Freeloadable content - an alternative to paid DLC

Cross-posted on gamasutra.com

A lot of developers/publishers sell expansion packs and other discrete add-ons to their games as "downloadable content," or "paid DLC."  This model has problems, for both players and developers.  The problems for players have been covered exhaustively, so let's leave that aside for the moment.

Here's my perspective as a developer.

Let's say that the upcoming version 1.0 launch of our game Defender's Quest goes well, and some time down the line we release an expansion pack.  Will it earn enough money to justify working on it?

There are a couple of facts that influence this decision:

1. It's impossible to sell more copies of DLC than of the original game
2. DLC's price must be substantially less than the original game's
3. Many people in your audience will never experience the DLC content*

*Only issues 1 and 2 are relevant from a financial perspective, but I'm a softie, so number 3 is important to me for other reasons.  One of the biggest reasons I make games is so that as many people can enjoy them as possible. As long as I make enough money to keep doing my job, I don't like restricting and fragmenting the experience, which is exactly what paid DLC does.  Free2Play is certainly an alternative, but I want to leave that for another article, this one is mostly about fixing DLC from within. 

So let's assume 25% of our audience buys our DLC (an optimistic estimate), and we sell it for 25% of the base game's price.  This gives us 6.25% of our original gross revenue.  Not bad - and if we spent less than 6.25% of the money, time, and effort it took to make the original game, we just got a raise! 


The problem is, it's all downhill from there.


First, it's a law of human nature that every purchasing decision has "friction," so fewer people will buy each subsequent DLC pack than the one before.  Second, it's a law of human business that day one is the most profitable day for DLC, which is why so many AAA games these days push day-one DLC.  The frightening corollary to this second law is that each day you wait after launch to release DLC means fewer sales.  Combine these pressures of time and friction, and you're looking at ever-dwindling revenue.  


What this means is that your first expansion pack will almost certainly be your best seller, and thus paid DLC can't sustain prolonged development.  Is there a way to fix this model without abandoning it for subscriptions or free-to-play? 


I think there is.

I call it "Freeloadable Content," or FreeLC.

How FreeLC Works

First, let's assume the DLC I want to create must make $5,000 to justify working on it.  So, with paid DLC, if the base game cost $7, we might sell the DLC for $2 and hope for at least 2,500 sales.  That's the traditional model.


Under the FreeLC model, we instead start a small Kickstarter project to raise the $5,000 we would normally expect to make through sales.  Now that we've covered this cost, we release the expansion as a free update to everyone who has already purchased the base game, even if they didn't contribute to the Kickstarter.  Hence, freeloadable content. 

Implications

Although the idea of FreeLC is quite simple, it has some interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive consequences. 

For one, FreeLC can be less adversarial than paid DLC.  Even if a player legitimately enjoys Mass Effect 3 and its $20 day-one expansion, it dampens her enjoyment when she has to wonder whether EA is just trying to find a sneaky way to raise the game's price to $80 (EA's Peter Moore has essentially admitted to this).

So that's one benefit.  But besides not having to nickel-and-dime, or more accurately, ten-and-twenty-dollar our players, we can let all of them have the extra content and still get paid to develop it.  We don't have to fragment the game's shared cultural experience into high- and low-paying tiers.


Furthermore, there's one final benefit that deserves special attention:

We just increased the value of the original game!

Under the paid DLC model, the base game stays the same, while any additional value the developer creates is locked up in discrete expansion packs, each of which has additional purchasing friction.  With FreeLC, each expansion makes the original game better, and since we've already made our "DLC money," we're free to sell the whole collection for the same original price.

I'll illustrate this effect with an example.

First, let's assume for the sake of argument that you can actually reduce the value of enjoying a game to some number.  So, say the base game is worth 10 units of fun, or "funits," (whatever those are).  Then, we make a small expansion, worth 2 funits.  Together, that's an experience worth 12 funits.  All together, we eventually release 1 complete game worth 10 funits and 5 DLC packs worth 2 funits each.

Then, we load all our merchandise into our digital wheelbarrow, and cart it off to the internet for sale.

Here's how it looks under paid DLC:

  Game: 10 funits,  $10
  DLC:  2 funits,  $2
  DLC:  2 funits,  $2
  DLC:  2 funits,  $2
  DLC:  2 funits,  $2
  DLC:  2 funits,  $2

And here's how it looks under FreeLC:

Game+DLC: 20 funits, $10

Which would you rather buy? 


The second option provides the exact same content for half the price.  We've already recouped the cost that we would normally have to make through DLC sales, so we don't have to charge the extra $10.  


Even better, there's one, simple low-friction purchasing decision - "Do you want to buy everything for one low price?"  Sounds like a good deal to me!  That's a much easier sell than, "Do you want to buy this? And how about a little more for this? And this? And this?"


