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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

bill fostom (he worked w/ manifesto games, which was recently shut down) had this idea: http://blog.whyos.com/2009/06/game-developers-cooperative/

i think it's a great idea but would probably take someone dedicated to set up (and he's said he doesn't have time to do that) so i thought i'd just pass the idea along in case anyone else was interested in setting something like this up

the idea would be that a small (single-digit) percent of sales would go towards this organization, and this organization would run a site and act as a publisher for all its members, promoting their games the best it could; perhaps there could even be elections and such, like the igda

[moi]

I think if something like that succeeds and becomes very important and influent, then it will become an hostile force against the other small devellopers and those who won't want to become members.
The founder members will become fat and they will start exploiting the small. Maffia style.
Well this is just a possible scenario.

[MrChocolateBear]

Very interesting idea. I would be interested in being a part of this. If enough people got involved, the organization could double as a networking site for indie developers to find and form teams/business connections with others.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think if something like that succeeds and becomes very important and influent, then it will become an hostile force against the other small devellopers and those who won't want to become members.
The founder members will become fat and they will start exploiting the small. Maffia style.
Well this is just a possible scenario.

well, if the 'fee' to enter would mean that just, say, 5% of your sales goes to them when sold on their site (as opposed to 80% with sites like big fish games and other portals), and if there were no restrictions on who could join, then there wouldn't be much incentive not to join. and there could also be a rule that that percent could *only* go towards site upkeep and promotion, not to salary or something. i don't know much about co-ops though (except that there was a bookstore co-op at my college which seemed to do okay).

[nihilocrat]

Sounds like a cool idea, I also wonder what sort of legal definition it would have (co-op? non-profit?) and I'm curious if it would be feasible. I would hope that a very low barrier of entry would enable a lot of minor developers to sell a game with very little hassle, no need to register a business or even set up a PayPal account or what-have-you. I would definitely fit in this category because I don't know much about business nor do I find it very interesting.

[Tom Sennett]

I think it's an interesting idea. (I've thought about similar stuff)

I think it could break down pretty easily though. How do you make sure that all games get promoted/distributed equally? Or does it make sense to promote more those games which may sell more, since that could generate the most revenue for the organization and all its members?

But then that's starting to sound like a regular ol' publisher. I like the idea of elections, Paul - if leadership were done by committee or something, with defined lengths of term, it would probably help keep the principles of the organization strong.

The other thing is who you let into the organization - is it selective or open to everybody? Being selective automatically cuts you off from some talent. But letting anybody in would dilute the brand.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think promotion could be done somewhat impartially, through a system like the tigs database or amazon.com, with user reviews and 'you might also like this game' stuff and so on

i think accepting everyone would be fine, as greg costik mentioned, there's no such thing as shelf space on the internet, it's unlimited. so it'd be great if it had tens of thousands of games on it. that might lead to problems of a sea of terrible games and a few good ones though, so alternatively perhaps your game would have to be nominated and voted in by other developers (like, if at least 10 people who have games on there nominate your game, it would also get on there)

[William Broom]

How would this cooperative be different from TigDB?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a few ways i can think of:

tigdb doesn't handle payment transactions or do any promotion, it's not a "portal" where you can buy games; this idea would be

tigdb is run by a few people, who get to decide who gets on it; this would be more of a community, a more organic structure rather than top-down, more like a wiki, a place where people can edit the info of their own games

other than that, it'd be similar in listing a lot of indie games and allowing people to write reviews about them and having categories and tags and such

[Craig Stern]

I approve of this project! I have a few practical concerns about how to make this economically feasible (i.e. not an inordinate financial/time burden for the guy paying for hosting and maintaining the site), but in theory I think this is a really lovely idea.

On a side note, Godaddy has IndieGameDex.com available, as well as IndieGameLand.com, IndieGameScene.com, IndieParadise.com. (I also happen to own GamePantry.com, which I haven't yet used for anything and would be happy to lend to this project if it ever gets going.)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

well, if it's a co-op, there wouldn't actually be one guy paying for the hosting or working on it, it'd be cooperative, and paid for by the percent of sales, but yes, to start it up there would need to be a good deal of time investment and i'm not sure anyone here has time for that

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

as discussed above, in theory there would be elections for some of the decisions like that, while others of those would be done systematically (i.e. quality controlled by requiring nomination to join). i also don't think it's fair to say that youtube and flash games "fail" for entertainment purposes when they entertain millions a day; they just may fail for your particular personality or tastes

[Alec]

I've been interested in this concept for a while, but I don't know how it would actually work out.

