Defold Web Monetization — Grant Report #1

Intro

The Defold Foundation was awarded a grant in June 2020. With the received funding we set out to integrate, promote and support the use of Web Monetization in web games created using the Defold game engine. The plan was to integrate Web Monetization through the Defold plugin system and promote it through examples and tutorials and to host a game jam focused on Web Monetization.

Project Update

With the Web Monetization Challenge (game jam) concluded and the winners announced we are now proud to say that the entire Defold Web Monetization project is officially completed!

Key activities

During the course of this project we have finished the following tasks:

• Web Monetization integration in the Defold game engine
  • Extension/plugin
  • GitHub
  • Template project (accessible from the Defold editor)
  • Manual
• Web Monetization example game
  • GitHub
  • Play on itch.io
• Web Monetization game jam:
  • Website
  • itch.io

We are still working on a more complex Web Monetization enabled game which we hope to finish in February.

Also worth pointing out is that we managed to get itch.io to add the required monetization tag to their iframe. This means that future games published on itch.io can make use of Web Monetization.

Communications and marketing

During the course of this project, and especially during the month before and during the game jam, we actively promoted the jam on Twitter, LinkedIn, within our own community and thanks to Andrzej Mazur also in the gamdev.js weekly newsletter. Some examples of Tweets:

• Andrzej Mazurs top-5
• 10 days left
• Theme announcement
• js13k promo
• One month Coil vouchers
• Some of the judge announcements:
  • https://twitter.com/defold/status/1317009997881085952
  • https://twitter.com/defold/status/1313021381278400515
  • https://twitter.com/defold/status/1314097409518166017
• Game jam invite

We have also sent several newsletters, each reaching around 30k subscribers.

Blog/News posts:

• Game jam winners
• Game jam announcement
• Grant announcement

What’s next?

We will continue to work on an expanded WebMonetization enabled game. We hope to use this as a test bed for Web Monetization to learn more about how Web Monetization can be used successfully in games.

Additional comments

We would like to thank Grant for the Web, especially Chris and Erika for their support throughout the entire process.