Now, let's look at all the potential problems with the FreeLC model and see if we can address them.


1) Freeloaders

James actually has one of these

Since everyone who's already purchased the game gets the FreeLC, there's less incentive to support the Kickstarter drive, and just wait to get the content for free. This is the biggest risk I can think of (though we certainly have nothing to lose by just trying it and seeing what happens).  

First of all, you have to buy the original game to get the FreeLC, so it's not as big a concern as if it was just free for the general public.  That said, here's some possible solutions to the problem:

• Exclusive pledger rewards
  We create special stuff for high-dollar pledgers, such as exclusive bonuses and vanity items, putting their likeness into the game, etc. The only way you can get these things is by supporting the Kickstarter drive, so people still have an incentive to contribute besides just getting the FreeLC.
• Sell the basic game
  The lowest pledge level lets you buy the original game at a reduced price, so the Kickstarter drive doubles as a kind of sale.  If you already have the game, you can gift this copy to a friend.  If you don't have the game yet, now's your chance to buy in at a reduced price.  Not only do you get something right now, you've now bought into all current and future FreeLC.
• Count on goodwill?
  Perhaps this crazy idea will drive people to support it out of the sheer goodness of their hearts.  I wouldn't count on this alone, but it's a real thing that happens, and the amount of resentment players have for DLC suggests many would welcome an alternative that gives them more respect.

2) Lost "potential" sales

The next concern is that by giving away the updates for free, you're losing sales.  "Never leave money on the table," as the saying goes. 

First of all, if the Kickstarter drive succeeds, it doesn't really matter if you "lose" sales because the money you would have gotten through DLC sales is already in the bank.  Everything after that is just gravy. 

Second, and as I've said above, people now have more incentive to purchase the original game, which sells for a higher price than a DLC pack and can reach a larger potential audience since it has the lowest possible purchasing friction.

Third, although it's impossible to know the precise number of DLC sales you'd have made otherwise (and thus ask for too little in the Kickstarter), we have enough information to set a reasonably accurate upper bound.  DLC requires the original game to work, so you simply won't sell more copies than you did of the original game.  Furthermore, in the articles I linked above, we saw that AAA titles with huge marketing budgets like Mass Effect 3 had a 40% attach rate for day-one DLC (again, the best day for DLC sales), so it's safe to assume that we mere mortals would get substantially less than that.    

Finally, the FreeLC model opens up an additional revenue stream - dedicated players with deep pockets.  Free-To-Play developers call these "whales," but under the FreeLC model, I'd call them "patrons."  These players are the game's biggest supporters and are often looking for ways to spend more money.  Rather than just getting their money, this method includes them as pillars of the game's community.

3) <Insert complaint about Kickstarter>

The next issue is that of Kickstarter and crowdfunding itself.  

Many people have raised concerns about pie-in-the-sky Kickstarter campaigns for games that promise the moon and ask for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding, which then take years to materialize, if ever.  Most of these concerns don't apply to FreeLC. 

First of all, if you're a developer kickstarting FreeLC, you've already made your base game and established your track record. 

Second, you already have a basic reward that you can deliver to pledgers right away - a discounted copy of the original game, which entitles them to all current and future FreeLC.  

Third, since it's just an expansion pack and not a full-fledged game, even a relatively large and expensive project can ask for a modest sum of money and still cover the cost of development.  

Fourth, developing an expansion pack is much less risky than creating a game from scratch, and it takes a lot less time to boot. 

This should result in an attractive Kickstarter campaign that's easy to fund without making outlandish promises.

Future Work

Let me emphasize that the entire FreeLC model I've just laid out is a hypothesis.  I'm not sure if anyone's actually tried this before, and I don't know whether it will actually work in practice any better than paid DLC.  These are the effects and implications I can foresee, but nothing beats actually trying the thing out. 

So...when are we coming out with FreeLC for Defender's Quest?

Right now, we're still working on our big free update to Defender's Quest, version 1.0, followed by a release on all the big digital download stores that will accept us.  This should happen in a month or so if everything goes according to plan.  If I had been smart, I would have thought of this FreeLC idea back in February and used it to fund this huge update, but our financials are in reasonable shape and we should still be able to squeak by, and hopefully new sales will give the game a future.

I'm not sure what the future holds for us, but I can say for a fact that if and when we release an expansion pack for a game, it will be FreeLC.

Further Reading
If you're interested in my other musings on games and economics, try my Piracy and the Four Currencies series.

The Holy Grail of Digital Distribution

Cross-posted on Gamasutra. Twitter handle: @larsiusprime

The challenge of being an independent developer is that so much of your game's success is out of your control. There's no Department of Internet Money where you can present your neatly wrapped Cool New Thing and be justly rewarded with crisp thousand-dollar bills.

