LudumData

Looking For Advice

[raw] LD37LD #37 16. Mar 2017 · 04:01 UTC · 97 days after compo start by DatCodingGuy · 3

Hey everyone,

I’ve been making games for about 3-4 years now with GameMaker Studio (version 2 how recently come out 😀 ) and one of my projects for IT at school was to make a game. My teacher was very impressed with the quality of my game and told me that I could probably make indie games in my spare time and make some money off them. I’ve been thinking hard about this for a few hours and I thought I’d ask a community of indie game developers what their thoughts are on the best approach.

After thinking for a while I think the best approach for me would be to use patreon and having a “pay $x every month” system. I know it’s not the conventional way of doing it, I know that when most people start a gamedev project they set up a one-time campaign, advertise and hope they get all the money they need to mae the game. But I want to take a different approach.

What I was going to do is make a $5 or $10 per month subscription and for that price you get behind the scenes videos of my journey designing and developing the game, your name in the credits, closed beta access to the game, access to a closed facebook group where I can directly interact with my patrons and probably more and then release the game free and open source for people to play and learn from.

One of my friends was saying “why would anyone pay money and end up playing a free game?”, my response is that the money they’re paying isn’t for the game, it’s for behind the scenes videos which can act as tutorials and/or a blog on the process I would take to produce a ‘professional’ grade game (since it’s a free game and only made by one person don’t expect Call of Duty quality) and being able to beta test and directly interact with me to be able to give input and feedback on the game.

I could make the games paid and polish up the game a little more but I like the idea of being able to make my games open source and giving back to the community.

What do you think of my idea?

Comments

16. Mar 2017 · 19:45 UTC
I think it would be difficult to get people to pay for something without knowing exactly what they get.
bml
18. Mar 2017 · 23:04 UTC
I’ll assume your game development, game design, marketing, teaching and customer service skills are strong. And that you’re driven, productive and focused enough to stick with this. The videos you create will have reasonable production value, not make me cringe and have some entertainment value. You will also need to post high quality content on a regular basis.
Stuntddude
20. Mar 2017 · 16:44 UTC
I would say you might be thinking too far ahead. Patreon could make you money, and it’s free to use, so there’s no particular reason not to give it a try, but it could also go nowhere. The outcome depends on a lot of factors including a huge amount of luck. The bottom line, though, is to have something people want to give money to. People don’t usually give money for the reward tiers on Patreon. They pledge because they want to see a project succeed. If you don’t believe me, just look at the reward tiers of successful projects. They usually aren’t that substantial. Consider the two that bml mentioned, for example. Bay 12’s only reward tier is at $1, and it gives you essentially nothing. Yandere Dev’s $1 tier gives you literally nothing, and his only other tier is a $100 tier to get your company’s logo on the splash screen, which makes a minority of the project’s total income.