[c-foo peng]

I really like the idea of labels, hand picked artists with a unifying mark, marketed individually as well as part of a special group of developers of greater quality/similar tastes. In certain respects, it's almost like a publisher... except they don't do any publishing. Mainly for brand recognition purposes.

We sorta have them now actually, such as the Poppenkast... and... nothing else quite comes to mind. But nothing in the "business" sort of way that I know of.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there's also Eo (similar to the poppenkast) for game maker; the ohrrpgce engine had things like that too -- red murdock software, and rpgcreations (my group)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the elections wouldn't be for every decision, they'd be to elect people to temporary terms, and then those people would make the daily decisions

also i think the idea for a 'label' is a good idea but it kind of is different from the purpose of a cooperative -- there's some overlap, but a label intentionally limits its games to the best or games that reflect its style, whereas a cooperative wouldn't limit itself like that

[gradgames]

I think this is a fantastic idea and would certainly join the organization, put up money, or help get it off the ground.

I do think that the Co-Op site should take more than 5% of Sales though - 20-30% like a standard affiliate deal.  A large portion of sales (10%+) should go to advertising the hell out of the site so it has traffic and becomes an important portal for developers.

[ZOMGBananas]

I think the idea of this service would serve the indie scene extremely well. I know that independent games get their exposure mainly by word of mouth. Having a professional place where developers can congregate, and where gamers can come and find the best indie has to offer would be invaluable. Not saying, of course, that places like TIGSource here don't do that well enough as it is.

I'm not a programmer, artist or musician, and am only just taking my first steps into learning the deal and making my first product. Because of that, I tend to have a lot of free time on my hands. I'd love to be a part of a project like this, though I fear my "newness" in the indie scene, added with my lack of web community experience would serve to work against me.

[bateleur]

I think the whole cooperative idea is a really bad one. Some explanation:

There are various things one might want out of a cooperative. Publicity for your game. Handling the mechanics of sales. Providing inter-developer support. But all these things are either better provided by other means or are not actually things a cooperative could provide any more efficiently.

Sales etc. - Insofar as this is useful it would actually be a nuisance for the cooperative. Someone would have to register it as an entity able to accept credit cards sales. There would have to be policies to deal with complaints/returns. There would have to be responsibility for legal issues which could arise. Inevitably, restrictions would have to be imposed on developers as to the terms and conditions they could offer. And who hosts downloads? The cooperative? Then what happens with things like demos where the data costs are not necessarily covered by sales? Assuming developers are free to continue selling from their own site as well, what stops them exploiting the free resources of the cooperative but then selling more cheaply from their own site? There would have to be rules. Who's going to run a big operation like this for free? (And it would be for free, since the cooperative would not be in a position to pay a salary.)

Publicity - What every developer wants is for the world to hear all about their game. But that's not how publicity works. Someone still has to prepare screenshots and videos, send email to journalists, create buzz about the game prior to release. It's a lot of work which the cooperative is clearly not going to take on. Sure, it can give page space to a few games each week, but sites like TIGSource and indiegames already do a good job of that. If you think they're overlooking good stuff, what mechanism would prevent this cooperative from doing the same? (In fact it would be worse, since members would expect balanced coverage and so weak games would get overhyped, as was the case on Manifesto.)

Support - TIGSource is already excellent for this.

What a cooperative might do is be divisive in terms of who was prepared to join. Would there be inter-community political storms over things like IGF judging for co-op vs non-co-op members?

[Loren Schmidt]

I've been interested in similar ideas myself.

One thing I was thinking about is a community run browser game portal similar to NewGrounds, but without salaried employees. It would be ad supported, and because it would all be volunteer run, proceeds would go directly to maintenance costs and developers. Because games themselves would be free, there would be less issues with people trying to cheat the system by selling titles from their private sites, etc.

I haven't the web savvy to know how feasible something like this is, or what the overhead is like for a large Flash portal, but I would be very interested if such a thing happened.