Miniclip Retrospective: The Making of a Flash Pioneer
Five choices that defined Miniclip’s success
Remember the first time you entered Miniclip? It was no different from entering a library. With thousands of games to choose from, it’s no secret that gamers of all ages were spoiled for choice. Sure, they didn’t have cutting-edge graphics or mind-bending narratives. But at Miniclip, accessibility was and still is the name of the game. It’s a mantra that has served them well.
To millions across the globe, Miniclip is a household name in the entertainment industry. All it takes for a healthy dose of nostalgia is one look at the site’s home page. With over 200 million monthly active users across multiple platforms, Miniclip is an aging behemoth that still has its bag of tricks intact.
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Neither of Miniclip’s founders had a past based in programming. Co-founders Rob Small and Tihan Presbie kickstarted the iconic site when the former recorded the latter dancing in a kitchen. All it took for the first “miniclip” was US President George Bush’s head superimposed onto Presbie’s body. The name is evidence enough that neither Small nor Presbie expected the site to go beyond video clips. The similarity between their initial goal and social platforms like TikTok and YouTube is eerie, to say the least. And this was way back in 2001, mind you.
On a budget of £40,000, Miniclip soon became a safe haven for user-generated content. Surprisingly, much of it was tailored to the casual gaming crowd. With zero marketing, Miniclip rose to a point where a Google search for “games” led you straight into the London-based virtual game library. It did this with an approach that gave the internet its due as a unique medium. Utilizing Adobe Flash ensured that file sizes were low, letting gamers get in on the fun almost instantly. Soon, Miniclip was a name that drove conversations, even ones about the latest and greatest in gaming.
Flash forward
Keeping Miniclip open to user-generated content meant that new games were published on the platform every week. While games had their fair share of bugs and more nefarious bits of software, a dedicated userbase ensured that only legitimate games found their way to the top of the leaderboards. This also meant that popular games found an avenue to get even more players onboard.
Games on the platform often relied on a fun core gameplay loop over fancy graphics or realism. Microtransactions meant that a good chunk of Miniclip’s games employed practices that would soon become commonplace in the free-to-play industry. Hosting games on a virtual platform meant that multiplayer and competitive leaderboards were only a click away. This spiraled Miniclip from the realm of obscurity into the spotlight.
Its focus on being nimble with respect to trends and staying away from topical politics (something that big companies tend to mess up on a royal scale) ensured that Miniclip didn’t falter as it grew from thousands of users to millions of fans. A team of developers from dozens of countries ensured diversity while letting Miniclip craft experiences for all sorts of people. While these aspects certainly drove growth, here are five key factors that led to Miniclip’s drastically amplified paycheck.
1. Games of all kinds
Miniclip was far from a curated library that had only the best experiences it could get its hands on. While it did police apps for viruses and their ilk, games that weren’t all that polished were still let in. This allowed players to go on a little treasure hunt of sorts as they separated the good from the great. A bad game would only result in players heading into another game to check it out. Nuggets that earned their stay would soon be catapulted onto the leaderboard of popular games, enticing even more players to join the fold.
Effectively working as an open market for game developers, Miniclip soon became the platform of choice for novice game developers wanting to ship their first games. Sure, not all of them were great. But it cemented the fact that Miniclip was open to everyone. It also helped cut down piracy in an age where bootlegged copies of games were all over the place.
The move also helped it set itself apart from contemporary rivals with deeper pockets like MSN and Yahoo! While those services turned to aggregators for the same old games that were nothing more than glorified trials, Miniclip’s open nature and massive userbase invited more developers to the platform. Exclusive games built from the ground up for its audience didn’t hurt either.
Fragger launched in 2010 at the top of the iOS app charts with a simple yet nuanced set of game mechanics married to a simple UI. And in 2015, the deceptively simple Agar.io spawned a genre of .io games and quickly skyrocketed to the most-searched game on Google that year. But among the gems crafted by Miniclip, 8 Ball Pool stands as a shining testament to the fact that Miniclip knew its fanbase best. With over 10 billion plays, it earned over $400 million in its first three years alone.
It’s no surprise that Microsoft knocked at Miniclip’s doors in 2012 when it needed solid games to strengthen its paltry Windows Store gaming offerings. Games from Miniclip’s stable that were once paid were now released for free for Windows Phone users under the Xbox banner. Microsoft was more than happy to cover the cost.
2. Monetization pays off
Before countless free-to-play clones with aggressive advertising strategies populated smartphone app stores, Miniclip began looking for opportunities to monetize games without incurring the wrath of its player base. It knew that going overboard would make its games look like reward simulators. Miniclip ended up going with a multi-pronged approach that could be adopted on a case-by-case basis.
Casual games began to display full-screen ads between segments in the game’s loop in a manner that didn’t impede the player’s experience. Some of these ads were playable and offered rewards, making them more interactive and less of an annoyance. Dynamic ads like billboards meant that marketing didn’t have to come at the cost of game time. For other games where matches could take a while(8 Ball Pool comes to mind), Miniclip doubled down on in-app purchases. Paying attention to the game’s audience and tweaking their ad strategy accordingly maximized the game’s average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), ensuring a steady flow of income.
3. Subscriptions aplenty
RuneScape. It’s a masterpiece veterans revere, one among the handful of games that kicked of subscription-based adventures that expand with time. It hit the scene way back in 2001, back when steady internet connections were a pipe dream. RuneScape hit its stride in 2004 when Jagex Limited teamed up with Miniclip, quickly becoming the world’s biggest MMO with over 200 million accounts created after launch. While the subscription opened up a good portion of the game’s world to players, RuneScape was perfectly serviceable in its limited free-to-play mode.
