Couple of thoughts ...
If when buying a hat the purchaser specified how much money goes into making hats vs improving game play
And or maybe
don't sell hats or don't ONLY sell hats, sell competition... not pay to play but pay to compete
Or maybe something along the lines of; if you want to compete against others you need to pay x number of in game gold coins/medals, you can either earn gold coins/medals from winning competitions or via an in app purchase
You could even maybe sell a "tickets" to watch a match in game rather than say just in twitch; and or maybe the winner(s) would win an in game pot for winning the match, this may mean to watch a match would be 1 medal/coin and to play would be say 10.
This would provide the incentive required to keep the devs making the game better rather than making more and shinier hats. The business model would then become to make a game where people are willing to pay a nominal amount to compete with each other.
A good single player mode would be the training required to get people to "match" level
A thought on the yearly cap is that instead of trying to tag the yearly cap to gold or some such; say up front we want <n> number of staff (dev/artist/etc) and that will cost $x, this way if next year you want/need a head count of 20 to make the game better, then we need $y
If when buying a hat the purchaser specified how much money goes into making hats vs improving game play
And or maybe
don't sell hats or don't ONLY sell hats, sell competition... not pay to play but pay to compete
Or maybe something along the lines of; if you want to compete against others you need to pay x number of in game gold coins/medals, you can either earn gold coins/medals from winning competitions or via an in app purchase
You could even maybe sell a "tickets" to watch a match in game rather than say just in twitch; and or maybe the winner(s) would win an in game pot for winning the match, this may mean to watch a match would be 1 medal/coin and to play would be say 10.
This would provide the incentive required to keep the devs making the game better rather than making more and shinier hats. The business model would then become to make a game where people are willing to pay a nominal amount to compete with each other.
A good single player mode would be the training required to get people to "match" level
A thought on the yearly cap is that instead of trying to tag the yearly cap to gold or some such; say up front we want <n> number of staff (dev/artist/etc) and that will cost $x, this way if next year you want/need a head count of 20 to make the game better, then we need $y
Edited by jeringa
on
I believe there's a small flaw in Shawn's business plan.
He expects his initial capital to come from Canadian government grants. According to him, whoever awards those grants has a strong preference for F2P projects (obligatory south park link). In my mind, that can only mean that those people don't see video games as a cultural medium, but as a money-making machine that recovers grant money in the form of taxes. Isn't his moral vision of F2P at odds with the greedy, standard F2P that is getting the grants?
He expects his initial capital to come from Canadian government grants. According to him, whoever awards those grants has a strong preference for F2P projects (obligatory south park link). In my mind, that can only mean that those people don't see video games as a cultural medium, but as a money-making machine that recovers grant money in the form of taxes. Isn't his moral vision of F2P at odds with the greedy, standard F2P that is getting the grants?
If the point is to continuously improve the game for the players why not sell that in the in-game store? Instead of selling hats, take some of the good ideas from Shawn's binders and put them on sale. Or even take game improvement ideas from the players.
This could be the Kickstarter model were the ideas that reach their goals gets implemented or a model where just the most popular idea gets implemented for the next year, taking all the invested money. There could still be a cap on how much a player would be able to pay for getting a idea implemented.
Just my thoughts...
This could be the Kickstarter model were the ideas that reach their goals gets implemented or a model where just the most popular idea gets implemented for the next year, taking all the invested money. There could still be a cap on how much a player would be able to pay for getting a idea implemented.
Just my thoughts...