Emanuele Feronato

Talking about Construct, Game development, HTML5, Javascript and Monetize.

Three months ago I decided to start monetizing HTML5 games as well as I am making for years with Flash games, and I want to share with you how it’s going with worDrop, my first HTML5 game.

At the moment I tried only three ways to monetize the game, because I am making some changes to it according to how do people play word games.

First, I did not place any in-game advertising and this is bad, but I wanted to initially monetize the game by selling licenses.

So I placed it on MarketJS, I got some visits (hopefully from sponsors) but no offers. I also must say the average quality of games submitted on MarketJS is not that high, so probably it’s a bit far away from being the FGL for HTML5 games.

The first success came from Softgames.

I submitted the game on this page and they got in touch with me really quickly, giving me all the support and the information needed to turn the original idea (an HTML5 browser game) into what they are looking for: HTML5 games opzimized for mobile.

Alexander Krug, the founder and CEO of the company, has some advices for you developers looking for a license on Softgames. Basically your game must:

– work perfectly on Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8
– be optimized for phone and tablet
– work in fullscreen and automatically scale
– handle device rotation automatically (showing “please rotate screen” information)
– have a loading bar and very optimized loading times
– be able to turn off/on sounds

With these suggestions in mind, I made some changes to my game and got it licensed by them. All you have to do is include their API (once you made the deal), and you’re done.

I was a bit afraid of including their API because I made the game with Construct2 and I supposed it wouldn’t be easy to manually edit the code, but Softgames also made a plugin for Construct2 so adding it was really easy.

So at the moment I highly recommend Softgames, everybody works with you to make the best out of your game.

What’s next? I am doing the spanish version of the game and publish both the english and the spanish versions on Facebook. I just have to see what kind of ads should I include. But my quest for being billionaire with an HTML5 game continues, so stay tuned!