A rant about videogaming. By a man who videogames.

Too much ranting, not enough thinking.

It’s just the tragedy of the commons. Wishing this effect didn’t apply won’t make it go away.

Some really good indie games survive/survived on donations or pre-sales (Dwarf Fortress, Mount + Blade) because they offer replay value and an experience which grows over time.

Art games of the type mentioned tend to offer (for me) a one-off experience since the connection or revelation isn’t so powerful the second time, and the game mechanics often aren’t interesting enough in themselves to provide motivation. But then I much prefer craftsmanship to artistry in many media :)

Thinking practically, a compilation of games (cf. poetry anthology) would be one way to raise the value to a more typical price point: Like Passage? Pay $10 for another four experiences from the same author. Grants are another route, but it’s difficult to get them for work in a new medium.

As background, I’d be interested to know how many hours went into making Passage or similar.

I think Xander, and the crazy man in the video have a really good point, for the vast majority of services we pay for them after they have been performed, the service provider is confident that the customer will do the honourable thing and pay if the job is good.

the mentality that if you have used something already you shouldnt have to pay for it is crazy, if I was to go into the supermarket and started using random products before reaching the checkout, I’d still have to pay for them.

the donate system is the ideal, each gamer gives what they think their experiance was worth. if there was some way to convince more gamers not to be assholes the system might get off the ground.

but also, art games sucks ballz. Well, not Ttoday i Die, i loved that one. But i shouldn’t call it a game at all, more like an interactive urrr… thing.

I wish people would start donating more, that would be great, but there is also something magical about freeware. I’m not sure if it’s that the games are free, or if it is that the author has no pressure to make something that will generate money one way or another.

For me Assassin’s Creed was a bad game because inspite of the good mechanics and interesting ideas it decided to make the actual assassinations the most minute part of the game, with more of your time spent running about the city collecting lost flags. All the sequel would require to be a good game is to simply have me be an assassin more than an errand boy.

A lots of games do the “invest on what it could become” thing already, and the very Left 4 Dead from valve did it… see the result :/
The issue here, might be trust. But if done well, like Mount&Blade or good episodic games, it can be a really successful formula.

As for the donating format, it doesn’t work simply because it’s a lot harder to pay anything on the net than to simply gives a few dollars IRL.

I wouldn;t pay for “today I die”, it was hardly a game. BUT… I might donate for kyntt stories or trilby’s notes, in fact, I AM basically dontating to get the new Cave Story and La-Mulana remakes!

@amdan – You are doubtless correct concerning the original text, but the term is now much more widely used to refer to the general strategic situation where each individual acting rationally brings about an outcome none of them like. (This isn’t mysterious or controversial – game theoretic and/or microeconomic models predict it very straightforwardly.)

@Xander – The thing about strategic equilibrium is… it’s an equilibrium. In particular, even if every individual shares his precise goals, this doesn’t give any of them an incentive to behave as he recommends.

It’s not that I don’t like the idea of freeware developers being able to make a living, it’s just that he doesn’t seem to realise his proposal could never work.

good video, but that won’t change mankind, nothing will.

What about an alternative Game-store where you pay a flat rate and the money is distributed by the users rating or something?

@bateleur: Assuming rational actors is good for theory as it supposedly makes models simple enough to work with but it is it really an accurate reflection of reality? I don’t know, you sound very authoritative, but using a term that comes from a misunderstanding of commons to explain how people will not donate to projects they support when this has worked in practice does not convince me of anything.

I liked Assassin’s Creed, so there.

I have to admit that I was moved and begun to weeping once I finished the Passage.

@Video: Fucking AMEN, bitches!

And I agree with Stwelin. Some of the best games I’ve played were games made without any financial motive. Cave Story for example was originally released as freeware and is one of my all time favorites.

In fact, when people decide to make games for the money, it usually has a detrimental effect. Look at all the half finished sports games out there with features intentionally left out so they can profit on the next game.

Paul Eres, that’s not the point. Whether people like to support indie developers or not (which nobody even brought up before you did) doesn’t change that this guy’s arguments are flawed. Please don’t try to derail the conversation with a red herring.

Paul: I don’t think the dominant reaction is “we want indie games, and we don’t want to pay for ’em!” – I think that most people here are realizing that the donation-for-freeware business model is flawed. At first, I thought the rant video was going to be about how flawed it was, not a command to indie gamers, “GO DONATE! NOW!”

The Passage is something I would never pay for. It lacks, utterly. And before anyone tries: the argument “But how can they make games with no money?”

It’s been done. Developers need to take risks. They need to pour months if not years into development of a solid idea along with their OWN MONEY if they want to see return. A game created in a week, two weeks… That’s a hobby. That’s nothing that deserves a donation.

