The G-Meister
Giga Slime
As I'm sure most of you have gathered by now, I'm making a game. Currently the migration over to Java is going well, but I've still got a lot to learn. However, that's besides the point I want to have a chat about.
So before we talk about money and the consumer, let's set a few things out. This game doesn't need any funding. Given I'm still in education and most likely will be for the next 5 years, I don't have any plans to take this into a full time job... ever, really. The game is a puzzler and will operate on a level based system, meaning I can vary the amount of content provided. It will allow mods, have a level editor and possibly have a randomly generated arcade-like challenge. Let's also say I'm releasing the game on Steam and Steam alone. Also, I know nothing about business, I'm only making assumptions in this thread as to what I think is logical.
This gives us a few things to take into consideration:
The first thing I'm considering is the game being free (not free to play, ever). This usually draws in a very large amount of people if the game looks somewhat decent, but can make some pre-judge the game as cheap and tacky. I think the former outweighs the latter.
The thing is, I would like to make some money out of it. If the game has an upfront cost, there is often a smaller player base, but I would assume they tend to be older and more dedicated. I would never do microtransactions as I feel that gives people an unrepresentative experience of the game, and can put people off instantly (me being one of those people).
The other option is paid DLC. This allows the base game to be free and for me to make some money, but it comes with more complications. If I provide too little of the game and lock most of it behind DLC, people will think of it more negatively and it will harm ratings, and therefore the player base. This then harms the ratings and leads to less sales. If I put too little of it in DLC, people simply aren't going buy it... well I guess they will actually, and probably more so than if I put more behind.
The final option is voluntary donations. I haven't done any research into how well these have done in the past, but I gather that they can be quite successful.
I guess you can combine these in multiple different ways, and I am inclined to go down the route of "free, no DLC, donations" so everyone who plays the gets the whole experience, but then Steam won't get a cut anywhere, and they may be unlikely to let me publish the game. What do you think?
Keeping the playerbase up
There are quite a few ways to do this as well. Achievements give people something else to do if they feel like it, and give players an extra reward for playing. However I think that requires a bit more discussion, so I might bring that topic up in another thread later down the line.
An active modding community (which will thrive if the game is free) improves replayability, as well as adding theoretically infinitely more content. I have plans to make modding very easy and accessible which will assist this, but may counteract the point of having any DLC. It is possible to keep modding communities alive by setting up categories like Most popular (of varying time intervals), Most recent, Random picks, Developer's picks and the like, although this will require a dedicated server to set up... unless Steam Workshop does that for me.
With a simple level builder, I guess a daily challenge keeps people coming back as well, but I doubt I'll be able to keep that up.
Competitive leaderboards on the set levels encourage speedrunning, but then you run into the issue of hackers. This will probably be quite significant if the game is coded in Java, especially if it's free.
Any other suggestions? I'm sure there's loads of other things that could be done.
Early Access
The last thing I want to talk about is early access. The positives of this, like in SoG, is that you can people to bugtest for you and you get opinions and suggestions from the fanbase. However, I think this will only be possible if the game is paid for during the early access period, otherwise the influx of people may be overwhelming for a single person to regulate. This may then harm release downloads.
I'm not sure the game would benefit massively from early access either. I guess I'm a pretty decent bug tester myself, and I can always ferry the game off to the people here or to my friends to get some feedback. Are there any other ways to get it to work?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated, hopefully this gave some ideas to other game devs and sparks up some constructive debates.
~G <3
So before we talk about money and the consumer, let's set a few things out. This game doesn't need any funding. Given I'm still in education and most likely will be for the next 5 years, I don't have any plans to take this into a full time job... ever, really. The game is a puzzler and will operate on a level based system, meaning I can vary the amount of content provided. It will allow mods, have a level editor and possibly have a randomly generated arcade-like challenge. Let's also say I'm releasing the game on Steam and Steam alone. Also, I know nothing about business, I'm only making assumptions in this thread as to what I think is logical.
This gives us a few things to take into consideration:
- User ratings. The better people rate the game, the more likely people are to buy it. Although this largely depends on the gameplay, the business model can have an impact.
- Life cycle. The quicker people get bored of it, the less support it has and therefore less new people buy it.
- Cost. Probably the largest factor and influences the other two greatly.
The first thing I'm considering is the game being free (not free to play, ever). This usually draws in a very large amount of people if the game looks somewhat decent, but can make some pre-judge the game as cheap and tacky. I think the former outweighs the latter.
The thing is, I would like to make some money out of it. If the game has an upfront cost, there is often a smaller player base, but I would assume they tend to be older and more dedicated. I would never do microtransactions as I feel that gives people an unrepresentative experience of the game, and can put people off instantly (me being one of those people).
The other option is paid DLC. This allows the base game to be free and for me to make some money, but it comes with more complications. If I provide too little of the game and lock most of it behind DLC, people will think of it more negatively and it will harm ratings, and therefore the player base. This then harms the ratings and leads to less sales. If I put too little of it in DLC, people simply aren't going buy it... well I guess they will actually, and probably more so than if I put more behind.
The final option is voluntary donations. I haven't done any research into how well these have done in the past, but I gather that they can be quite successful.
I guess you can combine these in multiple different ways, and I am inclined to go down the route of "free, no DLC, donations" so everyone who plays the gets the whole experience, but then Steam won't get a cut anywhere, and they may be unlikely to let me publish the game. What do you think?
Keeping the playerbase up
There are quite a few ways to do this as well. Achievements give people something else to do if they feel like it, and give players an extra reward for playing. However I think that requires a bit more discussion, so I might bring that topic up in another thread later down the line.
An active modding community (which will thrive if the game is free) improves replayability, as well as adding theoretically infinitely more content. I have plans to make modding very easy and accessible which will assist this, but may counteract the point of having any DLC. It is possible to keep modding communities alive by setting up categories like Most popular (of varying time intervals), Most recent, Random picks, Developer's picks and the like, although this will require a dedicated server to set up... unless Steam Workshop does that for me.
With a simple level builder, I guess a daily challenge keeps people coming back as well, but I doubt I'll be able to keep that up.
Competitive leaderboards on the set levels encourage speedrunning, but then you run into the issue of hackers. This will probably be quite significant if the game is coded in Java, especially if it's free.
Any other suggestions? I'm sure there's loads of other things that could be done.
Early Access
The last thing I want to talk about is early access. The positives of this, like in SoG, is that you can people to bugtest for you and you get opinions and suggestions from the fanbase. However, I think this will only be possible if the game is paid for during the early access period, otherwise the influx of people may be overwhelming for a single person to regulate. This may then harm release downloads.
I'm not sure the game would benefit massively from early access either. I guess I'm a pretty decent bug tester myself, and I can always ferry the game off to the people here or to my friends to get some feedback. Are there any other ways to get it to work?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated, hopefully this gave some ideas to other game devs and sparks up some constructive debates.
~G <3