next »

[Robotacon]

Let's say that there was a indie credit currency that you could buy from a trusted third party to buy indie games. Would that be something that you would consider using?

The question applies to both gamers and developers.

[Akhel]

Um, I don't get it. Why not just buy the games with regular money?

[Terry]

Yeah, I don't see enough potential advantages to offset the potential disadvantages.

[Drew]

So like Microsoft points, but easy for websites and developers to hook into?  I think this would be a great way to encourage people to donate to indies.

People have tried lots of things to get mini-donations to work, but I'm not sure if it has been tried with some kind of imaginary currency that abstracts the value away.

I think forcing people to buy bundles of points is the key, though.  That way people would buy X points with the intention of buying something, but might have a few points left over to throw in someone else's donation box without a second thought.  If you have to use a credit card, you might pass on donating, but if you had a few spare points you might be more inclined to part with them.

The trouble would be getting people to join (Like the other replies so far have indicated).  It would be hard to get people to buy big packs of points without a lot of sites and developers on-board. 

People are also hostile toward the "points you don't need" angle, so you would have to sell it as encouraging donations to indies.

[Chris Whitman]

I was under the impression that a lot of the points idea was centered around reducing the number of credit card transactions required to buy a number of small items.

So if you're going to sell five items valued at $5 each over a period of several months, you do one credit card transaction at $25 instead of five at $5.

[Drew]

Yeah, exactly. Gamers like it because they don't have to enter their credit card 50 times and don't have to see 300 $0.05 charges on their statement.  They also like going through a trusted party instead of many sketchy parties.

Developers like it because it makes it more likely someone will drop a small amount on a download, and because it encourages donations even if they aren't charging. 

The downside is that developers might sell things that they wouldn't normally sell

[moi]

No interest, except for the one who would control the "indie money" of course (free money)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think a central (non-casual) independent games portal would be more useful and necessary as a first step before any type of indie money.

[shinygerbil]

I always considered Paypal to be a good enough scheme. It's an interesting idea, though. Kinda like Stardock's 'tokens'.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

There are a few problems with PayPal, the big one being that it's not automated and you need to manually send someone the link to a game for each sale, which would take up a lot of time and would annoy people who don't get the game immediately and have to wait a day or so.

[Robotacon]

I was thinking about PayPal too but I haven't used it that much so I don't know the pros and cons.

A central independent games portal sounds nice but I'd like to see several indie-portals where you can play using the same credits/tokens.

I'd like a trusted 3rd party ("indie-bank") so slimmed down that they only were responsible for the transactions and the site they had was like a ATM where you could login and deposit or withdraw money. That way the "indie-bank" does not become a market place with ads and crap.

It's all about creating a useful protocol for transactions and it wouldn't take much time for a game designer to setup an interface to the "indie-bank". In my spare-time I run a online comic book store so I know it's not hard to implement interfaces to the credit card solution providers.