TWO THOUGHTS:

1 – Ahmadinejad does not wear a tie

2 – Is some of the lack of donations a responsibility of the DEVELOPER? Just kind of playing devil’s advocate here, but if someone links you to a cool game or emails it to you and you play it and like it, having to then google for their name, figure out if they take donations, etc etc, is kind of a pain in the ass. Are there any freeware games that have a donate link right on the game over screen?

Oh, dear god. Relying on donations are fine, and if you are lucky enough to be able to make a living off of the charity of happy fans… Then good on you! But whining just makes me less prone to donate.

I’m not going to lie; I am cheap, and rarely give out money when I don’t have to.

Giving money to the author of passage would be no different than giving it to fairly skilled acoustic guitar busker on the side of the street somewhere. A nice gesture, surely, but not something that should somehow be expected.

I wouldn’t. And if I passed that busker a couple times, and he started complaining that I wasn’t putting money in his hat, he would cross the line between ‘busker’ and ‘annoying hobo.’

Videos like this just FURTHER prove that something as unreliable as “Eh, just pay whatever if you like it” isn’t any kind of business model. And I’ve yet to see a single argument even kind of defending it.

Xander, your examples are flawed. You eat at a restaurant, you get a receipt. You leave without paying that receipt? Illegal. You didn’t like the food? Too bad, don’t tip.

Likewise, you aren’t going to rip out your filling, and bring it back to the dentist saying “I find this unsatisfactory, and therefore I am not paying.”

I imagine most of the examples you would continue to give would be likewise.

The difference is donations are NOT a standard “pay-after-the-fact,” in that there is no incentive or obligation to pay this money, beyond a moral one. And, as unfortunate as it is, my money is generally more important than my morals.

Supporting indie developers *is* important, I agree. But I think the onus is on the developers to FORCE us to pay them, at least if they are attempting to make a living off of their art. The reason all the other mediums do it, is because they already experimented with all the other methods that didn’t work, and the people who didn’t convert starved to death or started working for soup companies.

two strange facts:

1) the internet did change mass media. content from everybody, for everybody. tons of mediocre content just for free… + many already existing ways of marketing, adapted to the internet’s products/services: fixed price per piece. auctions. monthly fees. free content + advertising.
but no new way of payment/support has been established yet. but digital software on the web is a actually a totally new kind of value (think about it!).
that’s a strange fact.

2) computer games = software. mp3s = software too? – in my opinion: yes. so what’s the difference of small game like ‘Passage’, and traditional music track, like an mp3 on iTunes?
at the end it’s just a “useless” junk of bytes inside the global memory.
culturally, music is still considered as a higher value, because it has tradition. and making music can even be a very enjoyable way to spend one’s time. the product is fairly portable, and there’s even a established market, to sell it, when it is reasonably good. in contrast, games (on the scale of ‘Passage’), are generally much harder to produce and display (needs so many skills in very different areas, + parts can be very unpleasant to do…). and distribution/sale is more difficult. but, as a product, i can’t see a fundamental difference from 2-4 minute piece of music…
that’s a strange fact.

@Paul Eres – Pointing out the flaws in this guy’s naively idealistic rant isn’t the same as disapproving of his goals.

I’m very happy to buy Indie games and do so frequently. Indeed, I’ve even donated to projects more than once. But I don’t think anyone should feel pressured into donating if they don’t want to. If it’s not supposed to be optional then don’t make the game free.

Fantastic Contraption had a “please donate” button and is largely freeware (there is some bonus content for donating). Very successful, so the model works – if you have the right product.

When I donate to a game I donate based on how much value I think it gave me. If it was a 10 seconds and changed my life, I’d donate more than anything else. If it amused me for several hours but was pretty shoddy despite (Assasin’s Creed, for example), I don’t mind paying $60.

Turns out I’m easily influenced and I’ve pretty much donated to everyone by now. :)

I won’t deny, though, that there are a lot of Indie games with less than 30 minutes of gameplay but a neat idea behind it. I’ll donate in hopes of seeing it blossom into something a lot longer, but I can see how others wouldn’t want to reward that.

I think the most interesting angle is 0rel’s; there is definitely a need for an economic system which actually accounts for digital info and abundance rather than scarcity.

Of course it’s hard to say whether that sort of techno-utopian society is more or less crazy than what this video proposes, which is just a stop-gap until someone figures out how to actually run things properly.

Hooker With No BeVis, you’re arguing something I didn’t even say. you implied that I was somehow talking about selling out, which I wasn’t.

My post was a response to this.

“And you wonder why there’s no imagination in games? Because they’re not getting any support.”

Now look at games that get tons of financial support. Say, Madden for example. Is that imagination?

Now look at something released basically for free like Cave Story. See what I’m saying.

I wasn’t saying anything other than that specific argument the guy made was flawed. Don’t try to spin or interpret it as anything else.

Who cares about imagination? People care about fun. If the game is fun – I buy it. If it’s not – I don’t buy it.