Not shown: other 100,000 computer geeks making $0 from their online games.
4,500 more are in "beta", which means they didn't finish making it.
400 more were built by people who didn't understand CSS, and so are ugly and Times New Roman'd.
70 are blatant copies of other existing games.
20 are played by a small group of friends, but didn't spread beyond that.
5 thought they would make money by selling t-shirts or something silly like that.
4 make money, but not a million dollars worth.
That is like saying you won't succeed because 99% who went into martial arts never made it to black blet because they never took martial art seriously.
I haven't even introduced the premium features yet - people get very addicted to these games and are happy to pay for UI enhancements. Hell, I've ever had multiple people contribute designs, graphics and JS to the site wanting nothing in return.
It's been running less than a month in beta and has had 0 public advertising (this being the very first time) and has 150 active players purely from word-of-mouth. Admittedly its not making any worthwhile money currently despite me putting hours and hours of work into it but its been great fun and a great learning experience so its worth it never the less - so long as it breaks even I'm happy. - http://islandor.com
Games like this are based solely around a community, people get friends on these games so don't wish to leave - the game itself is just an addon to the community.
Oh, and its more than $20, I think people must just be clicking as they want the game to survive or something - I've no idea. Not to mention I'm getting spammed with evony ads. I also suspect having a very direct advertising target helps, compared to other sites which often have a very broad market and thus struggle to advertise.