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This is my personal adaptation of keynote presented at Casuality Europe by Jason Kapalka, co-founder and chief creative officer at PopCap Games during Casuality Amsterdam, on February 8, 2006.

Yes, a bit old, and not exclusively Flash-oriented, but these rules did not change during the last three years, so… here they are:

1. Make it really hard!

Not enough playing time in your game? Kick it up to SUPER MAX DIFFICULTY!

• Make people fail each level 5 or 6 times, at least.
• Punish newbie’s with violent death. They deserve it! Heavy Weapon was probably too hard for new players… 

What to do instead…

• Don’t punish new players who click around randomly at first. Give them time to experiment.
• No casual game ever failed for being too easy. But plenty have failed for being too hard.
• Games that depend entirely on skill can be intimidating. Games that rely entirely on chance can be boring.
• Bad tutorials can make an easy game seem much, much harder. Lavish lots of time and energy on teaching people how to play.

2. Have a dozen mediocre game modes instead of one good one

• Which of these modes is good? Which to play first?!
• Difficulty level… do I want Easy? Normal? Hard???
• If you can’t decide on one version of the game that’s actually fun, just throw every iteration in there! Quantity will make up for quality.

What to do instead…

• Extra modes do provide value, but focus on making sure the main game is as good as it can be.
• Selectable difficulty levels are problematic. New players have no way to know what subjective terms like “Easy” or “Normal” mean in this new game. Avoid if you can!
• Be sure to explain alternate game modes as clearly as you can before users have to choose what to play. But see Rule 8! Nobody wants to read!

3. Make it a 600mb download that requires 2 next-gen video cards and 4gb of RAM and test it on just 1 computer

• 3d texture bump mapping is awesome, let’s toss that into our Solitaire game just for fun!
• Nobody still uses a modem anymore. Do they?
• QA, shmoo A. It works fine on my computer. Anyway, we can always patch it later.

What to do instead…

• Don’t use 3d. Or have a 2d fallback mode.
• Remember that every extra technical requirement you add shrinks your potential audience for the game… whether that is a newer processor, more memory, a larger download footprint, etc.
• Test thoroughly.
• Beware of requiring weird plugins or the like for your web game. Users are not keen on installing the latest JVM. Similarly, any apps you require to be present on the user’s machine for a downloadable game, whether that is the latest version of DirectX, or some arcane video player, are problematic and risky.

4. Price your game at $35. Or $3.50. And sell it only from your MySpace home page

• I don’t know, that price just feels right to me.
• We don’t need no stinking contracts or partners! We’ll launch this game on our own!
• Someone offered us a deal! No time to read the fine print! Sign!

What to do instead…

• If you price too low, people will think your game is probably garbage.
• Be polite and reasonable when talking to publishers. It’s a small industry and word gets around if you’re difficult.
• Consider your up sell incentives very carefully.

5. Use the Right Mouse Button

• Making critical control elements rely on the right mouse button or the mouse wheel is cool. Doesn’t everybody have an RMB?
• For that matter, why not use the keyboard to control stuff too?
• Mouse AND keyboard at the same time? Even better! How about a flight stick?

What to do instead…

• Casual game players prefer to use a mouse, and they don’t like to right-click or use the mouse wheel or keyboard.
• Many players run games in windows… be aware of the interface problems this poses.
• Players do not generally have the patience to master complex or fidgety control schemes… if they don’t “get it” in 5 minutes they will move on.

6. Give it a terrible name or theme

• Everyone knows casual game players love dungeons. In space. With robots. And skulls. Right?
• How about a game with robot skulls… in a SPACE DUNGEON?
• Remember to use words that resonate with your target audience, like “blood,” “war,” and “assault.”

What to do instead…

• Pick an easy-to-spell, easy-to-pronounce title.
• Make sure you can trademark the title.
• Find non-violent, bright themes that appeal to casual gamers.
• Make sure your theme meshes well with the mechanics of the game.

7. Award low scores

• It’s not logical to award 10 points when 1 point will do.
• It doesn’t matter if people think the game is low-scoring.
• Touchy-feely psychological factors have no place in game design!

What to do instead…

• Award lots of points!
• Set up as many combos and bonuses as you can, to reward the player for anything positive they do. Reinforce with audio and video.
• If something “feels” fun, pursue it whether or not it seems to make sense in “normal” game design terms.

