The other day I came across an interesting blog post about game piracy. In a nutshell the authors of an indie game claim that they are seeing 95% of the high scores they collect reported by stolen copies of the game. Given such a huge rate of piracy I started to think about what alternative business models might get around the problem. After all, It’s hard to compete with free and empirically it seems that people are willing to torrent the game even if they know it’s the work of a small studio. Today I thought I’d look at a model based on donations from fans and how that might or might not work.
First off I’ve started a poll over at the TIGForums feel free to check out the comments and be sure to vote. The question posed is:
How likely is it that an indie gamer would donate money for a game he played and enjoyed?
Simple question and from reading comments on some blogs and in the thread people do seem to be willing to donate. In fact, judging from the comments in the thread so far I would wager that the majority of people currently do or are planning on donating to their favorite authors. All of this makes the results of the poll quite surprising:
What we’re probably seeing here is a degree of over optimism when predicting your own actions, or the group of people who commented in the thread are for whatever reason more likely to donate and thus not representative of the larger community.
Regardless this makes it hard to imagine supporting yourself through donations. One of the refrains that came out of the comments was that people are often wary of donating money after a game is released. These same people are entirely comfortable with pre-ordering a game months in advance or even somehow sponsoring the developer ahead of the game’s release, but the idea of donating after the game’s release causes them to pause. To quote one person:
Well, I never have donated in the past. I happily pre-order and buy indie games, but to me it’s weird to just give money away.
So I think that part of the problem is how the exchange is framed. The solution may be to change the language and actions from a donations-based model to a patronage-based model.
In the patronage model the author doesn’t ask for donations after the fact but instead seeks donations so he can create future work. This changes the request from “If you liked my game please donate” to “If you’d like to see more of this please donate”. I’ve also seen some indies tweak the model to include token goods in exchange for financial support. For instance, the people behind Blurst are experimenting with the idea, from the Wall Street Journal:
Later this year, Blurst games will conduct an experiment. In addition to giving away its games for free, it’ll charge $20 for a six month subscription for additional features such as a downloadable version. Blurst will also be taking requests from fans to add features over time.
Obviously this blurs the line between patronage and traditional business models. Still by giving away their games for free and tying the “premium” version to future features and works Blurst makes a direct appeal to gamers as patrons.
Will Blurst be successful or will everyone simply play enjoy their games for free? What alternative business models have you thought about?
Hello, my name is Alex Schearer. I grew up in New York and currently live in Seattle.
4 Comments
Woah, hold on. Remember that as it is, you said that the game makers are getting by with 95% piracy rate. Your graph seems to imply that maybe 30% would, and that could be enough to get by, or at least a big improvement.
Also, another model I thought of, similar to the patronage model, is the ransom model. Release a demo of your game for free. Tell people, “I’m collecting donations for this game, and I will only release the full version once I’ve collected $X”.
Wait, sorry; looking at the actual NUMBERS on your graph, it looks like 10%. Still, sounds like it could possibly turn out better than the apparent 5% now.
Haha, I like the ransom model, though it may not be that different in practice. I think you raise a fair point about the graph (which I realize now is missing the sample size sadly) which is also echoed by the Wall Street Journal. Namely, that a small set of followers can be enough to bankroll the entire operation even in the face of extreme piracy. That said, I think there are a few caveats. Specifically I think what that smallish set of followers can bankroll is a set of smallish games produced by a handful developers. That’s fine but has consequences for the more capitol intensive fair we’re used to on consoles. Also, while the model may work for a single developer would it scale to support the entire eco-system? Or would we find ourselves in a situation where a small group of rapid fans support the entire indie scene but that the class of profitable indie developers is vanishingly small?
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Nice post though.