deeperbeige.com

A silly little game to test how fast you can click a button 50 times. It’s not quite as easy as it looks though…

Play ClickRace on this site

I wrote this game as an experiment in advertising. It is deliberately a simple game, but with a few silly tricks that give it some lasting appeal so it’d distribute well. Then, I put a version on my site with google ads, a version out on the web with mochi ads built in and a version on Kongregate with their ad-share system in place.

So how has each version done? Well, I wouldn’t call them resounding successes:

Google ads: $1.96 from 40 impressions

Mochi ads: $15.92 from 113046 impressions

Kong ads: $2.31 from 2452 impressions

All of the above are over a period of a fair few months. So, number one problem: Not enough impressions! Number two problem: Mochiads pays bugger all! A hundred thousand impressions isn’t a lot, granted, but then neither is $16. Scale that up by a factor of 10 for a million-plays game (which is about right for a fair game with fair distribution), and you get $160. Which is pathetic.

Google ads looks rather better, but remember that the ads don’t travel with the game, but stay on your own website. That means you only get paid if people are actually on your site itself, not if the game is played on a portal elsewhere, which is the norm.

Get rich quick via advertising? Doesn’t seem likely from these figures.

The classic block-collapsing game we all know and love. Click on the biggest groups possible to score the highest.

I made this game not to be original or groundbreaking in any way other than one – to have an incredibly hard to hack highscore table! To date, I don’t believe anyone has ever successfully cheated at it. Give it a go if you like, but be responsible – let me know if you manage to hack it successfully. I’d love to know how if it has any flaws.

Here’s roughly how it works: The server sends you a random game seed to be played. As you play, Flash records the moves you make. Then, when your game is over it sends your score along with the moves you made to the server. The server replays your game in PHP and checks it comes out with the same score. It also checks mundane things like the game is actually the one it sent you, and it hasn’t been played before etc. If the scores match, you’re on the highscore table. If not, you’re a cheat!

I can’t think of any exploits, although occasionally it does generate a rediculously easy to score starting layout due to a flaw in the random number generator that I’ve never bothered to fix!

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