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[larsiusprime]

As a developer, I've been thinking about supporting my game Defender's Quest after release with some paid expansion packs on top of the normal free updates. After a lot of thinking, however, I'm pretty unsatisfied with the economics of paid DLC, from both a player and a developer's perspective.

So, I wrote an article about it detailing my analysis of how the system is broken, and proposing an alternative I call "Freeloadable content" or FreeLC.

Summary:

Rather than release expansions as separate, discrete, purchases hoping to make back the cost of DLC development with a small profit, what if we instead asked the game's community to crowdfund the DLC, and then release it for free to everyone who already owns the base game?

This way you still make your "DLC money," but you don't fragment the experience, add barriers and purchasing friction, etc (With Paid DLC, The combined forces of time and friction mean you generally sell fewer copies of each subsequent DLC expansion). With FreeLC, perhaps we can avoid this problem and actually increase the value of the original game, driving more original sales.

Furthermore, whereas it's very hard to estimate the cost of developing an original game, it's easier to estimate the cost of an expansion pack, and you have some hard facts to guide you (ie, probably less than 40% will buy the expansion, and you probably have to sell it for ~25% of the original game's price) so you can put an upper limit on what you'd make from DLC sales to guide how much you ask for in your crowdfunding drive.

Finally, a small-scale kickstarter like this asking for a small amount and expanding on an existing property with a proven track record is much more likely to succeed than a high-dollar, from-scratch, promise-the-moon project.

The article gives full details and addresses all of the immediate concerns/problems/complaints about the model that I could foresee.

Thoughts, comments, obvious-holes-in-the-hypothesis?

[wg/funstorm]

It's great how crowdfunding enables projects that otherwise wouldn't happen. But I prefer when it's the exception and not the norm... seems like every other day now I hear about a new campaign asking for pledges. As a self-interested consumer I don't like having to wait months of even years for my purchase, and I don't like the added risk. You downplay it in the article, and while I agree it's less time/risk than the average campaign, it's still far more than a normal purchase. Honestly I think I'd prefer just a straight up expansion, 1999 style. Then I can see exactly what my money will get me, without having to rely on faith & promises and can make my decision right then & there and get the product while I'm still excited for it. I know it's extra risk for the developer so I can empathize... but as a consumer I just plain don't care.

I do like your point about it increasing the original's value. But if that's your goal, you could also achieve it by making the DLC free after a couple months (I think gears of war does this with map packs).

By the way, I'm a big fan of the game and your previous articles (eg on piracy). I was actually just on your site again yesterday hoping for an update or news on more content, it can't come soon enough for me. Definitely I would buy dlc. Maybe I would pledge.

[larsiusprime]

Thanks for the feedback! You definitely make some good points, and I agree kickstarter itself is where most people will tend to have their gripes.

The "releasing old expansions as free updates later on" bit is an interesting point I hadn't considered; I'll file that one away for future use.

For me, the biggest challenge is the hard fact that expansion packs by their very nature have limited sales potential because you simply have to charge a fraction of the original price, and you simply won't sell to more than a fraction of your original audience as purchasing DLC also requires the base purchase. It's kind of like how Harry Potter #1, by its very nature, will always sell more than its sequels, because the others build on top of it.  (I'm sure some random people read books 2-7 without ever reading the first, but they're in the extreme minority)

FreeLC is my basic solution to this and other problems, but I'm definitely interested in exploring other ways, too!

As for Defender's Quest, honored to hear you liked the game
Re: updates, We have a HUGE announcement coming up, I've already typed up the blog post with sexy pictures and the like, but I can't go public with it for now as I still have to wait to hear back from a certain individual at Big-Announcement-Type-Folks, inc. for 100% confirmation

Aside from that, we're going to hit release candidate on gold edition very soon, and if you want in on the ongoing private beta send me a PM either on this forum or our own forum.

[cystem glitch]

I agree, I think this sounds brilliant. You've already completed the game, so it isn't a big question mark about whether it will get finished or are you underestimating the time it will take - it's just new stuff in the same mold and you already demonstrably know about how long it will take. Sounds like a really great way to gauge interest upfront and see if it's a worthwhile way of spending your dev time

[James Coote]

I was thinking of doing a similar thing further down the line, so I'd be very interested to know how you get on if you do this

[Evan Balster]

I've made this case before, and I'll make it again -- there are big motivational problems with upfront funding of development work.  If it takes longer than expected, or a team member drops out, or there's a hangup, you're left sitting on a promise you really don't want to break.  Run out of money?  You have to juggle that promise with sustenance work, a cycle which can be very hard to break.  Worse yet, if you get to having any kinds of motivational issues with the work, you're left without an incentive aside from guilt to complete it.  This is a recipe for depression and failure -- professional and personal disaster.  Have you ever been paid in advance for contract work?  It is a Bad Thing.

