Mateusz Skutnik, creador de Submachine y otras series, fundador de Pastel Games, hablando sobre el futuro de los spónsors de juegos indie y sobre el futuro del Flash en los juegos online.
"If youâve been playing my games lately, you probably came across this confusing message. Let me explain whatâs happening and if you have to be worried that my games are going away.
Short answer:
No, you do not have to worry about anything. My games arenât going anywhere, this matter is completely irrelevant to the games. You can sigh in relief.
Longer answer:
Yep, times are changing, again. This time â significantly, and for the worse, which will become better in time. Bare with me, Iâll explain everything. Again â donât worry. This message above is a fallout of Mochiads going out of business and closing itâs services rather abruptly. What is Mochiads, you ask? Itâs an in-game advertisement provider (all those ads that could be seen inside the game screen when game is loading). Iâve been a partner of Mochi since the beginning in June 2007. As I remember it was still in Beta at the time. And now theyâre closing itâs services and are notifying you that ads are no more, and free games once again got a bit less profitable for the developers. Did I got hit by this? Well, sure, but my games were never that popular and profitable in the first place. Actually â when the sponsorship model went belly up last year â that was a bigger hit, but I survived that as well. You might have noticed that Pastel Games are making less and less games each year. And that my own games no longer have sponsors. Luckily, now you are my sponsors. Each one of you, whether you buy my games or just play them online with ad-block turned off.
Iâll be switching from Mochi to CPM Star, but that will take time. Itâs roughly 150 games that need tweaking, and I just donât have time to do it right away. Maybe one game daily, or something like that⦠Thanks for testing that CPM in-game ad system for me a few days back. You are the best.
Also, donât worry about that intellectual property talk, because Iâm the creator, and owner of all my IPâs and Mochi going out of business has nothing to do with it.
Since weâre already talking about the grim reality of flash game market, thereâs another subject to discuss. It seems like this flash game business is slowly but steadily fading away and one day itâll be gone. Maybe Iâm wrong, but before that happens, creating flash games will become completely not profitable. Remember, that business model that I operate on I created back in 2005. That was, wait for it, centuries ago in internet years. Back then Youtube didnât exist yet. Can you imagine that? Since then everything changed, and on top of that completely new market emerged â the mobile market, and that completely messed up the dynamic of creating free content for computer devices.
Long story short â Iâll be switching platforms, from flash to (probably, hopefully) Steam. That will take time and effort, but thatâs nothing new to me. However, I wonât go on the mobile market. Tried it before, got burned, and now the insanity that is app store and android market is out of the picture for me. I donât want to create mobile games. I donât consider swiping a finger proper way of playing my games. Moreover, point and click games are completely incompatible with mobile devices. Lack of cursor defies screen exploration.
The transition from flash to other formats (not necessarily Steam, I can build standalone games and just sell them through my store, as usual) is not something that will happen overnight. I want to at least create Submachine 10 in flash. I just canât abandon you now, at the end of the series.
To recap â yes, the flash game market is getting worse. that will push me towards creating games on other platforms, which is a good thing.
Is it possible that the term âfree gamesâ will no longer apply to my productions? Well, it is.
Everything changes. Again.
Iâm still here. Making my own things, as usual."
