{"id":1460,"date":"2012-08-27T13:46:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T13:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2012-08-27T13:46:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T13:46:15","slug":"share-play-and-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2012\/08\/share-play-and-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Share Play and Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not about copyright, IP, F2P, piracy<\/a>. I have no problem with games as service as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something about computer games and business model, it\u2019s the elephant in the room: we don\u2019t master game development<\/strong>. We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

@tiedtiger wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

If you are struggling with the same moral question, then my advice is simple: Get over it. Repeat sales is a basic business model, used from fine restaurants to lowly casinos.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Casinos and restaurants master every single thing involved in their processes, this is how they make money, not so much because they repeat sales (it\u2019s not so much the volume it\u2019s the margin, ask Apple). Decades, centuries of experience. A restaurant knows exactly how it\u2019s going to work out for that red velvet cake, restaurants have a worldwide map of  people\u2019s taste\/costs to produce meals today. It\u2019s known. Casinos have the house edge. No mystery, randomness close to zero.<\/p>\n

Us? We have incompatible tools, we have no idea who we are aiming for, we have no  game audio standard, we reinvent the wheel constantly and we never know exactly when a cake<\/strike> game is done!  We breath chaos.<\/p>\n

We never know exactly when a game is done and what is going to take to please people. People don\u2019t know either.<\/p>\n

Therefore the F2P paradigm doesn\u2019t work so well if at all, and that\u2019s my problem with it. It\u2019s a timing problem.<\/p>\n

I give some tracks and songs for free. I know what it takes to make a song and also know what it takes to make a game, a polished game. It\u2019s way harder than anything I have ever done, add the fact that you don\u2019t know what you will sell in a F2P scenario (everything is possible) and that if you make bad choices you can kill two years of work instantly, I mean it\u2019s suicidal right? <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I still think the shareware model, free demo (generous), paid game (from let\u2019s say $2 to $20) and of course micro-transactions later seems the strongest and fairest way to sustain a gamedev team and make people happy. Nothing greedy in this (I\u2019m talking about independent developers here, obviously).<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want players to think making games as a funny hobby. It\u2019s hard work. I think we shot ourselves in the foot by selling $.99 games, people have NO IDEA how hard -or long- it is to make a great game, that stupid price made them believe that it\u2019s actually easy and painless. The ratio amount of work\/money made is the worst of any kind of entertainment. To go back to Tadhg\u2019s analogy, people have a notion of what is going on in their plate at a restaurant. They have no idea with the freshly downloaded title on their digital device.<\/p>\n

I think we need to stop running for virtual gold mines or leaning on the good old brick & mortar past. We should start being honest with the audience, educate people, that will help shaping up better connections with players leading to better games. We will learn more, have better tools, tweak all that until it\u2019s running perfectly well.<\/p>\n

Like for food the business model angle or the art angle will blend and we will be ready to embrace a MasterGameDesigner show on TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not about copyright, IP, F2P, piracy. I have no problem with games as service as well. It\u2019s something about computer games and business model, it\u2019s the elephant in the room: we don\u2019t master game development. We don\u2019t. @tiedtiger wrote: If you are struggling with the same moral question, then my advice is simple: Get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1461,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}