if the game loads and they're able to play and enjoy a part of it, they wouldn't mind having to wait a bit for the other parts.
Third, if you're really getting sick of EBF, then end it. Remember, the best games are made out of passion: if you start viewing them as simply ways to get money, they will lose some of their quality. Try to find the right balance: I could name lots of big flash gaming titles who lost themselves due to the absolute search for money.
If you're bored from Epic Battle Fantasy series, it would be a good idea to upgrade it with planned features despite failing Greenlight and release the PC version somewhere else (GoG.com and Kongregate).
PC version will not have better performance (being embedded in a web page has nothing to do with speed) and nobody cares about advertisements, and deleted saves are caused by people's own stupidity and imprudence (such people can't play ANY web games, since they lose data from all of them).
Porting your future flash games into iOS applications (for Apple) is easy (You will need the special iOS export feature present in Flash CS 5.5. link: <a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html">http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_
iphone.html</a>) and will allow you to sell games on Apple Game Center.
Sounds to me like you're massively talented, and you should be working on bigger games targeted towards Steam and maybe even consoles, while potentially using Flash and websites like this one to distribute little mini-games or demos which serve as hype machines for your real projects. Or at least, it sounds to me like that's what you want to do. If so, go for it, or the unexplored curiosity may just taint your joy in this.
I wouldn't insult all of the people who really commit to doing web games and stuff by saying you're "just too good for this now", but I think your desires and ambitions are going beyond the reach of this creative realm.
I would say you did a fantastic job with the series overall and would not totally freak out if you discontinued it because at this point the series overall ended with a high note with this game (which actually turned into my favorite entry in the series). If you were to make mobile games though I think the profit off of it might be nice and definitely help you achieve your goals. Flash i would say 60$K is definitely an achievement but it all bears down to what do you want to do. (Even if you stopped making flash games or making any time of games i would consider it understandable because of life's random encounters and problems)
I look foward to your final decision of what you will be doing game-wise and I wish the best for you're social life as you are sort it out.
I feel as if your problem was advertizing. I rarely (Not saying I didn't at all.) see information about the game anywhere else on the Internet except the frequent posts here. And a failure? Come on, that's nowhere near a bad amount of cash for a flash game. There are also more than a handful of highly played flash games still out there today so I don't really see how flash is dying. (Dead Frontier, random Facebook shit that people spend mirrion dorra on, BattleBlocks Theater, etc) Sure it's not as big as it was, but it's nowhere near being "dead". And lot of shit on Steam Greenlight passes because it has a lot of hype. And again, the only hype I saw about this game was here.
TL;DR
Please put your work out there a lot more than you currently do, it deserves to be shown to the masses.
With all due respect intended, bugger off with that garble: EBF4 IS awesome. Making games is a dream, not a job, and I'm sorry, but if your only reason for making games is to earn a paycheck, then go join a major game corporation.
That said, please don't leave us because everything you've made so far is awesome and you have great potential as a game developer.
Seriously, I'm sure that a lot of people would agree with me when I say that making your thoughts come to life is a privilege - sometimes even a responsibility. Claiming that a game was a failure because it didn't make enough money is a great way to piss off the game's fans (say FF7 was a failure, I dare you), and anyone with a hint of sense can tell you that [happy] fans are where the money's at.
tl;dr no offense but quit yer bellyachin'
ixfd64
I don't think it's ever too late to implement another data tracking service. It's not like people have stopped playing the game.
matt-likes-swords
True, but I missed my best chance to get data, and it's already a bit late to make much use of any data I can still get.