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Designing Flash Games for Fun and Profit aka FGL

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Paul Keith:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9128-Designing-Flash-Games-for-Fun-and-Profit

Yet there is money to be made designing Flash games. Sometimes there's a great deal of it, says Chris Hughes, a former Flash game developer and a co-founder of FlashGameLicense.com.

While Flash games may not make money from game sales, they can generate a lot of web traffic. The greater the web traffic, the more money hosting websites can charge for advertisements on their site. Portal sites are willing to share their advertising money with designers, because a single top-tier game can generate more than 100 million plays, Hughes says. Additionally, according to an industry report, about forty percent of internet users worldwide play Flash games..

Hughes has been using FlashGameLicense, or FGL, to connect designers with sponsor host sites - and money - since 2007. Flash developers can showcase their games on the site; host sites can preview games and bid on them. If a game sells, FGL takes a small cut. To date, the company has brokered nearly 6,000 deals and given $8.6 million to developers.
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For their money, sponsors typically get the developers to include the sponsors' name, logo, and website in the game; that way, when a game inevitably spreads around the internet, there's a figurative and literal link back to the sponsor's site. Developers keep the rights to their game and intellectual property. There can be additional features to a deal: a sponsor may ask for exclusive rights for a period of time, share a small amount of advertising revenue, or offer additional money if a game does well, but most money typically changes hands through sponsorship.

As for developers, the amount of money they makes varies tremendously, both due to the terms of the deal and the success of the game. At FGL, one or two games a month - roughly the top one percent - might sell for between $20,000 and $30,000, and a similar number of games might sell for half that amount. The average price for a game sold is closer to two or three thousand dollars, but many games sell for much more - or significantly less - than that price, Hughes says.
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