8. Expect users to read

• If the game is complex, we’ll just put a few pages of instructional text at the beginning.
• What do you mean you didn’t get that part? There’s a three-paragraph pop-up that explains it!
• It’s best to explain everything all at once so people understand the function of every single thing in the game before they start playing.

What to do instead…

• Use as little text as possible.
• Show, don’t tell. Use illustrations and animations whenever possible.
• Lead users by the hand… make the instructions interactive and engaging.
• Use big, readable fonts, and pay attention to layout and typography. Don’t make whatever text you do have hard to read.
• The more text you have, the more difficult it will be if you ever have to localize it.
• If you’re producing a game in a language that isn’t your native tongue, do not skimp on getting a good writer who is fluent. Writing very clear instructions in a very small space is NOT an easy task, and style matters.
• Be careful with stories. It’s very easy to put in way too much text, so that people will just ignore or skip it. You should probably never have more than a single screen of story stuff at any given point, eg. between levels. Keep in mind some people will skim or skip it no matter what.

9. Make it challenging and cerebral

• People LOVE really hard, really challenging mental puzzles. The kind that can totally stump and/or frustrate you for HOURS.
• Well, some people do, don’t they? People who play Sudoku or the New York Times Crossword puzzle?
• What do you mean those people aren’t the same ones playing casual games? That’s just crazy talk!

What to do instead…

• Strive to make games compelling, addictive, and replayable.
• Avoid stumping the player so that they can no longer proceed in the game.
• Be generous with hints. Let them play the way they want to play.
• The model for most casual games is closer to Solitaire than the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.
• Remember that many casual players want to relax when they play a game… they don’t want to be challenged, frustrated, or agitated. This is in stark contrast to the typical console title, which is aimed at producing excitement.

10. Ignore what everyone else says about your game

• What the hell does my MOM know about games, anyway?
• These testers have been playing the game for 6 months now! So I trust their opinion on how new players will feel.

If you don’t get it, you’re… you’re just stupid!

• Use the Mom Test.
• Get fresh audiences frequently to see how newbie’s will respond to your game.
• The less interested and experienced a person is with games, the more you should listen to their comments about your game.

1. Advertising model

This is the most common way to monetize a Flash game. You can put ads in the loading screen of your game with services such as MochiAds or CPMStar, or just stick the game in a web page and put Google AdSense around it. You get money based on how many times these ads are viewed, so the more people playing your game, the better. With ads embedded in the loading screen, you’ll get money whenever your game is viewed, no matter what site it’s on. If you have your own web page ads, these will only give you money when people play the game on your site, though they usually pay more per view.

2. Sponsorship model

Another common way to make money is to have your game sponsored. This means that a game portal, such as Kongregate, will pay you to put their logo in your game along with a link to their site. This helps bring more visitors to the portal site, which means that they get to make more money from their own web page ads. Sponsorships are a good way to get a lot of money upfront, but you can only sell one sponsorship per game, and often your sponsor will not let you put your own ads in the game. This arrangement is called an "exclusive" sponsorship, because you can only have one sponsor. But other options are gaining in popularity, such as the primary sponsorship, where you still have one primary sponsor, but you are also allowed to sell restricted licenses to other websites.

4. Portal model

How can game portals afford to spend so much money sponsoring and licensing games? They must make even more money somehow, and that somehow is through web page ads. Some say that the best way to make money is to make your own website and host your game there. Lock the game to your site so no one else can steal it, and put some AdSense around it. Then spread the word about your game and hope it becomes popular. If you don’t have enough games of your own to keep people on your site, you can easily add other games with the MochiAds Publisher service. There are a number of tutorials out there explaining how to build your own portal. You can then sponsor your own games, by putting your logo in them with a link to your site. It may take more work, but the payoff can be greater than simply getting a sponsorship with an existing portal.

