I'm working on what should become a single player RPG. I say "should" because right now I'm just programming the basics of a 2D Isometric game. I have a character that runs around and some NPC characters that will wander or flee or attack. I'm not sure exactly what the game will be like in the end, I'm thinking something like Zelda, with maybe Harvest Moon mixed in a little so that its not all killing the baddies. Go to http://blog.turt99.com to see development blog I've read a couple blogs from game developers that talk about selling their games. I don't really want to make a huge amount of money off my game (I don't know if I'll ever even finish it) but I was thinking about ways I could ask for payment. What I was thinking was to make the game free (unless you want to donate), except for certain features: 1) If you pay for the game, you get a login for a website, and the website will gather data from your saved game and give you a players badge. It would allow you to show others that you play the game and brag about how well your doing. I would put in milestones or achievements that would give you medals or symbols on your players badge. 2) If you pay for the game, and the game ends using a lot of harvest moons ideas, I'd look at making a kind of stock market site. players would play on their own single player games, but when you sell your goods you would have the option to put the item for sale on the server and then any other player could purchase it. I'd probably build in a system that each time you started a game you would randomly be assigned certain crop types (Animal Crossing did this), so if you got apples but wanted to grow oranges you'd have to find player selling them. I figure adding features like this will gather a few sales and something like this where you have to authenticate with a website or server is harder to crack or pirate then a single player stand-alone game. Comments or Other Ideas?

Quote:Original post by Foniks
Have a read of this article:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3924/wheres_the_cash_for_flash.php

It's covering flash, but is quite relevant to your question. One of the comments is that donations generally do not translate into a lot of money. Using a micro transaction like system like you've already suggested is a better approach, and is likely to generate greater revenue.

(You may want to skip over the first few pages that are flash specific, but it does go on to talking about microtransactions)

Thanks for the reply, the article is very interesting. I think I'm going to have to go with some sort of microtransaction. I don't really want to get into all that there is involved to make a MMO game, so have a subscription setup isn't really going to work.

I just need some really good Ideas to give as rewards for payment.

- HTML Code for a Players Badge
- Custom Player Artwork
- Custom Item

I really liked in the article that they asked for a donation, it didn't matter how much just that a donation was made.