Instead, you can either self-publish or work with one of the many third party stores.  Either way, you're still going to have to do a lot of marketing work yourself - and even if you get onto a major platform like Steam, success isn't guaranteed.

Perhaps one glorious day, an online store will descend from the Heavens that lets anyone submit a game, immediately approves it, presents it to an enormous audience, and lets the game succeed or fail on its merits alone.  Brother will no longer fight against and brother, the lion will lay down with the lamb, and a bright new age of meritocracy will shine down upon us all.  Also chocolate ponies.  Amen.

Until that magical day comes (if it ever does), marketing, networking and all those other "businessy" skills will be just as important to a developer's success as the quality of her game.  Furthermore, the perception that you have to sit at the same lunch table as the Indie "in-crowd" to succeed will persist (regardless of whether that perception is true).

Will this glorious day ever arrive? I wouldn't count on it.  My advice to any would-be developers is to stop asking for permission to succeed.  Don't wait for someone to come along and fulfill your dreams or make you the next Cinderella stories - make games, share them with the world, learn some business stuff, and do your best to make it work.

But you know what? It's nice to dream. What if this magical store really is possible after all? I'll give you a hint: there's already something out there that's not too far from the dream, and chances are you've already used it.

What We Want

First, let's talk about what we're looking for.  This magical dream store must:

1. Have a low barrier to entry
2. Reward merit with financial success
3. Connect developers to a large audience

Sounds great! However, these goals might not be compatible. Let's look at today's landscape.

Steam

Curated stores like Steam have a small number of hand-picked, high quality titles that are lavished with individual attention and promotion.  This is beneficial for both developer and customer - customers get great games, affordable prices, and excellent service, while developers get a huge audience both ready and willing to pay for their games.

The downside, of course, is that everyone wants to get onto Steam and there's simply not room for them all.  Even if Steam could reliably sift through their mountain of submissions, separating the undiscovered gems from the thousands of Minesweeper clones, there still wouldn't be room for all the great games that want to get in.  Steam is pretty close to our magic dream store in many aspects, except for the fact that you have a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting on there.

The App Store

On the other end of the spectrum, you have services like the App Store, which accept just about anyone who applies.  Not surprisingly, the App Store is flooded with games. Even worse, Apple shows no interest in fixing the store's fundamentally broken discovery channels. This forces developers to compete for slots on the "top app" charts, and leaves customers poking around in the dark, passing over countless games they would have loved.

Among other problems, the store is plagued by "race to the bottom" pricing. The only reliable path to success is to get on the charts, the most important of which are "most downloaded" and "most sold." Your game can't be "most downloaded" unless it's free, and your game can't be "most sold" unless it's 99 cents. There's no "most revenue" chart, so there's no chance of selling half as many units at three times the price and still staying on top. (Apparently there actually is a "highest grossing" chart, at least on iTunes. My mistake)

 This design pushes developers towards the free-to-play business model.  Free-to-play is fine and good, but it stinks that the store intentionally excludes a wider range of pricing models (The situation is somewhat better on the iPad, which can actually support games at various different price points).

There's also no way to sort the games by user rating, and search functionality is awful.  Given Apple's obsessive attention to design, there's every reason to believe these decisions are intentional.  Apple treats games like commodities, which drives developers to compete for visibility, which in turn drives down prices, which provides customers with a pile of affordable, disposable apps.  Every once in a while, Apple hand-picks a new "featured App" to be the next Cinderella Story, keeping hope alive for the next wave of developers.

The App Store falls far short of our magical ideal - it's easy to get onto the store, but success has a lot more to do with chance than merit, and game design choices are limited by Apple's preferred business models. Those that succeed despite these challenges usually have a focused marketing effort outside of the App Store itself.

A Different Way

It seems like there's some fundamental trade-offs at work here.  A strongly curated store like Steam or Xbox Live Arcade can be good for both customers or developers, but the bigger the store's audience, the harder it is to get accepted.  On the other hand, open stores like the App Store or Android Market will take just about anybody, but it's up to the developer (or the winds of fate) to actually reach that store's audience.

Couldn't there be some store that lets pretty much anyone submit a game, without drowning customers in a river of shovelware, or leaving developers up a creek without a paddle?

I think there is.

It's called Kongregate.

Full disclosure:  The lead designer of Defender's Quest, Anthony Pecorella, also works for Kongregate.  We started working together when he was looking for a programmer, and found a popular game on Kong that I had written.  

Now, as I said before, the magical store from the heavens doesn't exist yet.  Kongregate falls a bit short of the ideal, but it's leading the way.

What is Kongregate?

Kongregate is one of many free flash game portals on the internet.  Flash developers (like me) make games, and then distribute them to the public through these portals - the biggest ones being Kongregate, Newgrounds, and Armor Games.

