Web Games
that make Business Sense
Scott Kim, scottkim.com
Game Developers Conference 2001
My name is Scott Kim. I have been an independent game designer for ten years, specializing in puzzle games. Some of the games I’ve
worked on include The Next Tetris, Heaven & Earth, Obsidian, and Majestic. I wrote the puzzles at the back of NewMedia magazine for
ten years. Some of you may know my book of upside down lettering called Inversions.
These days more and more of my work has been games for web sites. Some of these sites are game sites, like the Zone or Uproar, but
many are not. .For instance, a couple years ago, I did a weekly puzzle for the Adobe web site.
What the Client Wants
I hear games are a good way
to make my site sticky.
I do not want games that are
inappropriate or too costly.
What do you recommend?
These days, I get a lot of calls like this. As a game designer, my job now is to not only design good games, but to design games that serve
specific business needs — like to keep people coming back every week, or to explain product features.
A New Kind of Client
 Not
a gaming company
 No gaming expertise
 No gaming infrastructure
 Games are a means to an end
And I have to deal with a new type of client. They’re not a gaming company. They don’t having gaming expertise or infrastructure, so I
often need to educate them about the basics of games. Most importantly, they view games as a means to an end, not an end in itself. So I
have to understand their goals before I design the game.
An Old Kind of Client
Web games are a recent phenomenon, but games in service of business are nothing new. Crossword puzzles in newspapers increase reader
loyalty by providing daily amusement. Contests under bottle caps boost sales by promising a chance to win prizes. Trivia quizzes in movie
theaters keep customers entertained while waiting for a movie. The puzzle above promotes Symington’s soups. The goal is to stack the
four blocks so that each face of the column shows all four soup labels. The puzzle was invented and patented in 1900. A later independent
incarnation of this puzzle was marketed by Parker Brothers in the 1960s as the hit game Instant Insanity. This game has a lot of the same
virtues as web games: for a small price you can give the customer an engaging memorable experience they will want to share with friends.
Outline
What is a Web Game?
Questions to Ask
Reasons for Web Games
Tips for Web Game Developers
In this talk I will talk about what is a web game, the questions you should ask your clients in order to analyze their business needs,
examples of the sorts of games that work best for particular business needs, and how to build a business developing web games.
What is a Web Game?
Let’s step back for a moment and see how web games fit into the larger world of electronic gaming.
Electronic gaming started with location-based arcade games like Pong. Then it moved into home game consoles built by Atari, and later
Nintendo and Sony. As Apple and IBM invented the home computer, games moved onto computers. Now games are moving online.
Online gaming is now the most rapidly changing part of the industry. The internet affects all game publishers, both as a medium for
playing games, and as a channel for marketing and distributing games.
Within online gaming there are games aimed at traditional gamers, like Quake, Everquest and Ultima Online, and casual games like
Jeopardy!, Monopoly, and crossword puzzles. Casual games appeal to a vastly larger audience than traditional computer games. Casual
gaming is now the fastest growing area of electronic gaming: witness the recent transformation of high-speed 3d online gaming service
TEN into the casual gaming web site Pogo, and Electronic Arts’ foray into casual gaming ea.com.
Casual gaming includes game destination sites like Pogo and Playsite, as well as games on sites that have nothing to do with games, like
Yahoo! and Pepsi. In this talk we’ll look at casual games for nongame sites, which I believe has the potential to be the bigger market.
Played in a Web Browser
 Without
big downloads
 Built in Java, Shockwave, Flash
 Usually simple, familiar games
Technically speaking, a web game is a game played in a web browser. Online games that do not qualify as web games include games that
are downloaded online but played offline, and games that require a CD-ROM or big initial download. Typically, web games are built in
Java, Shockwave, Flash, Visual Basic, Javascript or HTML.Because they are accessible to a wide popular audience, most web games are
simple familiar games like bingo or crossword puzzles, though there is certainly room for new casual games.
