Jeuxgratuits.net is a middle player in the french flash games protals market with around 30 000 to 45 000 unique visitors a day.   Even if I want it’s impossible for me to sponsor AAA flash games, the competition with english portals is to big.

Here’s a simple exemple:

Galactic Invasion is a AAA game looking for a sponsor.

The developer get an offer from candystand.com at 8000$ and one from armorgames.com at 9000$.  Since English portals attracts visitors from all countries its a pretty good bet.  But for me the owner of jeuxgratuits.net paying 9000$ to get 15%(french players) of the game players, it’s definitely  not a good business.  I would end up paying far more for every potentially interesting visitors than those English portals.

So I came up with this idea, what if I could sponsor the game only for player having IP from France, Quebec, Algeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast, etc. ?   I could bid 3000$ for a localise sponsorship, the developer would still have to look for at least 6000$ from a big portal willing to give up sponsorship exclusivity. HARD.  I’ve try to convince, and failed.  Flash developers are not wiling to spend time on those deals, what they like is coding games.  And big portals want nothing less than exclusivity.

But by creating an alliance of independant games portals from the most important languages we could jointly bid on those games.

French countries portal = 3000$

Dutch countries portal = 3000$

English countries  portal = 3000$

Spanish countries portal = 3000$

etc..

You see that it could be a win win situation for everyone (except for big English portals).  The developers could get more and WE could sponsor AAA games.  Of course we would have to develop a small API that tracks IP and browser language so flash developers could easily integrates the localise sponsorship in their game.

What do you think?

1. Independents games developers are desperately trying to find ways to live from their crafts.
2. The music industry his desperately trying to find new ways to monetize their content.
   
3. Powerful device like the IPhone, the Blackberry Storm, the Android G1, the Palm Pre will be in the hands of millions of costumers soon.
   

Sells interactive apps for touch-screen phones based on artists songs at twice/triple the price of the equivalents MP3.

Let call those interactive app, MGC aka Music Game Clip.  But don’t be fool by the name it doesn’t necessarily have to be a game or have a goal; it only have to be interactive and be related to the artist song.  It could be anything…  And I trust indie game designer genius to come up with incredible idea that could change both the music and game industries for ever.

The collaboration between indie developers and musicians could create gems!  Like the collaboration between musicians and film maker did years ago and still do with music videos.

Why I think it makes sense:

• The economics is solid!  The MGC can be cheaply produced by small team or even individual in short period of time.  The marketing channel of the musicians could be use to sell them to fans trough Online Store like Itunes.
• The music industry would be trill to makes money with a product they entirely own. (contrary to music games like Guitar Hero)
• The indie games developers can spend time developing crazy concepts and ideas around songs, make them come true and distribute them to millions of fans.  And make money from that.
• It’s a win win situation for everyone involve.

Why I think fans would buy them:

• Imagine … you commute in the metro or the bus you listen to your favorite band song and you experience it, totally!  Like they envisioned. A perfect moment out of reality.
• Cool factor
• Cheap

So what do you think? Think it will append?  When?  Can it append without the support of Apples or The big major?  Could we see a hit from an obscure music artist set the bar and create the genre?

Summary: It is important, for the online flash game industry, to develop a unique free crowdsourced translation web service for flash games developers to help expand audience and revenues.

The flash gaming industry is exploding since companies like Mochi Media, Armorgames and Kongregate found ways to monetize games of small developers. Quantity and quality are rising fast for the pleasure of million of players all around the world. But there is still one issue that we, as an industry, did not tackle : accessibility.

Most of flash games are develop only in English. Why?

• It’s the biggest market.

• It’s where sponsors deal are lucrative.

• Small developers don’t have the resources to translate their games.

And that’s fine! Since independent developers want to make as much money as possible and reach as much users as possible with the reality of their means.

But it’s definitely not a perfect situation for many reasons:

• All games with complexes mechanics who needs extensive explanation and/or are story-driven loose appeals to players who do not understand English.

• The vast majority of internet users are not native English speakers and a really important fraction do not speak English at all.

• Players who do not get a good immersion don’t spend much time playing the game.

• Less play times means less money for developers and ads network.

• No localize content means less localize advertisement deal.

• English content only means less expansion possibilities for portals.

Those are some of the reasons why we need to create a simple, free and unique way for small developers to bring their games in every languages.

Without going technical it could be done by inserting a call in the flash game to a crowdsourced translation web service.

1. The game check the user operating system language. If it’s not English it send a request to the web service to check if a translation is available.

2. a) If there is one: the data is served and the game is translated.

   b) If there is none: a message is prompt asking if the user is interested in translating the game. If so, he is sent to a specially design translation website.

This implied that developers insert some api code in their games and use a special markup language to identify texts who need to be translated. A small time investment for big possible returns!

To be successful, this operation would need good publicity through the developing community and financing from partners to support the development and hosting of the web service.

I’m hoping this presentation can start a conversation and open the eyes of the industry on the huge market opportunity sitting on the other side of the language barrier.