Monetizing Eleven to be self supporting
in Ideas
Hello Glitchery! I'm a diehard Glitch fan, can't wait for it to be available again. I'm also a video game designer, credited on AAA games. I'd like to help.
I was thinking about how Glitch didn't make enough money to pay for everything last time, and I think this can be corrected in a way that won't drive us diehard fans crazy. The key will be "speeding it up." If you've ever played Elvenar, you'll know that they have diamonds, you buy them with real cash, and then you can use them to get special decorations for your village to add Culture points, OR to speed up things instead of waiting, such as building upgrades, etc.
I think that's a key. Speed it up. The trick is to make sure it won't ruin the timed mini-missions, because strategy first; but combined with donations for the servers and maintenance crew, kickstarter and other social avenues, this game can not only come back to life, but can make enough money to stay that way!!
I can write you a spec detailing the assets to control with speed options if you like.
I was thinking about how Glitch didn't make enough money to pay for everything last time, and I think this can be corrected in a way that won't drive us diehard fans crazy. The key will be "speeding it up." If you've ever played Elvenar, you'll know that they have diamonds, you buy them with real cash, and then you can use them to get special decorations for your village to add Culture points, OR to speed up things instead of waiting, such as building upgrades, etc.
I think that's a key. Speed it up. The trick is to make sure it won't ruin the timed mini-missions, because strategy first; but combined with donations for the servers and maintenance crew, kickstarter and other social avenues, this game can not only come back to life, but can make enough money to stay that way!!
I can write you a spec detailing the assets to control with speed options if you like.
Comments
The money issues Glitch had were down to the venture capitalist funding. There was never going to be enough financial return to satisfy them. We have no one to please but ourselves. We will have server costs to cover, possibly a few bits of software licensing depending...that's where we're going to start, is covering those costs. There are other things being discussed behind the scenes, but nothing that is ready to be shared with the public. We also intend to respect the original design by not monetizing the actual gameplay. Monetizing building projects would take away the key element of the game, which was cooperative development. Credits and whatnot are still under discussion, but it's very likely that purchasing them will be for the same reasons that existed before (teleport tokens, fancy hats, shiny wallpaper, etc).
First of all, yes, Eleven is a beautiful game. And it has a great original design, not monetizing the gameplay. I'm for preserving that if at all possible.
Second of all, on a hobby-level scale of just 20 people on one server, you are absolutely correct, money is not an issue, as you can pass the hat for the one-two servers needed to run the game. I'm thinking about scaled up Eleven where hundreds of fans could play it again, yet pay for the dozen servers and the people monitoring them 24-7, as a full time job, is possible.
I know about venture capitalists, of course, and I know that they are concerned about getting their money back. They make investments in things with the hope of getting double or more back on the money they put into it. This game is not a good target for that because of its current model of not monetizing anything.
What I'm saying, as a diehard fan of Glitch/Eleven, is that it needs to make money somehow. Wouldn't you rather quit all your day jobs and work on Eleven all the time instead? That would be an ideal, right? And to do that, each person doing the writing, the graphics, the programming, the scheduling, and the testing, along with the server crew, is going to need incomes big enough to support themselves and their families.
Okay, so back to ideas about it. Here's more suggestions.
1. The unloved idea about monetizing just the speed it up aspects of the game. (Not restricting buildings, just if you want something done in the blink of an eye in stead of waiting, pay.)
2. Subscription monthly, annually, or some sort of time-based system to the game servers. I'd pay.
3. Advertising in game. Oh yeah, we all hate this one.
4. Advertising out of game, on the forum sites, the game access point page and other places. Still hate this one.
5. Purchase to play. You have to pay a certain amount to get in. And then you're in. Or by the character, in case you want multiple characters. You get a 30 day trial with your player to see if you like it. People will get hooked, it is, as we all agree, a beautiful game.
6. Micro transactions, but of course, we all agree those aren't ideal either...
7. Temporary for start, Patreon/Kickstarter/
Numbers will need crunching to figure out how much it needs to make in one year to support everyone working so hard on it. Labor of love can be career.
Thanks
We are self-funding at the moment because we can. To take money from people now adds a burden of expectation we are not prepared to deal with as a volunteer effort. This part is slow, and I know that is frustrating to everyone (even us). There's no guarantee that if we kickstarted/fundraised/begged for money until we could swim in it like Scrooge McDuck, that we could make it go faster...we all work in some fashion, and none of us would be able to afford to preemptively quit on faith that we can get it working AND make it an instant financial success. Once we do get to the point that we can launch, we will see where we are. I can assure everyone that at this point, the goal is to get the game running the way it was when it was shut down.
I did have one crazy additional thought, on the same level as Glitch itself. Could Eleven be the first nonprofit video game ever put out there? I mean, seriously! Why not? I think it would carry the spirit of the game to a whole new level and encourage all the right things.
Thanks for answering my thread!