The game of a millionaire or the story of creating a board game for a social network

    Good day!
    We want to introduce you to our application "Monopoly: Golden Sack" , which is developed for the social network "Vkontakte".
    You can see it by clicking on this link .


    Technical characteristics of the application:


    The client of this application was written in AS3, Flash IDE + FDT. The database is MySQL. The graphics are mostly raster. The server is located in the clouds, our choice fell on Skalaxi. Why such power is not yet clear, but let it be.
    Server Options:



    Application demographics




    History of creation

    The idea to do something similar came to us at the beginning of 2011. Then we, two friends, and subsequently the creators of the application, gathered at home to play the board game "Monopoly". Having received incredible pleasure from the game, I wanted to be able to play with friends without leaving my home. The attempt to find something similar on social networks turned out to be a failure. Then the idea came up to develop your board game "Monopoly" in the form of an application.
    The path to its creation was very long: this was mainly due to the lack of any experience in the development of Internet resources. We did not know where to start, but as a result we got a small action plan:
    1. Sketch;
    2. Thinking over the functionality;
    3. Search and work of the designer;
    4. Search and work of the programmer;
    5. Testing the application;
    6. Application launch;
    7. Advertising and promotion.

    And now about each in more detail. First, we started with a simple sketch on a piece of paper. It depicted the initial versions of application windows. Designing a sketch did not take much time and subsequently did not play a particularly important role, but it was easier to navigate, especially when working with a designer.

    Next, we thought out the functionality of the application, which has undergone dozens of changes. Basically, the application is not much different from the usual Monopoly board game where you can buy, rent and sell your property. But there are a number of differences from the original board game, namely:
    • at the beginning of the game you have a minimum amount of $ 1,500 in your account;
    • the more you earn, the more expensive tables you can afford;
    • for fast promotion in the game, you can purchase chips for the votes cast into the application;
    • the winner is the one who, after the lapse of time, will have the largest capital or the last non-bankrupt player;
    • at the end of the game, the game percentage is transferred to the winner’s account - part of the money that you will play with opponents.


    The main difficulty was to transfer the board game to the computer, in particular, to introduce a system of votes. It is important to interest the players, but at the same time create conditions under which the players would be equal, regardless of the number of votes cast. That is why it was decided to introduce a funded system : the winner receives a percentage of the initial capital, thereby, each player earns virtual money.

    The next step was to find a designer. Design is a very important part of creating an application: the attitude of users to the game depends on visual perception. In the monopoly, it was necessary to maintain the direct style of the board game, but at the same time to give conservatism, thereby arouse the confidence of the players. Also, the “rigor” of design increases the target audience: in addition to adolescents, older people play the application, which is not characteristic of all social networking applications.

    “We were very lucky with the choice of a designer, she just completed the task,” we thought. But now we realize that the design needs to be changed. By the way, if there are designers / illustrators who want to work, write. The main colors were chosen gold and green, where gold symbolizes wealth, and green money and peace.

    The main character of the game was chosen the hero of Irish folklore - Leprechaun, who is usually portrayed dressed in all green. Leprechaun’s attribute is a pot of gold, hence the variation of the name of our game “Golden Sack”.

    Then we went in search of a programmer , it was not easy. Honestly, working with a programmer taught us to wait, to wait a long time. It seemed to us that after a successfully developed design, we will launch the application in a couple of weeks, but we were deeply mistaken and the phrase “well, start on Saturday,” we repeated 15 times :)

    First of all, we sent him the terms of reference and hoped that he would agree to complete this work, as the previous two programmers refused because of the complex functionality of the application. The programmer called us surprisingly short periods for a very ridiculous price, which, of course, we did not meet. During the programming process, some functions had to be abandoned, but some had to be added as they were developed. We met with a number of problems, both technical and visual. In most cases, the problems were due to insufficient preparation of the programmer or illustrator. We had to hire more and more performers, but in the end, most of the problems were solved. As a result, we learned one very good lesson.: You need to remain in good relations with the people who worked on your project, even if you are sure that you will no longer need a person. As practice has shown, you return to many people, and again you have to work with them.

    After finishing the main work, it was necessary ... to play! Very, very much to play, so to speak test the application, in order to find and eliminate all technical errors. Honestly, during this time we became the virtuosos of the game "Monopoly", although we managed to love and hate it 10 times. The main difference between this application from others is a very complex basic functionality. In the game itself there are many opportunities and options for the development of events and, as you know, even with a huge number of hours spent on testing, the two of us could not find all the errors. That is why there was a need to launch the game, so that users, so to speak in the field, would help us identify errors.

    Application launch


    Came on April 22, 2012 . It's funny that on the first day several people offered to buy an application from us, which of course we didn’t even think about. People liked the monopoly, there were many fans of this game, but there was no decent application, so we guessed it. But, as we thought, questions immediately arose about the problems that arose: there were a lot of errors and the work on launch was just beginning. Most of the people were not very good-natured, so I had to listen to the claims expressed in a rude manner.

    Advertising and promotion


    We tried several methods of advertising directly on Vkontakte: VK targeting (~ 4.5 rubles / person), advertising in groups (~ 2.5 rubles / person), application advertising through votes (0.9 rubles / person). After conducting a study, it turned out that with the most profitable promotion was the advertisement of the application through votes . Each application has the ability to start advertising in the main window of the "Game" for votes, it looks like this:

    We would like to share with you advice: it is better to accumulate votes for several days and spend all on one day. It turns out that in one day you will spend more money, but the likelihood of getting into the recommended Vkontakte applications increases, since the rating of applications is ranked by the number of user visits.

    At this stage, advertising and promotion has just begun, so we will be glad to hear your questions and suggestions.
    If you have any questions about creating a game, feel free to ask them in the comments, and we will try to answer them.

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