Challenging the digital entertainment industry Copying is free, production is not.
I was contacted by a representative from Sagan Interactive. They have a idea I like at its face value but am unsure of its real world potential and implications. (I am also not sure that its a new idea since I have heard concepts like this before)
In my own words they looking to create a games platform where the games are free to play and players choose development teams to back for there next title as apposed to there last one.
There link is here
http://sageninteractive.com/
I am not asking people to rush out and fund it (although if you believe in it I am certainly not telling you not to either). I am more curious to hear how people on makegames feel about the idea.
In my own words they looking to create a games platform where the games are free to play and players choose development teams to back for there next title as apposed to there last one.
There link is here
http://sageninteractive.com/
I am not asking people to rush out and fund it (although if you believe in it I am certainly not telling you not to either). I am more curious to hear how people on makegames feel about the idea.
Comments
So does asking for half a million dollars when there's not even anything playable, apparently they need money to make something free to fund their next idea before they've actually made the first one... Or something. WTF?
What they're talking about already happens when teams release prototypes and people love them, prompting the team to put more time and effort into developing a full game. I don't see why anyone would want to up the graphics and polish requirements of the game they're going to put out for free (contrast a prototype with a completed game, which is what Sagen seems to want people to put out there) just so that people might maybe give them money based for their next idea? Would devs have to describe their next idea so that people could judge it? What if it turns out that said idea is actually a crap game when it gets to the prototyping stage?
All this is doing is putting a lag on when people ask for money, so that they can ask for money now with "no strings attached". If you're doing good work, asking for money for it isn't a bad thing, but you have to show that work. If they wanted to actually prove this model of theirs, they'd put something out there for free that people loved so they had better reputations and more cache for their eventual crowdfunding campaign.
It's not like anyone here has released a game for free that built their reputation and drove purchases of their eventual non-free game, or anything...
Having seen that they're trying to build a platform, well, what's wrong with the internet that we currently have?
I do feel that a statement about crowd funding doesn't really address my opinions about this particular crowd-funded project. Nor do I think that a successful crowd funding campaign is possible with only an idea, there has been a lot of research around crowd funding recently, especially in the games industry. I went to two different panels on crowd funding strategies at GDC, it's a darn sight more complex than you talk about above.
However, I still don't see what that has to do with my reservations about the Sagen Interactive project. I don't think what Sagen is talking about is a good idea.
Of course there's also the chance it's actually a big scam, which would definitely make it an ambitious one. sageninteractive.com is just over a month old. Of the 5 twitter accounts listed on the home page, all 5 were created this month. Either these people are game devs that are entirely new to the scene, or it's a decent hoax.
Either way, from my perspective, no matter how it turns out, it'll be entertaining (and somewhat informative) to say the least ;)
1. If this system works, you'll be stuck making the same sort of game all the time. Why would people fund a game that's completely different from the game they found out about it through? This also makes reputation and brand building a hell of a lot harder to do as well, seeing as people wouldn't be sent to your website, they'd be interacting with you via this odd system.
2. People will start saying they need a hell of a lot more money to build a game. This is simple economics. If all you're going to get to make a game is the money people donate to you when you pitch your idea, then you're not really investing in anything's success, you've got no long-tail sales, you've got no impact from awareness raising for an existing game. You're always going to be trading your time for money, so you're going to have to end up charging more for your time. That's going to compete with new developers that don't understand the actual costs of game production (and if a studio like Double Fine needs more money to produce Double Fine Adventures after all their KS success, then this is a real threat) so there will be a strong force always pushing game funding projections downward, quality will have to come down to compensate - either experienced devs will have to spend less time making games, or they'll leave for places that can pay the higher salaries they need. Yay, worse games for less pay. (The best you can get beyond that is merchandising, but it's clear that nobody's thinking about that)
3. This isn't even necessary for current development... We already have all the tools to do exactly what these guys are proposing right now as individual developers if that's what we wanted to do. Use your own website (bonus to brand awareness) and give away your current games for free, then kickstart your new ones. Watch the same market forces that I've mentioned above push you in the same directions.