5. Premium model

Now here’s where things get interesting. The methods we’ve discussed are all very indirect – your money comes from advertisers or portals. But now let’s talk about taking money directly from your players. The premium model means that you make a free game, and then you sell some extra, premium content to players who want more. This approach is slowly catching on, from an early, well-documented experiment with Drunken Masters, to the more recent success of Fantastic Contraption, making over a hundred thousand dollars in premium content sales. If you can make a game that’s as good as Fantastic Contraption, and it makes sense to charge for extra features like a level editor, then selling premium content directly to players can be much more lucrative than advertising or licensing alone. Just keep in mind that there is a very delicate balance between how much of the game you make available for free, and how much you reserve for paying players. If you are charging money for an experience that people could get for free somewhere else, then you will not be successful. But if the premium content doesn’t feel valuable and ‘premium’ enough, few people will choose to buy it. This article suggests that you make the most popular parts free, so more people will try it out and like it, and only charge for specialized, niche content that very dedicated players will want. Advertising will pay for the free players. And don’t be afraid to charge a lot. Make the extra content worth it. Drunken Masters charged $1.50 for its premium content. Fantastic Contraption charged $10. Which do you think made more money? The hard part is getting players to pay at all. The difference between paying a dollar and paying ten is very little, once you’ve got your credit card out. Make your game worth ten, and ask for as much as you can.

7. Micropayment model

This philosophy reaches its extreme in the micropayment or micro transaction model, where the game is largely free to play, but players can also spend real money in the game to buy special items. The way it usually works is that there are at least two different currencies in the game world: one earned by playing the game, and one that players get by putting in real money. Some items can be bought solely with currency earned in the game, and some can only be bought by spending real money currency. You must be very careful when designing for this monetization model, or else free players will feel cheated when their skill and effort is thwarted by someone who simply paid to get ahead. For this reason, micropayment games often sell only decorative items for real money, and require players to earn the items that give them an advantage over other players. This works if there is a strong social component to the game. But in a cooperative game, players like it when someone else pays for a powerful item, because it will help them out too!  If you’re going to make a micropayment-based game you’re going to need some sort of payment system, so players can spend money in the game. Fortunately, there are a number of payment providers all ready to be plugged into your virtual economy. Gambit is one example. But if you’re looking for something even easier to integrate, a bunch of new virtual currencies have popped up for Flash recently. If you don’t mind sharing your currency with other games, one of these might be the right choice for you.

8. Rental model

This model is crazy. It’s a variation on the micropayment model, but adapted for a highly skill-based competitive style of game, such as the first-person shooter Combat Arms. In the rental model, you earn points and use them to buy items, but as the name implies, these items only last for a limited amount of time before they expire and you have to buy another one. Because players always return to the same baseline of power as their items expire, these rental items can provide significant gameplay enhancements without making the game feel too unfair. You could allow players to pay real money for these items directly, but to make the game feel more fair you can instead let players spend real money on enhancements that help them earn points faster. That way everyone still has to play and earn their way through the game, but players who pay won’t have to work quite as hard. And of course this can be combined with a more typical micropayment approach, selling purely cosmetic items for real money. The advantage of the rental model is that players will keep buying the same items over and over again, so you can produce a smaller set of items than you would if players were buying a different item everyday like they might in a typical micropayment game. It also makes it feasible to charge lower prices for a given item, since each player will buy it more than once. Overall, the rental model may prove to be the most appropriate for a multiplayer game too small to justify a subscription or a huge number of items to sell.

9. Ransom model

If integrating a real money currency system and creating a bunch of items for your game seems like too much work, you could always just hold your game for ransom. In this model, you set the amount of money that you want to get from the game, and then you don’t release your game until you’ve received that amount in donations. Once you release the game, though, it’s free for everyone. And if you want to be nice, you could refund everyone for their donation if your ransom isn’t met. This is called a threshold pledge. The nice thing about this is that you don’t really have to do any extra work. Just start making a free game and get donations for it. There’s a nice little site called Fundable that takes care of all the details for you. Of course, you have to have enough of a reputation that you can get a bunch of people to pay you to release your game in the first place. It probably won’t make you rich, but if you can attract enough support it could be perfect for small projects.

