Results of the Generic Defense Game experiment

Jim Greer of Kongregate points us to this great post from 'PsychoGoldfish', creator of Generic Defense Game. As the game's creator puts it, GDG "was built and distributed as an experiment to get some insight on the current state of the independent web-based gaming community"

It's a fantastic read, though I wish he'd actually disclosed figures behind comments like "The ads in the game were a real surprise to me. I did not expect the high level of performance the would ultimately yield".

Anyhow, here's the money quote from the whole article:

Now, a lot of commercialized sites have made it possible to earn a pretty good living in this industry without having to build your own income generating websites. These commercialized sites kicked off a whole new generation of talent, and really helped to raise the bar in quality…at least.. that was how it started.

Today, everyone from high-school kids to seasoned vetrans, are whipping off generic games (not just in the defense genre) because the big commercial sites will dish out $500 or so, for pretty much anything that works (and even some things that don’t). The casual players tend to stick to these commercialized sites, because they brand all the games they sponsor to the degree that the players feel these sites are where all the games are coming from. For many casual players… these are the only sites they check for new games.

This is great for these sites, as they build strong user bases, and stronger revenue streams. This is good for the developers because they can earn sponsorships without having to put fourth a great deal of effort. This is bad for the industry because the quality content is being buried by the quantity content.