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Are you creative? Join the club
Startup investor Jeff Clavier mentions in his latest blog post that his most recent investment, online game site Kongregate.com, includes a game called The Fancy Pants Adventures which has been played over 150,000 times. (The site claims only 57,201 “gameplays”, so there may be different definitions at work. Either way, it seems like quite a few.) According to this Reuters story, the game’s author receives about $2 a day as his share of the site’s advertising revenues.
An author also gets up to $250 if his/her game gets a high rating by users during the week it first appears, and up to $1500 for a high rating during the month it first appears. So there is up to $1750 additional to be earned, but only one person can get that much during any month.
If you’re creative and you enjoy creating things that other people like, things that can be delivered over the Internet, opportunity is knocking. Enough money to live on isn’t. To make a living you need to find things that other people can’t or won’t do — and the Internet is reducing the number of activities that fall under “can’t”.
I’ve previously written about what I’m calling Deflation 2.0, but not in nearly three months so I hope I’m not boring you. I do think this shift is gigantic and I’m very concerned about its effects on many people’s livelihoods.
An author also gets up to $250 if his/her game gets a high rating by users during the week it first appears, and up to $1500 for a high rating during the month it first appears. So there is up to $1750 additional to be earned, but only one person can get that much during any month.
If you’re creative and you enjoy creating things that other people like, things that can be delivered over the Internet, opportunity is knocking. Enough money to live on isn’t. To make a living you need to find things that other people can’t or won’t do — and the Internet is reducing the number of activities that fall under “can’t”.
I’ve previously written about what I’m calling Deflation 2.0, but not in nearly three months so I hope I’m not boring you. I do think this shift is gigantic and I’m very concerned about its effects on many people’s livelihoods.
posted by Rohan Jayasekera | 1:01 a.m.
5 Comments:
If you’re creative and you enjoy creating things that other people like, things that can be delivered over the Internet, opportunity is knocking. Enough money to live on isn’t. To make a living you need to find things that other people can’t or won’t do
I think that this has always been true, Internet or no Internet. Very few people have ever been able to make their living creating things that other people like. How many artists, writers or performers have ever been financially self-sufficient?
I would be interested in reading more about the effects of what you call Deflation 2.0. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Dave, what's changed is that the term "creative" is now more broadly applicable than in the past, and I should have been more clear about that. While artists don't usually expect to make a living at what they do, makers of computer games do expect to. As do creators of other computer programs, newspaper columnists, and employees of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Indeed what is happening is that more people are being forced into the lives of the artists, writers and performers you mention. Will computer game creation shift from salaried employees at companies like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft to "I'm a game author; waiting tables is just my day job"?
Thanks for your feedback about my writing about Deflation 2.0. OK, I'll keep doing it.
Hi Rohan -
Thanks for the link! I think the revenue for creators will go up as we have more traffic...
As for the gameplays, there are actually two different Fancy Pants games. The one on the homepage is the original. There's an unfinished demo of the sequel, that was uploaded to our site first, and has even more gameplays. It's actually up over 200,000 now.
http://kongregate.com/games/DrNeroCF/the-fancy-pants-adventure-world-2-demo
It was dugg and has been linked to directly by a bunch of sites, which is why it has so many even though the rating is not quite high enough to keep it on the homepage.
Looks like the link didn't make it. here it is again.
Jim, thanks very much for your comment. Clearly Fancy Pants is very popular. Which is why it concerns me that its author is making so little money from it. Obviously he didn't do it for the money, so it's not him I'm worried about; it's the other game creators, photojournalists, and other "creative" people who've been expecting to make a living at it. All of us who promote Web 2.0, of which Kongregate is a great example, are disrupting people's livelihoods. I hope that doesn't send us all straight to hell or something, but at least I can warn people what they should worry about.
I'm relieved that your site is still functioning despite Fancy Pants' being dugg!
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