Indie Marketplace
by Brian Kittrell · in General Discussion · 11/19/2008 (10:28 pm) · 2 replies
An idea just struck me, and forgive me if it is already covered somewhere else in this forum or elsewhere. I just wanted to bring the idea to light, and if anyone has a link to another idea like this one, feel free to reply with it, as I would be very intrigued to check it out.
Anyhow, has anyone ever considered the concept of an "Indie Marketplace"? GarageGames itself may be interested in the idea, as it could use it as a tool to promote the Torque engine and perhaps help out its own community.
In essence, it is very similar to Valve's Steam platform, Sony's Station, or Stardock's platform. You have a central program that users log into, providing their user information, email, and etc. It costs them, say, $5.00 a month to use the program; however, they can pay additional purchase fees (if there are any) from any developer who is a member of the program, and the $5.00 a month pays the subscription fees for any game(s) they play that are connected to the central program.
The indie developers still host their games on their own servers, and they can have a separate subscription for people who only want to play their game, but there is the option for playing multiple games at the one fixed subscription rate for those who like to play more than one MMO at a time.
The indie developer benefits from this system in two distinct ways: it gives them exposure to people looking for a variety of MMO's to play, and it gives them a source of funding that was not earlier available to them. So, it increases advertising and income for the project, while providing the players a benefit of a "directory" of new, original MMO's to play in an easy-to-view list.
Some small amount would go to the maintainers of said list (let's say $1.00 of all subscriptions), then the remaining amount would be split between the games that the person plays. Let's say that a person signs up and decides to play 2 MMO's in the list. He keeps an active account in both games, and as such, each indie dev is entitled to 1/2 of the remaining subscription (from $5.00 (example subscription), -$1.00 for the central hub, that leaves $2.00 of subscriptions for each indie developer/indie game per month).
To sweeten the deal, promotional codes could be handled by the central hub programmers whenever an indie game wanted to offer an incentive for trying out their game, such as a pink hat. Ok, so the developer of Magic Island wants to offer new subscribers from the central hub program a pink hat as a reward gift for, let's say, 20 hours of play time. The player sets up the account on Magic Island with a promotion flag on his account. When he hits 20 hours, he can claim the prize.
What do you guys think?
Anyhow, has anyone ever considered the concept of an "Indie Marketplace"? GarageGames itself may be interested in the idea, as it could use it as a tool to promote the Torque engine and perhaps help out its own community.
In essence, it is very similar to Valve's Steam platform, Sony's Station, or Stardock's platform. You have a central program that users log into, providing their user information, email, and etc. It costs them, say, $5.00 a month to use the program; however, they can pay additional purchase fees (if there are any) from any developer who is a member of the program, and the $5.00 a month pays the subscription fees for any game(s) they play that are connected to the central program.
The indie developers still host their games on their own servers, and they can have a separate subscription for people who only want to play their game, but there is the option for playing multiple games at the one fixed subscription rate for those who like to play more than one MMO at a time.
The indie developer benefits from this system in two distinct ways: it gives them exposure to people looking for a variety of MMO's to play, and it gives them a source of funding that was not earlier available to them. So, it increases advertising and income for the project, while providing the players a benefit of a "directory" of new, original MMO's to play in an easy-to-view list.
Some small amount would go to the maintainers of said list (let's say $1.00 of all subscriptions), then the remaining amount would be split between the games that the person plays. Let's say that a person signs up and decides to play 2 MMO's in the list. He keeps an active account in both games, and as such, each indie dev is entitled to 1/2 of the remaining subscription (from $5.00 (example subscription), -$1.00 for the central hub, that leaves $2.00 of subscriptions for each indie developer/indie game per month).
To sweeten the deal, promotional codes could be handled by the central hub programmers whenever an indie game wanted to offer an incentive for trying out their game, such as a pink hat. Ok, so the developer of Magic Island wants to offer new subscribers from the central hub program a pink hat as a reward gift for, let's say, 20 hours of play time. The player sets up the account on Magic Island with a promotion flag on his account. When he hits 20 hours, he can claim the prize.
What do you guys think?
#2
"they can pay additional purchase fees", meaning they could pay a software purchase fee separate from the subscription. Sorry for not clarifying. :)
And, yes, the $5.00 would be arbitrary, up to the central hub or possibly a congress of developers perhaps.
11/20/2008 (1:58 pm)
Well, it's mentioned, but I agree not clearly defined:"they can pay additional purchase fees", meaning they could pay a software purchase fee separate from the subscription. Sorry for not clarifying. :)
And, yes, the $5.00 would be arbitrary, up to the central hub or possibly a congress of developers perhaps.
Torque Owner Brian Wilson
Interesting concept.