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Kickstarting Development from Inside, Without Kickstarter
Beadman
Member UncommonPosts: 154
More and more games are relying on alternative business models than what historically has been the go-to. Tied to these new models is often an ingame store where players can make purchases for digital content. We have all seen it before and have different views on it, but most of us just want it done right. Why haven't developers tried kickstarting their own games from the inside?
The successful continued development of a game comes from its success in generating continued return on inventment. Why then are games not taking advantage of the very apparent new love that many gamers have for paying for exactly what they want and believe in? Kickstarter has shown that there is interest in getting what we want (duh). Lets take it a step further.
What if you could log into your game, go to the real currency market, and set aside $5 towards a $10,000 goal to have the developers add quests to what you feel is an underappreciated zone? The possibilites are endless and are ultimately only possible with real player support. New features, content, or whatever else floats the communities boat. Pay for what you want that may otherwise not make it into the game.
I believe that this could work as long as developers strike a balance...
- How many 'kickstart' projects are listed at once. Keeping them in reach of the teams size, even if it only means one every other month.
- How many developers they have at any time and if they could bring in new talent and train them in a timely manner as needed. Grow if the demand is there.
- Still pushing out regular and necessary updates, independent of kickstarted projects. Reliant on the success of all of the previous.
Comments
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Please read the post again. Quests were an example. The players would decide what to pay for.
I don't pay for development. When the quest is ready, put it up on the store, and i will see if i want to purchase it.
I buy game (or content), not a promise of it.
Not to rain on your parade but I think it would go over like a ton of bricks with your average gamer.
They would decry that should be what their monthly fee is helping to fund or would simply label it as a money grab. Legit or not.
Not to mention the varying opinions gamers have on what they want or do not want in an mmo.
...and if you do have a unified sentiment about an issue, area, etc. then to me that speaks to an overall shortcoming of the game itself not something that players should have to finance to get more fleshed out.
I mean you seem to have a large portion that generally tend to be unsatisfied for what they get for $15 a month.
I think an alternative would be to go a route like GW2 adopted. Then again that will have its detractors as well.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I suspect thinking like this is what will keep projects honest. I see kickstarting within games as a way to get content made that developers would otherwise not act upon. Adding things like third factions to a PvP game would be the higher end of things that are unlikely to happen while simpler things like adding guild homes would be in the middle and adding content with existing tools (quests, etc) would be the easiest to get done.
I referenced alternative payment methods because ideally this would not be for games with a monthly fee. I believe this would work better in f2p or b2p games. I can see the issues of honesty in the pay to play market. What if a developer takes teams members off of an important project to work on a kickstarted project that you don't care about? Like anything involving money, I think players will untilimately decide the fate of the developer if they were to act in such a way. More and more companies are doing things like locking players out of content that is already on their discs and probably numerous other unknown shady dealings. Then you have developers like Valve tossing content to the players for free when they can and players notice it.
Like any business, some will abuse it. Consumers are pretty smart people though.