Flash Game Licensing – 5 Tips for Flash Game Licensing

Flash games have become very popular in recent years, not only with gaming portals, but also as marketing tools for non-gaming companies. Having your own branded game on your website to promote your brand or product not only attracts new visitors and increases your brand awareness, but also gets your visitors to promote your site by word of mouth. Add social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook to the mix and the excitement you can create by having your own game can have a huge influence on your web traffic.

There are usually 3 routes you can take to have your own game. First of all, you can develop it in-house, but that is expensive and time consuming. You or one of your employees not only has to learn Flash, but also the principles of game development. Second, you could hire a game developer, but like all specialized skills, that comes at a premium. Finally, you can license an existing game, add your own logo and links (and maybe have a developer redesign it with new graphics).

The licensing route is becoming more and more popular as more and more games become available to license. However, to avoid the pitfalls of buying the wrong game, or owning a game that will be expensive to rebrand, here are my top 5 tips for choosing a Flash game license.

good gameplay

Games should be fun, clear and simple. A game can have the most spectacular graphics in the world, with an intricate plot and great music, but if it’s not fun to play, visitors will quickly get bored. Often the simplest games are the most playable and addictive, just think of the classics like Tetris or Pacman. How do you know if a game is fun? Simple, you play! If you are not a great gamer, ask someone who is and in a few minutes you will know if the game is good.

good graphics

Good graphics don’t have to be masterpieces of art. Again, just like the game, the best graphics are usually simple, but they look clean and work properly. Look at the game, does it look attractive? Is the interface well designed? It seems that everything should be there?

easy to mark

If a game was not originally designed to be licensed, it can be difficult to rename it. Unless you are experienced with Flash, or have access to an experienced Flash developer, then it is better to license games that were developed with licensing in mind, rather than just approach the developer of a game you like. It will probably cause you a lot less discomfort.

well commented

Games can be complicated programs. Even an experienced developer will take some time to read and understand another programmer’s code, but that process can be made much faster and easier by commenting the code. Games that are designed for licensing and rebranding will usually be well-reviewed as they were developed with rebranding in mind. Games that were developed only for distribution to gaming portals will often not be well commented to save time.

tutorials or documents

This is especially important if you want to rebrand the game yourself, rather than hire a Flash developer. If the game comes with rebranding documentation, like a PDF manual, or maybe even video tutorials, that will make the whole process of adding your links and logos, and possibly changing the look of the graphics, that much smoother. quick and easy.

There is no doubt that the use of Flash games as marketing tools is on the rise. Once only accessible to large companies with in-house development teams, viral Flash games are now available to anyone through a license. Don’t wait for your competition to take you to the post and add a branded game to your site today!