This is another debate I got recently with some idle game enthusiasts, thanks to recent events forcing devs to get a bigger eye on the market. But first, let me put some explanations for those who don't know.
The idle game market is cut into two major parts - PC and mobile. On the mobile side, you have countless apps that try to steal so many money that they've quickly became the bane of mobile users, to the point that the only way for idle game enthusiasts to find decent mobile idle games is to search for ports of PC idle games. And that says a lot.
On the PC side, nearly every idle game was released on the site Kongregate for a simple reason - Easy to set up and update, good customer and dev support, easy monetization options, and enough people to have immediate fanbases devoted to help you make the game better. Except that, very recently and thanks to a new direction, Kongregate is slowly turning towards closure, even if they didn't announced it openly.
No more new games added there. No more support for both customer and dev. Closure of the not-popular chat rooms (which means, ~90% of the games not having an on-site way to chat). And for those that were popular enough at the time, a proposition to port their game on Kartridge, their new platform for games (think Steam but with much less content, and only for flash-like games).
Some will say that the major problem that was facing Kongregate was the approaching death of Flash and complete death of any semblance of support for every site around, and I wouldn't be surprised for it to be the main reason for closing the site. But with that decision being brought out and some parts being applied so quickly, the result hurts a lot of devs in the short and the long term.
On the short term, it means no money coming in for those with a monetization process, no updates until they move out, and an urgent need to find another platform. And while other platforms exist, they all have their differences that will hurt their games one way or another, from Armor Games being more strict on new games, game updates and monetization issues, to Kartridge losing more and more support because of the new direction's choices, to Steam costing money to put a single game on it.
On the long term, it means no platform to unite idle game enthusiasts. Sure, there are already Reddit communities such as the lovingly named Broken Mouse Convention, but these communities don't host games themselves, which makes it a bit harder to jump from one game to another. And the fact that many people were using Kongregate as a platform to try new things before jumping to bigger projects means that, unless another platform becomes popular enough and easy to access to become a new Kong, idle games will lose in popularity in the long term.
I wish for such a solution to happen. But in the meanwhile, if you're playing a game that is still only on Kongregate, has some semblance of monetization and doesn't push for updates, don't blame the devs, try to contact them and to get some answer about it. Maybe they're already working on a transfer. Maybe they're collecting funds for a Steam release. Maybe they organized their community on a Discord server.
And let's hope our mouses will continue to break on these kinds of games.
The idle game market is cut into two major parts - PC and mobile. On the mobile side, you have countless apps that try to steal so many money that they've quickly became the bane of mobile users, to the point that the only way for idle game enthusiasts to find decent mobile idle games is to search for ports of PC idle games. And that says a lot.
On the PC side, nearly every idle game was released on the site Kongregate for a simple reason - Easy to set up and update, good customer and dev support, easy monetization options, and enough people to have immediate fanbases devoted to help you make the game better. Except that, very recently and thanks to a new direction, Kongregate is slowly turning towards closure, even if they didn't announced it openly.
No more new games added there. No more support for both customer and dev. Closure of the not-popular chat rooms (which means, ~90% of the games not having an on-site way to chat). And for those that were popular enough at the time, a proposition to port their game on Kartridge, their new platform for games (think Steam but with much less content, and only for flash-like games).
Some will say that the major problem that was facing Kongregate was the approaching death of Flash and complete death of any semblance of support for every site around, and I wouldn't be surprised for it to be the main reason for closing the site. But with that decision being brought out and some parts being applied so quickly, the result hurts a lot of devs in the short and the long term.
On the short term, it means no money coming in for those with a monetization process, no updates until they move out, and an urgent need to find another platform. And while other platforms exist, they all have their differences that will hurt their games one way or another, from Armor Games being more strict on new games, game updates and monetization issues, to Kartridge losing more and more support because of the new direction's choices, to Steam costing money to put a single game on it.
On the long term, it means no platform to unite idle game enthusiasts. Sure, there are already Reddit communities such as the lovingly named Broken Mouse Convention, but these communities don't host games themselves, which makes it a bit harder to jump from one game to another. And the fact that many people were using Kongregate as a platform to try new things before jumping to bigger projects means that, unless another platform becomes popular enough and easy to access to become a new Kong, idle games will lose in popularity in the long term.
I wish for such a solution to happen. But in the meanwhile, if you're playing a game that is still only on Kongregate, has some semblance of monetization and doesn't push for updates, don't blame the devs, try to contact them and to get some answer about it. Maybe they're already working on a transfer. Maybe they're collecting funds for a Steam release. Maybe they organized their community on a Discord server.
And let's hope our mouses will continue to break on these kinds of games.
[flush] [walks in without washing my hands] Hi guys 