Don't monetise your games: Response

So, the game development community has been abuzz with this blog post. The basic premise is this "New developers should not monetise and should instead focus on building their craft and reputation". There has been a lot of hate for it, but I think the post is right on the money. Here's why. My first game Pond Wars was released a few months ago. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to site lock it so no one could steal the code. I spent a lot of time searching for ways to place ads within and around the game. I even refused to release it on Facebook because I didn't get a share of Facebook's ad revenue. I signed up for a bunch of different ad networks. 62 cents later I was sitting wondering what went wrong. Ultimately what I missed was traffic. The game just did not get enough plays to generate revenue. All of my focus on monetisation had distracted me from making the best game I could make. There were areas of the game I knew needed polishing, but I'd spent that time developing a way to place a banner ad on the screen if it played in a webplayer I didn't have a revenue share agreement with. I'd ignored ninety percept of the casual games market by not deploying on Facebook. I'd ignored the desktop avenue. All for a measly 62 cents. After reading this article I'm currently in the process of rewriting the game. I'm striping out everything related to monetisation. Its surprising how deep monetisation gets enmeshed in a game. When its done I'll be rereleasing it in every format I can get away with. Sure, I won't make a cent. But I don't think losing out on 62 cents will break the budget. And this approach seems far more likely to let me earn dollars into the future. When I get to the point that I can guarantee my games will actually get played, then I'll be back to consider monetisation. Until then watch this space, I'll be releasing a version of Pond Wars for desktop and Facebook totally free in the near future.