Most portals run ads to make money, some of which they share with developers.  A few portals support games with microtransactions, which lets developers sell virtual goods with a small cut going to the portal.  Developers can also make money from sponsorship deals, where a portal pays a flat fee to brand a game with their logo.  Kongregate has the best developer support in the business - they were the first site that I know of to share ad revenue, they have the best microtransaction system, and their support staff is both friendly and helpful.

Even so, there's not much to see here.  Flash portals have been around a long time and most of the scene's developers aren't rolling in dough.  Here's what makes Kongregate different.

Discovery

Kongregate has, hands down, some of the best discovery in the business.  If you create a game that Kong's audience will enjoy, it will succeed, because the players that love it will find it almost as soon as it's uploaded.  This is not the case on the App Store - there are lots of iOS games that the audience would love, but will never find.

Kongregate's excellent discovery consists of a simple and powerful user rating system, excellent search functionality, lots of categories, and an easy-to-navigate website.  In stark contrast to the app store, the user rating is the primary way in which games are sorted and displayed to the player.  These ratings come directly from players, who can only vote once each, but can change their vote at any time.  By tying visibility chiefly to "how much players like this game" rather than any other metric, Kongregate gives each game the best possible chance of succeeding on its own merits.

This makes many undiscovered gems rise to the surface that any curated platform would dismiss.  A good example is Shopping Cart Hero, which can only be described as "ugly as sin," but has nevertheless earned a loyal fan base and over five million plays on Kongregate alone.

(To be perfectly fair, Newgrounds created an excellent discovery engine first. Kongregate built on the idea and laser-focused it on games.)

Sifting out the Crap

Since Kongregate will accept pretty much anything, a whole lot of crap gets uploaded to the system.  This includes outright broken games, plagiarized games, and semi-interactive slideshows of pornography or disturbing images.  The worst of these are pre-screened by site admins, and anything that doesn't violate the terms of service goes into a holding pen with minor visibility.  These games are held off of the main site while they are "under judgment" until they get enough user ratings for an initial score.  In this way, Kongregate itself imposes as little value judgment on submissions as possible.

As of this writing, Kongregate boasts "57,941 free games!"  About 1% of those have a score greater than 4.0 stars, and only 14% have a score above 3.0.  All of the games on the front page are among these high-scorers, and the site keeps things fresh by with weekly and monthly categories for top-rated new material.

The most important part of this procedure is that it is not  arbitrary.  Subjective taste is still involved, to be sure, and it doesn't mean some "good" game won't get passed over - it just means that the audience itself is the final arbiter of what's good or bad, not an accident of the platform's design, or the whim of a curator individually picking the winners and losers.

That said, Kongregate does give personal, curated attention to select titles by featuring them on the front page, and giving them "badges" for players to earn (when a game gets badges, it's swarmed with players).  Unlike the "featured" games on Steam or iOS, however, there's a degree of objectivity to these selections - featured games must meet a minimum rating score to qualify, and there's usually few enough of these that Kongregate can just pick the top three or four out of the latest batch of games.

Finally, Kongregate has started experimenting with a Netflix-style recommendation engine, where it uses your rating information to show you other games you might like, offsetting the mass-appeal bias of the global user rating.

Money

Kongregate has a huge audience, provides a great service to their players, and a top-notch discovery system. What more could you want?

Well, the one thing holding Kongregate back from being the store to end all stores is that... it isn't a store :)

Most of the games are free, and they've only recently begun experimenting with microtransactions. Furthermore, their focus is browser-based games, rather than downloadable titles or stand-alone apps. They have, however, expanded well beyond flash games, and now support Unity, Java, and HTML5.

Kongregate has been particularly successful with free-to-play flash MMO's, such as Spiral Knights and Realm of the Mad God.  The more traditional format that we see on Steam, giving away a free demo to sell a premium game - has only been used in a few Kongregate games so far. Successful examples include our own game, Defender's Quest, as well as the strategy fan-favorite Creeper World. While Defender's Quest did well with this model, we took a hit to our review score because some players didn't like the fact that it was a demo. Creeper World, on the other hand, managed to drives sales and avoid any backlash to their business model.

As these experiences attest, there's potential here, regardless of whether your business model is traditional or free-to-play. Given that Kongregate's parent company, GameStop, also owns the more traditional digital distribution platform Impulse (a Steam Competitor), I can see some potential synergy.

Summing Up

My magical meritocratic game store hasn't arrived yet, and it might not ever, but I think there's hope.

Today's stores each have their pros and cons - Steam is awesome but inaccessible, whereas iOS is open, but crowded and arbitrary.  Kongregate comes the closest by accepting everyone, and then dutifully sorting the wheat from the chaff and directing players to the games they'll love. The only missing piece - and it's a big piece - is turning it into an actual store.

Who knows what Kongregate will do - I have no idea if this business move would actually be good for them (although it would certainly be good for me!).  Furthermore, there's no reason someone else couldn't build the magic dream store, building on Kongregate's model just as Kongregate built on Newgrounds'.

