Costly

[LimpingFish]

I make games in an effort to bring peace to the world. Or unleash the apocalypse. Whichever comes first.

I can't speak for everyone, but I totally got into game development to pick up chicks.

I hear Will Wright gets so much skirt...

Oi, you just ripped off my crappy joke...

No, I took your joke and made it better. 

[Disco]

The reasons why we make games may vary, but I think fame/money/sex wouldn't be very high on the list.

I can't speak for everyone, but I totally got into game development to pick up chicks.

Yeah, and I can personally vouch for him in that he is not lying either

[monkey0506]

The reasons why we make games may vary, but I think fame/money/sex wouldn't be very high on the list.

I can't speak for everyone, but I totally got into game development to pick up chicks.

Of course by "chicks" he means "baby chickens." See, with all the money he makes developing games he'll have enough to go buy a fresh batch of fertilized eggs, and make his chicken farming dreams finally come true!

[Play_Pretend]

I'd been thinking about trying a straight donation system for one of my games in progress...I've been paying an artist for the background work, and it should be a pretty great full-length game.  (Damn well better be...I'll have invested over $1000 total in it by the time it's done. )  Instead of risking trying to go straight commercial, do you think people would go for a "Send me whatever you think the game was worth, whether it was 10 bucks or a quarter" sort of thing?  It's definitely a labor of love, otherwise I wouldn't  be putting all the money into it, it'd just be nice to think that people would appreciate it enough to at least make some of my investment back, however small.  I'm happy regardless, just curious.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

No.  People don't do too well with a 'send whatever' type approach, and there's pretty ample evidence for this if you want to look and do a little research.  People like to know solid numbers for services rendered, so my advice is to try offering your game as shareware for a set price (or donationware if you are less confident).  Definitely offer a price for your services, because not doing so just confuses most people, even if it's ten bucks.  Now, one thing you could do is run a voting drive to set the price of your game based on screenshots, features, and general play length and offer some reasonable prices to select from.  That might work, too, and having a demo out there is a great way to give people a feel for your game.

[Emerald]

Hehe, if you really wanna kick people in the balls, you could make an unprecedentedly long demo which goes right up to the last chapter of the game, and then cut off with a "like this game? Buy it for just $19!"

It'll piss people off, but chances are by then they'll be invested enough in the story to just pay the money...

[auriond]

That last idea may backfire a little. If I played a game that led me to the last chapter and asked me to pay, it would probably strengthen my decision NOT to pay. So I'd try to get it by, ahem, less than legal means if it was really that good, or else I'd (more likely) just toss it aside and forget about it.

Strange Visitor, I agree that if you've already invested that much money, go ahead and make it commercial with a set price. Having a demo can work wonders. I was introduced to Gabriel Knight, the obsession of my childhood, through a demo.

[Andail]

Demos should be short. You don't want to tell the player "Haha! Thought you could play more without paying? Well you can't!!"
That'll just annoy people, and discourage them from supporting you further. They might also be bored with the prospect of re-playing too large a chunk of the game.

The extent of a demo should be very clear from the start, and preferably just one room or so, to let the player feel the game, like an appetizer. I think the best demos are purely cinematic, like a film teaser or something.

[Play_Pretend]

I think a straight cinematic demo would work really well for this game, too...it's got a lot of good-looking locations and funny events, so I think shown in the right sequence it could hook people pretty well.   I'd always thought before about charging something like $5 for a digital download with scanned documentation, or $10 for a simple jewel-case-with-cover-art-and-documentation-booklet-and-printed-label-CD, nothing fancy at all, just homemade but nice looking stuff for people who want a hard copy.  If I could just get 33 cents apiece from as many people as have downloaded Chicken VS Road, I'd easily make back my production cost, which was why the give-what-you-felt donations seemed like a good idea.   But I totally see what you mean, ProgZmax, and I think that voting drive seems like a more awesomer idea.

(Just to save on mystery - it's a total overhaul of the "Henchman" game I In-Production-Threaded a couple years back, and the money I've invested in a background artist for the 90+ fully detailed backgrounds has *so* been worth it, in time and backbreaking effort saved on my part.  It's probably a couple years off from being ready for a re-posted thread.  I've been reworking all the characters, animations, everything, to bring it up to a much higher quality level.  So between that and it being a full-length game, I think it'll be downloaded at least a few thousand times more than CvR.)

[Stupot]

One thing a few people have done is to release a game as freeware but also have an extended edition with commentaries, extra scenes, improved graphics etc.  If people like the game enough that they want all the extra bits and bobs then they can buy the extended version for a small fee.

I think Yahtzee did a similar thing with the Trilby games.