I’ve easily sunk in over 50 hours across its pretty (for the time) landscapes filled with interesting characters and skills waiting to be developed. Merchants hollering with discounts for wares were a common sight in cities, wares that could often make short work of quests that demanded one to grind. And if RuneScape’s quests weren’t to your fancy, there were better things to do.
Cataclysmic world-altering events used to revitalize players who got weary with quests. In 2013, I woke up at 4 AM to go on a crystal-gathering spree in the legendary Battle of Lumbridge. Dodging members of the rival faction while mining precious crystals in a race against time as a 14-year-old in a swanky outfit was exhilarating. It was an experience that few games promise, let alone deliver.
I’d be remiss in my duty in covering subscription games if I didn’t mention Club Penguin. Launched in 2005 and distributed by Miniclip a year later, the cutesy penguin avatars made a splash with everything from fun minigames to customizable igloos. You haven’t lived if you haven’t yearned for a Puffle, one of Club Penguin’s iconic virtual pets.
Acquired by Disney in 2007, countless events in collaboration with Disney properties coupled with continued support helped Club Penguin amass an impressive following with over 150 million players. It soon spawned an empire ripe for merchandise and corporate partnerships. When the game’s development ground to a halt in 2017, millions felt like they lost a part of themselves. People of all ages paid their respects with tweets and virtual updates, modern-age equivalents of a funeral procession.
4. The rise of the advergame
While ads between games were certainly a lucrative affair for Miniclip, its efforts gained a shot in the arm when companies realized that they could take advertising even further. Across its illustrious climb from strength to strength, Miniclip has partnered with stalwarts like Unilever, Coca-Cola, Warner Bros., Disney, Gillette, and Momentum Pictures among others to create games tailored to the ethos of the brand. Organizations that used to restrict their online presence to banners on the sides of websites now had full-fledged gaming experiences of their own.
These “advergames” helped bolster the brand image of a firm while being a relatively inobtrusive affair. While the company’s logo would pop up across in-game objects and loading screens, subtle placement ensured that players didn’t mind the invasion. The best part? Most of these games had memorable characters and compelling game loops that were as good as the best Miniclip had to offer. This ensured that shoddy remakes didn’t hurt a brand’s existing image.
80 million game plays on Gillette's Jet Ski advergame is no trifling matter. Unilever teamed up with Miniclip to showcase its Shore deodorant with Extreme Pamplona, a multi-stage platformer that hit over 25 million game plays in a month, shocking both companies. Disney’s Chicken Little movie debut was bolstered with a Miniclip advergame that racked up 16 million plays and over 2 million trailer views. And this was before the existence of YouTube.
No organization could pass up the opportunity of reaching millions of players who willingly chose to play a game that featured said brand prominently. It was a literal gamechanger in a market where people didn’t ask for ads to be splattered across computer screens. Miniclip soon became fertile ground for some of gaming’s greatest corporate experiments.
5. Welcome, Facebook
While Facebook made it to Miniclip’s after-party years after the latter launched, none can contest Facebook’s enviable position in the minds of billions of users today. The synergy that a social platform like Facebook had with Miniclip’s gaming library benefitted both platforms. Back when Facebook feeds were peppered with FarmVille requests and gaming featured prominently on the home page, Miniclip tapped into a new audience, one that was previously unaware of gaming.
While parents frowned at the mention of consoles, even they got in on the fun when it came to games that could be accessed from a browser. Miniclip struck gold when it realized that large swathes of this new demographic could be enticed with games that were already in its established roster. It quickly found that women were drawn to puzzle games while teens were interested in games that tested quick response times and decision-making.
Miniclip’s conquest paid off: compared to regular players, players who arrived at 8 Ball Pool via Facebook spent 70% more on in-app purchases. The move also added 24 million monthly users to a game that was already hitting the top spots on mobile app stores. Downright impressive if you ask me.
Where does Miniclip go from here?
With several successful experiments and a winning mindset that let Miniclip outstep its rivals at every turn, it’s no surprise that the firm attracted interest from several companies with deep pockets. In 2015, a massive investment from Tencent opened a new chapter in Miniclip’s history. Currently the world’s largest game company (with shares in everything from League of Legends to Fortnite), Tencent intends to bring Miniclip’s expertise in online games to the East, a region that is already witnessing phenomenal spikes in eSport demand. Tencent and Miniclip are perfectly poised not just to find trends, but to define them in the years to come.
With Adobe ending support for Flash this year and a pandemic that keeps us in our homes, Miniclip has decisions to make. Ending support doesn’t just make Flash woefully obsolete, it makes old games a ripe target for hackers. What was once a ubiquitous way to get people to play games anywhere is now a relic of the past, one that is left to services like Flashpoint to preserve. Sites like Kongregate and Newgrounds stand atop the same cliff that Miniclip treads on.
A good portion of Miniclip’s legacy games will be left behind as it heads into an era where Fortnite earns $1.9 billion a year and one where masks are the new normal. While it would be silly to write Miniclip off, bigger companies have fared worse under better circumstances. I hope Miniclip makes the jump with its consumer-oriented stratagem intact. Nonetheless, Miniclip has made gaming accessible in ways few others have. It’s difficult to imagine a videogame industry without lasting influences from games like Club Penguin and 8 Ball Pool, virtual arcades that were as good as the real ones at no cost.
Gone in a flash? I don’t think so. Long live Miniclip.