There are a few "indie" alternatives to Steam like Indievania that are taking steps in this direction, but are still relatively small.  Kongregate's main advantage is that it already has a huge audience.

Regardless of who actually does it, however, the outlines of the blueprint have been drawn. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I don't think the dream is impossible anymore. Someday, someone might make an online game store that lets anyone succeed if their game is good enough.

A man can dream, right?

-Lars out

P.S.
Kongregate: if you're reading this, feel free to use these ideas. In exchange, please send one (1) billion of your Earth Dollars to my orbital battle-station, c/o the Department of Internet Money.

P.P.S.
Newgrounds: forget Kongregate! I always loved you best. Please send me a thousand squadrons of tanks, piloted by your witty and insightful Tank Men(TM). With them we will conquer the world and remake it in our glorious image.

Indie RPG's on sale TODAY

So, the Because we May sale just launched today, and about 180 or so games are participating.

I'd like to direct your attention to a select few of those that might pique your interest.

Indie RPG's!

Of course, you should definitely check out our own game - Defender's Quest, which is available during the sale for the low, low price of just $2.99 - your best opportunity to get the game and your right to free updates before our upcoming "Gold Edition" expansion is released.

The Indie RPG crowd is pretty tight-knit. There's not all that many of us, and so we like to help each other out.  Robert Boyd and Jay Barnson were kind enough to write about us when we first got started, and today I'd like to return the favor and "pay it forward" as it were, to other amazing Indie RPG's out there that need some love. Also since you liked our game, you just might like some of these, too.

No one's paying us anything to list these (I generally hate ads and won't accept them on this blog) - all of these are here because I find the game interesting and would like to pass on the news to you :) 

Also, you won't find this many low prices on Indie RPG's all in one place for quite some time!

To help you make up your mind, I've collected two reviews for each game.

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh Daon

 $9.95 (was $22.95)

Reviewed by: IndieRPGs, RPGWatch

Telepath RPG: Servants of God

$14.95 (was $24.95)

Reviewed by: Did-Not-Finish, The Indie Mine

Avadon: The Black Fortress

$4.99 (was $20.00)

Reviewed by: GameSpot, Zeboyd Games

Squids

$3.99 (was $6.99)

Reviewed by: TouchArcade, Gamezebo

Cardinal Quest

$2.00 (was $5.00)

Reviewed by: TruePCGaming, IndieGameMag

Cthulhu Saves the World + 

Breath of Death VII Double Pack

$1.49 (was $2.99)

Reviewed by: IGN, Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Dungeons of Dredmor

$2.49 (was $4.99)
Reviewed by: IGN, Bit-Gamer

I think that's enough for now :) I might add more to the list as the week goes on. Be sure to spread the word to all your friends and enjoy all these awesome games!

(To the developers: the images above are hotlinked directly from your sites because that was the easiest thing I could throw together in 5 minutes, and I figured you wouldn't mind since I'm promoting your game. If it's a problem, just let me know in the comments or shoot me an email and I will take the time to download the image to my own server to save you the bandwidth).

Quick News

Hey everybody! We've got a lot of awesome Defender's Quest news for you guys today!

First and foremost, we're making good progress on gold version.

Second, I'm pleased to announce that Defender's Quest will be featured in the upcoming Because We May sale, which starts tomorrow and will last through June 1st. During that week, Defender's Quest will be available for the low, low, price of just $2.99!

After the sale, the game goes back up to it's regular pre-release price of $6.99, and when gold edition comes out the price will go up to $9.99, so get your foot in the door now! Anyone who buys the game now will get free updates, which includes a free update to the gold edition.

So, here are the things that are new in Defender's Quest gold:

1) Awesome new art
2) Unique upgradeable loot
3) Magic books
4) Bonus battles
5) Sidequests
6) Mod support

I'll be posting some more details soon, but it's already 4 o'clock and I need to make sure this post actually gets done :)

So, first and foremost, click on the new picture of Slak to get a preview of our new awesome sprite art!

I'll be posting more stuff soon :) Thanks for following us!

Defender's Quest: By the Numbers

So, in case you haven't heard yet, Gamasutra posted our first ~70 days of sales stats as a featured article today:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/168303/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers.php


Read the full article for details, but here's the TL;DR version:

• ~$70K / ~14K sales in about 70 days
• Top revenue sources: Kongregate, Newgrounds, Rock, Paper, Shotgun
• 90% of revenue came from flash portals!!!!!!

Pay What You Want and the Four Currencies

Cross-posted on gamasutra

Today I'd like to apply my "four currencies" model to the "pay what you want" phenomenon.  Like piracy, this is a case where the results we observe don't match what conventional wisdom says should happen, and I use my "four currencies" theory to explain the discrepancy. 

