Sorry your browser is not supported!

A lot of indie developers end up selling their games to very small markets, no-where enough people to make a decent living from. I've had an idea to change this situation, but I need some advice on how to implement it.

Mini Case Study:

Many of you may have heard of the game Darwinia developed by Introversion Software. This game did not sell too well at retail in the shops, but it sold much better online via Steam. A lot of the games industry as well as the majority of content distributors are moving towards the digital distribution model, music, films, and now games can be downloaded online.


My Idea:

My idea is to create a website where developers sell games that can be played over the internet using igLoader on a pay per play basis. So every time an end user plays a game they pay lets say 50p for arguments sake, and a large % of that goes to the developer. Larger games can be downloaded for a price set by the developers.

Each game will have its own leader board, and an awards system will be available for the games to utilise like Xbox Live albeit on a smaller scale. The entire website will centre around the community aspect of games as websites such as MySpace and YouTube have shown us this is immensely popular. The community aspect of the website will be its "killer app" so to speak and so that is being kept under wraps for now.

The website will be for end users only as I want to create an environment where people will congregate to play, buy and enjoy games developed solely by indies. Another website which is already under major development is being designed to aid game developers. (CodersTurf.com)


Anyway...

I need some thoughts, ideas, comments, criticisms and any other replies about this idea. Thanks in advance.

An interesting idea maybe, but ultimately it would rise or fall on the strength of the community that built up around it.

Pay-per-game is a dangerous route to go down - as those little 50p's will very quickly add up to something scary. A better idea, might be to abstract it out and say let people buy 'travel pass' style tokens:

The Heavy User: Let them play any 3 games for a week as much as they want,
The Favoured One: A monthly pass for a single game,
Jack of All: A trial token that lets them play all of the games 5 times each,
Freedom Ticket: Or a bulk ticket that has 100 plays spread across any game.

Let people trade these tickets, and give them the opportunity to 'win' these tickets by introducing new paying players, or other such things. Maybe give them partial vouchers (a la newbie tickets in Ultima) and encourage people to trade partial tickets to combine into full tickets.

This takes the focus away from the cash pain, and instead onto the much friendlier 'token' system. Let them pay for tokens with something like Paypal too. This would however mean that you'd have to either give game submitters a flat rate, or monitor how many people are playing those games.

Either that, or you'd probably be stuck down the Popcap games route and let people play trial versions and ask them to pay for the full version - not terribly community based, and altogether too money focused. Good luck.

Personally I'd just charge about £15 a month for unlimited access to any game on the network. I would never pay on a pay per item purchase simply because it's not really cost effective. Also it's prooven by MMO games that users are willing to pay that much. I'd also sperate the "shareware" level games from the "shop shelf titles". That is, solitare is a great game to play, and there's tons of shareware titles like it out there. I'd offer a £5 a month fee to play those games, and a £15 fee for the shop shelf games, or £18 a month for both. But I really don't like the idea of being on a clock with my game, and that's one of the reasons I don't play Everquest II anymore.

One thing people don't like to pay are monthly fees. Gametap is trying it right now and they're losing money left and right because the concept of downloading a 100MB to 2GB game is still a bit too much for a lot of consumers to handle. My company has had a plan for a while, for when (if ever) we finish our project... we'd release the game in multiple stages, a model that's worked for a few other companies in the past. First, we're going to distribute the game online via a website, and purchase advertising through websites (which is a lot cheaper than many people think/ claim... if you look into it, it's actually rather cheap comparatively). That mixed with the geurilla marketing campaign of physically entering chat rooms (no bots need apply) and telling people on the ground-level about the game will hopefully let us move a few thousand units. That would generate enough money for us to hire a CD duplication company like Oasis and a printing company to make boxes and print manuals so we could physically print up a few thousand units of the game. We'd sell those on the same website, but offer the boxed versions (which everyone thinks will sell better). By the time those are all sold, the game would be in higher demand, and presto, the wheels are in motion (so long as we keep blowing 40% of our net on advertising anyway). It doesn't just work on paper... other companies have done the same exact thing with pretty nifty results, and the indie film industry's been doing it pretty much since the invention of the internet.

Charging monthly fees is wrong, imho, and shy of MMO people I'm 100% positive that no one would pay it. Gametap is struggling right now as a result. It's just economically silly... would you rather pay $49.99 outright to purchase a game, or $180 per year ($15/ mo) to play it? Heed these words: pay-to-play will flop.

Here is what in my opinion would be a better idea: Make a server/ site where game developers can, with simple tools, create a mini-site for their company, with a page for each game they produce. Offer forums and chat rooms to these developers as well, and nice ones at that, so players can talk with the developer and whatnot. Take care of all of the payment stuff for the developers, too, so all a game developer needs to do is sign up (for free) and upload the games and the html for the mini-site. You take 10%+ of every sale of every unit from each game company who submits, and with that, you pay for the costs on your end, plus ADVERTISING (without that, this wouldn't work anyway). Spend enough money on advertising so that you're getting a ton of unique visitors, and after that you won't need it anymore (when was the last time you saw an atomfilms commercial? It's been a while ). When a game is huge and earns tons of money, advertise that game as a free service to the developers (set a "free advertising" mark, for instance, get a free TV commercial or magazine ad after 20k units have been moved or something). This would make A LOT more sense than charging people every time they play the game. Trust me, it won't work. But if you do what I just suggested, I'll bet you my car that you'll turn that site into a cashcow within a year, so long as you do it carefully and in a well-planned way

I don't think people would pay monthly TBH, and £15 would be a lot of money to someone who just wants to play a couple of games which would be pretty much everybody. I like the idea of the tickets to take away the thought of the money...

