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[Craig Stern]

I'm having a bit of a dilemma here. My plan for a number of months has been to make Telepath RPG Chapter 3 a browser-based game that makes money through ads. However, ad revenues seem to be on the decline (see e.g.), which is making me question the wisdom of this approach. On the other hand, prices for downloadable indie games seem to be dropping as well, and I don't know how my community will react if I change the game from being free and online to requiring them to pay money for it as a standalone product.

Do any of you have experience with downloadable content vs. browser-based? Any opinions on which is the better route?

[Don Andy]

If you really want money of it you probably should pay to download. The revenue you get from ad-based game is always pretty hard to predic and can come out with less than expected.

One thing I personally (from a consumer standpoind) think is important though:
When going with ad-based, TELL people it's going to have ads. When downloading apps for the iPhone there is nothing more annoying than getting an app that claims to be completely free, but then has AdSense plastered all over it. I mean, yes, it is free, but they should at least mention it is ad supported.

And for downloadable games maybe provide a (ad-supported? ) demo, so people know what they're getting into when buying the actual game. I'm usually less willing to buy a game when I wasn't able to try it out first.

[Paul Eres]

You can combine the two: ad based browser version, downloadable version with no ads and extra content. Flash does let you make downloadable versions I believe (N and Dofus do it).

[Craig Stern]

Definitely true. I just wonder how much extra stuff there would have to be to convince people to spring for the downloadable version, though, rather than playing for free online...

[Paul Eres]

Ask them, or experiment.