A quick summary for new readers:

In my first two articles, I explain that while piracy costs no "money-dollars" ($M), it still has "time-dollar" ($T) and "pain-in-the-butt-dollar" $P costs, ie, the time and hassle of tracking down a torrent, as well as the risk of malware, especially for non-techies.  There's also an "integrity-dollar" $I cost, ie, piracy makes some people feel guilty, and adds a small risk of legal trouble.  So, although piracy costs zero $M, it has non-zero $T, $P, and $I costs.

Raising large hurdles lowers sales

Image courtesy of haven't the slightest    

The legitimate product has no $I cost, and with a quick and friendly purchasing experience, it will also be "cheaper" than piracy in terms of $T and $P, making the customer more willing to spend $M. On the other hand, DRM and treating players like criminals raises both $T and $P, and makes players feel less guilty about piracy, lowering its $I cost.

This is a super quick and over-simplified summary. See the original articles for more details.  

The Pay-What-You-Want Paradox 

Conventional wisdom suggests that customers who are free to pay what they want for something will pay as little as possible.  This was widely repeated before RadioHead released their In Rainbows album as PWYW, and again when the first Humble Indie Bundle was announced.  In both cases, the conventional wisdom was partly right - lots of people did pay only the minimum amount.  But many paid more, and by any measure both sales were big successes.

Before we get into that though, let's look at a model where the conventional nay-saying wisdom matches reality - voluntary donations for software downloads.

Donationware Doesn't Work

image courtesy of MindfulOne

Donation-supported software rarely works.  There's a few outliers but for the most part it's a terrible way to fund a project - but why?  Let's apply the 4-currencies model.

When a developer offers a free download link on her website with an optional donation button, she is legitimately offering the game for two different minimum "prices":

The 4-currency "costs" are always relative to each individual.
This is just a theoretical "average person" example. 

The $M price of donation is as low as possible - any positive value will do, so why don't most people donate even 1 cent?  Because they can already download the product quickly ($T) and painlessly ($P) for free ($M).  Since the developer herself provides the free option, most people don't even feel guilty ($I) about it.

Pulling out a credit card, typing a number into a paypal window, etc, is too much bother ($P+$T),  especially when the developer provides a legitimate option to skip all that.

Raising NO hurdle lowers sales

Image courtesy jim.rocco

Now, what if there was a minimum price?  Let's go with 1 cent.  Let's temporarily ignore the fact that transaction fees for such small amounts would actually cost the developer money.  With a 1 cent minimum, the two "prices" now look like this:

By removing the "don't pay" option, all we have left is paying any amount, or piracy.  Piracy costs no money, but takes time, is a pain, and makes many people feel guilty. The only low $I cost option left is buying legitimately.  If the developer makes the experience quick and painless, she lowers the $P and $T costs sufficiently that many would-be pirates become customers instead*.

*Some will always pirate, because their personal valuations of the $P/$T/$I costs are different from those shown above.  These players will likely never be customers, so there's no point in worrying about them. 

Raising a tiny hurdle raises sales

Image courtesy of sombraala

Since there's no option to download both legitimately and for free, the small $P and $T cost of pay-what-you-want won't seem too bad for most people, especially if the payment page is slick, professional, and user-friendly.  Once these customers are over this initial barrier, purse strings will open, because the real obstacle was $P and $T, not $M*.

*For some people, such as those who don't have credit cards, or who live in countries not serviced by the payment processor, any amount of $M results in an insurmountable $P barrier, because there's no way for them to send the developer money.

There are some for whom money will still be an obstacle - this is the group that's paying only $0.01 or $1.  For those with a little more to spare, however, the results speak for themselves - people are more than willing to part with their $M, giving $5, $10, $100, or even $1000+.

Making it work for you

All this is simply to show how - and more importantly, why - the Pay What You Want model can work.  This doesn't mean it works in all cases.

The most successful variants of this strategy exhibit the following features:

1. Limited time
2. Product of significant value
3. Generates goodwill

The limited time is important, because it serves as a call to action - get it now while the price is incredibly low.

I have to admit that although I bought the first few Humble Bundles, I haven't bought some of the latest ones.  This is mostly because I simply don't have the time to play all those games, and I have pretty particular interests so what's on offer isn't always interesting to me.

I did, however, pay $10 for both Proun and Sleep is Death as PWYW because they caught my interest and were well worth the amount I paid.

The last point is the one I want to explore a little before signing off.  I believe people are more likely to behave cynically - that is, to pay the minimum amount, the more impersonal and detached their relationship is with the creator.  The more they see the creator as a real person with real needs, and the more they develop a personal connection with your work, the more likely they are to reward you with more than the minimum amount. This is why building a community around your game is very important, and why it's also important not to be a huge jerk, because it makes it easier for people to justify pirating your games.

