I’ve been working on a couple game concepts and want to prototype a few more before committing to one to build out. I’ve been hacking the hell out of Flixel, which I’ve decided to use for a most of the games. There’s a screenshot of game3 on the right there. Weird, eh? Also fugly, but it’s placeholder art so there. I have a new collision detection system for it that I’ll be posting about eventually (at least, I’ve never heard of it before).

The microtransaction (MTX) dilemma

I’m really excited about all the new services that have been released to allow Flash developers to monetize their games through microtransactions. I fucking hate ads, plus the ROI of them in Flash games is usually shit. Many many years ago I knew microtransactions (MTX) were the future of digital content and I’m pleased to see the idea coming to the mainstream (in America at least, Asia was quicker on it as usual).

The problem I’m seeing with MTX is that Flash developers need to try a lot harder by making much bigger games in order to really reap the rewards. Before, you could make a pretty simple, fun and addictive game and monetize it easily with ads. But with MTX, you can’t do that as easily since you need to build more content for players to buy into. For example, to me, putting premium content in a Tower Defense game isn’t viable–the game concept is so small that I doubt anyone is going to pay anything for more turrets or maps (for example). There just isn’t enough game there.

So in order to realistically bring MTX into our games I think we’re going to have to build much bigger games, and that kind of sucks because that makes it much harder for indie devs to make good on their work. Hell, this might actually decrease the quality of Flash games due to the higher gate devs will need to jump to get in. Well, let’s just see how it goes but I for one am having to take a lot more time building a game worthy of MTX-enabled content

By the by, below is my current list of MTX-enabling services currently available. If you know of any others, please leave a comment

• GamerSafe – Seems to be the best choice so far. Adds achievements, microtransactions, save games, leaderboards, etc in a unified, web-wide accessible account.
• Nonoba – Like GamerSafe, but also has a multiplayer network… but you must have a nonoba account to keep multiplayer stats/items etc (but guests can still play, just not save). Anyone used their multiplayer API yet?
• MochiCoins – MTX only. Can’t use with other systems so I’m completely ignoring this one.
• HeyZap – Also MTX only.

It’s best to include as many options for your players as possible, so given this list, you would allow premium content to be purchased with GamerSafe, Nonoba and HeyZap.

New additions to C³

I’ve made a significant number of changes to the site itself. Besides the better layout (960gs ftw) I added this awesome WordPress plugin that does an excellent job highlighting AS3 code (see previous posts with code)… except it’s fat and makes the site load slower, but whatever. I can fix that with another plugin (I <3 WP).

Also you can socialize my posts now, using Sociable; you’ll also see new blog posts updating my Twitter status (I mainly wrote this post to test that actually). I still have a bit to do for the site aesthetically though… but I kinda like tweaking themes, and now that IE is growing up (sort of) web design has been a little easier. I still can’t wait for Google’s bitch-slap to MS though. That’s so baller.

This time it’s because I’m an alpha tester for Metaplace, and I’ve been putting most of my free time into that. Check out the site, post in the forums (maybe you’ll get selected for the upcoming beta) — it’s an excellent project with a ton of potential.

But I’ve also been working on a new AS3 experiment that implements a blitting engine for sprite rendering. This allows me to display over 1000 sprites on-screen at once, as opposed to the 300-400 that’s possible with no special code. I’ll be implementing this in my upcoming Flash game. Maybe.