However:
1. If the system works, it doesn't necessarily mean Sagen will be the only one to use it. If there's (successful) precedence for pre-funding a game, more developers and small game studios might try adopting it. How that plays out on a macro-economic scale is beyond my brainpower right now, though :)
2. You may not be investing your own money, but you are investing money all the same, plus you have hundreds of shareholders breathing down your neck, so that may be even more motivation to succeed. Plus, correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like you're stuck with the free games. If a free game makes it big, there's nothing stopping the developers from investing more money and time to develop a v2 which they can sell for real money.
3. I have no doubt all the tools exist, but there's nothing inherently wrong in trying something that hasn't been done before (or, at least, hasn't been done well). You won't know how something will actually play out until you try it, and if you think about it, Sagen (if they're legitimate) is taking on a big risk here. If it were a bank loan they defaulted on, it's a bad credit record. If they screw this up, they'll probably never make games again for as long as they live.
1. Sagen are trying to create something for other developers to use. I assume that's why they contacted @tbulford, to try and get him (and presumably others) to buy into their system so that they could use it. Building one game after the other, each previous game funding the next, already creates studios that have a hard time switching what types of games they're working on. I'm simply saying that this force will be even stronger if you're only going to get money for a game idea if people playing the previous thing you worked on think that the new idea is worth something in that context.
2. The point of investing is return, so no, you're not investing anyone's money. Developers would be accepting donations in order to fund development time, with no possibility of earning after that. Sagen seem to want to replace the idea of selling games entirely, based on their understanding of copying, that's fine, but I don't see how a dev that makes any sort of successful series of games under Sagen's system would be able to transition to selling a new version of an existing game without finding another way to fund development (because you'd be getting donations to produce ANOTHER free game for Sagen) which leaves us in exactly the same spot we're in now.
3. Two parts to this. Firstly, Sagen aren't trying to make games, they're trying to make a system to distribute content, their site talking about their love of game development is rather misleading. Secondly, this has already been done, much better, with existing systems and software. I've done it: Released a free game, built a reputation, launched pre-orders to fund development of an expanded game. It's working great! That's why I feel qualified to debunk the need for this expensive yet oddly crippling system.
1. That's all true, but it's not the point I was addressing - it's whether or not the model works. Funding models come and go, some pan out, some don't. Even if Sagen tanks completely, there's something to be learned from their attempt, as ill-conceived as some would believe it to be, and I'm sure you're not the only one with your doubts.
2. Well, strictly, no, as a funder you're investing your money and expecting the return of a working game. If Sagen managed to rack up donations of $490'000 with zero expectations of any returns, they'd be on their way to a slew of lucrative careers involving confident diagrams and gullible investors ;)
And like I said, there's nothing stopping the developers from investing the money themselves. Wouldn't you rather receive seed funding for an untested idea to see how it performs in the open waters, before committing any of your own money to it? That's pretty much how the venture capital model works, except in Sagen's case, the money comes from the public.
3. I'm pretty sure at one point air travel was considered an expensive and oddly crippling system :) The point is that they're trying something new. You'll have yay-sayers and nay-sayers and in the end people will vote with their wallets, and that's what really counts here. As you rightly point out, this is not about game development, this is about a new way to fund game development - if enough people believe in the model, if it produces a successful result, that's one more card on the table that game devs get to play.
2. Sorry, I was talking about investment and return from the perspective of the game developer. Ignoring your first paragraph (and strange assessment of the characters of Sagen), that is most definitely NOT how the VC model works. VC is all about return! If you can't show that their investment in you is going to grow by serious multiples of 100s of percent, you're not getting funded.
I don't think you're understanding where I'm coming from here... I'm also not sure why you think these donations from Sagen's community are expectation-free. They were pretty clear about their model: Put your game up on their system for free, link to your next game, get donations to make that, make it and then put it up for free too, with link to next game, etc. That's a system with no return on investment - the developers of a game can only make more money by promising more than their previous game concept, provided that concept was a great one. Even then, they're still expected to make the game they're promising AND release it for free. Yes, I guess they don't have to, but then they'd be the sort of predatory dealer that gives away a hit game for free.