The Humble Indie Bundle generated goodwill through its charity drive, by offering cross-platform versions of the games on sale, and through the sheer novelty of the promotion (which by now has worn off).

Also, anyone who tried to donate less than $1 was greeted with this picture before their order was finalized:

This likely had the effect of raising the $I cost of any transaction less than $1.

So, those are my thoughts on PWYW and the four currencies. I think the PWYW model is here to stay and can be successful in the future, but the novelty factor has now worn off.  That being said, PWYW seems like a much better option for generating revenue than an optional donation.

Part 4 : "Free-to-Play and the Four Currencies."

Details on upcoming GOLD version

EDIT:
For everyone who's been asking, YES! If you have bought any version of the game so far, you will most definitely receive the GOLD edition as a FREE udpate. With Level Up Labs "Free Updates" does indeed mean free updates :)

Hey Defender's Quest fans!

Monday is when we will normally issue updates, if we have any ready. We don't have one this week because I've been busy working on gold features, which will be held back until they're all done and then released all at once.  When we do have udpates, though, rest assured, you'll see them on Monday :)

Also, Anthony's at GDC all week so it's just me and James holding the fort, so it might take a little longer to answer emails / respond to forum posts, etc.

So, with that all being said, let me tell you guys what we've been up to lately! Announcing...

Defender's Quest GOLD EDITION

Gold edition will be version 1.0 of the game, but we haven't definitively and clearly stated what will and won't be in the game.

Now that development is well under way, here's what we can commit to:

New Art!
Yes, we're giving the game a major face-lift! We're keeping the character designs mostly the same, but we're putting in all new backgrounds, new sprite animations, and depending on time and budget might overhaul  the UI and some other elements as well.

For digital painting stuff, we've hired the amazingly talented Karen Petrasko, who's worked for  Amaranth Games, PassionFruit Games, Wadjet Eye Games, Gamenauts, and others.

Here's the new title screen she did for us:

Here's another quick tease - the new "golden man enthroned" background:

We'll share some more art in the future as we get it done :) We also have some sprite artists, too, but we'll share more details on that once we get some stuff done at that front.

Note for those with art-style grumps:
If you're incredibly attached to our old art style for some reason, we'll consider an option to switch between the styles. This will require us to switch the way we load assets to the game, so we'll only do it if we have time, it's technically feasible, and enough people really, really want it.  Unlike last time, we will have two complete sets of art , so it's at least possible this go-round.

This would add the native ability to mod the art style for the game, so it'd have other uses as well, but we've got a ton on our plate already, so unless there's a lot of demand please understand that though it's doable, it's a bit low on our priority list.

More End-Game Bonus Battles
We'll be including more bonus battles for sure.  Right now we're leaning towards most of these being "epic" battles, ie, a fixed-wave challenge, such as 50 or 100 waves, with one or more "endless" challenges as the very last ones, so there's a natural progression to the list.  Haven't decided for sure yet, but basically - more bonus battles!

Doing Something With Unique Equipment
You'll notice you can't sell any of your unique equipment.  This is because we're doing something with it in Gold edition - we're not sure just what yet, though!  Basically, I want there to be some mechanism for upgrading these items into "super" versions that are viable end-game choices. What exactly that means though is still TBD.


New Game PLUS
A common feature in JRPG's is a "New Game+" mode where you can start a new game using the data from a save slot that's already beaten the game, and experience some new features.  Chrono Trigger famously did this, letting you retain all your experience and equipment to blaze through the game and experience some secret endings.

In Defender's Quest, all you have to do to enable NG+ mode is beat the game. Any challenge level will do, so even if you only eke by with blue stars on casual mode, you'll still get there.

When you beat the game, your save slot will look like this*:

After you've started a New Game+, it will look like this:

*Just a design mockup. Final look will depend on the new UI and sprite styling.

"Play" will take you to your normal save slot.  "Play+" will take you to your New Game+.  The data for NG+ works under a "two-slots in one" model.

Your party data is shared between the two worlds.  All levels, xp, equipment, scrap, skills, etc, gained in one will be exactly the same in the other.  Your map and battle progress in each world, however, is tracked separately.  Since party data is shared, when you start a NG+, Azra starts out at full strength with all her xp, levels, and spells.  You start with an empty party but whenever you encounter each hero, like Slak, Ketta, etc, that character class is unlocked in NG+ mode, and you'll now see all of your recruits from that class at their old powered-up strength with all their equipment and skills.

All of the battles will be given a face-lift for NG+ that raises the challenge.  We could have just bumped everything up by X levels, but that sounds boring.  However, creating new content for each and every challenge would be way too much work.  What we're doing instead is creating new monster types that only show up in NG+ mode, and creating a global replacement rule across the game.

