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Last few years i have started to get a feeling that product based sales are getting further and further away from a good way to make income and such and also copy protection dosnt usally seem to work that long( broken sooner or later especially if you starting to gain lots of attention ). Partly why i have begun thinking of ways to stay indie/ small developer while still trying to get an income out of it. And i always return to the same answer. Service based. You pay for the service of having access to games. And you gain a more stable economy around your producs as well as older games on the platform has a larger chance to still recive payments. Maby its just way way out there but i feel that the way hub is working i feel that this option would be viable for your platform. As always there is lots of work invovled. Sure there are very valid agruments against this such as offline mode and such.But i still feel this as a very valid option. Especially since games keeps evolving and devs keeep adding games to the platform. So having a kinda same modell you have now. where you devide the full platform into X steps. and early supporters geet a continues disscount on the monthly fee as long as the stay subscribed to the SoP hUb platform. anyway just a crazy idea. And since i know for sure that at the moment i dont ahve the time or the power to make somthing like this on my own i feel that its an good suggestion to the SoP/hUb. As i like SoP!! =) best Regards ps: personally i prefer the idea of subscriptions for a platform then having to buy everythinng seperatly especially since you never know if somthing will happend to the lience you bought or the computer or backups and stuff. Kinda like it when the software dosnt really cost and is easly aviable while paying for the playtime. Might be just me but still having lost quite a few games to uncarefull siblings and parents i just prefer to have it digitally all in one place. |
Submitted by Blakhouse
Wed, 10/14/2009 - 15:00
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Really interesting stuff.
Really interesting stuff. I've been pondering something along these lines actually... is the good ol' shareware model really what people want?
Subscribing to the service would be a really cool option to offer.
Connecting all this with activity in the community, and playing the games would be a really cool thing. Like "Since dntoll values your feedback you have received 100 SoP Dollars"
Anyway... this is indeed a huge amount of work and a whole new model of doing business I think we need to find some baby steps we can take to try it out and slowly add to the possibilities of hUb
What do you guys think? In what direction should we move?
heh just like i said just a
heh just like i said just a suggestion /crazy dev spamming. But have been thinking of this ideas a long time. But i realised i rather support somthing then actually build everything from scratch since like i said like having stuff under one roof having 50 diffrent digital platform accounts isnt really that intresting either. i have steam hub and a fileplanet account as it is( as well as lots and lots of mmo accounts getting a bit of hazzel to keep track of them )
I like it
The big issue I think is that a subscription with a time-based fee (monthly or yearly or whatever) implies that the subscriber constantly be getting new content / value.
This means that SoP needs to commit to either new games or new content on a regular basis.
Another interesting model that you see a lot is that of having free software but having a virtual currency (like SoP-Dollars) and have certain things in the games cost money. Typically this is user customization stuff, and this in turn implies lots of good social networking support.
Apparently the ratio of paying customers tends to be around 20% for that model.
Check out Muskedunder's new Facebook version of Icy Tower for an example:
http://apps.facebook.com/icytower/
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
isnt that the idea?
Johno:
Isnt that the basic idea of Spell Of play?
Keep itterating your games keep adding games/content?
And with the introduction of Sentry and games were you can share levels and such you are getting value for the money.
Also with a more steady stream of cashflow(subscriptions) There might be room for more focus on the platform community and content.
Btw IcyTower cool game =)
The indi development is a though nut to crack and i guess the more ways you can charge for your games the better spread thay will have since you ought to have somthing that fits everybody.
Integration with exsisting social media as well as more interaction on hUb community such as playerprofiles and stuff should almost be in regardless =) never bad to have your site / games exposed in more channels. =)
Strange
I was thinking about a similar type of service a while back. Not really related to SoP, I was thinking more of games for Android Market and similar, but it applies to both.
The difficult part would be to get it started, it would need to be dirt cheap in the beginning while you work up a list of games for the service. Once you have a baseline of games you can start raising the price though, but you can never go over a certain amount as people will begin to hesitate.
I don't think you could go over the average mmo-subscription price, that's the same level that Spotify has chosen, and I think that is the absolute max. Although I think a lower price is necessary for a mobile type platform for example, as people aren't used to paying as much there.
This would also require some way to determine who gets how much money from the subscription, at least when it comes to SoP, as there are games here not developed by the "core crew". This could be tricky but doable.
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There's no kill like an overkill!
I don't think there needs to
I don't think there needs to be a commitment to producing more games/content (we already do this as you say Blackhouse) to support subscriptions. What is important though is to make games that has a high level of replayability. This can be achieved with pretty low tech means such as high-scores and achievements.
Maybe that is the way to start? Working more on getting high-scores and achievements into the community... There are a number of games by johno that do have online highscores and other things but they are not integrated with the community.
Another thing we've been pondering is a "game stream" kind of thing, that is you get a flow of events published in the community with events from the games. Like "hObbe got a 400000 score in T.W.T.P.B." "Johno created a new level in Sentry"
So there is definitely things we can "easily" do to get the ball rolling... currently the thing that is a big limit for me is time. However, I hope to get some more time on my hands in the next few weeks...
I agree
I totally think hObbE is on the right track with the above post. The future of SoP to me would to have a better integration between the games and the community, something like a common API for SoP games to handle achievements and high-scores and such.
I don't think the monthly fee would work well for SoP, partially because of cheap people (like me I'm ashamed to say), and partially because of having several different developer groups.
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There's no kill like an overkill!
Malice: But if there was the
Malice:
But if there was the options of
Buy each game individual if you want to.
Buy a subscription to play all games online and maby premium features on the community part of sop
Buy Sop credits/dollars to spend as you like. (Thiese sop dollars can even manby be used to give good contributors to content and game feedback somthing back. Or local events tournaments for a sop dollar prize.
You could even make Sop dollars easy purchaseable with an sms or so.
But the whole thing would need somthing like a hUb community lib to be included into your software to get acccess stuff.
could be everything from login to hihgscore and achivement handling.
Anyway nice ideas =)
And hobbe the game stream thingy sounds awsome =).
notes
The hUb already passes login information to the games.
I am seriously considering some game designs that require you to login, and thus have the hUb filter games accordingly, i.e. if you haven't logged in you can't start the game. There are lots of designs that only make sense if the game "knows who you are".
The "game stream" that hObbE mentioned is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, just haven't got around to it...
It is indeed very much like what Twitter and recently Facebook are doing.
good ideas people! hobbes
good ideas people! hobbes ideas are a good start and provides extra value to our games. the problem currently is our lack of time and frequent updates. i personally dont like subscription models as im afraid ill forget about it and money is taken from me without knowing it. i do however like point systems. if i have points and see something i like im MUCH more likely to buy. ive occasionally bought stuff on xbox live and wii shop channel just because it was easy and i felt like having something right then and there.
i like the game stream as well. brings the community closer. i already love seeing the orange text on the frontpage with updates in the buzz section
highscores and achievements is a good way to start. its just the kind of game i'm already aiming for as well.
we should also make it easy for first timers signing up and maybe give them some points or free time playing stuff to get things going.
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Solid Core Entertainment
Developer of Roadclub and Sense: Survival Prelude (Developer blog)
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