Possible benefits / routes of monetizing

seiyria commented 9 years ago

Please note, this is not an immediate priority, but something that will be worked on for a long, long time (until the game is "version 1.0").

Eventually, IdleLands will need to cover its server costs. Here are some possible things that both exist and could exist to help alleviate this. As for what a "subscription" would cost, I don't know (no more than 1-5$ / mo). This is just a brainstorming thread. With my current set of beliefs, the game will not be pay to play, nor pay to win, but it might be "pay to access some [optional] content." The game will also, always be open source. No exceptions.

I also want to be very clear: I have strong doubts of this game being super duper profitable; all I'm looking to do short term is cover the costs of the infrastructure so the game can keep innovating. I plan to take any earnings and invest them back into the game unless it takes off, in which case it will probably have to get turned into a proper business (or adopted into my current legal entity).

Here are some possible avenues for revenue generation:

Donate button
Patreon
recurring payments through another medium
"stretch goal" unlocking (patreon goal: unlock X class for everyone! -- otherwise, only donators would get it)
microtransactions (but really, what can you microtransaction here?)
player run advertisements getting priority (they could still make them normally, but they wouldn't have any sort of priority)
running player advertisements into X players adventure logs, or via IRC.

Here are some possible benefits:

Change your class at will (provided you've been that class before).
Buy a teleport to (nearly) anywhere at any time. (probably with a time limit) Possibly, instead you get a once a day teleport to a teleport room, which has many common teleports (and possibly less common ones). Lock out the teleports that the player does not have access to. Could be once a week for non-premium players, and once a day for premium players.
More ways for players to keep on top of their data (RSS feeds, more)
More integrations with other services
temporarily subscriber-only worlds (and by extension: boss gear, classes, guild locations, etc) (probably only temporary - 2-4 weeks at most)
Data feeds offered to other developers who want a live feed of IdleLands updates in their game
~~larger inventories~~
exclusive guild hall (seats all buildings)
larger adventure log
higher item stat caps (say, 400%)
titles
free boost to town crier events
fame
VIP access to content (1 month preview)
a special pet
~~less time between actions (9 seconds instead of 10, for example)~~ (not necessary, the game already goes quite fast)
discount on in-game items (via shop, guild shop, guild buffs, etc)
always online player (tough to say, but maybe - or possibly make your player stay on 30 minutes after you log out, instead of 10 seconds?)
access to a subscriber-only IRC server (ehhh)
the ability to remove providences at will
access to the "clubhouse" (not yet created) which could have a bunch of trainers or other miscellaneous benefits
optionally receive a daily/hourly summary of your character (ehhh)
access to a bouncer on the subscriber only IRC server (ehhh)

Things that will never happen:

(automated*) Advertisements of any form on any website (If there is a relevant site that wants to advertise to idlelands, that would be fine)

Oipo commented 9 years ago

Microtransaction ideas:

Uploading your own sprite, screened by a mod
Global shouts to all active and/or inactive players, for e.g. guild recruiting
Longer retention of data / more statistics on idle.land

seiyria commented 9 years ago

@Oipo: re: advertisements, see #637

ghost commented 9 years ago

Those benefits are all fairly open to a P2W model.

I would rather move towards a cash shop where you can buy services or benefits such as:

changing your character's name
changing your guild's name
buying more guild slots (and putting the default at a low but fair number)
when an event happens to your character, your nickname is coloured (on IRC)
more custom strings
"the Generous" title
initiating a server wide event

Elaboration on that last point, a subscriber could activate a server wide event once every day. This would randomly select a number of players to participate in a special kind of event. The person who activated this is not guaranteed to be part of the event, but does have a higher weighting over everyone else.

I think any real benefits that are up for purchase should be things that benefit others as well as yourself.

I think Oipo's ideas are very good as well.

Stretch goals aren't a bad idea, but I would give subscribers "early access" to classes instead of permanently locking non-subscribers out of them. I wouldn't make this a long early access period, maybe a week or so. This gives subscribers the opportunity to get there first, but doesn't lock non-subscribers out of it completely.

Oipo commented 9 years ago

Your post made me think about how Reddit does it currently: They give subscribers a pretty long window of trying resource intensive features, such as remembering what links a redditor has visited accross computers. But they also have a very good model of having people give away Reddit Gold.

We could possible incentivize giving other players a subscription by having achievements based on number of people having donated a subscription (of at least one month?) to. Though I do fear that people will end up begging other players to donate a month to them. Will get back to this later.

seiyria commented 9 years ago

I think I would be "ok" with having, say, a 2-3 week period where new classes are only available to subscribers.

I'm also definitely ok with people gifting other people memberships, and getting achievements for it. I think people who beg for it will just get ignored, and if it's excessive, we can always be like "bro, stop" -- and possibly include moderator action (as much as I'm against it, it's necessary for spam protection and such). If it really escalated, the simple fix is to fix the ban command and enact temporary bans for people that continue to beg. I'm mostly against this because it can lead to power-hungry people being, well, like that, but it's something that should exist just in case.

seiyria commented 9 years ago

All,

I've set up a patreon here (redacted). Patreon emphasises the 1/2/3$ tiers, but I felt like there should be higher tier(s) as well ('m open to adjusting the amounts as necessary). I figured there could be an achievement that grants you certain benefits for each tier. Of course, each successive tier grants you the previous tier as well.

What I'm looking for are: what sorts of benefits would you be interested in at these respective tiers? Do these tiers seem fair?

My current set of ideas:

Patron - small boost to fame (in comparison, since we don't know what fame is or how it will work yet), small amount of advertisement credit for the Town Crier, and early access to "exclusive content" (ie, in-development worlds that are created after the first one is done, and holiday content as it's created -- released to all when it is totally complete), and a title ("Patron")
Bronze - bigger boost to fame (stacks with previous tier), "Bronze Patron" title
Silver - more fame, new title
Gold - more fame, new title
Saint - more fame, new title

Obviously, as you can see, these are pretty bland goals at first, but I'm here to ask for how to expand on it.

Also, I'm honestly not really interested in using the "patreon blog" as I have no interest in maintaining two blogs for the game. Plus, the game is totally open source, if anyone were really interested they could always dig farther into it and figure things out. The only possible use I could see would be @sedgwick using it to post map updates ("hey, check out this new map!") but I suspect he'd rather post to reddit (and I don't blame him).

Please note that I don't have any of the Patron stuff implemented yet, and I would like to flesh out the campaign a bit more before doing so.

seiyria commented 9 years ago

Hm. Another thing that I just thought of: Instead of allowing people to change class to any class they've previously been, the 'lite' version of this (ie, for unpaid users) could be to allow them to do the same thing, but they need to find a certain collectible in the game (one for each class) before they can freely change to that class.

@Latinx says this should be available at the 5$ tier (and up), as "I believe that it would be for the really dedicated"

AkumaNoTsubasa commented 9 years ago

I would not permanently restrict content from players. On a "Be VIP and see/have stuff first" for 1 month is fully ok and I'd agree with that. But else the best thing is to make it just cosmetic.

Also maybe getting ingame discount on stuff to buy with a fixed %. Like 15% cheaper. (Guildbuildings/Buffs)

As someone said maybe custom sprites. Free Players 1 custom sprite for a class. Paid can use a custom sprite for every class.

Towncrierbuys get 50% more views

New Content 1 month before others

Special title which grows over time of a continious payment (Like a Rank)

Special Pet that only Paying customers have

Maybe 1 second less time between each step?