Readit NewsWho do you target first and how
I like the idea of the service, but wouldn't use it unless I can run it on Mac. Streaming for indie games would be perfection, as I don't have the time to go deep into a AAA title but would love to quickly start up some cool short indie game on demand.
Some indie games I've really enjoyed back in the day for the story were ones like What Remains of Edith Finch and Binding of Isaac. I'm certainly not playing them for more than a few days. On the other hand, indie games that I would replay, like Terraria and Stardew Valley, are already making significant revenue through the current Steam model. In fact, many of their current players would have been dismayed by a subscription model, which would have led them to not enjoy that much of a fan base.
Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0].
For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement.
Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds.
good luck!
[0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...
Spotify's merchandise stores and concert notifications are IMO a pitiful shadow of what they can and should be, and what you can and should be - imagine a Patreon-esque system with tiered badges and in-game supporter perks, with verification built in at your DRM layer, the Discord tiered-role features that Patreon integrates with, award-gifting, etc. Draw a hard line at what kinds of monetization is and isn't acceptable, and become a breath of fresh air in the monetization debate. There's so much possible here beyond subscription distributions, and you could cement your reputation as an innovator and ally to a whole world of brilliant creators.
I currently pay for XBox Game Pass Ultimate at $15/month. That comes with 400 games, although I tend to play the more indie games. They do rotate off, so I bought Subnautica, for instance, on Steam. I notice that a few of yours have been on Game Pass.
Right now, Epic is shoving free games like crazy through their Game Store. I have a huge backlog of games on Epic that I'll probably never work through. Some indie games, some former AAA games. Same with Amazon - they give away free games every month for some reason.
I don't know if this glut of games is going to end well or poorly, but I would suggest you don't compete with XBox, and instead do a Mac-first indie game subscription service. Apple Arcade is pretty poorly marketed, and there might be more opportunity there.
>On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.
Do I want to pay $75 a year for that game though? And if I play that game for 20 hours in one month, and also play a new game and complete it in 20 hours, how much does that new game get? Many games are very much play-once and done. Like I don't think I'll replay Hob again, but I still think it was one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2021 (when I discovered it on PS4). Likewise Carrion (actually I did replay that one coz people are chewy).
This may be a thing just for the whales, but maybe have a thing like reddit where I could rate a game positively and back that up with cash (like over and above the $8/mo). In a way, the pay-what-you-want bundles offer a similar mechanism, so the idea may be validated already.
I'm also realizing that most of the games I think of as Indie, I played on PS4/5 or Switch. Dead Cells, Hades, Manifold Garden, Celeste, Carrion. With Manifold Garden and Celeste I even bought the soundtracks. (Spend a lot more on consoles than steam, and finish more games there).