Current state of the market

[mazoku]

Just wonder what is the current state of html5 market? I think there are too few sponsors and most of them are closing. The games on the big distrubutors and sponsors are way too money centered with too many ads so players are less and less. What do you think?

[b10b]

35 minutes ago, True Valhalla said:

This is simply untrue.

Please can you name more than half a dozen active sponsors who regularly and consistently purchase non-exclusive licenses?  The list you provide on your blog (behind an email signup, or element delete) reveals most are obsolete or not worth trading with (in your opinion).

14 hours ago, mazoku said:

The games on the big distrubutors and sponsors are way too money centered with too many ads so players are less and less. What do you think?

I think I'd agree.  Too many irrelevant ads too soon, creating delay and frustration, destroying the fun and with it the potential to grow a discerning audience craving more.  Audiences have been conditioned to lose sight of the value of their own time, to tolerate relentless haphazard-programmatic ads rather than pay a quarter to play a game.  Everyone loses.

 

[b10b]

6 hours ago, True Valhalla said:

I said myself that I agree there are too few sponsors.

If we agree that there is little non-exclusive sponsorship market, perhaps we can also agree that devs wishing to Make Money With HTML5 should be skeptical of click-bait to the contrary?

[b10b]

Just now, True Valhalla said:

Learn to read?

I am trying, sorry if you are offended.  There are "too few sponsors" but also enough to support "plenty of developers"?  My reading skills suggest this might be a contradiction.

[mazoku]

I have bad experience with one of those rated 5 stars sponsors. And I don't think they have many players. All of the web players prefer old flash games as they have less advertising. 

There is no html5 games niche at all. Those multi-million dollar companies are actually struggling to sustain theirselves. (Just an observation)

Even that only two people are responding to my thread is a response by itself

(And you can't have ads each level, ads at the beginning, ads each 2 minutes and even more video ads that are unscipable. No one will play this)

[mazoku]

I can care less about credibility but I understand your position and the reason behind it. 

 

[Jadegames]

I think the problem with threads like this is that everyone tends to refer to their own personal experience which (usually) cannot be extrapolated to the "general" HTML5 game developer. 

I think there would be fewer disagreements on this thread if everyone prefixed their sentences with "In my personal experience...".

@True Valhalla has been making games for years and I've seen him active on the Gamemaker forum in threads that would affect his games (presumably) because it would affect his bottom line (primarily when an iOS upgrade breaks how Gamemaker works) and has a reputation that proceeds him and I believe doesn't have any reason to mislead anyone.

@b10b games are some of the most polished games available. To be honest, with the quality of games he's making I'm surprised he's concerned about the state of the market. Although neither of you have said "it's harder to sell games".

I suspect both developers experience doesn't tally with other HTML5 developers, it certainly doesn't with mine - I've been making HTML5 games for just under a year, made 2 games, positive feedback but no sales, I'll keep trying though! But that doesn't invalidate what he's saying.

I think without someone creating an anonymous survey to all members in this forum to ask users things like years of experience, games published, average income earned, full time/ amateur, etc. Questions like this will forever be dominated by personal experience which isn't the most impartial judge.

Just a thought!

[ozdy]

In my experience, both @True Valhalla and @b10b are right. There are many sponsors that aren't closing down and you can approach. Very few of them would be interested in a non-exclusive license, though. And many developers can do well, if they work hard and smart and a couple of hundred dollars a month is all they want

[ArcticArcade]

The majority of sponsors I've made contact with are only interested in non-exclusive $200-500 licenses. While we were contracting the money was great, but now that client doesn't want anything any more, there's no point for me to continue with HTML5.

[scheffgames]

I get the feeling from this discussion that although the html5 market it's smaller it's still profitable enough to keep on making html5 games. 

The interesting question would be IMO "considering the current course of events will it still be worthwhile financially to make html5 games in the close future - 1-3 years?". or "will my html5 game developing knowledge/experience will be obsolete/useless in the close future?" 

My personal opinion is that getting money from sponsorship it's just going to get harder and harder as sponsors disappear from the market and the competition grows. Unless something like the "diablo rpg rebirth" happens (for html5 games) in which case demand will grow and sponsors will follow. 

 

[b10b]

44 minutes ago, scheffgames said:

"considering the current course of events will it still be worthwhile financially to make html5 games in the close future - 1-3 years?". or "will my html5 game developing knowledge/experience will be obsolete/useless in the close future?"

