Create Your Own Mobile Game for Pennies — Without Coding
Use playable, ready-made HTML5 games — it’s easier and cheaper than you think
STEAL THIS CAMPAIGN
Use playable, ready-made HTML5 games — it’s easier and cheaper than you think
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series, Steal This Campaign, wherein we highlight creative, achievable, and unique ideas that you can steal or replicate parts of in your own marketing campaigns.
Have you ever wanted to create a mobile game for your business or product launch, but assumed it was too expensive?
I have a secret to tell you. You can buy one for pennies.
The Envato Market sells these playable, ready-made HTML5 games that work across all devices. Better yet, they can be saved to customers’ Android or iPhone home-screens and played like a real mobile app — one that would usually cost thousands of dollars to make.
All players need to do is hit ‘Share’ on their device and then ‘Add to Home Screen’. (see image below)
With little to no tweaking, you can use these ready-made games as part of any brand awareness or marketing campaign. All you need to do is think up a story and make it relevant to your business or promotion.
I Turned a $7 Game Into an Exciting Heist
On the Envato Market was a mobile-friendly game called ‘Dangerous Racing’… Unfortunately, this specific one isn’t there now, but there are some close racing alternatives for you to choose from.
I ended up buying the game for $7 which included a license to host and use it on our clients’ site. Now all I needed to do was to create a story around the game.
The story behind the game was:
The client’s warehouse was burgled and Xmas was ruined.
A customer saw it go down and was in hot pursuit of the offender.
Customers could become the pursuing vehicle within the game and retrieve our stolen goods along the road — while avoiding traffic.
The ten customers with the highest scores would win real-life prizes. Because they would have saved Xmas.
I storyboarded a video and wrote the script and the company general manager’s voice was used as a fake 911 dispatcher. The thief was our warehouse manager in disguise and real CCTV footage was staged for fun.
You can watch that finished promo video at the bottom of this article.
Now you don’t necessarily need a video, but it depends on how much effort you’re putting into your promotion and what role the game will play for your business.
Think about the kind of game you’re buying and what story you can create to make it relatable to your products or promotion.
Customizing a Game to Your Brand & Needs
You don’t need to know how to code to customize the games to your needs.
The creator’s name is listed on the side of their product, beneath the ‘Buy Now’ button and if you’re logged in, you can email them to perform extra work (see image below for creator’s name and profile).
This was a response I got from ‘Dangerous Racing’s’ developer when I asked him to add a leaderboard into the game.
Hi,
Thank you for your feedback! Yes, I can add a leaderboard... However, since such functionality was not in the game initially, it will cost $10.
$10? I think we can all stretch to that.
Want To Change the Look Yourself?
To change the look of our game we simply opened the game’s image files in Photoshop and redesigned them with the client’s brand colors.
If you save each file under the same file name, the game will automatically ‘compile’ and look exactly as you’ve designed it.
This method would be technically known as ‘re-skinning’ and only takes a basic knowledge of Photoshop. Zero coding required.
How To Turn It Into Revenue
It’s hard to gauge the true economic impact of the game because I didn’t put ads or coupon codes inside the game itself. This is something you could do or commission the game-builder to do.
That way you’d have a true ROI (return on investment) figure to work with.
Instead, given time constraints, I decided it was better to ask for people’s email addresses in order to play. It created a cleaner end-user experience and helped to grow my client’s email marketing list.
You can do this by having a pop-up that requests the player’s email address on the game page before they can play.
$7 Game Stats — the Facts & the Furious
The client has since used the email addresses of those 4,500+ active players to market products toward. Based on the open, click & store conversion rates, it was definitely worth the $7 that was spent on the game and the time taken in Photoshop to reskin it.
Of course with a high-video production, a leaderboard, and some added staff-hours, it cost more than $7, but company staff is paid full-time anyway, so their cost is negligible.
Whether you simply host a complete game to keep customers coming back to your site, or you reskin a $7 classic, you’ll still be able to have a mobile game of your own for mere pennies. A far cry from the thousands of dollars it usually costs.
As promised above, this is the video that was used to promote the launch… I hope you enjoy it.
Fun fact: We got the car by asking some guy on Facebook if we could film him driving it and the sheriff of our videographer’s town closed the road for us because it sounded like a fun idea.