Services like Kickstarter have some great statistics with regard to traffic, contributions and successful funding, but there's one that doesn't seem to come up much -- how often project-makers (particularly software developers) follow through with their creations.  It's so because it can't be measured -- there's no objective difference between in-development software and vaporware.  My own Kickstarter project (Game Project of the Year 2010, as it would happen) is stalled right now; nothing I am proud of, though I'm still telling myself I'm getting back to it soon.  Its most memorable peer from that year, Glorkian Warrior, is in a similarly sad state from what I can tell.  (It is my strong suspicion that if you filtered through funded video game projects from 2010 on Kickstarter, about 10% or less will have delivered by now.)


Essentially what I'm saying is that we should be making games, not promises.  That said, if you have the DLC partly finished (or better yet, completed) when you start hunting for funds, the problems above are not nearly as severe.

[ColeyWoley]

We're considering releasing a game with chapters that you pay to unlock.  Only issue is we'd need to have the budget to develop the whole thing.  It would be great if you could serialize, but we can't make it quick enough.

[Mittens]

I've made this case before, and I'll make it again -- there are big motivational problems with upfront funding of development work.  If it takes longer than expected, or a team member drops out, or there's a hangup, you're left sitting on a promise you really don't want to break.  Run out of money?  You have to juggle that promise with sustenance work, a cycle which can be very hard to break.  Worse yet, if you get to having any kinds of motivational issues with the work, you're left without an incentive aside from guilt to complete it.  This is a recipe for depression and failure -- professional and personal disaster.  Have you ever been paid in advance for contract work?  It is a Bad Thing.

Services like Kickstarter have some great statistics with regard to traffic, contributions and successful funding, but there's one that doesn't seem to come up much -- how often project-makers (particularly software developers) follow through with their creations.  It's so because it can't be measured -- there's no objective difference between in-development software and vaporware.  My own Kickstarter project (Game Project of the Year 2010, as it would happen) is stalled right now; nothing I am proud of, though I'm still telling myself I'm getting back to it soon.  Its most memorable peer from that year, Glorkian Warrior, is in a similarly sad state from what I can tell.  (It is my strong suspicion that if you filtered through funded video game projects from 2010 on Kickstarter, about 10% or less will have delivered by now.)


Essentially what I'm saying is that we should be making games, not promises.  That said, if you have the DLC partly finished (or better yet, completed) when you start hunting for funds, the problems above are not nearly as severe.

Perhaps developers could make the DLC first, then release it for free if enough money is raised, and if not, then it could be sold via the traditional method, just to those who pay, not everyone.

This obviously has the "problem" of doing unpaid work on the DLC, but we're game developers and should be used to working on a product first, then getting money/sales when it's done.

[larsiusprime]

I agree with Jackson.

If you have trouble with the Kickstarter fund-before-development model, then you could modify the FreeLC approach to ask for the funds after you've already developed the project, under the same terms.

If you can raise enough money to cover the projected sales, then you release it to everyone who's bought in to the system and still get the same benefits (no high friction barriers, increases the value of the base product driving new sales, players obviously get the FreeLC, etc).

Kickstarter is merely one of many means to the end of raising the funds, and can be done before or after the content's been developed. The core problem I'm trying to solve is that of ever-dwindling sales, which is baked into the nature of paid DLC.

[Hima]

I think this is a great idea, and it might be the norm in the future.

For freeloader problem, since the expansion required the original game, this mean people who will support you are more likely to be the one who enjoy the original game and want more out of the game. Simply put, they are your fans. Fans are also more likely to support the artist they love. And to people who pirated the game, if they enjoy it, they might back the expansion to support you, since they didn't pay for the original one. So I don't think freeloader would be much of an issue.

Also, glad to see Eunice and Mimi's comic in there! :D

[Chris Koźmik]

Rather than release expansions as separate, discrete, purchases hoping to make back the cost of DLC development with a small profit, what if we instead asked the game's community to crowdfund the DLC, and then release it for free to everyone who already owns the base game?

I think you stopped too early with your way of thinking If you are making a free crowdfunded expansion for a paid game it means you can earn at most the percentage of the sales of your paid game (only people who already bought the game will participate in crowfunding). Wouldn't it be more logical to do it other way round? Make the game free (crowdfunded) and then paid expansion? This way you have enlarging playerbase (a free game!) and the sales of your static paid component (expansion) is automaticly increased by the free marketing.

Going even further with this way of thinking you should end with Free to Play model, which already is used by above 99% of online games

[Evan Balster]

Another option to counter the "dwindling sales":  Make the base game free with the latest DLC (where their prices are comparable) or sell a game-and-DLC bundle.  Possibly for a limited time after the DLC release.  It's a value-add for the game, might help get a bit more press, and potentially adds some quantity of new heads to your playerbase, helping with future DLC.

In fact, if you did the "base game free with DLC" thing, letting existing players who buy the DLC gift the base game to a friend of their choosing would be a really smart thing to do.  (Gifting often introduces people to games they wouldn't otherwise play, thereby expanding the playerbase.)