For Casual Gamers
TRADITIONAL
CASUAL GAMERS
Young males with
All ages, male & female
High-end computers With low-end computers
Who will pay for
Who want free
Deep and complex
Quick and simple
Fast action games
Familiar turn-based games
Casual gamers want a fundamentally different gaming experience from the audience for traditional computer games. Note that most of the
features that traditional gamers crave, such as high-end 3-d graphics, get in the way of the casual gaming experience.
Questions to Ask
Here’s a checklist of questions to ask your clients to analyze their business needs. These questions are not rocket science. Nonetheless they
are worth reviewing. I believe that most problems in web game design result from failing to think through one of these questions.
1. What is the purpose?
 The
purpose of the game…
 Should support the site purpose…
 Should support the business purpose
TIP: You may have to clarify the purpose
Ask about purpose. Ideally the game should support the site’s purpose, which in turn should support the purpose of the business. When the
purpose changes, the game should change. Often clients are not clear on the purpose of the game, and you have to help them define it.
Adobe.com
For instance, Adobe contacted me in 1998 to create a game for their site. The Adobe site was a mixture of technical support and marketing.
They de-emphasized sales of applications — their core business — because they did not want to compete with retail channels.
Puzzle: Promote Fonts, Clip Art
So I made the purpose of the puzzle be to promote Adobe fonts and clip art, which are a secondary business to selling applications.
2. Who is the audience?
 Age,
gender?
 Interests?
 Purpose in coming to the site?
TIP: Different audiences prefer different
types of games
Ask who is your audience? Not only their age and gender, but also their interests, and their purpose in coming to the site. The more you
can put yourself into the audience’s shoes, the better you will be able to design games that meet their preferences. Here’s a tip: different
audiences prefer different types of games. In particular, most people have a strong bias for word, logic or visual games.
Adobe: Visual Artists
Adobe’s audience is graphic designers, so visual games were a natural. In this puzzle the challenge is to figure out from which letter each
of the square designs comes. For instance, the blue brush stroke came from the C. Every square comes from a different letter.
3. How often do you want visits?
 How
long
 How frequently
 Over what period of time
TIP: Don’t overfeed your customers
How long do you want your customers to spend on the game? How frequently do you want them to come back? Over what period of time
should the game keep attracting customers? Here’s a tip: you want your game to be fun, but you actually don’t want to make it so
engaging that they forget the rest of the site — unless the site has a business model that depends on people staying on as long as possible.
Adobe: Weekly
For Adobe, we wanted to encourage customers to keep returning fairly often, so the puzzle was initially planned to be weekly. To keep
people coming back, each puzzle included a preview of the next puzzle. We included an archive of past puzzles. In retrospect it would
have been better to have limited the number of past puzzles. Otherwise people gorge themselves on past puzzles, then never come back.
4. How will you judge success?
 Page
views, unique visitors
 Sales transactions, letters to the editor
 Over what period of time
TIP: Build tracking into the game
It is important to know up front how the success of your game will be judged. It might be judged on page views, number of unique
visitors, numbers of sales completed, or number of letters to the editor. You also want to know over what period of time the game will be
judged. If you know the criterion for success, you can often build automatic tracking into the game. Whatever the goal, be sure the success
of the game visible to the client. I made the NewMedia puzzle be a contest every month so that the magazine would receive hundreds of
letters, making it obvious to the magazine staff that people were reading the puzzle.
Adobe: Track Page Hits
The Adobe Puzzle was divided into several pages. Here is the page that appears when you solve the puzzle. The Adobe site already kept
count of how many unique visitors saw each page — we didn’t have to build any special tracking technology. By counting who reached
which page, we could track how many players started the puzzle, and how many finished it.
5. What is the technology?
 Platform:
computer, PDA, cell phone
 Programming: Java, Shockwave, Flash
 Server: CGI scripting, database, posting
TIP: low-tech is good
Now let’s look at the practical considerations in building a game. First is technology. Different platforms offer different input and output
devices, which work best with different sort of games. For instance, PDAs have pen input, which work best with games played by clicking
on large objects. Technology includes not only client side browser technology, but also server side technology like databases. Traditional
computer games often push the technology envelope, but on the web lower technology is often better, because it reaches more people.
