Hi,
So, going into the previous meeting I was pretty focused on purely unsocial games. I didn't have anything against them, it just seemed like too much work for someone just starting out in the industry with a tiny development crew and no money. Straight casual seemed the way to go. At the meeting, I heard a lot about Facebook being a platform where people are making a lot of money. I thought, we could do that, because then we wouldn't even have to run it on our own servers, so I looked into it a bit more, and I'm still a little confused.
I understand how things like micro-transactions work. That makes sense, but take a game like Bejeweled Blitz. I don't see where the money comes from in a game like that. Since the game my team is currently working on would be most like Bejeweled, if transferred to Facebook, I'm really trying to figure out where the return is on a game like that. Ads, linking to the Popcap site so people buy other games? I don't see any micro-transactions. I'm just not sure where the revenue is for Popcap to release this game on Facebook, and I'm not seeing it for a lot of games out there, like Twirl, or pretty much any game that doesn't have micro-transactions. What am I missing?

Hi Ben,

This was actually discussed quite a lot at Casual Connect this past July. Bejeweled Blitz really exists in order to sell Bejeweled and other PopCap games through social virality of the Blitz experience.

I think that if you want to focus on casual games, you should check out this series of articles from Dan Cook at LostGarden.com:

Flash Love Letter, Part 1
Flash Love Letter, Part 2

and of course, if you are a child of the MTV generation:

Flash Love Letter, The Video

:)

I think these articles have a lot of good advice on making money off your own hard work and creativity.

Hope this helps.

--Bruce

Great links Bruce - thanks for sharing these!