Plant Wars Logo

This is Jon from Plant Wars, which is yet another PBBG (what else would I be doing here?). I started the game around 9 months ago as I was searching for a job after graduating with a bachelor’s in Computer Science. I had only learned a minimal amount of PHP for a class project earlier in the year, so I definitely have used the process as a learning experience. Still, I’m pretty sure I can tell you more about what not to do than what to do. As with any web-based game, we are constantly developing and are far from being done.

First of all, set up a test site with its own test database. Keep it up to date so that you’re not tempted to cheat and just make this tiny change on the live site first. I cheated when I implemented the password change feature. The query it used when someone changed his password was “UPDATE Users SET Password=md5($newpassword)”. Notice something missing? That “WHERE Id=$_SESSION["Id"]” clause is just so easy to forget. That was a mess that would have been worth any level of inconvenience in maintaining the test site to avoid.

Secondly, I’d recommend using a framework, such as the Zend Framework for PHP. This is because I didn’t and still don’t. I don’t even have data access objects. Sure, I store some commonly used methods in files that I include on every page. Alas, I’m still in the habit of embedding queries in the pages directly. Separation of logic and presentation? Yeah, that’d be nice.. At my day job, I use the Struts framework with Java – and while it does make the initial development take somewhat longer in the case of Struts, it is definitely worth it. The maintainability is increased incredibly by the proper separation of concerns. Once you learn a framework, you should generally find that your productivity increases. The initial learning curve is worth the sacrifice at the beginning for the long term benefit.

Perhaps the most important thing I did right was to have my friend Daniel help me out whenever possible. Going at such an endless project alone is intimidating, and having someone else to shoulder some of the burden is essential. Coming home and seeing a new feature implemented that you didn’t have to lift a finger for is exhilarating. Plus, then you have someone to brainstorm with and to just talk with about the game. Your girlfriend (or mom, if that’s the case) may pretend to care, but she’s probably tired of hearing about it.

In the same vein, it’s essential to have some trustworthy staff members. Grant these people moderation powers on your game’s forum and give them the ability to check the logs for cheaters. Write a nice administration panel for them (and yourself) that will streamline the process of checking for cheaters. For example, one button click to see all users who have shared an IP address. Examining log files may be your thing, but it’s time that you should be spending developing. Ensure that your staff is – once again for emphasis – trustworthy, as well as good role models for your community.

If you have staff that you don’t know personally help on the site’s development, don’t give them access to the live database. Restrict them to the test site – another good reason for its existence. Merge their code yourself. I made the mistake of granting access to the live database to my first staff member. I got off easy when he just made a page to bump his stats up artificially.

My final recommendation is regarding monetization: if you would like to at least make enough cash to pay for your hosting costs (which we usually manage – if barely), ensure that people can donate for some advantage in your game. For example, with Plant Wars, donors gain fertilizer (which is spent to train, fight, etc) at twice the rate of non-donors. I charge a low price of $2/month, and I’m not sure if I would recommend going that low. My initial price was $5 and that received lots of complaints and no donors, but now that the game has progressed, I’m more inclined to believe that anyone who donates currently would be inclined to do so even if it were a couple bucks more expensive. Use your best judgment. Also, I allow anything that can be bought with real money to be sold player-to-player so that a) there is more motivation for people to give me real money and b) people who can’t give real money still have the opportunity to gain the same benefits with increased activity.

People hate clicking on ads. It is worth the minimal time investment necessary to sign up with some sort of pay-per-action network, such as CPALead (disclosure: referral link). This allows players to fill out an obnoxious survey for an in-game reward, while you get some money.

Come check out the Plant Wars blog and you can also follow us on Twitter! (As a related, post-final recommendation, open up communications from your game as much as possible. It increases the likelihood that someone will find you from a social networking site or a search engine.)

Codestryke, who owns and runs a handful of games, spoke about one of his games – which uses the ‘players buy turns’ system with an unusual twist: when one player buys turns, all the players get them. Turns are also kept in a ’stockpile’ of sorts – there are so many turns available for purchase each day, and once all the turns for the day have been bought players will have to wait for the next day to buy more.

I got in touch with Codestryke to ask him about why he went with this system as opposed to something a little more common, and this was his explanation:

In a turn based game everyone should get the same amount of turns as turns are actions so if someone gets more then another player then of course they will be able to dominate more. The only way to make the game fair yet earn income is to allow everyone to get them and the player who uses them in the best manner is the winner.

We do this on Cypher and did it on another game we ran called BordelloBattles where the idea came from originally. It’s worked out extremely well for both balance, a way to earn income and to bring a community effort into supporting the game.

While this business model seems to have worked out fine for Codestryke, I am sure that there are more out there – what sort of interesting business models have you seen in browsergames lately?

There are two primary methods used to monetize browsergames: Advertising, and Purchasable Bonuses.

• Advertising

  Advertising is one of the monetization methods that most browsergames reach for first – it’s trivial to set up, doesn’t require any extra development time, and you can essentially set it up and then just watch the money roll in. However, there is a bit of a problem with the Advertising model – it annoys users. Some users find any sort of advertising intrusive, and will do specific things to enjoy your game without the ads – like installing Adblock. When a user has Adblock installed, you won’t be making any money off of advertisements for that user.

  One way that some games attempt to work around the way users feel about advertising is by offering a way to make it less intrusive – something like “For just $4/month, you won’t see any more advertisements!”. While this can work, it’s still not going to protect your income from users who just decide to use Adblock.

• Purchasable Bonuses

  Some players are competitive, and some are not. This monetization method takes advantage of the more competitive players, by providing them with a way to increase their character’s power unnaturally – for a price. You as the game developer essentially sell power-ups for players who are looking for that edge.

  This method is a lot more reliable than advertising once you can get the ball rolling, because it won’t annoy users. However, it has a much larger potential failure rate, because you need to be very careful to keep the game balanced for users who don’t want to spend any money. If the Sword of Destiny costs $10 and makes your character invincible, players without the Sword won’t want to buy one – they’ll just resent the overpowered players they encounter who already have one. This gradually builds resentment in your playerbase, and slowly the players who aren’t willing to spend money for bonuses will leave. You need to be very careful to ensure that the bonuses a player can purchase won’t overpower them in comparison to users without those bonuses.

At the end of the day, these are just two of many different ways to monetize your game – and each game will have a different approach that works best for it. Black Sword RPG and Dragon Tavern both use the Purchasable Bonuses model, and seem to have done a fair job of balancing it out – and other browsergames like Utopia have managed to make the advertising model work well enough for them. Which monetization model you choose is up to you – you can even choose not to monetize at all, if you want to. Why not experiment a little?