Doing a Little Market Research here

Deathwinger · Post by **Deathwinger** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:08 am

Hey guys, I had an idea and I'm checking to see how marketable it is before I go trying anything. I'm using a global poll so I can keep all the results intact and centralized.

It's basically a concept of 'for gamers by gamers' I am considering. Please vote only once and vote honestly. Thanx in advance.

http://www.coolsurveys.com/cgi-bin/cSurvey?Deathwinger

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:58 am

0 - games aren't designed by committies.

roid · Post by **roid** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:08 am

i went to vote, but there is no "Yet another clone fps game? i wouldn't even play it for FREE" option.

i'm not kidding, i am so sick of them. i'd need a GOOD amount of convincing to believe that any new FPS game is truly "interesting".
so i didn't vote, none of the options even came close.

you just KNOW that it's gonna be exactly the same as all the others.

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:23 am

I just play not at all or just what I'm used to. Which means I pull a lot of classics from under the dust and enjoy them all over again.

Last week we had a 3on3 LAN playing Tactical Ops till 6am. The game sucks in many ways, but we know it and we had as much fun playing it as we had five years ago!

Nitrofox125 · Post by **Nitrofox125** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 7:40 am

I don't think it'll fly.... after ten months at $5/month you'll have forked out $50 anyway, and you can have fun playing a game like UT for 3 or 4 years. Even at $1/mo, you'll still have forked out around $50 by the end. Also, how would LAN games work? Would you have to have an internet connection? That's the bane of Steam. I would just rather fork out the money to buy a new game.

roid · Post by **roid** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:40 am

oh heyhey! how about charging money to play it online only for the first few months and then after that scrap the pay-to-play scheme and sell it as a normal game. so ppl who get it straight off the shelves will pay extra, while you still get your normal game revenue after that. bah phooey! that idea sucks.

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:25 am

I've never been a fan of pay to play online. Every game that offers that I've stayed away from regardless of how great it might be. You already pay X-amount of dollars to the upkeep of your system to play these games, not to mention the bills you pay for the internet connection and electricity and then on top of that most new games are $50-$60 dollars off the shelves.

Then companies want you to pay an extra $5-$10 to play on their servers so they can continue providing a service. Personally I'd rather save up to buy a new game with that money, or save up to use it for the other expenses listed above.

I know it becomes increasingly difficult to run and maintain a means in which tons of people can play online these days but if the game is popular you'd think they would have made more then enough from sales to cover the expenses. *shrug* but then again companies are losing money over this kind of thing. Go figure.

I blame inflation personally

Deathwinger · Post by **Deathwinger** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 8:38 pm

LAN games and single player would most likely be free as there it is an offline mode. However, updates (monthly based on what people's choice are) would be the thing to really be paying for.

I've been doing my research on other pay to play items. Hell, it seems that most places you have to buy the game for the $50 dollars and pay as much as $1.95 a hour/day. Not only that, you take the game as it is given to you.

The experiment in this is to see what really can come out of a almost totally player choice oriented game, the players indirectly create the game.

But if the idea of pay to play at this rate is not appealing to you. Perhaps methods could be suggested to make the plan more attractive for you? I'm just doing research right now, any input at all will help.

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 11:16 pm

you'd be best to ask those who would be most likely to play this kindof game, the overwhelmingly MAJOR audience of online games.... kids.

kids are stupid, they will wreck your game if given the opportunity to "change" it. to make your game work you'll need to design an entire working form of online player based government into the game to make sure the unwashed hethens don't wreck everything at the drop of a hat.