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Yes, the conference was exciting, the speakers were great, and my free t-shirt looks fantastic on me. We’ll get to all that, but first let’s start with the biggest news of the conference – the $10,000,000 (yes, that’s 7 zeros) Mochi GAME Developer Fund. So what is this fund and how can you, as a small game studio or independent game dev, start reaping the benefits? You can find all the information you need here.

That wasn’t Mochi’s only game-changing announcement. They also launched Mochi Social, a platform which gives you all the tools you need to build easily distributable social games. Find out more here. Go Mochi!

Okay, let’s move on to the classes themselves. My 2 personal favorites of the conference were Seb Lee-Delisle’s talk on taking Flash games into the 3rd dimension and Tim Fowers’ talk on the bumpy road to making his game “Now Boarding” a success.

Seb, always an animated if not tangential speaker, is a master of pushing Flash to its limits. I spent half the class with my mouth hanging open as he showed off masterpieces, including the digital pyrotechnics show and Big and Small’s house. Be sure to check out the mobile while playing as Small. After blowing us all away with examples of how to push the Flash envelope he did get a little more technical showing us some important concepts of 3d. I can’t wait to see that guy speak at one of the more technical trainings he does throughout the world.

I’m a huge fan of puzzle games. I’ve blown countless hours on such games as Bloxorz and Numbskull. That’s why I was especially excited to see who won the Summit’s award for best Puzzle game. Drum roll, please. And the winner is Rustyard by Nitrome. Though I wasn’t able to meet them, the pixel art masters of Flash gaming were there to accept the award. Be sure to check out the winners and runners up in each of the other categories.

Digital goods seems to be all the rage in Flash gaming right now. Many of the top grossing game companies are making more by selling items within the game than they could ever get for the game itself. I think my favorite advice from the whole conference was regarding digital goods and how to get people to pay – get the players in their time of need. Don’t offer them the nitro boost on level one when they’re doing fine on their own. Get them on level 20 when they’ve already put 2 hours into your game and are going crazy because they just can’t seem to get past that one little spot. The same applies to demo levels. If half your levels are free and the other half are paid, make sure you split them up strategically. Make the free part end right at the climax of a section, the kind of spot that’ll make them go crazy not to finish. That’s how you get them to buy.

The Flash Gaming Summit was a fantastic conference for anyone making, or aspiring to make, games. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone. I’ll definitely be there again next year.

Lance Snider
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