Re: Interesting article at gamasutra about the future of copright

In article <amg4q15pejhfrhbsnttp5tidspp0vnm8ac@xxxxxxx>, bop@xxxxxxx
says...
> "Crosbie Fitch" <crosbie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >It's not actually 'donation-ware'.
> >
> >No-one parts with any cash until the goods are released. No product, no
> >money.
> >
> >The idea is, that if enough people fancy something, they can pledge to buy
> >it up-front. And if the producer sees enough pledges, they can say 'Done!'
> >and it's a deal.
>
> OK, pledge-ware, then. Not that the label makes much difference. You're
> still talking about an honor system, whereby it's the buyer's honor to pay
> the amount he has pledged when the product is available. If you've ever
> been involved in buying/selling process, even at a small scale, you'd know
> the difference between peeps saying they'd pay for something, and then
> actually paying for it, is like night and day. So, going on the buyers'
> word to decide to invest some millions of dollars in a game is pretty
> doggone naive, if not downright stupid.

And then there is the attraction of 'freeloader-ware', in which you let
others do the pledging.

> A better scheme has been around for quite some time, as someone has pointed
> out. It's called shareware or demoware, where the seller partially gives
> the product away, then the buyer pays for the whole product based on the
> piece he has tried. There is little faith or honor involved. The catch is
> that it still requires the seller to have the product made first, because
> entertainment by its nature is an on-demand basis (read: NOW), not a
> wait-for-a-couple-of-years-while-I-make-it basis.
>
> The shareware model, AFAIK, may work to get your product noticed, if only
> because the alternative is no marketing at all. But while it may serve as
> an on-ramp to the freeway of commercial enterprise, once there then its
> distribution scheme is no longer useful. All of the few handful of
> successful companies that have shareware as their roots (Id being the most
> notable), abandon the model once they got their products on the retail
> shelf. Things may be different with today's viability of electronic
> distribution, but I've not seen a successful model yet, Steam and its ilk
> notwithstanding. Perhaps you know differently.

It's kind of the same. The average shareware game author these days is
likely to profit by teaming up with somebody like Real Arcade and
paying them the lion's share of the royalties, essentially for
advertising/appearing on their popular site.

The internet is a huge mall, but as the number of stores expands, fewer
and fewer just wander by any particular one.

- Gerry Quinn

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Interesting article at gamasutra about the future of copright
    ... > still talking about an honor system, whereby it's the buyer's honor to pay ... Whilst the person making the pledge is encouraged to do so as an honest ... > distribution, but I've not seen a successful model yet, Steam and its ilk ...
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