Flash game sponsorship has been going around for a few years now, and it has grown from portal to portal. There are hundreds of websites out there that are willing to sponsor games. So what is sponsorship? The most basic type of sponsorship is when a website pays a developer an agreed amount so the developer will put the website’s logo and link on the games, before it is released. It’s kind of like when before TV shows they say ‘This program is brought to you by Kraft’. Even though Kraft didn’t make the TV show, they would have payed to put the message on. Likewise, the websites pay you to say ‘presented by …’ or you can make other agreements such as to have links to the website.

Websites want to do this because they know (or assume) they can earn more money from your game than they paid for the sponsorship. When people click on their link in your game, they get more traffic and more people click on their ads, earning them money. This is like Kraft hoping the viewers of that TV show will buy their product. The amount they pay you depends on how good your game is, and the agreement you make with them. This can be anywhere from $200 to $2000, even higher in some cases.

What you should never do (more…)

This set of tutorials with take you through the basics of how to create a simple shooter game. Note that this is the way I do it, not the only way, and feel free to change things as you read as every game maker has a different style. The first part of the tutorial will show you how to make the main player and how you can control it. This tutorial is done completely is Actionscript 3.0, so if you only know AS2, see this post and if you don’t know actionscript at all, go here.

The first step is to draw the main character. We’re going to be controlling him using the WASD or UP, LEFT, DOWN, RIGHT keys to move him, the mouse to aim and mouse click will fire bullets. This is what you’ll be able make after you do this part. After you’ve drawn the character, put it on the stage and give it an instance name of ’ship’.

Now add this code to the main timeline: (more…)