Adobe: HTML+CGI
The original Adobe site was technologically conservative, supporting no plug-ins. So I designed puzzles that could be implemented in
straight HTML with simple CGI scripts on the server side. The conservative approach made the puzzle very robust — no browser
incompatibilities. To play this puzzle, the player chooses a letter from the menu below each square design. After choosing guesses, the
player clicks the Submit Answer button. The server then updates the page to show which guesses were correct. This style of interaction led
to the idea of scoring the player on the number of submissions it takes to solve the puzzle.
6. Who will build it?
 What
skills are needed?
 In house or out of house?
 Buy syndicated content or build?
TIP: Coordinate your team
Of course you have to make sure you have people with the right skills to build the game. But you don’t have to do it all in-house. You can
outsource the work, or buy pre-built content from a content syndication firm. Many syndicators will customize their games for a small
incremental charge. Working with outside firms can save money, but only if the costs of coordinating the production and maintenance of
the game are not too high.
Adobe: In-house Production
I was the only outside person working on the Adobe puzzle. I delivered art and text to an FTP server periodically, then in-house artists and
programmers implemented the puzzles.
7. How much will it cost?
 Cost
of building the game
 Cost of maintaining the game
TIP: build with templates to reduce
maintenance
Of course budget is a major constraint. Keep in mind that there are two costs: building the game, and maintaining the game over time. It
often pays to spend more money up front building reusable game templates, in order to reduce ongoing maintenance costs.
Adobe: Four Templates
The Adobe puzzle was built on a rotating collection of four puzzle templates: two font puzzles and two clip art puzzles. Before we
launched the puzzle, we built all four templates.
8. How will it be maintained?
 Fixing
bugs, supporting new technology
 Posting high scores, awarding prizes
 Adding new content
TIP: Start small, roll out over time
Often maintenance costs are higher than building costs, which can come as a surprise to companies accustomed to shipping products.
Maintenance costs include bug fixes, posting high scores, awarding prizes, managing community, and adding periodic new content. As
with all internet software projects, it is often good to start by building a small inexpensive core game, see how players respond, then
growing the game over time. This reduces the chance that you will build something that you can’t maintain.
Adobe: Not Automated Enough
In theory the four puzzle templates were re-usable. In practice, they required hand assembly, and production costs ran too high, especially
for CGI scripting. In retrospect I would have launched with just one or two templates, and added more templates over time as needed.
9. Do you even need a game?
GOAL
ALTERNATIVES TO GAMES
Viral
Email games, greeting cards
Friendly Jokes, cartoons, stories
Creative Open-ended tools & toys
Practical Timely useful information
One last question: do you even need a game? We’re game developers, so we’re in the business of selling game services. But games aren’t
always the best solution to business needs. Sometimes I can serve my clients needs best by recommending something other than a game.
Summary: Questions to Ask
GOALS
MEANS
1. Purpose?
2. Audience?
3. Frequency?
4. Judging success?
5. Technology?
6. Staff?
7. Budget?
8. Maintenance?
9. And…do you even need a game?
Examples of Web Games
Here are some examples of web games, and the business reason they serve.
Reason 1. Attract Attention
iwon.com
Contests are a great way to attract attention to a site. When you visit the portal site iwon, you see this screen. The more often you visit, the
better your chances of winning. Through this simple gimmick iwon has come within striking distance of market leader Yahoo!
Reason 1. Attract Attention
espn.com
Here is a similar contest on ESPN, the market leader in sports sites. Each day you get a different random set of three player cards.
Depending on how well your players play that day, you get some number of points. Outstanding features of this game:
•You don’t have to do anything at all to play
•It rewards frequent visits
•It is well tuned to the interests of its audience
•It makes use of an existing database of player photos and statistics already owned by ESPN
Reason 1. Attract Attention
For instance: Lotteries, skill games,
creative contests
 Contests create buzz
 Get people to register
 Can be themed to match a site
To summarize: Contests can be simple lotteries that you enter by just showing up, like iWon and espn, or they can be more complex games
of skill. Note that lotteries are illegal in many places; games of skill and creative contests get around this restriction.