If sponsorship is a micro-niche that generates small value then where might bigger value exist?  Gambling, social, adult, advertising - these are the areas web-interactive growth has historically occurred.  I think there's evidence it exists for HTML5 today (via trend analysis, user habits, job postings), but that's arguably a far cry from making games in a purest sense.  Bets could also be made on emerging gaming trends like .IO or IM games.  Alternatively HTML5 gamedev skills are highly transferable to SPAs or UXD.  Whatever the choice, there's a fair amount of insurance in the technology stack.

[b10b]

@True Valhalla, wow you've been busy with retrospective editing of your posts!  It is appropriate to wish to correct your originally bullish remarks, but less appropriate to use such corrections to call others names or to promote profiteering click-bait?  Suggestion: mark future edits with the word "edit", "addition" or "clarification".  For the record I do not think it is appropriate for this forum (which attracts a larger number of newcomer developers) to promote false promises targeted specifically at them.

[scheffgames]

3 hours ago, b10b said:

Bets could also be made on emerging gaming trends like .IO or IM games.  Alternatively HTML5 gamedev skills are highly transferable to SPAs or UXD.

Very interesting. Actually I was approached by a client for a SPA and UXD (I had to google the terms beforehand, thank you very much :D) so I guess you might be right - although the UXD offer was heavily inluenced by my previous graphic and ui design work - some of which was unrelated with gaming.

.IO and IM games are a very interesting market but they do require solid multiplayer programming knowledge methinks. 

Code Canyon might be another way of gaining some green though I have no experience with them and I don't know if the effort involved will produce any results.

On 4/30/2017 at 11:52 AM, mazoku said:

There is no html5 games niche at all. Those multi-million dollar companies are actually struggling to sustain theirselves. (Just an observation)

Actually @True Valhalla is right - there's been a niche since the advent of the html5 technology. Even if  it's not going so well with it doesn't change the fact that it exists and it will do so until it will be vastly overshadowed by other similar tech - like WebGL for example. Also the niche it's not limited to sponsors - like @b10b said there's also plenty of unexplored opportunities.

[edit] - my bad, actually WebGL it's also html5 tech. Still, as far as I know there's nothing serious out there to dethrone html5.

On 4/30/2017 at 7:25 AM, b10b said:

If we agree that there is little non-exclusive sponsorship market, perhaps we can also agree that devs wishing to Make Money With HTML5 should be skeptical of click-bait to the contrary?

Well, TV makes it look easy I think and it's transparent about the whole process. But the truth is that it's damn hard to make money selling html5 games to sponsors, even for people with previous programming and graphic experience. 

And for the folks just starting in this whole game dev business, being successful in the html5 niche will be so much harder. 

But it's an interesting gaming niche to be part of and as long as one doesn't quit too early there's lots of things to learn regarding UX/gamedesign and some financial opportunities - although those come quite late in the whole process.

Edited May 1, 2017 by scheffgames

[kahootbird]

So if non exclusive licenses go generally for $200-$500 how much do exclusive licenses generally go for these days? 

[Daikrys]

3 hours ago, True Valhalla said:

I don't have time for your type of crazy.

exactly that. just have one single conversation without being rude, offended or harassing people.

take your own advice.

[mattstyles]

10 hours ago, scheffgames said:

my bad, actually WebGL it's also html5 tech. Still, as far as I know there's nothing serious out there to dethrone html5.

This is because JS won the browser language war, Flash has run its course, there is nothing to challenge html5, but... if you're making casual games then you're up against the native marketplaces which are extremely strong and have many advantages that html5 devs don't, so, I think there needs to be a point where you really push what your platform is good at, what it is better at than other platforms.

I'm still surprised webGL stuff hasn't taken off more, I can only assume its through lack of developers who really know what they're doing in the graphics field getting on board with it. The browser has the exact same access to the GPU as any other application (albeit with a slightly older language implementation), loading of assets will always be difficult, but, beyond that you can create some stunning visuals that could rival some AAA games, with the advent of WASM you could even be pushing native applications for code performance too.

10 hours ago, scheffgames said:

Alternatively HTML5 gamedev skills are highly transferable to SPAs or UXD.

I couldn't agree more! It's a fantastic time to be a JS dev at the moment.

