next »

[Notch]

I've been thinking about possible business models for indie games, using myself as the target audience. Paying for games is not a problem in itself, but there's a definite barrier in getting my credit card out, or logging in to paypal.

I pay 100 Swedish kronor (about €10) each month to listen to music via Spotify. I get to listen to the latest music when I want, and I don't have to take out my credit card, or feel like a thief by downloading it.

Would something like this work for indie games? Some kind of service that you subscribe to, you get to play as much as you want, then the service pays the developers a portion based on how much their games get played.

Personally, I think it could work great.
Once there's a decent player pool, the developers don't have to worry about converting players to customers.. you just need to get people to play the game. This puts the game first. You could even put up versions under development, or small tech demos on there. If it's fun, people will play it.
The biggest drawback is probably that people won't actually OWN the games. But I guess it could be possible to have a "Buy" button that lets you buy a permanent copy of a game.

[bateleur]

Spotify is great for customers... is it actually good for musicians? (Certainly eMusic isn't - I've heard lots of complaints about it.)

[Notch]

From the numbers I've seen (can't remember the sources at the moment), it's not. I don't know why that is.
I've never spent 10 euro per month on CD's, so this is an all time high for me on music spending..

[Christian Knudsen]

Wasn't there a story about Lady Gaga suing Spotify because she'd only received $100 despite her songs being the most shared ones, or something?

[Falmil]

A lot of this was discussed fairly recently: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=11984.0

[Notch]

Oh, neat! Thanks. :D

Locky thread, mod?