That means, every monster in normal mode will have a corresponding "alternate" version in NG+, kind of like how in the original Super Mario Bros' "second quest" the turtles were replaced with fireproof buzzy beetles, which in turn were replaced by unstompable spikeys.  We'll also apply a global monster level bump of some sort, and that will be how we generate the new battle content for NG+.  Hopefully that will be a good amount of new and interesting content without too much extra work.

These new monster types will have new and interesting behaviors, not just rehashes of stats and existing abilities. What exactly those will be is still a secret, though :)

For boss battles we might manually hand-craft the NG+ versions of those, we haven't decided yet.  Battle rewards will probably be new, and there'll most likely be a new set of non-unique items in the game so you still have stuff to spend money on.

New Game+ will also raise the level cap, for obvious reasons :)

The next thing about New Game+ mode is that it will include some other special features. Namely...

Side Quests

We've identified natural places to insert new missions that run perpendicular to the normal story arc. These will inject a bit more story and gameplay content and generally add spice.  These battles will be special and do things like restrict which classes you can use and a few other surprises so they're not just "more battles" (because we already have lots of that with NG+)

So, first off - why are Side Quests only in NG+ mode? Why not also in normal mode? A few reasons:

1. Most of you have already beaten the normal game
   If we include sidequests in the normal quest, there's little point in playing them in the normal mode as you'll be way over-leveled.
   
2. We like the "core" story experience of normal mode
   Side quests tend to slow games down.  We feel normal mode has really good pacing and a driving central motivation pushing things forward.  We feel that in normal mode, the sidequests would be distracting to new players, but in NG+ where you've seen the old stuff already, these will be a nice new treat.
   
3. If it ain't broken...
   We've got a good thing going with normal mode, so in the unlikely event sidequests totally destroy the narrative, it only affects a special bonus mode and doesn't tarnish first impressions of the game.

These sidequests will reveal a little bit more of the backstory of Defender's Quest and also give us more chances for individual characterization, as well as cool new battle set-pieces. The next feature is related to this end...

Azra's Journal

Being a Librarian, Azra has been writing down her experience in the Pit.  In NG+ mode a prominent "Journal" button will be added to the UI which lets you read her thoughts:

New Journal entries will be added as you progress through the game, documenting Azra's observations and generally fleshing out the experience through details, notes, and sketches.  We're going to try to nail that "British Naturalist in the Galapagos" vibe.

So, what's the point of the journal? And why is it only in NG+?

1. Gives our writer something to do
   Most of the NG+ features are art and programming heavy, but this will keep James busy and will hopefully provide some content that people who love story will really be able to dig into.
   
2. Provide NG+ story rewards
   In normal mode, before and after every battle you get a little cutscene, which is a great little reward.  In NG+, you've seen all the cutscenes already (and yes, we'll add an option to auto-skip cutscenes) so the reward is diminished.  This should provide a new story reward for those who are into that.
   
3. PacingThe Journal is available only in NG+ mode for pacing reasons, again.  In normal mode, I would be afraid people would feel obligated to click on it every time it shows a new entry, and since normal mode has so many cutscenes already it'd be in serious danger of slowing the player down.
   

We might use the journal to provide basic info-dumps on in-game things, like an enemy bestiary, for example.  If we do that, we'd probably make those basic functions available in normal mode, but keep the extra story entries as exclusives for NG+.

So, those are some things we can formally announce for Defender's Quest Gold edition!

One last thing, because some people have asked?

Why Gold Edition? Why not a sequel?

Some people have asked why we're bothering with such a big update to the game rather than focusing on immediately doing a sequel. Some have mentioned that the updates might be of only marginal value in attracting new sales and that our time would be better spent making an all-new game for our existing fanbase.

There's several reasons we're doing GOLD edition:

1. This is the game we want to make
   This is the definitive version of Defender's Quest, and we would have finished it to this degree if we could have afforded to, but we had to release early to survive. Now that we're doing pretty good, we can afford to roll out these bonuses and make the game we're happy with.
   
2. We really want to get picked up by Steam/HIB, etcWe've submitted to Steam and the Humble Indie Bundle, but haven't heard back from either.  These added bonus features - in particular the new art style - will give us a better chance of being noticed. If we get picked up by either we could likely expand our audience by 10x at least.
   
3. We want to put our best foot forward for Desura/Impulse/GamersGate/IndieVania/etc
   Regardless of whether Steam/HIB come knocking, we're going to launch on the other big digital distribution portals, and we want to polish up the game a bit before then so that we can really drive sales on first impressions.
   
4. Attract another round of press attention
   Releasing a big update will hopefully get us some more reviews. By responding to all the criticisms we've seen so far, hopefully the next round of articles will be even better :)

Oh right, I forgot one last thing:

RELEASE DATE : When it's done.

We slipped on our original release date for early release, and we're not making that mistake twice. Our honest estimate is something like a month or two, but who knows.  Could be longer, could be shorter. 

We'll keep you posted.

-Lars out.