Are online games still profitable?

It seems to me that all you need to do is make some really crap, boring game, with lots of pointless objectives(some that take a month or more to complete), and distribute it on Facebook.

I know for the most part, this isn't practical, but if you look at the top guys of various FB games, this appears to be their strategy. You could even just take an idea from an existing game, add/remove content, change it a little bit and there you go. E.g farmtown, farmville, potfarm (I've heard with potfarm the game doesn't basically tell you when you have to play - expiring crops - you can leave it for weeks and come right back to it, but I wouldn't know, I don't play these, I play real games). Just slap some unique content in that they have to pay for and there you go, do as mentioned above use the wall posting feature and get it on as many people's pages as possible, if you have the time (once the game is developed, of course, and tested as 100% working) look at the promotion as a full time job. Could even expand into myspace etc. (which I personally thought was better when I used social networking).

So, to answer your question, I believe it is still possible, you'll just need to put the work in and also a bit of luck (not profitable for most people, but still possible).

 

If you can develop something similiar to Farmville, along those ideas you could turn around millions of dollars.

~ Slutz ~

 

Of course - but look around how many Farmville clones there are. Only very few of them are successful. The others were programmed in many months of hard development time and are far away from making millions of dollars. Apart from that high marketing investments are necessary to create publicity, so it's also a rather risky business.

 

Or something similar to Neopets and Webkinz.
I know that the following game sites are [posssibly making over $10k a month or more from account upgrades and such, Rescreatu and possibly Aywas

I don't think so.

 

yes, it is still profitable as you can see the money spend on game worldwide is increasing every year
the only thing is how attractive the game and how good you promote them

 

Do you have a source of this information?

 

I believe they are still profitable since a lot of people are spending more time online.

 

Do you have any source to this?

 

SNG's are still profitable. A few years ago I actually played SNG's seriously as a change to my usual limit hold'em ring games.

 

Depends what kinda games your on about , if you make a game that is always updated and is enjoyable then i don't see why it will not take off.

 

One source would be this blog post: UKOM: One year, one million more silver surfers in U.K.

 

Yes they are profitable but, you need to develop your own game with a good idea.
When you enjoy playing it , people will do and you will get money.

 

Yes, online games is definitely profitable but the development cost and maintaining the servers could be costy. I'm not an expert in this, but I have a few friends into it. It depends on how good the game is, and on what platform it is on., e.g. FB

 

Good ideas usually go a long way.

 

I think it is still profitable as most of online game sites has a huge lots of traffics, take top gaming sites like:Kengames , for example they are doing fine.

 

I think online games still provide hope for profitable.

 

Don't go for flash based games on a website... too many of them! If you could write a quality game for ios/android or facebook that's a whole other story!

 

ya.surely..

 

it's profitable if you work with the right company. Ad networks are a middle man and shave off money from each transaction - I would go direct through a company that provides a similar offering for advertisement!

 

Hi,
I am involved in game development. To earn money from online game is depend on game like how many users playing your game, how your game different from others etc. In short its totally depend you to earn money from online making game. So, develop unique online game and start to earn money. All the best.