Quote: "About the only down-side I see is that when individuals have paid, they expect the final product, even if you haven't reached your funding target."
I noticed that Project Zomboid has a small disclaimer saying something like "You're paying for the game as it stands NOW, and no further updates are guaranteed.". Perhaps that's the way to go, to cover your backside.
Quote: "You probably need a reasonable reputation before embarking ion something like this, or have a huge marketing budget. The worst case scenario is that you get a small uptake that generates an insubstantial amount of income, small feedback sample sizes (with too high an error margin) and you are left with a commitment but very little money."
I would see that as a problem if my business model wasn't kind of already like that. At the moment I make games, with no profit in sight until I complete. I release small alphas to a handful of interested people and get some wishy washy feedback. I'm not guaranteed to make enough money from the game over it's sales life either, to make up for the time spent on it. So while I see the risk, it doesn't feel any worse than my current situation.
Quote: "So to conclude: For indie games such as Minecraft or the stuff made on this forum, yes
For the next Half Life/Halo/Crysis, no "
Totally agree there. Yes, it has to be something with evolving game mechanics, that has a sandbox feel. Each time you release a new feature, the game as a whole takes on a new gameplay edge. I guess the model has to be, you provide the sandbox and a few toys, and the community helps you craft the rest of the toys.
Quote: "The biggest problem here is that the game needs to massively take off in the community, there are probably plenty of projects around with this model but only a handful that I can think of that work. I believe the game needs to be relatively well finished, so people have something to play whilst waiting for the more considerable updates."
Yeah, I think you need months of development done, with a playable relatively bug free game to start out. By which time, I guess you could go straight to sale and then release updates anyway. I suppose it depends how far down the feature rabbit hole you want to go.
Quote: "I'd start off with a free, cut-down version of the game, and when (if) it gets popular release a paid version and stop updating the cut-down version, sort of like what Notch did with Minecraft."
I kind of do that at the moment, but they're released in parallel. The only changes to the demo/Lite versions are bug fixes, while the full version gets feature updates. For example, I'm going to add a new campaign to Space Squadron soon, but the demo will still be 2 crappy levels.
Perhaps, in this case, Android games are too simple to work with this game model, because the platform doesn't lend itself to long sprawling sandbox games. When you've got the basic gameplay in place, you're mostly done, or at least I am, with the projects I go for.