3. You don't seem to be addressing my actual point, which is that this type of model has not only been done before (indentured game development is how the traditional publisher model works - you only get money to work on your next game based on your previous performance plus your current pitch, no royalties, only earn while you're working) but the "give stuff away free to grow reputation" part has also been done in multiple ways as well. We've already LEARNED from this, or at least, we should already have. We already have better ways to approach this sort of funding that not only make more funding money available, they also don't remove the earning potential for game developers on the flip side. Every Kickstarted game is still sold once it's finished - games made for Sagen's system pointedly aren't sold. Ever.
Let me ask you a couple of questions:
Do you think that game developers would be able to use Sagen's system to produce games that they couldn't have built otherwise?
How am I, as a game developer, supposed to convince people to donate money for my next game idea, when all they've seen is the last thing I built - Is that a problem that's unique to Sagen's proposed system?
I love the idea at face value, but I have my reservations. I don't like the idea of becoming stuck building only one type or style of game which this would certainly promote (not that publishers would not do the same thing assuming you had a deal with one). I fail to see how the developers are expected to build that first game from which to get an audience (but then that problem exists with or without this platform).
I think that if the platform gets enough momentum and is launched we might dabble there and see hows it plays out but I certainly not eager to commit huge resources right out.
To answer your last posts questions @dislekcia, I don't think that the platform would enable developers to build games they could not have otherwise (certainly not the first one). I can't say how a developer would promote the idea of the next game unless it had a lot in common with the previous one (or at least targeted the same audience).
Ultimately its going to be interesting to see if something like this gets any momentum with the games players. If they decided they thought it was a cool and awesome way to get games that would say a great deal.
One thing I do empathize with is the frustration they feel towards to big business of game development, but that doesn't automatically make their idea viable. I think a platform that was geared towards helping players connect to devs and learn about projects they might like would be more interesting (not that I have a clue how that could be achieved, perhaps a facebook app for games lovers that let them list the games they like and showed them games that other people likes similar to the ones they do, something along that line).
Thanks for the feedback and comments @dislekcia and @wogen.
@dislekcia I was using "investment" in the strict dictionary sense of the word (give money, get stuff) - from what I understand of finance, it can get horrifically complicated depending on a number of factors :)
And I'm certainly not arguing that Sagen's model is better, I'm arguing that it's different, and I personally think it should be given a fair chance to succeed, the same way publishers gave digital distribution a chance. We still have no idea how it will pan out in real life - maybe the model is a hit, maybe they tweak it to make it look more like @tbulford's idea of connecting players to devs on a massive scale, maybe they reach agreements with devs to sell their games for profit via Sagen's platform. Maybe it ends up being compared to Steam the way Android is compared to Apple - tons of variety, with occasional dots of quality, but overall a more open platform for game distribution. We just don't know yet, but they make it clear in their video that the future of this platform will largely be consensus-driven, and if everyone agrees with you, then the platform will inevitably move in that direction.
To answer your questions, no, Sagen doesn't bring anything new to game development itself (that I can see), and so far the most value I can see in Sagen's platform is that it's a little bit like Ouya, except taken to the more open extreme. But it's something different.
If they're actually going to fund devs their first game to get started, then I applaud their bravado and naivety.
If they're just putting the money into "a great platform" with "all the features ever" and not giving two hoots about the real business problem at hand (exposure, promotion, that first game, quality control, etc) and am really paying $490,000 into the model... Then good luck to them.
I don't get it.
Also, those Facebook game listing apps? They exist. You not knowing about them simply goes to show how great they are at managing discovery ;)
@wogan: Sorry guy, but I don't really feel like you're saying much here. That strict dictionary definition of investment you're working off? It doesn't mention anything about future profit or expected return, so it's not really useful. Plus I have no idea how you got that context from the first sentence I used the word in: I was clearly talking about game developers investing in their games to get long term revenue from a business and profit perspective, not crowd-funding pledgers, venture capitalists or even, as you seemed to mean at one point, customers.
As far as I can tell, you're saying that Sagen might totally change everything they spoke about doing in order to, uh, change. Yeah, I guess they might do that. They might, indeed, allow people to sell things on their system despite having previously promised that everything on their system would be 100% free... Speculating on things that are rather unlikely, but potentially possible, doesn't seem very useful to me. Which is probably why I'm talking about their actual model that they've advertised and the issues that their proposal raises in my mind. Are you sure that you understand what it is that they want to build and the reasons they gave for why?
