What do you think about games/utilities being sold online where the community, all together, pays for the software?
Let's say NewGame is released as a demo. People try it out and now want to play the full version. For the full version to be released, various people from the community who have the money make arbitrary payments (like donations) to the author until a threshold is reached (the community price). Then NewGame is released as freeware, possibly even open source.
The community price would be higher than the usual price you find on commercial games, but if enough people give their support, each individual would end up paying less (assuming the author doesn't charge outrageous prices). Because the game is released as freeware, neither the author nor the users have to worry about copy-protection and the annoyances that come with it.
What are your thoughts about this? Has this been done before? If so, was there any success?
Honestly, doesn't sound very viable for the author releasing it. If the game/app is of high quality and unique, they absolutely deserve every cent they receive from it, IMO. I can understand where you're coming from though, not everyone has tons of cash to spend on software.
You're right about the viability. Maybe one can just view it as a method of getting a little more income than normal donations.
So, would people support a game sold like this? Some, for instance, might be afraid to part with funds because the game may never be released if the rest of the community don't give their support. There's an element of risk for the buyer. Perhaps the author could set an "expiry date", where the game is released regardless of the funds received. He/she would then depend on the community's impatience.
I'd considered a system like this, but I'd've made it such that if an individual donator gives over some amount (say 5 of your favourite currency) then that donator gets a copy. Sure this means piracy can appear, but it means there is an incentive not to just wait out other people donating.
It sounds way too risky for the people donating,seeing as how the person working on the product could simply lose interest,either that or it would be a terrible game.
how could you make sure everybody got their money back incase the project failed?
I'm not sure if Dwidge thought of this the same way as me, but I'd hardly start accepting group payments unless/until the full version was done, or very nearly done, but then personally I don't release demos of games before a game is at least in its final stages, unless I feel a real need to get some feedback on aspects of the game, while there is still time to easily change them.
Giving a copy to a generous donator will also encourage bigger donations. Maybe one could personalize the copy given to these donators in some way, which could discourage them from pirating it.
If the game is finished (or nearly) before accepting donations, that should rule out the risk of the author losing interest.
For the third point (it might turn out to be a terrible game), I think that's where the demo will help, provided the above point is applied too.
Another thing is that the demo should not be the full version under a lock that can be activated with a code. It should rather be a "bare-bones" demo, where the full version needs to be downloaded when it's released. This will prevent cracking.
You should be donating for the full software, not a demo. Donationware does work, Dwarf Fortress is the biggest example of a game that's still a demo, but is making enough money for the creator to quit and spend his full time on it.
I was thinking of making a payment system of the following type for my games:
GameX 1.0 is released as freeware. If enough people like it, I make a more ambitious GameX 2.0, as donationware. If people love that, I release GameX 3.0. People who donated lots of money for GameX 2.0 get a discount which increases in a power curve or exponentially to the amount they donated. So, it awards people who actually believed enough in the game to pay.
Once I release GameX 4.0, GameX 3.0 falls into donationware, while GameX 4.0 becomes commercial. So, people who don't have money can still enjoy the game thanks to the efforts of the others.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I quite like that idea muz, it lacks all of the pitfalls of the community payment idea. I guess the only real advantage the community payment idea has is if you want/need a specific amount of money for something, you can set that as the limit... but then you can do that with donationware, albeit without any reward once the limit is hit. Of course, you could release the full game as donationware, and offer to add bonus content if some amount of donation is hit, which would probably mean happiness all around
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