Is the pricing that unusual/patentable?
Sounds like a "drink exchange" to me. For those who don't know...
Basically, you have TV screens around the bar, showing live the cost of all the different drinks on offer. The more people buy a particular drink, the more the price goes up. If nobody is buying a drink, it becomes really cheap. If you're smart, you end up getting absolutely wasted for next to nothing, by drinking loads of different random drinks that you'd never normally touch. It's a good system
I can't help thinking that word of mouth leads to piracy rather than sales (especially on small pc games). A lot of people would only buy a game if they thought it looked good and didn't know anyone who already had it.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here btw - I do not in any way condone or wish to encourage such unlawful behavior.
I don't think a flat rate of 16% is workable. Depending on the amount of work the author has put into the game, marketing may be a small or very large part of the overall "value" (for want of a better word).
I also agree that you should forget about burning discs. Noone has a problem with mp3 downloads, and the average indie game would take less time to download than a music album (that's certainly true of klik games at least). Plus, PC games players are likely to be more computer/internet savvy anyway. If you're going to have some other games with huge filesizes, then perhaps offer disc burning as an extra option, but let the author choose.
Anyway, I don't want to sound too negative, because I like the general idea, and wish you every success.
Simply put; it's not a great idea if you actually expect to turn a profit and prevent losing it all in a lawsuit.
It sounds to me like you're suggesting treating game developers like profit instead of business partners. There's far too much bickering over profit cuts so far. Keep in mind that you will need to form a relationship with the game designers, play each game until it's completion, and scour the source. Only then could you determine if the game is endorsable and marketable. If not, you've wasted a good deal of unpaid time simply to turn the game designers down.
Review is absolutely necessary, and each game will need to be held to ESRB-like standards. Without review, it's only a matter of time before some design company brings a Tetris clone to you that features hidden pornographic images, secret obscene text, or overly-gory violence(block on block blood fest, anyone?). Then you have some soccer mom throwing a lawsuit at your ass.
I'm simply saying that's a lot of very necessary work to be charging 16% on a $5.00 web-purchasable game. If you charge more, you'll draw fewer clients. If you charge less, you'll lose money in labor costs.
The only way this would work out well for both you and the game producers is if the game sold for far more. $40 to $60 for instance. Unfortunately, with the promise of high profit, it's likely doubtful a professional game design company would come to you for marketing, rather than trying to market the game themselves.
You'll need to find a way to offer and market the game so that it's no loss to you if the game in question doesn't sell well or isn't appropriate for all audiences. The simplest way I can think of is creating an actual "pay-per-game" download site. Rate games by content, allow buyer interaction, and place disclaimers on games which are still waiting review.
That would allow you to quickly review a game without having to be horribly critical. After the game is uploaded to your site, throw a "Game has not been rated" disclaimer on the page, and begin quasi-marketing it. By quasi-marketing, I mean marketing with the understanding that you really don't want to sell the hell out of the game just yet. The profits you pull in should be enough to pay for the man hours spent extensively game testing for content later on. Drawing fewer customer downloads at first may help prevent legal issues from occurring, too. Purchasers will do a lot of your early game review for you so long as you allow them a place to leave comments.
Once enough interest has been collected, you'll already be making your 16% profit on every download, and the flat-rate cost will cover site upload. The profit you've made from each download thus far can be utilized to fully review the game officially; playing it through until completion, and scouring the source code.
Then you can rate the game to categorize it's appropriateness, or talk to the game developers about changing features to suit consumers. Once rated, use some more of that 16% profit per download to market the hell out of the title. If the title sells well, increase cost until profit plateaus. If the game doesn't sell well, reduce cost and cross your fingers.
That's the only "safe" method I could offer. Most of it's pretty Captain Obvious stuff, and I figure I'm just filling in the blanks.
Edited by The_Antisony
ChrisD> Employer: Say, wanna see a magic trick?
ChrisD> Employee: Uhh… sure, boss.
ChrisD> Employer: Your job! It just disappeared! Pack your things and leave! Pretty good trick, huh?
Originally Posted by Sketchy Is the pricing that unusual/patentable?
The whole supply/demand thing's been around since the start of commerce; I prefer to compare it to budget airlines Anyway, ideas, formulas, and concepts are not patentable, it's the usage of them. I could tell everyone about how it works, but you can only patent how you implement it. Anyway, some negativity is all good, better to be negative than to act like you agree.
@Antisony: Anyway, yeah, I calculated everything and considered what everyone said, and I don't think we'd make a good profit on 16%. Better to charge a flat rate for it, like $2 per sale, with the developer keeping the rest of the profits. That other stuff you wrote, well, the marketing team would do it first. Once things get heavy, we could hire some professional gamers to play the games through and comment on them. And the lawyer should be able to handle whatever trouble developers may bring up; if you try to sell malware, he'd make sure the soccer moms bite the responsible developer first
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
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Edited by The_Antisony
Anyway, ideas, formulas, and concepts are not patentable, it's the usage of them. I could tell everyone about how it works, but you can only patent how you implement it. Anyway, some negativity is all good, better to be negative than to act like you agree.