•Games create buzz that attracts people to the site.
•Games are a good way to get people to register for a site: the chance of winning a prize is an effective way to dissolve a person’s
resistance to divulging private information. A
•And finally, contests can be dressed to match the theme of the site.
Reason 2. Draw Repeat Visits
uclick.com
Newspapers use syndicated daily comics and crossword puzzles as a way to keep people coming back for more. In a Gallop poll, more
than 25% of the American public reported having played a crossword puzzle in the last month, making it the most popular indoor sport.
The Universal Crossword by Tim Parker is the most widely syndicated crossword puzzle on the web, with millions of players daily.
Reason 2. Draw Repeat Visits
sarbakan.com
Mr. Snoozleberg, by Sarbakan.com, is an innovative web game that includes a simple but compelling storyline. Such a game could be
presented in weekly installments. The animation production costs for a game like this are relatively low, compared with the cost of
producing a fully animated movie such as Mondo Minishows.
Reason 2. Draw Repeat Visits
For instance: crossword, jumble, chess
puzzle, jigsaw
 Fixed format, varying content
 Preview of next day, answers, winners
 Ratings, high score, continuing story
To summarize: Daily puzzles such as those in newspapers are a good way to draw repeat visitors.
•All daily puzzles feature a fixed format with varying content. The fixed format makes the puzzle easier to produce, and makes it easy for
readers to develop a daily habit of playing the puzzle.
•Some puzzles link puzzles from day to day by delaying the answer to today’s puzzle till tomorrow, by giving a preview of the next
puzzle, or by announcing contets winners the next day.
•Other ways to increase the stickiness of a daily game on the web include player ratings, high score boards, and a continuing storyline.
Reason 3. Retain Visitors
lycos.com
Big portal sites like Yahoo!, AOL and Lycos offer games for the same reason that shopping malls have game arcades — to give customers
everything they want in one place. Why let your customers escape to another site if you can offer everything they want in one place?
Reason 3. Retain Visitors
For instance: card games, board games,
bingo, puzzles, arcade games
 Include what is expected
 Themed to the site
 With a few standout custom games
One-stop shopping game areas should strive to offer a wide variety of games that cover what the customer expects, which typically
includes card games, board games, gambling games and simple arcade games.
•For the most part the games can and should be generic.
•But even if gameplay is generic, the look can still be customized. Las Vegas casinos use this trick: same games, different environment.
•It’s probably worth including a few unique games that make your gaming area special, otherwise there is nothing stopping people from
going to other portal gaming areas.
Reason 4. Distraction
mondomedia.com
Heavy Metal Guy is a humorous 5-minute animated show produced by Mondo Media. New episodes appear regularly on sites such as
Netscape and iwon. Because episodes can run as much as a megabyte each, each show begins by giving the viewer the option to play a
game while the rest of the show downloads. Such a game is called a “download game.”
Reason 4. Distraction
The download game for Heavy Metal Guy is based on the musical memory game Simon, with the title character making appropriate
noises and gestures. In general it’s good to dress a download game in the style of the content. Like Disneyland’s elaborate pre-show
exhibits that you see while waiting in line, a download game should be part of the experience of the main show, not merely a time-waster.
Reason 4. Distraction
When the show has loaded, the player is given the option of launching the show. In general it is a good idea to let the player control when
the game ends, instead of automatically launching the rest of the show.
Reason 4. Distraction
When possible, it is better to avoid the need for download games by hiding big downloads under credits and other low-data introductory
sequences.
Reason 4. Distraction
For instance: Simon, Concentration,
trivia, simple arcade
 Must be very simple, no instructions
 Can be themed to go with content
 Must let player stop at any time
Download games are usually extremely familiar games that require no instruction.
