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[manunderground]

I got started thinking about patronage-based models for sponsoring indie games and I was curious how y'all felt about the above question. In addition to the poll I'd be very interested in hearing about people's experiencing trying to collect donations for the games they've published. If anyone would be willing to share the drinks are on me! (Serious open invitation if you live in Seattle, too)

[Simon Andersson]

I'd defenitly going to start donating from now on, I've just turned 18 and can finally have a real bank account.
Kinda been looking forward to giving my money away to talented stragers

[Lynx]

Even though I would donate and have done so in the past, I voted for 'unlikely' since I think most people would mean to do it, but would forget to do so.

[ExciteMike]

Well, I never have donated in the past.  I happily pre-order and buy indie games, but to me it's weird to just give money away.

So... way back when, Radiohead let people who bought one of their albums set the price themselves.  Does anybody know how that worked out?  Or whether it's been tried since?

[manunderground]

Yea I was thinking about that too. You can read about the album, In Rainbows. Probably the most relevant part for this discussion is:

According to an Internet survey conducted by Record of the Day of 3,000 people, about one-third of people who downloaded the album paid nothing, with the average price paid being £4.[53] When asked in a December 2007 interview by The Observer how many discboxes were ordered, the band members responded with various answers ranging between 60,000 and 80,000.[20] In October 2008, a report from Warner Chappell revealed that although most people paid nothing for the download, pre-release sales were more profitable than the total money from sales of Hail to the Thief. The report also stated that the discbox sold 100,000 copies.[54]

Key takeaways I think are:

  1. Most people who downloaded the album paid nothing
  2. The average amount people did pay was ~$8 (correct my conversion if wrong)
  3. They sold a discbox in parallel for real $$$

[manunderground]

Well, I never have donated in the past.  I happily pre-order and buy indie games, but to me it's weird to just give money away.

How exactly is it "just giving money away", though? I'd say it's more akin to playing an extended demo and then deciding to purchase it.

[handCraftedRadio]

I think that the average amount of money donated to indie developers by players is somewhere in the negatives seeing as how the piracy rates seem to be so high.

[Super Joe]

if possible, i would steal money from them (preferably lunch money)

[xerus]

The conversion rate for players to donors for most indie games I think is around 0.5%.  So I voted extremely unlikely.

[manunderground]

The conversion rate for players to donors for most indie games I think is around 0.5%.  So I voted extremely unlikely.

Xerus where did you read that number? I'd also love to see what was the average amount given. If the average was something like $5 and 5 people out of 1,000 donated it would be very hard to quit your day job :-)

[ExciteMike]

How exactly is it "just giving money away", though?

Yeah... I mean, intellectually I see how it is the same effect on my bank account, but there is little if any reason to feel bad about not donating.  It's hard to think of it as stealing or even rude, so I'm left thinking "Why NOT keep my money?  I have uses for that stuff!"

I guess all that simplifies to: I'm selfish .

[xerus]

The conversion rate for players to donors for most indie games I think is around 0.5%.  So I voted extremely unlikely.

Xerus where did you read that number? I'd also love to see what was the average amount given. If the average was something like $5 and 5 people out of 1,000 donated it would be very hard to quit your day job :-)

I didn't read it from anywhere.  This comes from my personal experience and experience of those I know that do donation systems on their work (and this is quite a few.)

[Paul Eres]

With Glum Buster it was 9000 downloads and about 25 donations, which is around 0.3%. So I'd say one out of 200 or one out of 300 is reasonable.

For selling games, it's more like one out of 200 to one out of 50. So the donation after playing a full version free rate is about 2x-4x less than the selling a demo rate (along with the average amount donated being much less than the sale price of a game).

[Craig Stern]

The conversion rate for players to donors for most indie games I think is around 0.5%.  So I voted extremely unlikely.

Xerus where did you read that number? I'd also love to see what was the average amount given. If the average was something like $5 and 5 people out of 1,000 donated it would be very hard to quit your day job :-)

Depends on your traffic. If 2,000 people a day play your game and ten of those donate $5, that would come out to about $1500 per month before taxes. Not exactly making a mint, but well above the poverty line.

[Piranha]

i wouldnt donate, but only because if you're an indie games developer and you're only in it for the money you're a sellout

SELLOUT

i might be being sarcastic