Ideas to Fund & Promote FOSS games

[Conoktra]

Do realize some facts that are inherited by the nature of FOSS games:

1. You will never make as much $$ as proprietary games unless your game is proprietary too. For this fact you will lack in support, developers, and other required resources.
2. While the concept of FOSS is great ([free]dom), it is by nature incompatible with making money (the "free" aspect). You are often left depending on the "good nature" of people to make any income, and that is nowhere near reliable.
3. All FOSS-business models are vulnerable to competition. Very vulnerable. Consider a MMO game that is FOSS but makes money through the online gaming service. There is nothing stopping someone else--who didn't invest a dime in development--from offering the same service and making money off of your hard work. Heck, they could even offer it for free. All this because you have licensed it saying it was Ok to do. A prime example of this fact is that of Nexuiz/Xonotic: http://xeno.planetxonotic.com/forum/....php?id=150%29
4. The special exception to this is for large corporations in scenarios such as Andriod, VP8, etc, but are completely worthless for non-multi-billion-dollar-corporate projects (aka: us).

[F1r3st0rm]

What if you allowed for people to gain the software for free and modify it for free, but to use special features and extras would cost a little bit of money? Kind of like how Combat Arms lets you play for free, but you can pay for extra stuff

[Omegus]

When I play a game I feel that I should not have to pay for extra stuff. The items or extra stuff should already be in the game. I like it when a game has downloadable content where it expands the game by adding a ton of new content for a extra price.


When you buy a major label you are doing just that buying a label. I feel that price should be modest but with also saying that, if I purchase a game I have some expectations on what I am purchasing . I do not want a game to have a terrible story/system/voice actors.

I see FOSS games as casual games like apps on an Ipod or tablet. Not to say they could not be major hitters but when you make a game free you do not feel "Compelled" to finish the game. When you buy a game you need to beat it because you spent your hard earned money to buy that game. It also gives you that self satisfaction.

A buddy of mine is making a Final Fantasy Tactics clone called (Tethical) but the gimmick of this game is that it will be an Online game. Now this game in my mind has massive potential for making money even if he charges $4.00 he will make his money back because people want to play a "online final fantasy tactics". Funny enough he is using the Panda3D engine.

If I had a millions to make a game company I would make my games open source but I would trademark the crap out of everything else like music, icons, characters the whole works but the code. Because if my company is good I can recreate the great feelings that I give fans when we make games. Plus like I have said on other topics I would start out making cheap games using the money made from those games to fund one massive game . I would then distribute through Linux , Apple , and PS3. Is this logical? NO but advertising is. I would sell out my major game with the main character in an in game video drinking Pepsi while pounding back a Big Mac then wiping his face with his Nike shirt .


I did a survey in Toronto and Seattle and found out of 200 people (well it was 173 in seattle and 189 in toronto) in each city(400 people) that what sells for software in general (so App, games, music players, etc..) is that it needs to look good and simple. Lets face it masses are not smart. This is why Jersey Shore is still on the air.

[Modplanman]

Made a (very small) update, adding the example of Ryzom.

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2 illustrative examples to help people get past the idea that "you can't compete with free" or "you can only compete with free badly" - Nina Paley and Jason Rohrer.

Nina Paley created Sita Sings the Blues, released under CC-BY-SA. She has made significant income from the film, and in fact has testified to earning more than she would have going all rights reserved.

http://questioncopyright.org/sita_distribution

So far, Nina has made more money by this method than any traditional (i.e., exclusive) distributor was offering before the film's release. Since releasing it for free distribution in February of 2009, she's received approximately $28,000 in donations and another $25,000 in sales of DVDs and other film-related merchandise from the online store. (Note that the donations are dedicated to paying back music licensing fees she had to pay to be able to release the film at all; there's more on that here.) The average donation is a bit over $10 US (but that's not counting the rare outliers, the occasional donations of $500 or $1000 -- if you include those, the average donation is around $30).

Best of all, her income stream is fairly steady. This is the opposite of the traditional "burst and fade" distribution model that so many works endure, dragged out of circulation prematurely to avoid competing with new releases from the same publisher. Because Nina's film is audience-distributed, it's in circulation forever, whenever and wherever people want to see it. And all those audience members are potential customers and donors, as the financial results bear out.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...23375986.shtml

Jason Rohrer is a renowned game designer/developer, who at the same time as having games like Gravitation in the repos of distributions has Inside a Star Filled Sky for sale on Steam. He puts his games into the public domain (IaSFS shows an OSI logo, so it might be under a license), gives source code with sales of his games and has gained significant sales and press attention.

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/

Both are examples of artists who have both made a living and not relied on any or at least very little copyright protection (certainly no more than the GPL provides).