What I keep trying to say is that nobody needs Sagen's hot air to turn a free game into game funding. I've done it one way, others here have done it in other ways, still other people around the internet have found even more ways to fund their development in smarter and more immediately understandable ways than Sagen is proposing (these other ways also don't require huge flights of "what-if" fantasy on the parts of developers in order to potentially have a good outcome) - The core thing that every approach has in common? Build something fun first, find out how much people like it, figure out appropriate ways to turn that into funding/money/product from there.
@Tuism: Yeah, I don't get it either. I really don't think the money they're asking for is for the first round of games in their system at all, they were pretty upfront about their projected costs for simply building that system of theirs. Which doesn't even solve the real problems game developers have with putting stuff online.
Also. It seems that developers would have to initially release a very good free game before they will be sponsored for another one. Which means that this system requires a big fat loss leader (which is always a scary strategy, like @tbulford said)
So I'd expect that this system could be adopted by Flash developers and other developers who normally release their games for free or developers who want to put up a prototype that they've done in a game jam or something.
I'd think that if they could actually get this set up, assuming they get that money, there might be a few developers that could benefit moderately. Someone like Adam Atomic with Canabalt might see a few donations.
But due to the free games for donations system I'd expect that the budget of these games would have to be low for this to be profitable for developers.
And so it'd be pretty hard for Sagen to get any user base going on this thing given that the average quality of game would not be particularly great.
And without a use base then no one gets money and the thing flounders in limbo.
If you read between the lines of their product pitch and their video, it's pretty clear that they're taking a stab at redefining the art-compensation cycle, and to me, it looks like they're trying to find a way to connect artists and buyers in a way that encourages the creation of art, as opposed to the mass retailing of it.
That's what I like about their idea. As you allude to, serious game developers who want to make serious money wouldn't put themselves on a platform like Sagen. But thousands of amateurs who find the prospect of marketing themselves intimidating, just might.
The entire point might be moot, though - it looks like their funding campaign isn't going anywhere fast. I still think it's a good idea, and maybe it would fare better over the long run as a distributed, open-source, donor-funded project. Sort of like a DeviantArt for games :)
At best what they're doing is making crowd funding project more closely/conveniently entwined with the past games the project creator has released. So like Kongregate + Crowdfunding. Which if it turns out to be the best of both those things could be promising.
Have you considered that such a system inherently favours established artists with large catalogues and disfavours newcomers?
Basically...
At the core of it is this problem: Consumers don't like paying for free things. That's why they won't back Sagen's free portal, and that's why they won't pay for free games even if Sagen were successful. People just don't work like that. (Projects for free games that I've seen on Kickstarter really struggle).
Well, now let's try to clear some of this up. We are not creating a site, we are working on a platform like steam. Think of it like a mix between steam and kickstarter/indiegogo.
If we are sucsessfull we want to be able to offer other art forms then just games, like movies and music. Now, Carl Johan Petri a Ph. D. Assistant professor at Linköping University is currently doing a study on fruit stands. What he is trying to do is instead of setting a price on the fruit he gives the fruit away and then let the custommer pay whatever he/she wants to. So far the fruit stands he convinced to try this makes more money now then they did with the regular price model. The study is not over yet so I do not have any source to back this up. But you can look him up as a person on linkedin or however you please. Our idea is based on his study.
About the twitter accounts, most of us did not have accounts there before and the ones that had, made new accounts just for the comapany.
I don't want to give out the informations about my colleagues but I can give out some of mine.
http://gameawards.se/people/4920
http://marnoman.webs.com
http://www.playgroundsquad.com/Falun/user/view/userid/352/showPager/1/name/arn%C3%B6man/school/1/year
Cheers!
Thanks for taking the time to come get involved in the conversation here. Would personally like to know more about that study assuming the findings are made public. Is there anywhere we can go to find that?
We also have loads of evidence from the various pay-what-you-want bundles out there that developers don't end up making more money than they would via a standard pay model. The reason bundles do well is they reach the market that wouldn't buy all the bundled games at their full prices anyway... In fact, it's pretty much assumed wisdom among game developers that you don't release your game in a PWYW bundle, you only go that route once your game's already been out for a while on normal channels. Just look at what happened to Voxatron as an example.
