Posts Tagged ‘video games’

Making Money From Flash Games Development

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Flash games have became increasingly commonplace in recent years but despite this, the creators of them seem fairly resistant to any real form of change. This is evidenced by virtue of the fact that they are continuing in producing the same tired material with no thought of expansion. A part of this can be explained by the fact that Flash games and the creation of them is a difficult process.

It is not sufficient to be good at Flash, you need to actually work on a variety of other abilities and skills as well, and so the Flash developer has to contend with things such as the creation of graphics, sound files, music. Underpinning all of this is the need to have the patience to actually plod through the project to its ultimate conclusion.

In short, games are very demanding items and they require a significant amount of hard work and commitment to ensure that they are successfully fulfilled. Not only is there the skeleton of the program (which is the code itself) but there is also the multimedia as well, such as the graphics, the sound files.

Given that there is the notable presence of all these different components, booting up the computer and jotting down some code is not likely to get you a very worthwhile program I am afraid. Whenever I decide to make a Flash program, I begin with my most trusted tool: pen and paper. I will map out what the game will do, how I will achieve the desired results and what I will need to include. This helps me to work out how the game could and will be written.

Once I have developed my design, I will then move onto the actual creation of the code. The sole purpose of this stage is simply to identify how the game will work, rather than how it will look. Whilst I will make use of holder graphics during this stage, this is more for a sense of purpose rather than actual commitment. Audio will also usually be omitted from this stage.

Once the dummy version of the game has been successfully written and exhaustively tested the next logical step is to then proceed to merge the graphics as well as the audio together. How well I completed the design stage will have a profound impact upon the successful completion of this stage. I will usually delegate a lot of the graphical work to an artist to ensure that I keep myself clear for the coding.

I only start to add the fancy extras if I am totally satisfied that the remainder of the course has been duly finished. All the little extras which are attractive to the user are great for winning them over, but include them too early on in the process and you will make more work for yourself.

As can be plainly seen, Flash games are very complex, laborious and time consuming projects indeed. However, by using organisation and careful planning it is entirely possible to break a large project into a much more manageable one and it means we can achieve results in a smaller time frame.

Please note: if you have never actually made a game entirely by yourself then the best thing maybe for you to simply focus purely upon modifying existing code to achieve a desired result because this will provide you with a much needed boost in experience.

Developing games can be a lot of fun, a great learning experience, and also quite profitable if done properly. They can also be a real headache thoughg so my advice is to take it slowly, learn at a gradual pace and enjoy the journey!

Download editable Flash Game FLA files at ViralFlashGames.com and learn how to create exciting games at Flash Games Course

Rock Band’s Top Songs To Play

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Since Rock Band first hit the stores two years ago I have been one f its biggest fans. I will sit for hours at a time playing the songs again and again as I try to get them perfect.

I intend on mastering this game on every level as well as every instrument. This will literally give me thousands of hours of game time and stacks of possibilities.

I’m going to share with you now some of my favorite songs on Rock Band. If you’ve never played it before, where have you been? Get yourself a copy now.

The first song I played was say it ain’t so by Weezer. This is the first song they recommend you try out and it’s a great first song to start off with as you’ll find your way with it really quickly.

It’s an incredibly easy song to play; it sounds fab and is a lot of fun. Even if you aren’t the singer you will be singing along.

One of the classic songs on Rock Band from the 1990′s is Creep by Radiohead. Whether you play the easy version at the beginning, or the harder one later on, you’ll enjoy playing along with this great song, whichever instrument you choose.

If you like to push yourself and set yourself high goals, the ultimate test on Rock Band is Green Grass and Tides. I personally wouldn’t recommend that you go anywhere near it until you have more or less mastered the game, as it is the hardest song you will ever have to play.

With awe inspiring solos and just about the hardest tune to master, this is the one everyone wants to crack on expert level. Many have conquered other songs as experts but this is a whole different ball game. Getting through this song is like a full physical workout and you will be exhausted at the end of it.

Access additional writing pieces created by this same author regarding subject matters including petite scrub pants and jeans for petite women.

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Developing Flash Games For Profit

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Over the past few years casual gaming hsa taken the Internet by storm. Browser games, an in particular Flash games are now more popular than ever, and with that increase in popularity comes an increase in demand. If you’re a Flash designer or developer, here are 7 ways in which you can cash in on this growth in the market.

Developing games for client might sound like a difficult market to break into, but in fact there are lots of companies out there looking for simple Flash games for their marketing campaigns. By starting with small, simple projects you can “earn while you learn” and slowly build up a portfolio as your skills develop.

If you don’t want the obligation and deadlines of working for clients, sponsorship mighht suit you better. This allows you to develop a game at your own pace, and once completed your sponsor pays you to embed their branding and links into the game. The amount you’ll earn will vary, depending on the company which is sponsoring you, and the quality of the game.

The next optin is to monetise your games yourself. These days several advertising networks offer the ability to embed adverts directly into your games, earning you money every time they are played. The networks usually have publishers who will distribute your games for a share of the revenue making it easy to get your game noticed.

You can also monetise your games by simply hosting them yourself, and displaying adverts on the same page. Banner adverts, Adsense blocks or affiliate promotions are all viable ways of monetising the traffic that a good Flash game will generate.

Recently several companies have introduced micro-payments and in-game currency. This allows players to buy upgrades and items, and is a new and fast growing way to monetise games. While this method is still in its infancy, I predict we’ll be seeing more and more of this in the near future.

Finally, and perhaps most obviously, a good Flash game can be ported to a more commercial platform. You can offer a downloadable version for a few dollars, an iPhone version on Apple’s App store, or you could even port to a console platform such as Xbox live. In fact, once you’ve learned the skills of a Flash games developer, the doors to the games industry are wide open to you!

So as you can see, developing Flash games can be a great way of making a profit, either as a complete enterprise, or as part of an existing design or development business. If you’re new to game development then start by following game tutorials, or modifying existing game code and in time you could be writing the next blockbuster!

Find Actionscript game tutorials, articles, book reviews, game source code and more at FlashGamesClassroom.com or download Flash game source code to learn from, modify, edit, rebrand and create brand new games at ViralFlashGames.com