Reason 5. Teach
newmedia.com
Web games can teach concepts. This game teaches the concept of color mixture — an important skill for visual designers on the web. I
designed this puzzle for my monthly puzzle on newmedia.com. After ten years of creating puzzles for NewMedia I found that I could
make games to teach almost any concept.
Reason 5. Teach
For instance: drill, simulation,
walkthrough
 For education or corporate training
 For marketing or consumer awareness
 Expected on kid sites
Teaching games include conventional drill and practice, simulations, and walkthroughs that step you through a process.
•Teaching games can be used in educational settings such as schools or corporate training…
•As well as for marketing products or creating consumer awareness of an idea. For instance, an ecology site might want a rainforest game.
•Although somewhat unusual on adult sites, teaching games are de rigueur on kid sites.
Reason 6. Brand Marketing
candystand.com
Candystand is a web site aimed at kids that promotes Nabisco’s many brands of candy.
Reason 6. Brand Marketing
candystand.com
Here the donut-shaped Lifesavers candies form the holes for a game of ski ball. Since it is not appropriate to sell candy to kids on a web
site, Candystand instead creates positive associations with its brand names by incorporating the products into familiar arcade games.
Reason 6. Brand Marketing
mentalworkout.com
Here is a completely different example of brand marketing. I recently designed puzzles an ad campaign entirely built around puzzle
solving. The client is the business consulting firm Cambridge Technology Partners, and the goal is to recruit new employees.
Reason 6. Brand Marketing
mentalworkout.com
The print ads point to a web site called mentalworkout.com, which has interactive puzzles like this. Here, the goal is to arrange the tiles so
all lines connect all the way across the board, both horizontally and vertically. Players can post high scores and win prizes.
Reason 6. Brand Marketing
For instance: jigsaw puzzle with logo, driving
simulation
 Goal is to promote a brand
 Not to sell a product
 By using the logo, product or idea in a game
Brand games can be as generic as a jigsaw puzzle using a company logo, or as specific as a driving simulation for a Seadoo jet ski vehicle.
•The goal in brand marketing is to create positive awareness of a brand, not to actually sell a product.
•In some cases there is no product to sell. For instance, oil companies create ads that portray themselves as environmentally friendly. In
other cases the product is not appropriate to sell on the internet, or the web site does not want to preempt sales in physical stores.
•In all cases the idea is to build a game in which the brand is part of the game itself.
Reason 7. Product Marketing
shufflebrain.com
Computer game publishers often put demoes on the web to help sell games. Here is a web game I created to help sell the CD-ROM game
Obsidian, which I also worked on. I didn’t use actual puzzles from the game because they would have been too big, and given away too
much of the game. So instead I created original puzzles using art and themes from the game. In this puzzle the challenge is to unscramble
a poem that occurs at a critical point in the game. The game originally appeared on segasoft.com; you can play it at shufflebrain.com.
Reason 7. Product Marketing
gamelet.com
Gamelet.com built this game for Proctor & Gamble to promote Cascade Complete, a dishwasher detergent that lets you avoid prewashing.
The goal is to juggle the dishes. The Cascade box is a powerup. When you catch it, all dishes are suddenly put away clean. Through this
imaginative dramatization, the game communicates the idea that Cascade Complete lets you “skip the sink”.
Reason 7. Product Marketing
For instance: demos of computer games,
automobile web sites
 Excerpt of a product
 Simulation of a product
 Explain features
Web games can help sell many types of products. Besides demoes on computer game sites, automobile sites often include games.In
general, a game can help sell a product by
•Letting the customer experience it directly (in the case of products that can be delivered online)
•Simulating the experience of a product.
•Or by explaining how it works.
Reason 8. Viral marketing
battlemail.com
Marketing people all know that word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising. No wonder there is so much buzz about “viral
marketing”. The web site battlemail promotes itself to advertisers as a potent form of viral marketing. Not only are customers likely to
infect friends with the virus, the messages are highly targeted, based on the types of people that like particular types of games.