I've always assumed that 1) the clientele for this kind of restaurant is affluent.
And 2) the social pressure to pay, and the expectation that one does normally pay for food, is what motivates people to pay generously (people dine in groups usually).
I don't think it's impossible to generate that social pressure in a game portal. e.g. the portal (which you say might be a little like Steam) could record statistics about how the user has paid. These stats could be visible to other players, and there might be some slight perks, like paying players get access to beta's or can download soundtracks or whatever (the kind of things Humble Bundle does). There could be API's that the games can access, so games could be aware of players' payment behaviors and could give some rewards for paying players (for instance).
I'd certainly suggest that certain things are inaccessible without paying, like what Humble Bundle does with having two tiers of games. And maybe you implement a clever way for folks to split money... e.g. They pay $5 to access some things they want and they can assign how that money gets split between the games that they've played so far. So the portal runs a bit like a perpetual Humble Bundle with a Kickstarter built in.
I guess I'm saying: I really think people should be getting something for their money. Even if their donation is motivated by generosity they shouldn't feel like they are just giving money to a charitable cause. I think the "you only get these extra games if you pay above X" is a major factor in why so many folks give any money at all for their Humble Bundles.
Also, to entice some of the bigger better games you might need to promise them some actual money. Klei Entertainment (for example) keep on putting their games in bundles. Obviously they're trying to get loads of people playing their games. They're probably getting less than a dollar per copy of Shank that sells in a bundle. I think if you could say: These games (including Shank, for example) are only playable to players who have donated above 8 dollars to developers, then you might have a chance of enticing developers like Klei onto the platform, because you could guarantee some money would be paid. And maybe you could give developers some control over those how players get to have access to their games.
Of course a lot of players are used to getting games for free (unlike food at restaurants or fruit stands). A lot of players will never pay.
I'm going to say it again anyway: Until there are a lot of quality games on the portal getting enough traffic there to make it profitable for any games will be a huge challenge. And until it is profitable, getting quality games (or rather let me say higher budget games) will be a huge challenge. Obviously it'd be a long slow build, as with any portal. But also I'd anticipate a lot of unique obstacles that a portal like Steam doesn't need to worry about.
For what it's worth. I'd happily put some of our game ideas up at such a portal. The more people who play our games and get information about our future games the better. And maybe when we get to the point of having an old game that is no longer making money I might be keen to put that up.
And I'd expect that folks used to making free games (like games for Kongregate), or people who have been including their games in bundles already, or people who've made a fun prototype and have nothing to lose, would also try it out.
So long as the system is developer friendly. I mean kind of trivially simple to port to and release on.
When we started this the internet was in a certain mindset. Sim City was just released. Obsidian just came out that they would only get a bonus if they had a high enough score on metacritic. A anonymous developer had just wrote an article on Kotaku telling everyone how publishers is destroying games and people was screaming in the comments that their should be a better way to make games then through publishers. We believe that the world is ready for a change, showing that is it the gamer that is paying the greedy mans salary and if they just put their foot down and say no, the man would stop making money and they would have to start to actually listen to the gamers about what they wanted in their game.
How we think that this will do it differently.
Today, pay with your wallet/speak with your wallet only works on already released games. You can't effect the development of games without going to great lenghts.
What we want it to be. If it's a product that the people wants, people will be ready to pay what they think is fair for the great time they will get out from it. We believe that the odds is in favour that someone will donate a small amount of money more times to the same studio that produces awesome games just to get more great games from them, but we doubt that someone is ready to pay 50 dollars twice for the same game, which some publishers is trying to force us to do.
This is the next step in the whole natural selection were games that the people really wants will get their funding and get made and with our search and filter system on the platform it will be easier to find those games that it currently is on other crowd funding web sites.
One final thought. Games will be cracked and released through torrent sites no matter what you do. Comapanys should stop chasing down their customers, calling them thieves. Embrance it instead and put your trust in the gamers thats enjoying your games. If you are open about the costs of making a game, they will be fair. Just look at 2 player productions, they released their documentary about Mojang on piratebay after it was done, they also included a text in the video saying that if you enjoyed it, please buy it. They are still alive.
A pipe dream maybe, but one that is worth following through.