When I Was Young: A Post Mortem

That’s been almost a month since the release of When I Was Young flash game. As I promised here are some numbers and statistics. Looking ahead I can say that for the moment it’s not only my greatest game, but also most successful project under newly created The Gamest brand which have got more than 1 million game plays in less than one week after release.

As I mentioned before the game was created for the Russian contest of fast game development and I had only a week to work on it. But to be honest I spend almost two weeks after the contest to polish a game and make it more attractive to the potential sponsors.

It was awesome experience and very fun activity. I believe that exactly these additional adjustments were the main reason of When I Was Young general success. I’ve really learned a lot during development process!

Bidding process

I don’t know a single flash game developer who didn’t hear about FGL. This is one of the greatest (unique in fact) auction where game developers meet with sponsors. So after the game was finished I uploaded it to FGL and prepared to the bidding process. Editor’s rating of the game was pretty standard – 7.5. But nevertheless I hoped that it will help me to sell the game for a good price.

The game received its first bid for $750 in 6 of 7 days after FGL admins approved it for sponsors’ view. This was a very good sign and I was eager to see how far the bidding would go. The second bid was only $50 higher. Here is the representation of bidding “mini-war” between two sponsors during the period of 3 weeks.

Sponsor 1: $750
Sponsor 2: $800
Sponsor 1: $900
Sponsor 2: $1000
Sponsor 1: $1250
Sponsor 2: $1300

At this point new sponsor have emerged with bid for $1500. His bid was not only higher, but he also was willing to pay 10% of FGL commission by himself. It was great offer as for 2.5 weeks of development and I was ready to hit the “Last Call” button. But before doing this I wrote mails to another sponsors asking them if they planning to increase their bids. First sponsor increased his bid to $1750 while second just ignored the message (probably the bids were too high for him). And I hit “Last Call”.

Unfortunately there was no sponsors’ activity during 3 days of last call. So when the bidding was over I had to decide which bid to choose. The different between highest two of them was only $75 considering that third sponsor was willing to pay FGL commission. But the lower bid looked more advantageous, because third sponsor allowed me to use CPMStar ad and also to add developer’s splash screen with hyperlink to my site.

When I wrote him to ask if he is willing to increase his bid a bit, he answered that he would like to keep the current offer, but will pay extra $500 if the game gets frontpaged on Newgrounds or Kongregate or $1000 if it will be featured on both.

So I made my choice.

If you have already read previous articles you know who became the winner. It’s awesome game portal BigDino.

Pleasant surprise

Martijn (the owner of BigDino) was really great sponsor to work with. The communication process was fast and the branding API was truly simple. I spent as much as two days on integration only because I had to develop the splash screen for my own site The Gamest. I received the payment for primary license within a week after release.

I uploaded viral version of When I Was Young to Kong and NG in 5 or 6 days after release on the BigDino site. The game got good enough rating and even achieved Daily 5-th Place on NG. But the biggest surprise was that despite such a moderate rating When I Was Young was frontpaged on NG.

Immediately after the game was featured on NG I received a message from Martijn: You’re on the NG frontpage! I think there was a bonus connected to that right?

Now you should understand what a great sponsor BigDino is.

But you want final numbers, right?
Primary license: $1500
NG frontpage: $500
CPMStar ad: $270
Sitelocks: $200
Total income: $2470

Not bad as for game developed in 2.5 weeks. The only non-exclusive license was sold to AndKon. Unfortunately I don’t have enough contacts with sponsors who are interested in site-locks yet, but if you are one of such sponsors, don’t hesitate to contact me using this form or directly by e-mail: admin(at)thegamest.com. Non-exclusives for When I Was Young are still available.

Game plays and statistics

So far (in less than one month) the game has 2.5 millions of game plays. As I said before, this is my most successful game at the moment. It has got more than 370 thousands of views in the record day and continues to get on average 30 thousands of views daily.

Hope that with such stats When I Was Young will be profitable to BigDino and we will have the chance to work together again in the future.