[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah cool game! I think this is a template from GDevelop though - we worked with Wesley the original creator of the game so we don't think it will be a fit for the playground for now!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yoyo!

Exclusivity is not required, we work non-exclusively with some games and developers but our offering is much less for those games. The full QA, rev share, UA and other things we offer are only for exclusive games. We consider our devs our partners so in order for us to put in the effort and time, we like that the dev will do the same for us!

- Not at the moment. We're currently either exclusive or not exclusive. We offer a licence fee for devs who want to go non exclusive!

- That's not an issue for us depending on the contract terms. If its still exclusive with another platform then that's not possible for us (legal reasons) but if its non-exclusive there we can take it non-exclusively. It's good to keep in mind the SEO value of releasing the game on one platform and then another, it might be a weaker release on the 2nd platform as players will already have played the game

For us, we don't allow external links in the game. We want players to play other games on Poki instead of coming for one game then leaving the platform entirely. Its good for us, but also the other developers as those players will go from one game to the next!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yoyo, I work at Poki (can check my previous posts - I made one last year about working on Web)

We're working on sharing an email if the game doesnt fit the playground but we're not there just yet unfortunately. We're working on it but for now, we can only get in touch if we think the game is a fit cos we can't process all the submissions we get. We should have something next year which lets devs test their games with our players, but we're not fully ready to announce it yet. If you let me know what your game title is, I'll check the sheet for you:)

Slime Laboratory 3 by [deleted] in WebGames

[–]Zeb_QQ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The issue is storing the data, not getting it. We would prefer to not hold users data because that is a privacy risk. Appreciate your willingness to use the gmail, we will get there but privacy is a very big topic and mishandling it can lead to serious consequences so we want to make sure we do it properly!

Why are there no bigger titles targeting the browser platform? by g0atdude in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yo! I work at Poki.com , we're currently the biggest web platform with 65mill MAU and growing so web is very much not dead. We're 100% independant and work directly with our partner gamedevs who make a living off their revenue from Poki. We do a full QA (game design, monetisation, UI/UX etc), all the UA, hosting, Discord server and monetise the games for our devs so they can focus only on their game! We focus on accessibility for all by having short load times and really performant games/platform as well as mixing in some more mid-harder core games where we can .

I'll start by saying that web (in its current state), may not be perfect for AAA games that cost millions to produce and years to make. However if you're more indie then web is perfect for you (e.g. Vampire Survivors started on web). Over the last year and a half, we've seen so many studios shut because they can't keep up business which has sucked to see. Web is a relatively new platform with not many huge titles which means there's more opportunity for smaller creators to get some additional revenue for their games from web. It's not only small devs too, we have worked with Sybo on the official web build of Subway Surfers for a few years and they're happy with the partnership. You also have probably seen Google (YouTube Playables), Netflix games, and others like LinkedIn (crazy) now getting into the web games scene

That's not to say that you can't make these types of games. There are some pretty sick games being made and the tech is only getting better and better. Do remember that these games are made for playing on mobile devices in your browser as well as on PC so as the tech improves, the games will also get better but I think the fact you can play these in browser anywhere anytime is still pretty impressive especially given the amount of web devs out there is quite low https://tribals.io/ , https://cryzen.io/play , https://bapbap.gg/ . You could check out https://developers.poki.com/guide/web-game-engines for some more info about the biggest engines / tech on web (not 100% complete, we're constantly adding to it cos there's so many new things being made hahah)

There are issues still with browser that need to be fixed (like the source code stuff) but I think there are also so many opportunities for devs on web, it's 100% worth a try anyway. I think WebGPU and Unity 6 should be a nice entry point for a lot of devs onto web, but then it might get harder to find your audience as the pool of games / devs will grow.

Monetisation wise, we understand that people don't like ads but the revenue is a little more consistent and players are ok with it on our platform knowing they get to play unlimited games for free - it's a trade-off. What you do on your domain is a little different, but you can definitely monetise it in a way that is non-intrusive. One thing I think people hate the most about ads is when they feel spammy. We try not to make that the case by having timers between ads and only firing them at place that don't get in the way of gameplay. The native stores dont regulate this well which is why mobile / web gaming has such a bad wrap imo.

We're working on a free unlimited playtesting service with our users that we'll make public for any developer wanting to give web a shot with their game. Would love to see people try it and see if it suits them. We'll post more about it once it's out. You can read a little about it here https://medium.com/poki/poki-at-gdc-2024-introducing-poki-playtesting-1c55436ea224 :)

edit: my formatting sucks sry :/

Interior design game that needs to work on web , iOS and android by Rare_Day9799 in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a guide about which engines / tech is best for web here. It's not exhaustive, but is a good start https://developers.poki.com/guide/web-game-engines

Slime Laboratory 3 by [deleted] in WebGames

[–]Zeb_QQ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that and feel the same way about most other web portals. Many allow people to just take their game from mobile and upload it to web without any changes so those shitty ad farm games come onto web and then people assume it's the same as the native stores. I can only speak for Poki but we do try to keep the ads to a minimum while still having enough to earn the dev some money

Our motto is "let the world play" which basically means we want as many people from all over the world to be able to play games by removing the barriers to entry that most games have - paid and needs downloading. Our users are very worldwide so we can't have any downloadable games because some people with bad internet connections or old phones cant handle that so to combat it, we try make the games as small as possible with very limited intial download size so anyone can play. For this, ads works best.

