I run a moderately popular browser game. We have over 175k registered users and get millions of requests a day.
Our conversion rates are low, but we've managed to get enough people playing to sustain itself, one full time employee (me!) and a few contract employees.
It's been a lot of fun. If you are passionate about games I highly recommend it since it can definitely be sustainable. Having said that, I'm not sure it's necessary a lucrative path for most people.
I'll understand if you don't want to answer this question: do you manage to live off your game? i.e. make enough profit to not have to have a day job?
I'm asking because I run a webgame myself, of much smaller scale and niche purpose, and I'm wondering if I should invest the effort it takes to scale it up.
When I saw that Mafia Wars was one of the most popular games on Facebook, I went to check it out, and before long thought "Wow, this is just like forumwarz except with mafia." Apparently html rpgs are now a viable genre.
Have you ever considered making more games that are essentially gameplay clones of forumwarz but with different themes? That seems to be a lot of what Zynga has done with their facebook games - Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, Zombie Wars, etc. Also have you considered social network integration yourself. I hate to suggest such un-innovative strategies but it might work.
Our conversion rates are low, but we've managed to get enough people playing to sustain itself, one full time employee (me!) and a few contract employees.
It's been a lot of fun. If you are passionate about games I highly recommend it since it can definitely be sustainable. Having said that, I'm not sure it's necessary a lucrative path for most people.