WebGL, WASM round the corner, more and more offline options becoming available for clients, node based services, JS looks like its winning IoT programming, tech like Electron throwing JS into desktop native solutions, real hybrid apps for mobile/desktop, new, more powerful language features, a reliable development roadmap for the language, the browser fragmentation problem disappearing.

These are all incredible things, I'm not sure there's ever been a better time to be a JS developer.

And all these things don't happen in isolation, the language/ecosystem is still growing at a meteoric rate because businesses and users demand more and more from it. JS dev work is booming. Tech moves very fast but its likely 10 years before you can finish using JS, and even then, if you learn programming then you'll find you can pick up many other languages (JS protects from a lot of programming concerns so be sure to be learning these as you go, stuff like how the JIT compiler works, memory management etc etc).

[ozdy]

@True Valhalla you might want to stop with the abusive behavior alredy, it might hurt your reputation just as much as saying the HTML5 market is in a bad place.

[labrat.mobi]

As someone who makes mobile web games for fun, I hardly play games on mobile browser, because..

1. ADs - mobile web game experience gets spoiled by Ads. When a publisher displays 5 seconds AD everytime I die.. it kinda spoils the gameplay experience. Also lack of back button logic in games.. I need to use touch screen to close to AD, sometimes the skip button hit box are shady.

2. Lack of offline experience - I just want to open the game quickly and play for few minutes. Most of the time it takes more than a minute  to launch a game because of slow preloader AD.

My next game is gonna be primarily desktop browser game.. I can scale down the game for mobile web and add some touch controls. But it will be desktop browser first experience.

P.S: I don't know anything about marketing HTML5 games. So far I have made only 50 cents (USD) on gamejolt. My opinion is from someone, who likes to play games.

 

Edit:

Also I haven't seen any originally game in html5, most of the games are mini version of the native games or just clones.

Only original html5 game I have played is "crosscode" - demo is playable in desktop browsers and full version is download only.

[mattstyles]

3 hours ago, True Valhalla said:

It feels like the time is right for WebGL.

I certainly hope you're right, personally I like slower-paced retro games which often don't need super speedy graphics, but, some web stuff more graphically complex feels like a jump forward for the platform.

[alex_h]

The big restriction on web based games in general is asset size, both on disk and in RAM. Flash worked around the download size issue by using vector graphics which are tiny. With HTML5 whether its canvas or WebGL you are general using pngs and jpegs which very quickly hit the limit of both what your users patience can handle while downloading and also device memory at run time if targeting mobile.

[Edit] To be fair, apps also have the same memory limits, so its really just the downloading issue.

[mattstyles]

Yeah hopefully stuff like http/2 (and before that SPDY) that mean a server can intelligently throw stuff at a client to use will help (as will better offline support that could ease subsequent visits), but, yeah, network speed is what it is and the speed of light isn't going to change anytime soon!

[scheffgames]

13 hours ago, labrat.mobi said:

My next game is gonna be primarily desktop browser game..

If this is the case then you should strongly consider developing with Unity or another engine/framework that takes advantage fully of WebGL. The only reason I'm using a JS framework it's because of Canvas support which it's essential on mobile.

[EvaFatal]

Hey there! Talking about an HTML5 market - is there any Market (except of CodeCanyou/Envato, MarketJS) where you can post games with prices and wait for publishers right like it was on FGL? It seems that it's not always very effective just mailing and I'd like to have an additional place to look for some publishers.

[Daikrys]

On 3.5.2017 at 11:41 PM, EvaFatal said:

Hey there! Talking about an HTML5 market - is there any Market (except of CodeCanyou/Envato, MarketJS) where you can post games with prices and wait for publishers right like it was on FGL? It seems that it's not always very effective just mailing and I'd like to have an additional place to look for some publishers.

I dont know of any. People reported that MarketJS is only promoting their own games, am i right? As for CodeCanyon, i think its a great place to offer scripts or simple templates but not for complete well made games, but personal opinion here. You could also get in touch with a member that has contacts and doing well, offer him a reasonable share and outsource the business stuff. I havent made any html5 related business for a while so please take my advice with caution.

[ivanix]

I was looking to do something with eager.io a while back,  they came out with a simple Word Press plugin that could be used for embedding webapps and games.   They also had their own little market place. Then seems they got bought out by cloud flare.  Supposedly cloud flare will be using the market place to sell to their own customers.

https://eager.io/