Also some great info in the comments!

I used to get loads of pm’s on FK.games asking me for pricing advice, and my stock answer is to bounce back to the prospective client. They have a better concept of it’s worth than you ( For the first game anyway ), so I’d always do the “I’ve got to be honest, this is my first time selling a game. You guys obviously have a budget in mind for it, so make me an offer based on that and we can take it from there”. Everyone has a budget.

As to the 30%, I can totally believe that. Distribution is king, which is totally wrong, but that’s the way it is. Game portals receive paid placements for adver-games which at best keeps the price for original content low, at worst it shuts the door completely.
Plus we’re in a situation where the portals with the really huge traffic don’t allow you to have your own ads, so in a lot of cases these sites are picking up games for free and just treating it all like shovelware and getting just silly amounts of money in terms of ad revenue.
The indie scene for the most part is just giving content to people who make money out of it. None of that last sentence should be right

As to your local guy skewing the market for everyone, I’ve been asked to do games for an insulting amount of money before, guess I will in the future too. Some design agencies / clients have no concept of cost or the depth that goes into making a game.
If it is actually him alone screwing things, well, I know some bad bad men. Just give me the word and he won’t be open sourcing anything again. Yeah you know what I mean.

As you mentioned, I’m finding Flash contract work to be a lot more lucrative and less risky than gambling on selling game licenses. I earn enough to live contracting and the income is reasonably regular.

I do plan to get back into making games on the side just for the hell of it though, even if they make little money. It’s just hard to find the motivation to fire up Flash after spending 8 to 10 hours a day on a contract job, sometimes more, like today – 15 hours. Being paid by the hour helps ease the pain of that though.

It’s great to hear you’ve had success with Kyobi. Is it your most successful personal release?

Oh, and kyobi is a lot of fun too.

Another example: i’ll be talking to the casual game portals about Kahoots soon. i spoke with a few folks in the know at GDC and asked them what the royalty cut should be. i was figuring i’d get something high, like 70 or 80 percent, because the portals haven’t invested in the game as publishers – they just have to put it on the portal, so it’s completely free money for them. The devs i talked to said i should get about 30%, which was standard. They may have been funning me? i don’t know. But it was good to hear that figure, so that i don’t get into a hopeless stalemate negotiation down the road.

When 2DBoy shared the numbers of the cash advance/back royalties from various publishers, i was in heaven. It means a lot to folks like me who haven’t been through it once, and have NO idea what to expect.