Reason 8. Viral marketing
For instance: email games, screensaver
games, greeting cards with games
 Make it fun
 Make it personal
 Make it easy to send
Besides email games, other possible types of viral games include screensaver games and greeting cards with games. To make a game that
people will want to send to their friends, be sure it is fun, personal, and easy to send.
Reason 9. Brand Extension
station.sony.com
Jeopardy! is one of the most popular syndicated TV game shows, second only to its cousin Wheel of Fortune. Dozens of versions exist,
extended into every possible medium. To make sure the internet generation keeps watching the show, parent company Sony created the
Sony Station web site, with spiffy new online versions of its game shows. Note the co-branded versions of Jeopardy with VH-1 and ESPN.
Reason 9. Brand Extension
For instance: TV game shows, board
games, newspaper puzzles
 Faithful to the original brand
 But also appropriate to the medium
 Be willing to take poetic license
Besides TV shows, board game manufacturers like Hasbro and newspaper puzzles like the New York Times also have web extensions.
•A web game extension of a game from another medium should be faithful to the old brand, yet appropriate to the new medium.
•Be willing to alter details of the game to fit the web. For instance, TV Jeopardy! requires contestant to speak their responses, whereas web
Jeopardy! has contestants choose responses from a list. This changes the game strategy a bit, but keeps the game show pace moving.
Summary: Reasons for Games
1. Attract
2. Repeat
3. Retain
4. Distract
5. Teach
6. Brand marketing
7. Product marketing
8. Viral marketing
9. Brand extension
Here is the a summary of the nine reasons for putting a game on a nongame web site. The first four reasons involve manipulating the
customer’s attention, while the remaining five reasons have to do with communicating a message.
Tips for Web Game
Developers
If you want to develop web games for nongame web sites, here are some tips to keep in mind, based on my own experiences and the
experiences of other web game developers.
Tip 1. Know your Strengths
boxerjam.com
You can compete best with other developers if you focus on your strengths, and target clients who need what you have to offer. For
instance, Julann Griffin started off as a creator of game shows for television. Her company BoxerJam primarily targets big media
companies like Sony and Electronic Arts with big mass-market audiences and lots of infrastructure. Other web game companies come out
of the print, game, education or animation world.
Tip 2. Think Small
TRADITIONAL
CASUAL
BUDGET
$1-10 million
$1-10 thousand
BUILD TIME
2 years
2 days - 2 months
RHYTHM
Few big sales
Many small sales
PLAY TIME
Many hours
A few minutes
SCREEN SIZE
Full screen
400x300
FILE SIZE
300 Mbyte
300 Kbyte
Let’s face it. Most web games have drastically smaller budgets than do arcade, console or computer games.
Tip 3. Be Small
popcap.com
If web games are developed on such small budgets, how can a developer survive? By being small. PopCap has just three people (game
designer/artist, engineer and business person). Four months after their launch they had the top two games on the Zone, Bejeweled and
Runes (called Diamond Mine and Alchemy on PopCap’s site). Even if your company is large, the development team can be small. Small
teams not only cost less, they can make changes faster.
John Vechey, PopCap’s business person, comments that the building web games is a great way to learn about game design, whether or not
web games are ultimately what you want to build . The basic issues is designing a good game are the same whether you are building a
multi-million dollar extravaganza or low-budget Java game. But web games have much shorter development times, so there is more
opportunity to iterate a design and learn from your mistakes.
Tip 4. Customizable Templates
shockwave.com
Most puzzles in newspapers use the same form every day with changing content. By building a puzzle on a re-usable template, you can
shorten production time, make it easy offer cheap semi-custom puzzles, and streamline production of a periodic feature. An example of a
template-driven puzzle is Jim Collins’ jigsaw puzzle on shockwave.com and uclick.com. Drop in a new picture and voila, a new puzzle.
Not only is life easy for the puzzle creator, he can offer the tools to end-users to build their own puzzles.