10. Patronage model

Last but not least, we have the patronage model. Like the ransom model, it is based on donations. But here, people are encouraged to donate larger amounts in exchange for exclusive and personalized recognition. A recent example of this is the donation system Daniel Benmergui set up with the release of his artistic game Today I Die. If you donate a certain amount, you get your name in the credits of his next game. If you donate one hundred dollars, you’ll get a poster of one of his games with the characters replaced by whoever you want. And the first person to donate a thousand dollars gets to choose the characters and a new ending for a custom version of the game. Judging by the donation page, the game has brought in at least two thousand dollars in donations so far. The key here is to make the people who donate, the patrons, feel special. People will pay more because they’ve gotten something unique and personalized. This approach requires that you give a lot of attention to your fans, and that you can attract enough of them, first of all. If you want to be an artist, and you are prepared to cultivate one thousand true fans, patronage may be the best option for you.

Whether you pursue one hobby or one hundred, equipment and supplies can get expensive. Thankfully, there are ways to have money to spare while enjoying your spare time. These ten tips can apply to a variety of hobbies, although each tip works better for some hobbies than others. 

1. Try renting first

If you’re starting a new hobby and aren’t sure you’ll enjoy it, invest as little as possible in supplies or equipment. Before you buy a kayak, for example, see if the closest park with a lake rents them. Musical instruments can often be rented through schools or music stores. Other expensive equipment is available to rent from a variety of sources.  Once you know you love the new hobby and will continue it, it may become less expensive to buy the equipment than to rent it.

Figure out how many times you would need to rent something before the rent has cost more than a purchase; once you know you will use the equipment more often, it’s time to buy. Apply the same theory to one-time entrance fees versus annual membership. Spring for the golf club or gym membership only when you are certain you’ll visit often enough that the membership is less expensive than multiple one-time entrance fees.

2. Look for sources of free supplies

Woodworkers may find that foremen are willing to give away the leftover wood from construction sites. Artists may find free materials in nature or even on the curb on trash day. Readers will find nearly every book they want at the library. (If a book is not at your local library, ask about an interlibrary loan.) Be creative and don’t be afraid to ask, "If you’re planning to throw it away, anyway, would you give it to me instead?" 

3. Adapt less expensive items to suit your needs

Women used to sew their own clothes to save money, but now the fabric often costs as much as a completed item! If you like to sew or quilt, consider finding fabric away from the fabric store – buy inexpensive flat sheets; reuse the good parts of stained or torn clothing. Historically, quilts were often made from "scrap" materials. Why not follow tradition?

4. Check other stores before going to a hobby-specific store

If you’re a scrapbooker, look for colored paper and card stock in an office supply store; it will most likely cost less than at a craft store. Toy stores sell collectible trains and computer games. Discount and overstock stores (like Big Lots) often carry tools, sporting goods, gardening supplies, books, and craft supplies. In general, the narrower the use or audience an item is marketed for, the higher its price is. However, if you need very specific supplies, you might not find them anywhere but at a specialty store.

5. Share your supplies

Find someone else who enjoys your hobby and offer to trade supplies or equipment (temporarily or permanently). If you have a close friend who shares your hobby, consider splitting the costs of new equipment with that person. 

6. Buy from others who share your hobby

Find someone who upgrades equipment frequently and see if he or she is willing to sell you the old equipment. Check the yellow pages for a store that sells second-hand sporting equipment or computer games. Search online auctions for collectible items. 

7. Focus on the necessities

Skiers don’t really need expensive, matching snowsuits in the latest style. Rock climbing shoes are nice to have, but your old sneakers also work. A 20-piece mess kit might be tempting to buy for that camping trip, but the pots, pans, and silverware you already own will do the job, too. Particularly if you only participate in a hobby occasionally, make do with renting or buying the bare necessities and skip the frills and gadgets. 

8. Shop at yard sales or local auctions

People have a tendency to purchase hobby items and, when they lose interest in the hobby, resell them at a fraction of the original price. Yard sales and auctions often have collectible items, unopened craft kits, golf clubs, musical instruments, and more. 

9. Get money back from your hobby

Teach piano lessons; sell your crafts at a craft show; take your produce to a local farmer’s market; auction off Hello Kitty collectibles. In most cases, you won’t make enough to quit your job, but you might at least cover the expenses of participating in the hobby. 

10. Make a hobby of saving money

Finding new ways to get the most for your money can be a challenging and fun pursuit. At times, it even feels like a competitive sport. Challenge yourself to save more each month. Even if you don’t beat your previous numbers, you still win!