Can anyone make money in Flash games?

Its a serious question... Zynga aside (they are nominally Flash), are there any stand alone web sites, that are public, who's sole business is making money in online flash games?
I really can't think of any. All the big online game portals are owned by other companies.
Pogo, Addictinggames, or Kongregate are corporate owned. What is it about flash games that makes them hard to monetize? Is it that we're asking too much? Do we expect them to make too much money? Is it that the market is fragmented? What is it? Its not like there isn't demand. Online games drive tons of traffic and people (especially kids) play all day.
Hmm.

The person or company that unlocks Flash/web games will do well for themselves.

Jan 18, 2012

Brian Kramer said...

Here's how I see it: the advantage Flash/web games have is that they don't need to be installed - they just load and can then be played. I'm supporting HTML5/Flash now and will continue to in the future. All of my games will be multi-platform. The HTML5/Flash versions will be able to be hosted on other sites, and users will be able to buy the unlock for the full version in the apps (playing the game otherwise in "demo" modes), plus buy DLC in the app all while remaining inside of the game. Google In-App Payments make that possible.

So, in my opinion it's NOT hard to monetize good games. Just no one practically is doing what I describe. They are either trying to make games as a service following the social games model or just make money from ads. Neither are what I want to do.

Making games just for Flash would be stupid. There are plenty of tools which allows cross platform dev such as Monkey or PlayN.

Laurent Courtines Free Online

Can anyone make money in Flash games?

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