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[Falmil]

Steam is so easy to use, so I'm not sure what your argument is. They have my credit card on file, so buying games is nothing more than a few clicks. Really, it depends how you want your content. I prefer to own select things, while you clearly want a sampling of all of them.

Paying your developers "pennies on the dollar" seems like you're taking advantage of them. Considering they're supplying all the content, they should be the ones getting paid instead of you. This "business" attitude is the reason most of the people here are against the idea on principle.

I have no idea what you're saying with the used car analogy.

[bateleur]

manifesto games was a portal exclusively for non-casual indie games, but nobody heard of it, even though it got some press when it started up and was started up by a moderately famous/experienced person and had some funding

This is a little misleading. The problem Manifesto had wasn't that nobody had heard of them, it's that they weren't popular with indie developers because they take a cut of your profits in exchange for which they don't really do anything you couldn't do yourself. Consequently they weren't much use for gamers either, because anything you wanted wasn't on there and anything you found on there that you hadn't heard of tended to be bad. (And the editorial reviews were ridiculously positive to the point where you couldn't trust a word they said.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

hmm -- can't the same be said of the casual portals, though? what does, say, big fish games do for you that you can't do yourself? or even sites like direct2drive. steam does provide some added value, but the rest of the portals are basically online stores collecting games, and take a percent of the profits. but people use them anyway. the main difference between them and manifesto is that manifesto didn't have as much traffic as they do.

[bateleur]

hmm -- can't the same be said of the casual portals, though?

Oh, absolutely, but Manifesto never aspired to be a mere portal. Perhaps you didn't read much of Greg K's writings on the subject?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i have, and you're right, but that's irrelevant to your original claim (that manifesto failed because it didn't offer indies anything) -- if it failed for not offering indies anything but a site that collects games and taking a percent, wouldn't casual portals also fail for not offering casual developers anything but that? yet sites like big fish games are still going pretty strong, making millions a year, and have been for about a decade now.

[tiglionabbit]

Offering to handle checkout, content delivery, advertising/promotion, etc is offering something.  Some portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds offer extra features like comments/chat and achievements.  Then again, I'm not totally sure what big fish games' business model is.

How do people sell their games?  I've only ever bought indie games over steam, paypal's digital delivery thing, or whatever custom system chronic logic and introversion used.  I wouldn't expect every game developer to have to set up their own storefront web app though.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

indies usually sell them through portals and through e-commerce service providers like bmt-micro, fastspring, plimus, etc. etc. -- they take a small percent (usually about 10%) in exchange for handling all that stuff.

[bateleur]

wouldn't casual portals also fail for not offering casual developers anything but that?

Well no, because the volumes are so much higher.

And besides, looking at Manifesto as just a portal it's immediately clear it's got nothing going for it.

Offering to handle checkout, content delivery, advertising/promotion, etc is offering something.

Thing is, checkout and content delivery are commodity things these days. They're not hard and they're not expensive.

Advertising/promotion is really valuable and important, but Manifesto never did that to any meaningful degree.