What’s necessary for putting a flash game on facebook? Not much. I did that by putting a php file onto my server which acts as the canvas file. Into the same folder I unpacked the FB PHP SDK. FB likes developers and thus gives you an application profile page, the only thing you have to worry about is the actual canvas page.

To create an app for TriPop I followed the normal procedure, added an app in the developer section, copied the given keys, created the php file, filled out several, mostly self explaining, fields including the path to my file and there it is. TriPop’s application profile page and the TriPop application itself.

The FB SDK, once unpacked needs to go onto the server to as the php will refer to it.

The code for a simple application canvas (no approval by the user required because no user data is used) looks like this:

<?php
// Awesome Facebook Application
//
// Name: Application Name
//

require_once 'facebook-php-sdk/src/facebook.php';

// Create our Application instance.
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
  'appId' => '***************',
  'secret' => '********************************',
  'cookie' => false,
)); 

?>

<div style = " text-align: right; width: 640px; margin-bottom: 5px; ">
	Back to
	<fb:application-name
		linked="true"
	/>
	's application page
</div>

<div style = " text-align: center; width: 640px; margin-bottom: 5px; ">
	<fb:swf
		swfbgcolor="ffffff"
		swfsrc='http://www.yarrcade.com/gamefiles/tripop/TriPop.swf'
		width='640' height='480'
	/>
</div>

The first div is just for a text field at the top that can be used as a back button to the application profile page. The next div encloses the swf. And that is all. Really…

For more information refer to the FB Developer Documentation. Just if you need to go deeper or if you want to use more functions. Moreover, for dedicated development on the FB platform you may want to have a look at Michael’s new book.

The facebook app view from the developer's dashboard

On the application’s dashboard just select ‘View application profile’. Once there, upload a picture (can be the same picture, remember 75x75px) via the ‘Change picture’ dialog.

The application profile

Done. Yoho!

It was friday and I got a mail by MJ that my game QuadroPop60 was approved and ready to go live that weekend. Exciting!

QuadroPop60 on the MindJolt frontpage

So, after reading all of those story about tens of thousands of views I took a screenshot of my Mochimedia Developer Dashboard as a ‘before’:

Mochimedia Developer Dashboard BEFORE

Well, I went to Prague that weekend to see some bands at the Sonisphere Festival and when I returned, I had to raise my arm again (you know, with the two fingers up):

Mochimedia Developer Dashboard AFTER

Great, one weekend (yeah I know, it’s the ‘last 7 days view’) brought twice of what I earned in a whole year before. So, it is possible. Even with a 200 days old game.

And, YOHO!

I am not an artist but on some special days I have the ability to draw something that amazes me on the next and no matter how hard I try, until the next special I won’t even get close to something a 4th grader could do.

I am not a programmer, though it is fascinating to solve problems in an absolut logical way. Sometimes I think in code. Nerd. But fun.
I don’t have crazy ideas. As an engineer I like symmetry and realism. I admire people like Jack Black who came up with Tenacious D and just sang what came into his mind (or at least lets people think there is no accurate planning in it). Even back in the days with my band I just did write one song that made absolutely no sense, because all the words were a mere listing of things in a strange bar (thinking about that, this could make sense, gah!).

Either way I tried it in my spare time. Bought a computer in April 2009, bought Flash, made a game, made a blog, joined the business (MochiMedia Member since: Jun 18, 2009) and learned. And learned. Just to emphasize this: it is a crazy cool business. All kinds of people, lots of problems, lots of help. A great community with highly creative people that deserve every penny they earn by spreading out so much fun.

Alright, enough of the chit-chat here. Hard facts following:

MochiAds stats

Even though all those games weren’t successful in meanings of monetarization I learned with every step I took. What could possibly work as an icon? I look different at advertisements now. Did you ever take notice of the difference outlines give to text? Or a gradient in the letter’s color? Or colors in general. Awesome.

MochiBot stats

Now that the number of games played is falling there is a good too. An increasing number of plays is via a big social network. And while the apps pull the game from this server I do earn the publisher portion too. And a very good (for me) ecpm comes this way to. Some days it is around $1.50. Now I would need just millions of plays…

But either way I won’t stop here. With flash I discovered something that is fun to use. Nerdfun or so…

The one thing delaying the completion of a new game is feature creep (“I could do that. But it could take some time. Hmm, maybe I’ll postpone it for a sequel. But if it is a major thing missing, who would look at the sequel? Gah, I’ll do it!”).

Well, up the mugs, yours truly,

Kegogrog

(Yoho!)