@ Matt Rock:

A lot of what you said about developers getting their own websites, chat rooms, etc is already under development at CodersTurf.com

I might make it so that game plays are free, but submitting your score, multiplayer, saving your game (what level, acheivements you have), downloading the game, ect need to be paid for but only a one off payment. Adverts could substitute that income.

Then every member can have their own page with blog, profile, favourite games, acheivements and more. Also members will be able to challenge each other on a game.

I like the sound of this idea, but I really don't understand how you can do a "pay per play". If someone downloads a game to their compo and installs it, how do you define "1 play" and how do you control these plays?

Are you thinking mainly along the lines of multiplayer games? What constitutes a play here? Is it a log on and then connection to a gaming server? If so, if you look off after 5 minutes or 5 hours is it the same, or is it per level?

The idea that appeals most to me is a 1-off payment per game, download, play as much as you like online and offline. Once you've charged someone for the game, they should have full access to all online score, community and multiplayer facilities for that game. Asking someone to pay for extra services is unfair and unattractive, in my opinion. One payment for each game, and then you know you can explore that game to its full potential before moving onto the next one.

I'd definitely be interested in getting involved and getting my games on a site like that, but I wouldn't want to be roped into a contract where that site has exclusive rights to the title. It'd probably be the best place to buy it from though with the community behind it.

@ Fallout:

Yeah I was thinking out loud in my post before yours. I think people should be able to play a demo version for free online, but for the full game to play online or to download, and to submit scores, save where they are in the game and save their achievements they have to pay a one off price set by the developer.

There is software available in the form of a browser plugin to allow you to put games on your website, the software is called igLoader, I'll have to research it more to see exactly what it can do but it sounds like it could work with this website.

The website won't have any rights to any of the games, it would just be a platform for you to sell them.

If you'd like to help us with planning the website, or developing it I can give you a place on the team.

Isnt there already a company out doing this? like gametap or something?

@TDP - Read the other posts in the thread before posting

Pay to play is lame. I like how the Xbox 360 allows you to play a demo, but makes you pay if you want to have achievements and if you want to have your score on the leaderboards.

This is what you need--- something to set your bragging rights in stone--- and more features (maybe a retro mode) if you pay for the full version. And then there's the price point. Do you set it too low, which makes people think it will be a low quality game? Or do you set it too high which makes people not want to pay? There's this stigma with online games and how people won't pay the same price as a boxed game on the shelves, regardless of quality.

TDP - as I already mentioned, Gametap is already doing this. But they're extremely unsuccessful at it so far for a number of reasons, and I honestly think that Josh's idea, while looking really cool on paper, might have trouble getting off the ground. Charge people to buy the game, pay for server stuff with advertisements, and BUY advertisements with a big chunk of your profits because the only way this will get popular is with exposure. I'm sure you'll end up getting developers lining up around the block to upload their stuff to the site, but without customers to buy those games the site will be dead in the water.

As for what Jeku said, I think the best way to do it is to charge as fairly and as honestly as possible. If you have an indie team develop a title with mostly mainstream qualities (the graphics are good, the gameplay is good, the sound is good, and the game looks and feels legitimately well done) then charge more for it ($49.99 or so), but if someone submits a text adventure, don't make people pay a lot. If you charge one single uniform rate for every game across the board, I can pretty much guarantee you that this won't get off of the ground. But with honest prices, decent advertising, and a good catalog of games (with NO periodical payments required for membership), this idea will soar, and that I'll also guarantee

Not that I want another xbox vs PS debate, but the reason I don't like xbox is that you need to pay for online play. imho, that's silly. But again, that's just me.

I think you'd need quality control as well, or a chart system. If people have to wade through pages of pacman remakes and very crappy 5 minute pong games, the whole site will appear cheap and amateurish.

So you have two choices: Quality of control - Only allow games of a certain calibre and above onto the site, or a Chart system, so that the best games are always on top and the first to be seen. Then Mr 5 minute crap pong can still add his game and attempt to sell it, but it'll be hidden way down at the bottom of the list where it deserves to be.

Site staff can give recommended/spotlight/highlight reviews etc. to games that are newly added but deserve some attention to avoid games never getting publicity. I'd definitely favour the charting system to allow a maximum number of games, 99% chance of getting on the site for game developers (obviously you'd still disallow games that are taking the piss - ala "The 'Hello World' Game"), and make the site as attractive as possible to game players, cos they always see the best games first.

@Josh
I'm happy to help out and give ideas/suggestions and give you feedback on progress, but I won't have time in the immediate future to do anymore.

Yeah I don't think I'd ever charge $50 for a text adventure.

The front page could be the "spotlight" with the new games, and the rating system sounds like a good idea. I think I would have to play test each game to make sure the quality is up to scratch, then I could recommend a price to the developer based on the game and also what games are most popular on the website.

I'm not really ready to start anything yet because I have to prepare for the launch of Coders Turf in the summer which is already starting to cost a small fortune, but after that I can start thinking about this website more.

Thanks for your ideas guys.

When the PS2 has any facet of online play like Xbox Live (centralized, game-crossing, stable) then let me know. And believe me, I have been forced to use the PS2 online network for quite some time--- absolute *nothing* like Xbox 360's Live system.

@Jeku and Matt: Sorry, my bad, I had just browsed through the thread before posting

And i agree with Jeku as far as the Xbox Live thing goes, its easily worth the $50.