OrR
Corporate games suck.
I want commercial games on the Pandora and I want them to be a success. I assume most people here want the same. For this to happen, we have to ensure that people pay for playing these games. With downloadable PC games, 90% piracy rates seem to be common. Developers I spoke to are often afraid that the situation on the Pandora will be similar. How do we combat that?
Let's first recognize that the piracy rate is not really what matters. What matters is the total amount of money made by the developers of a game. Of course, a high piracy rate does lead to low sales. However, if you give your game away for free and can convince 10% of the people who play it to donate money to you, that brings in as much money as a game that is pirated by 90% of the players. Can you convince 10% to donate? Not likely.
Classic DRM as a means of protecting a game is expensive, ineffective and annoying for paying customers. It can be some help against piracy but it seldom leads to significantly higher sales. We need to find other ways to encourage people to spend money on games, in addition to or instead of DRM. Here are some of the ideas I picked up or came up with over the years:
Create a positive atmosphere towards spending money in the community.
See also my sig. There could be badges you can wear on forums if you have bought a game or donated certain amounts to the dev fund. Sort of similar to the Xbox gamertag stuff. Since the community is tightly knit and forum staff, software and hardware developers and sellers are often the same people, organizing this should be possible.
Possible problem: Homebrew games, GPL software and pirated roms for old gaming systems are for free. Some people might expect to get everything for free. They have to learn that the money they save on those things should be spent on donations and commercial games (and maybe even Pandora merch) to support the continued existence of the system.
Create benefits for paying customers while giving the basic game away for free or ignoring piracy.
In addition to a game license, or as a thanks for a donation, a player would get an account. This account could include bonus content such as additional levels, exchange for user made levels, behind the scenes stuff, access to early betas, online play on official servers, whatever you can think of really. The basic game would work offline but using it online with the account would have benefits. An account would be rather difficult to fake. Every game could of course use it's own account system but a unified central system would make a lot of sense because you could then be rewarded for buying a few games by getting in on an early beta of an upcoming game etc.
Make it extremely easy and convenient to spend money.
A clean store interface is important, as is a variety of payment methods. The Pandora will have a web browser and often be connected to the internet so a "buy" button directly in the game demo or a "donate" button directly in the emulator makes sense. Somewhat prominent buy/donate buttons in news posts also don't hurt (as long as they do not become annoying).
Advertise commercial games and donating as much as possible.
Many people who buy a Pandora will not take an active part in the community. Make sure these people still know about commercial game releases and about the possibility to donate money to free software authors! For starters, ship the Pandora with a DVD or SD card containing all available demos for commercial games (and lots of other software) and put a little flyer into the box with an explanation about why donating to developers is great and how it is done. Pandora buyers should also receive an email newsletter which sums up recent software releases and community developments (if they want to). Another interesting option is a feed that pushes news directly to internet connected Pandoras. (Browser start page? Feature of the home screen? Optionally turned off, of course.)
Fair prices.
What is a fair price for a game? That is difficult to say. Lower prices enable people to buy more games and thus lead to more sales. Microtransactions are still a problem, though. Approaching 3$ and less, Paypal fees etc. become a significant money loss. With other means of payment that sometimes happens even earlier. The possibility to put money into a store account and then buy a lot of small games without losing fees on each transaction would finally make the 1$, 2$ and 3$ price points available and I think the Pandora has lots of potential for games in this category.
A key to many of these points is central organization. It has to be supported by the Pandora makers as well as the core community. A central, robust software selling site that is not greedy when it comes to profit margins would be worth a lot, for example. The second important thing would be a community driven system to put news out fast and with secured quality through a variety of different channels. In the early GP2X days I tried to do some work towards this with GP2X.letter but I quickly gave up. Maybe we can make it happen this time?
Additional ideas? Comments? Let's hear them!
Let's first recognize that the piracy rate is not really what matters. What matters is the total amount of money made by the developers of a game. Of course, a high piracy rate does lead to low sales. However, if you give your game away for free and can convince 10% of the people who play it to donate money to you, that brings in as much money as a game that is pirated by 90% of the players. Can you convince 10% to donate? Not likely.
Classic DRM as a means of protecting a game is expensive, ineffective and annoying for paying customers. It can be some help against piracy but it seldom leads to significantly higher sales. We need to find other ways to encourage people to spend money on games, in addition to or instead of DRM. Here are some of the ideas I picked up or came up with over the years:
Create a positive atmosphere towards spending money in the community.
See also my sig. There could be badges you can wear on forums if you have bought a game or donated certain amounts to the dev fund. Sort of similar to the Xbox gamertag stuff. Since the community is tightly knit and forum staff, software and hardware developers and sellers are often the same people, organizing this should be possible.
Possible problem: Homebrew games, GPL software and pirated roms for old gaming systems are for free. Some people might expect to get everything for free. They have to learn that the money they save on those things should be spent on donations and commercial games (and maybe even Pandora merch) to support the continued existence of the system.
Create benefits for paying customers while giving the basic game away for free or ignoring piracy.
In addition to a game license, or as a thanks for a donation, a player would get an account. This account could include bonus content such as additional levels, exchange for user made levels, behind the scenes stuff, access to early betas, online play on official servers, whatever you can think of really. The basic game would work offline but using it online with the account would have benefits. An account would be rather difficult to fake. Every game could of course use it's own account system but a unified central system would make a lot of sense because you could then be rewarded for buying a few games by getting in on an early beta of an upcoming game etc.
Make it extremely easy and convenient to spend money.
A clean store interface is important, as is a variety of payment methods. The Pandora will have a web browser and often be connected to the internet so a "buy" button directly in the game demo or a "donate" button directly in the emulator makes sense. Somewhat prominent buy/donate buttons in news posts also don't hurt (as long as they do not become annoying).
Advertise commercial games and donating as much as possible.
Many people who buy a Pandora will not take an active part in the community. Make sure these people still know about commercial game releases and about the possibility to donate money to free software authors! For starters, ship the Pandora with a DVD or SD card containing all available demos for commercial games (and lots of other software) and put a little flyer into the box with an explanation about why donating to developers is great and how it is done. Pandora buyers should also receive an email newsletter which sums up recent software releases and community developments (if they want to). Another interesting option is a feed that pushes news directly to internet connected Pandoras. (Browser start page? Feature of the home screen? Optionally turned off, of course.)
Fair prices.
What is a fair price for a game? That is difficult to say. Lower prices enable people to buy more games and thus lead to more sales. Microtransactions are still a problem, though. Approaching 3$ and less, Paypal fees etc. become a significant money loss. With other means of payment that sometimes happens even earlier. The possibility to put money into a store account and then buy a lot of small games without losing fees on each transaction would finally make the 1$, 2$ and 3$ price points available and I think the Pandora has lots of potential for games in this category.
A key to many of these points is central organization. It has to be supported by the Pandora makers as well as the core community. A central, robust software selling site that is not greedy when it comes to profit margins would be worth a lot, for example. The second important thing would be a community driven system to put news out fast and with secured quality through a variety of different channels. In the early GP2X days I tried to do some work towards this with GP2X.letter but I quickly gave up. Maybe we can make it happen this time?
Additional ideas? Comments? Let's hear them!
