Math Test – Case study

// December 10th, 2009 // Useful&Interesting Discusions, games

18 days ago I made a small Game. By small…I mean really small. I was bored and wanted to make something fast. I decided not to work more than 60 minutes since I don;t really have time for anything. I decided to make an educational game. Want to here how it goes?

The truth is I got lucky. I submited the game to MochiAds and it got featured. I did not expect this. Considering I worked only 54 minutes on a game. From there it was all upwards. I the first day it got more than 1000 plays. On the 2nd day 1700. After that I though it will get lost in on the net like all my other games: 3rd day it got 1300 views. 4th the same.

After that websites started to get the game so on the 5th day it got more than 2500 plays. Grown a lil on the 6th than started to lose plays gradually. Only to find that, to my surprise, it went back up six days later. It got more than 3000 plays.On the 7th it went up again to 3300.

At the current time, it has 2500 plays, and the day is not over yet. I also submited it to FlashGameDistribution and I expect to get some more plays this way as well.

Total revenue it generated? At this time I can say that from bordem and one hour of free time I managet to get 8,67$ (at the time of writing this post). It got 32,058 ad impressions from 158 hosts. And i do expect to get me even more revenue. I know it is not a furtune, but this game was not actually intended to make me money at all.

Also, it performs a lot better than all my other games, especially better than “UFO Maneuver”, a game that I hoped will get me some nice revenue, now is almost dead and made me only 0.76$ (what a shame).

What were the public’s reactions? At first I bad.I got all sorts of comments like “Never mix gaming and learning” or “If I wanted to do math I would have stayed in school”, but I also got some nice comments and I really think that this game helped some 3rd grade children practice there math skills.

Will I make another education game? Don’t know. Currently I don’t have the time, even though I have a good idea. I don’t know if an educational game can make it on the front page of Newgrounds or Kongregate. That is where the big bucks are. I got all sorts of advice about edugames, both positive and negative. So I haven’t decided yet.

If anyone is interested in viewing the stats of the game, I set up a share link that can be accesed here: Math Test Stats

As a conclusion: sometimes, the simplest idea and very little work can get you more than hours of thinking. It is a combination of luck and skills. All have a role to play in the success of your game. An educational game will always have a different user base than TD or shooting games, but they can survive, although getting on the front page of popular websites is almost impossible.

P.S.If anyone is interested in playing the game, you can check it out here: Math Test Flash Game

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