My top three games:

QuadroPop60 (released November 21st, 2009)
MochiBot: 27761 views, 159 hosts

Flu! (released August 22, 2009)
MochiBot: 32726 views, 127 hosts

Chain Reaction Tutorial (released August,18 2009)
MochiBot: 4326 views, 103 hosts

The total of four sources (Mochiads, Kongregate, Newgrounds, AdSense) from the beginning of this experiment (ides of June 2009) is ¢2641!

So, the last six months were pretty interesting. I learned a lot about game development in Flash and as a (still) beginner I am impressed of monetization possibilities. Well, I won’t quit my day job though I had quite a lot of fun drawing, coding, recording and putting all that together.

I also reached my goal of 25$. That may not be much but the best part of game development for me is game development. I still have some ideas I would like to test rather today than tomorrow but time is a limiting factor. But I will try to set up some cool things in 2010 as well.

Yoho!

Flu! (released August 22, 2009)
MochiBot: 12064 views, 117 hosts (top host geewa.com)

Chain Reaction Tutorial (released August,18 2009)
MochiBot: 3717 views, 98 hosts (top host rockyou.com)

Piece o’Eight II (released July 21, 2009)
MochiBot: 3431 views, 61 hosts (top host NewGrounds.com)

Piece o’Eight (released June 18, 2009)
MochiBot: 2046 views, 51 hosts (top host Kongregate.com)

The total of four sources (Mochiads, Kongregate, Newgrounds, AdSense) from the beginning of this experiment (ides of June 2009) is ¢1077!

90 days after its release Flu! hit the category page of a gaming website and is since then getting 2000 hits a day. Wow! It’s not the highest eCPM but still impressive.

Other than that I am excited about the influence of the ’60 seconds to fame’ contest by MochiMedia. Hopefully QuadroPop will gain some exposure from that.

Yoho!

Flu! (released August 22, 2009)
MochiBot: 4768 views, 107 hosts (top host mochiads.com)

Chain Reaction Tutorial (released August,18 2009)
MochiBot: 3154 views, 82 hosts (top host rockyou.com)

Piece o’Eight II (released July 21, 2009)
MochiBot: 3324 views, 58 hosts (top host NewGrounds)

Piece o’Eight (released June 18, 2009)
MochiBot: 2000 views, 46 hosts (top host Kongregate)

The total of four sources (Mochiads, Kongregate, Newgrounds, AdSense) from the beginning of this experiment (ides of June 2009) is ¢787!

It’s interesting that there are still earnings from all games. Plus a wider distribution – looks like that time works for the developer. Good thing is the MochiAds cpm seems to rise towards winter.

Yoho!

Over the whole September, both, the sidebar ad with text and the one with image, nearly got the same amount of impressions. BUT the text ad got NO clicks while the image ad had a CTR of 0.86% (not impressive but at least there were clicks).
So, with that result in mind I will change the sidebar ad to image ads only but I will leave the php script in to still have the example working.

Yoho!

EDIT: Deleted the script and totally switched to image ads.

Flu! (released August 22, 2009)
MochiBot: 3425 views, 93 hosts (top host mochiads.com)

Chain Reaction Tutorial (released August,18 2009)
MochiBot: 2678 views, 67 hosts (top host rockyou.com)

Piece o’Eight II (released July 21, 2009)
MochiBot: 3169 views, 52 hosts (top host NewGrounds)

Piece o’Eight (released June 18, 2009)
MochiBot: 1953 views, 43 hosts (top host Kongregate)

The total of four sources (Mochiads, Kongregate, Newgrounds, AdSense) from the beginning of this experiment (ides of June 2009) is ¢758!

While I did not publish a new game in September there was little value constantly created every day. Nice.

August 2009
July 2009

T’ lazy pirate can has a booty. Yoho!

Flu! (released August 22, 2009)
MochiBot: 2478 views, 64 hosts (top host Kongregate)

Chain Reaction Tutorial (released August,18 2009)
MochiBot: 1904 views, 43 hosts (top host Kongregate)

Piece o’Eight II (released July 21, 2009)
MochiBot: 2926 views, 46 hosts (top host NewGrounds)

Piece o’Eight (released June 18, 2009)
MochiBot: 1895 views, 43 hosts (top host Kongregate)

The total of four sources (Mochiads, Kongregate, Newgrounds, AdSense) from the beginning of this experiment (ides of June 2009) is ¢591!

It was interesting to see how the new releases pushed the old ones. As Flu! is a week old now I hope it will go on in creating some value. Overall I’m very satisfied with the experiment’s results so far.

July 2009

Me treasure chest is goin’ t’ burst. Yoho!

EDIT: And I just checked websitelookout.com, where the domain’s value (natan.info) jumped from $146 (66 days ago) to $511.

EDIT 2: And $21 on yourwebsitevalue.com…