Topic: What small, easy to code game would you pay and play for? (Read 673 times)

Make a 16-bit RPG

I think Valve is making out particularly well because it isn't difficult to sell TF2 items.

When they're selling these keys, what they're really doing is selling lottery tickets. In reality, Valve operates in TF2 as a casino (whether they admit it or not, everything tradeable in their game has an easily-redeemable FMV) and has cleverly managed to evade regulation for doing so.

That said, I also don't think TF2 is really f2p-p2w, because the useful upgraded weapons are so easy to come by, they're more like how BF2 does level-unlocks on weapons, where the rare ones don't do much more than look cool (similar to hats). The collectibles aspect can be completely ignored. This is in contrast to the vast majority of f2p-p2w games, and Popcaps recent PvZ2 even has a BS purchasable item which simply completes the game.

In EVE Online, there was a big scuffle over their $500 (or whatever it was) in-game monocle. This monocle did nothing, it was purely cosmetic. People purchased it, and as I see it, it's because they wanted to support the developers and maybe get a little recognition for doing so. It's basically the same as having a "Bitcoin Foundation Gold Member" avatar, but we'd never say that's a "pay-to-win" item.... well - maybe -- I guess it can lend a lot of credibility wherever you plaster it. Really, though, I like the cosmetic-donation model - and giving users an easy way to do so in-game, with cosmetic upgrades, I think's a fantastic way of subsidizing the poor or initially-skeptical until they can fall in love with the game, rather than putting up a paywall. Even if you skip the ability to quickly-easily donate in-game, Dwarf Fortress for example, an indie ASICII game, is able to support two workers full-time on a pure donation model. They bring in anywhere from $2k-$6k per month, but that's after years of them developing while still having to work somewhere else for living expenses. What's especially cool about how DF's worked out, is that it's almost a milestone-model, where they'll see a huge uptick in donations when new major updates are pushed. They can keep developing their baby for the rest of their lives and almost certainly live comfortably for the entirety, and that's not something so guaranteed anywhere else I can think of.

Many companies fail completely when making F2P games (that usually turn out to be pay2win). Actually, I think Valve did the right thing to make TF2 F2P. TF2 is much more popular now than compared to when it was a paid game. The company makes more money as a result of a higher number of players, and the players benefit by being able to try the game, and play it without paying anything. The gameplay is as balanced as it was when it came out, and players who trade/buy from the store have no gameplay advantages over players who don't spend money.

Yeah, but the point is they replaced one game they created for no reason with another entirely different game, when they could have just kept the original game for those who enjoyed that and had a standalone version for people who wanted the collectables etc. but nope, intelligence and forethought doesn't seem to be something the games industry is capable of these days.

^TF2 trading is actually fun. I probably would not enjoy TF2 as much if I could not show off my fancy hats and rare weapons.

The problem with the free to play option is that I have found it is an extremely short sighted method of making money from games, I think that the game developers who choose these options are more interested in making some cash quickly rather than a game people can still play 10 years on and have just as much fun as they did before. I have also found from doing research that when it comes to DLC content as well the games that adopt this kind of thing tend to die faster depending on how desperate the games company is to churn out the content to force people to pay for it. Why do you think for instance there are so many Call of Duty games coming out? While they certainly make money from it you can tell they're getting desperate for new ideas and even if you get a lot of people buying it in the long run they won't be playing it even after a year if the gameplay isn't any good.

There's also the moral side of it which is extremely annoying to find in computer games of all things, yes. I could probably make money with cash items but I don't think I'd ever really want the kind of customers who'd just piss away their money in order to one up their friends, adding to that, most item shops I have seen are essentially in game cheats that you pay for. I find it pathetic that to use these kind of business models and when I think about them I always come back to Shogun 2 Total War where they made you pay for fucking blood in an already supposedly violent computer game.

As a gamer I just couldn't take that, worst still is if you take the route that Valve took with Team Fortress 2 where they ruined a really well balanced game that people were enjoying ( Seriously I was actually fairly impressed by it when it first came out because it was one of the first rock/paper/scissors game I've seen that had some intelligent design for it ) and then turn in into some shitty free to play game about hats and item crafting. So not only did they end up ruining the original game for people who wanted to play that, developers who pull this type of thing usually end up making a crappy experience for the new players they catered for as well because the features are usually rushed in or poorly thought out.

I really could rant about the pay to win business models ( which is what they really are ) for pages and pages just trust me when I say I've had a long thought about it, the only time I could ever consider pay to win is if maybe as an experiment to see properly which one would last the longest because I bet in the end the normal game would still be played because it would be a lot better balanced etc. adspace is also not a very good idea I don't think because it's a very shaky form of income and you basically live on the whim of the marketing people of the various companies rather than the people you actually want to design games for.

I'm sure you are aware there are three main methods to gain income from games, selling them from point of sale, or a free play game, with ingame items to buy, the being third via advertising. Generally I'm in favour of the free play, you tend to get a larger player base and it does help increase it's popularity as free games tend to get played more often and encourage others to play it than ones you have to pay to play, which can often mean you spend less advertising it. You do have to make sure you make enough sales of course, but build it right and this is not usually a problem.

There are plenty of very addictive puzzle style games on FB for example, so this will be my example.
However this idea will probably work best in social environments, so if you don't want to implement it with that, it won't be of much use.
From a programming stand point, they are not that difficult to program, time consuming maybe, but not hard.
And when people get frustrated in unable to complete levels and get reminded their friends "beat" this level (with scores even), some will pay to get bonus items, so they can get pass that level or just merely beat a rival.

It's an idea that has been done to death, but it's has been done so because it works.

1) Block based games, where you have to move them about in an arena based upon special rules, certain things will happen. Make it interesting and difficult with those rules and it becomes a game of skill and planning.

2) Numbers game, recreate different levels of difficulty in cryptology experiments with hidden messages. Keep track of times and obviously correct answers. Could do it like a hangman style for correctly figuring out a message for example, or maybe only allow full message guess'.

Actually, I thought of a better name. Deliver, please!

LMAO Leave the naming to me, I'll come up with something The game needs to come first though.

Butt fly labs: the game

LOL thanks for the ideas guys, that may well be a game to make even if it will piss off ASIC companies I don't think we can name it Miners, please because then it might cause some copyright issues but I'll see if I can come up with something else, I'll start focusing now on at least getting the game mechanics running and see what happens.

I like that. Kinda like Papers Please.

Name it "Miners, Please".

Quintupled. Outside freemode/survival implementation, it could alternately be done in story-mode fashion, where customers' death threats become increasingly severe and frequent. You could eventually have a choice between going into protective custody (through some type of long series of tasks), or simply pay a guy to whisk you away to South America, Breaking-Bad-style.

You would have to deal with employees being shot, SEC & FTC investigations, civil suits, and damage to the facilities.

End day event: Mining market over-saturated, ASIC demand permanently drops 100%. Bank officer has stopped by to inform you they're calling your $1,500,000 loan in full. File for bankruptcy protection?

HAHAH I second this idea!

Very funny 

best idea ever! 

Do a Diner Dash type game where you have to assemble ASICs before the angry customers burn down your facility.

So I'm slowly beginning to experiment with buttons now in my SFML programming experiments and have long since been able to write text onto the screen along with getting proper statistics up that change depending on what key you press. I've been thinking about what game I want to make and I thought the best thing I could do was actually ask the people who might buy it which would probably be best to focus on, I already have plenty of ideas of what to try and I've listed four genres that I think I'd be able to do with enough effort. The management one may be a bit more complicated and take longer but the coding would roughly be the same, it would be just a matter of scale.

Let me know and it may well decide which type of game I'll release first.