Indie-Resource.com

As some of you know I bought a defunk game company a while back. I also purchased another out of good will but I ended up with nothing in return but that is another long story. Anyways I and my good buddy who we have worked on several games together as well as misc projects have been secretly working on a few things. Part of this has been what has been keeping me so busy lately. Well I finally got the legal stuff out of the way and was able to crawl through and pick out usable content from the assets purchased. This weekend I begin our journey and dream to host a game site. A place something like Kongregate but only indie games and only our games or close friends.

The site will be ad driven and will host 1 login for all games that track your scores and such. Will have a buddy system for comparing scores and teaming up for games. Lots of other features that are not worth talking about at this time. Our plan is to release some smaller fast action HTML5 games(quick play score beater games) on various sites like Kongregate, HTML5 games and so forth. Viral Dawn was on one of these that I did not even put on there and it received over 150k plays and 4 out of 5 stars. The game was not even finished! We have a business plan and an investor along with my own investments to get this off the ground but to be honest we are not looking at investing a ton of money. Let the success mark the investment.

I am looking for some advice. What sites are good to host games on? Like we build them and get money for each play or click. What advice for building such a site? Would any of you put your game on there for free hosting? Would you expect some ad revenue? How much? Or would the free hosting with a place with players already visiting be enough as you could charge in your own game. PBBG's, RPGs, ect.. are also welcome. We will host prizes for certain games to gather more players and basically the owner of the game will not need to pay anything, they will just benefit from the player gain and hype around the contest.

Remember this will not be a million dollar site nor am I trying to make a million. We will push for dollars but not in the sense of ruining the experience. This is going to start out very small. I expect to have a round 3-5 of my own games online by end of month.

I'd def be interested in atleast playing the games. I've never done any HTML5 dev, so I'm not sure what I could contribute I like the pay-for-plays model, but I also think there should be checks so there isn't "this games so bad and funny lets just go play" to get money kinda things, but that seems to not be a possible issue due to the closeknit group you'll allow to put games up. But honestly, I think free hosting + allowing opportunities for IAP would be enough in terms of pay. Good luck, this seems like a great opportunity

Well, if you remember it, I'm (still) working on my cubicverse game project. Can't call it a small HTML 5 game, but we may look into a single sign on system, or a way to share accounts between games as well as I would agree in principle to be part of a network. But beside that, I don't have much time as all my free time goes there.

Hum that's a nice idea and i would like to have my games posted there, not only for free hosting but for visibility too.

About your questions:
"Like we build them and get money for each play or click. What advice for building such a site?" - I would say that this is a good idea, both for the website and for the developers.

"Would any of you put your game on there for free hosting? " - Like i said, not ONLY for free hosting, but for visibility and with this nice community who wouldn't?

"Would you expect some ad revenue? How much? Or would the free hosting with a place with players already visiting be enough as you could charge in your own game." - This is also an option, i wouldn't post my game for the ad revenue... I would post for getting more players, and if your website does that then that would be my payment

One question: Is this supposed to be your official releases place? Why don't you start some startup company for a "common name" to all of your games then have them posted on that website. And in the game's page something like: "Powered by SITE_NAME_HERE"

Good luck

Thanks for all the great comments.

I have a studios name The Games Guild Studios.

Where's the official website ?

http://thegamesguildstudios.com/

but I am redoing it.

ahahahaha
You got me

And let the competition begin!
Not really though, our sites are different enough that there won't be hardly any conflicts.

As for tips, make sure that you don't make another site with a different layout on each page (*cough*facebook*cough*). Make it flow, but I am sure you already know that.
Also, I strongly recommend using prepared queries all the time (I say this because I notice hardly anyone on this site does it.)
I have seen countless failed SQL injections on my hate site, which brings me to my next point: logging. Make sure that you check the origin of the API calls (if you make an API).
Make sure that you know the origin IP if any anonymous posting is allowed, so you can weed out the spam.

Last and most importantly, show the community your work as you go to make sure it is smooth enough. Sometimes the seemingly great idea is really a horrible idea and that causes launches of things like Windows Vista.

Hope it helps!

great advice!