Tip 5. Levels of Customization
clevermedia.com
Web game developer Clevermedia created Speed Snack for the Planet Lunch web site eploids.com by dropping custom graphics into an
existing game engine. By using such engines, CleverMedia can customize games for low incremental fees. In general it is good to offer a
range of customization options, from free generic games, to expensive completely custom games.
Ezone offers some of its games for free, even giving away the HTML on their site. Tim Parker creates a widely syndicated crossword
puzzle. Pay a bit more and you can get a custom crossword puzzle for your site. By offering both generic and custom games, you lower
customer resistance, and give customers a gradual migration path toward more expensive options.
Tip 6. Sell Limited Licenses
ebrainygames.com
If you only make a small amount by selling a game, how do you make money? By selling it many times. Dave Phillips from
eBrainyGames recomends that you sell only limited licenses to companies that want your games, instead of giving away all rights. The
license can be limited to a particular platform, market, configuration, or period of time. For instance, eBrainyGames made a deal with CDROM compilation publisher Egames that allowed eBrainyGames to sell download rights elsewhere, to sell games directly on their own
site, and to even resell their games in other CD-ROM compilations, as long as Egames had first right of refusal. Reselling the same work
many times multiplies the results of your efforts.
Tip 7. Multiple Revenue
Streams
For game sites & nongame sites
 On computer & PDAs
 As marketing & as product for sale
 Ads on portfolio site
TIP: Try to get ongoing revenue, not just a
one-time sale

Not only do you want to sell a game many times, you want to sell it as many different ways as possibles, into many different channels.
Dave Collier of Gamelet says that he tried to get his corporate clients to pay him monthly licensing fees, not just a one-time fee, by
building in features such as community that would keep the games active for a long time.
Tip 8. Outsourced Hosting
uclick.com
To make it easy for sites to carry your games, it is wise to be able to offer complete hosting services. For instance content syndicator
uclick offers content both posted to the client’s site, or hosted on uclick’s servers. Clients with no technical expertise can choose
outsourced hosting, while technically adept clients can host the games on their site, gaining a bit more control over the look. Either way
the game appears seamlessly integrated into the client’s site, and daily updates are completely automated.
Tip 9. Portfolio/Destination Site
clevermedia.com
Most web game development game companies have portfolio sites that showcase their games. In many cases the portfolio site can itself be
a destination site, attracting players and providing revenue from ads or sales. For instance, Clevermedia runs four different web sites with
over 100 games. For many years they supported themselves entirely on banner ads. Don’t have your own site? Consider posting content on
a high-traffic site like shockwave.com, which allows content providers to promote their services.
Summary: Tips for Developers
1. Know your Strengths
2. Think Small
3. Be Small
4. Customizable Templates
5. Levels of Customization
6. Sell Limited Licenses
7. Multiple Revenue Streams
8. Outsourced Hosting
9. Portfolio/Destination Sites
Here is the a summary of the tips. The great thing about developing web games is that a small team or even an individual can do it all.
Conclusions
Summary
 What
is a Web Game?
 Questions to Ask
 Reasons for Web Games
 Tips for Web Game Developers
First we looked at the emerging world of games for nongame web sites.
Then we stepped through a list of98 questions to ask your clients before deciding which game will work.
We looked at 9 common reasons for putting games on web sites, and the sorts of games that serve each situation.
Finally, we covered 7 tips for web game developers.
Remember
 Tailor
game to meet business needs
 Build using reusable templates
 Offer levels of customization
TIP: Start small, grow slowly
For game developers, the important thing to remember is to start by thinking about what your clients need, then build games to fit those
those needs.
By building games on reusable templates, you can offer levels of customization that will meet a wide range of customer situations.
The market for web games is volatile. I believe the best strategy for web game developers is stay lean and mean, so you can respond
quickly to changes. Fortunately web games are easy to build, so a small team can do it all.
Web Games
that make
Business Sense
www.scottkim.com
The web is a new frontier for game developers. It is too early to say which strategies will succeed. But whatever happens, the winners will
be the companies that build web games that make business sense.