Question about facebook

[sandy234]

I never published game to facebook. I wanted to ask some question

Do you get any revenue of your game if you publish it to facebook

Do facebook takes a cut in those revenue.

Is it worth it to publish small simple games on facebook.

[Chris]

Its definitely worth it.
I released a couple of apps for customers there. Especially for games its really nice that you get a free Facebook Gamecenter entry. Think of it like an appstore but specially for facebook games.
People can browse by category or search for specific titles:
 

 

Every app/game has a detail page there that you can decorate with banners and present a couple of screenshots:

 

 

 

 

The process of creating an application on facebook is simple and takes only a minute (if at all).

Basically, you host your game somewhere on your server and only create kind of a link to tell facebook

where your game is hosted.

In the end, your game is displayed in an iframe directly on facebook.

 

 

The "installation" of every facebook app is free for all users. If you want to make money with your game, you are limited

to in-app purchases (but hey, they have proven to be much more profitable than direct app purchases).

The in-app purchases have to be processed with facebook credits, a currency specially created for facebook.

Facebook takes 30% of the generated revenue for itself (so does apple on the appstore).

 

One thing to keep in mind: If you want to provide a facebook app/game, your server needs a SSL certificate to be able

to deliver content via HTTPS.

 

If you have more questions, just ask.

[rich]

Chris - I'm curious, but has it been worth it re: revenue? I always imagined the facebook crowd to be super casual, sort of like BigFishGames demographic. I.e. only the right sort of games would find a comfortable fit there.

[Chris]

I haven't created apps with in-app purchases so far.

The claim that in-app purchases make more revenue than basic app purchases generate more revenue (for games) is based upon a blogpost (I forgot where it was) and talks with the guys from tap4fun that made a great income with their three mobile games.

Some Players tend to repeatingly spend money on a game to make quicker progress than the others. They had one player that literally spent over $10.000 to get on top of the world rank!

Sure, thats the exception, but one of those players makes up for thousand players that buy nothing.

 

What I really mean by "being work it" in terms of facebook is: getting users.

The inhibition threshold you need to overcome to "register" for your game and start playing is incredibly low there. You have your facebook account, thats the key to all apps you want to use. No more registration needed!

Also, when a developer makes clever use of the facebook API, players start to share lots of progress messages while playing the game, thus making their friends curious what they are playing.

 

Its also possible to register your app/game as both desktop browser and mobile capable, which results in a link inside the facebook mobile app that starts your game on the mobile device if the user wants to play.

And on a mobile device, you are no longer limited to the facebook credits payment system (well, instead, you are limited to apple on iOS ).

 

The payment process in facebook is completely handled by them and gives the user several options, depending on their country:

 

 

 

About the demographic:

Its not at all casual. Facebook has now around 1 billion users - this is such an incredible abount people...

There are people of all age classes, all demographics you can imagine.

 

The range of facebook games go from little casual games to full size MMORPGs. Everybody can pick what he likes.

Just have a look at their app center (no need to login)

[sandy234]

Well you need to make inapp purchase centric game like mafiwars something to be need to be profitable. And you cant do taht with a 2-3 man army or something. You need a huge team.

Well we can always use in game ads with facebook i think