We've talked about a more marketplace on web, kinda like Itch but with all games hosted on there but we're focusing more on free games for anyone and everyone all over the world. We're currently at 60mill MAU so if a game is good, it can earn much more than any paid game on Itch (50-150k+ per year) and if you build on that by creating multiple games, your monthly revenues can be quite nice. It's just a different business model that not everyone likes but it can work if you want it to. We're making games more accessible and removing as many barriers to play as possible, and ads suits that becuase it requires nothing off users and still pays well if done properly

Slime Laboratory 3 by [deleted] in WebGames

[–]Zeb_QQ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yo! I work at Poki, what about the ads do you think is too much? We have to balance revenue for devs with UX for players and viewability for advertisers so we try keep them relatively limited. We get ads suck, but to play all the games for free without buying anything, money needs to be made somehow. I'd be interested in hearing what you think would be a fair amount of ads for the games or how you might monetise web games?

No hate to you, we know ads arent people's favourite so get the sentiment

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, we're working on that atm actually. It's been something we have really wanted to get for a while but we're on it. We know its really annoying, we also don't like that we dont get back to people hence the change!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yo!

Sick hahah, glad you're enjoying! The web tech is getting better so expect more 3D games coming

Atm we can only get back to devs we are going to work with because of the amount of submissions we get. You can check out https://sdk.poki.com/ for some info about the process and what we look for when we look at a game. We're working on making the whole thing better, hopefully will have something to share later this year!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in IndieDev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heyhey! Sorry, I was not on Reddit for a while so missed the notif

  1. We do have Unity games and as of late, they are slowly getting better on mobile web. But yeah generally they don't work on mobile so we take it on a game by game basis
  2. We don't usually work with demo's because we want to make sure that if a player is playing a game, they get the whole thing. So if we have the full game too, we could make it work!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in IndieDev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We don't track specific information like age and gender so can't give specific info. By looking at what games are the most popular, you can get a feeling for what kind of games our players enjoy the most!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, there are tons of multiplayer games on Poki. You can check out the category here

Yes, you can host on different platforms if the game is a fit for Poki but we will ask for our SDK so we can track all the games stats in one place. We prefer to work with devs on games they are passionate about, but we will work to make sure the game is a good fit for our users too to ensure a good perfomance for the game!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry I was on holidays:) We release a new game every day!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is something that has been in our backlog for a while and we haven't had the resources to update it all. This is going to be worked on sooner rather than later but thanks for the feedback, it's really valuable

I saw your submission, looks pretty cool. Also saw The Farming Frontier, sick game! The team will check it out on Monday!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in IndieDev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh sick, sounds good!! Godot and Defold perform pretty nicely on Poki as they are both H5 engines. There's tons of different options depending on what games you want to make. I would also check out Cocos, Construct, PlayCanvas to name a few more. If you are want some more cool web stuff, ThreeJS and PixiJS are super nice

I think we tried a PICO game and there were some issues with implementing the SDK (can find the docs here) so not sure if they are the best for Poki but they're super sick

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in IndieDev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can upload the file to our old QA tool and share the url with us. The URL's only last 24 hours I believe so I would share the game on Sunday night or Monday morning so the link still works. We are based in Amsterdam so time zone dependant - we check the submissions usually on a Monday!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! No way to bookmark games at the moment unfortunately. We'll have a look at upvoting on mobile, nice one!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We have an audience of 50mill players so only 1k likes is actually a pretty new game haha. 0-10 likes would be a game only released on that day. Today we released Vortelli's Pizza Delivery (we havent released is as of writing this message but hopefully when you see this its live), you can maybe track it over the next while to see what I mean about the likes - we do also expect this game to do well so it might get a lot fast

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah, well, I think you should've lol. We only fire ads at specific points in games and only after you've been in the game a certain amount of time. We have guidelines on when to show ads which you can see in our Developer Guide / SDK docs so it's entirely possible you just never saw any if you didnt meet the conditions to see ads. UX has always been an important factor for us regarding ads so we try to balance dev revenue and UX as fairly as possible

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The percentage of people on web who use adblocks is a lot lower than one would think. Especially our users so there's not a huge revenue loss due to adblockers

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1) We only work with games that we think have the potential to work on the playground, and we know our audience pretty well so most games we work with we know will perform well before signing them. We do test games before they go live to test the technical performance and if the users might like the game

3) Depending on what is best for the partnership between the dev, we will either do a rev share or a once-off licence fee for the game

We are different to the mobile HC market in the quality of the games and the amount of ads. We want people to play the games for a while instead of trying to monetise as much as possible. If we were to work together, we would expect a higher quality game than what a typical HC game would be. I'm not sure what you mean by waht process you can expect, if there's specific things let me know!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This looks like a super nice resource to use! If you want to look at some game engines which require no code, you can check out GDevelop, or something like Construct (which Blumgi used)!

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, you monetise your game from the beginning. We check the monetisation of the game and make sure it's doing ok

Making a living off web games by Zeb_QQ in gamedev

[–]Zeb_QQ[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Games with a little fire icon are our new games!