Flash Game Distribution: Game Analytics

At the beginning of this month I signed up for Flash Game Distribution and used it to help distribute AQI Zoneout. After just one go around, I must say this tool is amazing.

First off, it helps you get organized by making you write up a description, instructions, compile thumbnails, etc and it keeps them in one place for you. From there it has a long list of sites that you can manual submit the games to. You select the portal and it keeps all your game information in one frame which you can copy and paste into the portal's sign-up form. Very cool. There is also a feature to upload to Mindjolt and get your game on MySpace and Facebook... however, I had trouble with the API and didn't have the time to debug it.

The most impressive feature of FGD, however, is the automatic distribution. We applied that to our game and we surprised by the results...

We officially launched the game on July 1st. It remained solely on PlayZoneOut.com at this point and we directed people there by adding a button to KnoZone's homepage as well as by sending out a message to everyone who is a fan of KnoZone on Facebook. Using this PR we had the following number of visits:

Day 1: 114
Day 2: 162
Day 3: 22
Day 4: 14

Hmmm. Not exactly going in right direction here... On day 5 I manually uploaded it to Kongregate, Newsground, and a couple other sites and saw the following visits:

Day 5: 765
Day 6: 518

We had mediocre ratings on both Kongregate and Newsgrounds (altho good feedback on newsgrounds). Unfortunately, we did not get rated high enough to stay on the front pages and quickly fell off into oblivion from those two sites.

However, about this same time is when Flash Game Distribution's automatic distribution kicked in. On day 7 I did a google search for Zoneout and sitting there in the top ten was a game portal in Espanol that was hosting our game. They even translated the instructions to Spanish! I thought this was amazing... there is no way this game would have reached this portal without FGD.

When we looked at the analytics we were receiving a small number of hits from a wide range of sites and countries.

On days 7, 8, and 9 we averaged around 650 hits.

On day 10 we got picked up by a portal in the Netherlands...

Day 10: 13,900 (who knew the Dutch loved Air Quality Puzzle Games?)
Day 11: 8,270

We then got picked up by a site in Romania which kept our hits over 5k through day 15. From there we dropped:

Day 16: 1,252
Day 17: 707
Day 20: 466
Day 26: 262

By day 26 we've had 54,500 visits.

Visits by Geography:
1. Netherlands: 26,250
2. Germany: 8,122
3. Belgium: 4,434
4. Romania: 3,364
5. United State: 2,215
Austria, Argentina, Switzerland, Spain, and Mexico round out rest of the top ten.


FlashGameDistribution shows that Zoneout has been requested by 24 sites. It has been submitted to 195 sites. And it has been e-mailed to 497 publishers.

There is no way I could have achieved that kind of leg work on my own. And there is no way we would have reached such a diverse population or received anything close to the number of visits without FGD's help.

I must admit I am a little bummed by how quick the number of hits fall off for Zoneout... but I must realize that an Educational/Advert Puzzle game is not high on everyone's list for games they seek out.

Tired of statistics yet? I got a few more to throw in. There were 4 levels in Normal mode and then if you beat that you could unlock hazard mode, which lasted 100 rounds.

Of all the people who played:
17,000 beat level 1.
6,500 beat level 2.
3,000 beat level 3.
1,500 beat Normal Mode.

1000 people gave Hazard mode a shot.
15 people made it through all 100 rounds of Hazard mode.

That is all the statistics that I can cram into one post. Hope you found some useful information in this post somewhere...