Anyways, while I was doing that, I would often check out the stats for Earth Tower Defense on the Mochi dashboard. In the past month, the game has gotten around 10,000 plays (this has mostly ocurred in the past couple of days). While that is a fanastic number of plays and I'm pretty proud of that, the eCPM (effective cost-per-thousand impressions) is rather low (it's at around .11 now). Comparing it to others on the mochi forums makes me feel kind of bad about that :( Other people seem to get numbers around .25 or .4. It is making me think about what I could have done to improve that ranking...
The one good thing that has come of this is that the game seems to be getting slightly better than average reviews (around 3.1 out of 5 for most sites). A lot of people have complained about it being too much like Gemcraft and the art but that isn't surprising at all, however. While it would have been nice if the game was a huge hit, the reality is that I can understand the criticism of the game.
Along these lines of thought, however, is something that is bothering me quite a bit. Basically, I need to start thinking of designing games a bit different. I need to make them more achievement-y and quick.
I'm currently designing Platform Explorer the way I used to design video games (which is to say that I wasn't too concerned with a lot of micro stuff). The reality is that I WOULD HAVE thought that Earth Tower Defense would be the quintessential Flash type of game that would earn a high eCPM. So, if ETD doesn't make any money on ads, than I'm not too sure Platform Explorer would either.
The thing is, I'm already past the point of return on Platform Explorer. Although I've been doing shit on ETD for the past week, I'm anxious to get back to it. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but that type of game is something I've wanted to make for years now. But I'm quite afraid of it not making ANY money at all and ending up being a waste of time. I'm concerned that I'm not as savvy about the Flash market as I thought I was.
Paul Eres (Studioeres.com) asked a question on Formspring that has gotten me thinking a lot about my career. Essentially, I'm not living up to the goals of Jr. Jellybeans. Basically, I'm not making games that are any good :) Well, that's not entirely right, what I really want to say is that I'm not making games that are GREAT.
I am doing the best I can and I truly feel like I've made a lot of progress in this past year. I feel like Earth Tower Defense was a huge achievement for me. Still, there's a part of me that's worried that I should be moving in a different direction. Not so much career wise, but I need to reevaluate how I'm trying to design video games. I don't really know how else to think, however. I mean, I'm just one man...Um... I didn't mean to get emo on you LOL. I do feel deep down that I'm making the right moves. But... well... I guess there are always doubts when your expectations never seem to turn out right.
Any comments or feedback I'd love to hear it!
