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[reallyjoel]

I've been toying with a business model for games that I think might be called 'tiered release', but please correct me on that.

It's simply release a game very early for very very cheap. Then you give free upgrades for life for all customers. The trick is that for certain major updates, you raise the price for *new* customers. But no matter when you buy it, the following upgrades will be free.

The advantages are many; You get to test your idea very early, thus lowering risk. You build loyalty with the early customers because they get ALOT for practically nothing. And in our case, for the "final" version with all the features we are planning to eventually implement, there will allready be a userbase which will hopefully have created a large amount of user content, so that the game doesnt feel empty, but vibrant.

There are also problems ofcourse. The biggest might be that new customers might feel ripped off. everyone that bought before him/her got it for less. Another problem might be lack of impact on the first release, if it is "thin", you might miss your marketing train..

Are there any examples of these kind of releases? Actually I know there is, but I can't seem to find it. It's very hard to search for. Also, I think that game failed hard.. >_<

Do you guys have any examples? What do you guys feel about this model?

[Snakey]

I think Cortex Command and Mount & Blade did that.

[reallyjoel]

Ah yes, Cortex Command was the game I was thinking of. Does anyone know if that has been successful?

[Snakey]

Seems to be doing quite well in my opinion. People are still working on it, and they are still updating the game.

[Mipe]

Mount&Blade hasn't been updated in quite a while, though.

[Cagey]

The best example of this in my mind is the Pocket God game for iPhone. Every week they release some new content for it. They've done 17 episodes so far. It was one of the best selling iPhone games for a while, but it looks like it's losing its thunder a bit now.

Personally, I really like the business model but I think if I were to do it I would do it more like Valve does TF2 patches rather than Pocket Gods approach. More content to begin with. No clue if it would make more money though...

[reallyjoel]

The reasoning for us is that we dont have time/money to build everything that we would like to have in the game, so it's pretty crucial for us to release it at a given date. After that we simply dont have the means to continue developing.

I wonder how the buyers have taking it with the games that have been mentioned.

Would you be pissed if you were late to the party and found out that you could've gotten the game you are thinking of buying for much less?

[Snakey]

It can be frustrating, but no more frustrating than missing out on preorders, althought preorders is only one step away from the final retail price.

What concerns me is that you are doing this out of sheer necessity. Becareful when its necessity because if you were targetting to get $1000 and you only managed to raised $500 through this, then a certain number of people are going to get very, very, very pissed off with you guys.

The second problem is that your marketing and advertising would fail pretty badly if you were to provide security provisions for yourself, so you would have to lie outright about the financial situation of your group to actually get any number of sales (You would have to claim that continual development will occur, when you know it won't if you don't get a certain number of sales).

It all boils down to the scale of that if. And it's pretty big to be honest. Perhaps its time to find a venture capitalist or angel investor. Ideally you need a decent amount of money to at least do three or four tiered releases before you start requiring more money from external sources to continue the project.

[Matt Thorson]

I'm thinking of doing this for my next game, but it's a bit of a different situation.

The game is embedded within its own site (and indeed, the site itself is part of the game), so I'll (hopefully) be making money off ads on the site.  The tiered release part comes in when I release updates TF2-style, adding new content to the game in chunks and occasionally releasing balance/bugfix patches.

I think tiered releases is especially useful if your game relies on having an active community of players around it.  With constant content updates, that community will be kept alive much longer than usual.

[KennEH!]

I've had it before where the update never came (Zombpocalypse), so I don't really trust myself to put money in on it. Though if done properly I'm all for it.

[MikeHart]

Actually I would get pissed if I buy and find out that the promised updates are not comming at all. Updates not only means bug fixes, but also new features if you sell it this way. So if you plan not working furtehr one the game, then I would not choose such a price model.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

ff4 the after (for wiiware) also did this; so did fedora spade (but that was freeware)

i may do this for a non-freeware game one day, but i think this model really only fits adventure games and rpgs, games that rely on a story to hook the players to the series