• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

It's really not about the money!

@ FAC 257: I just want to make sure you're good with freeware scenery, because I'd seriously question someone who would take a Killer Military payware over decent freeware:icon_lol:
 
IanP said:
Most people will pay nothing. When one of the big bands (Coldplay? Someone like that) did exactly the thing you are suggesting, the average (mode and median) payment made was a massive nothing. Collecting most of the payments that were made cost more than the amount received. It was a stunt and unlikely to be repeated.
Click to expand...

Okay, then set the minimum amount to 0.5€ or 1$ or something.
 
It goes without saying that we are feeling the pinch too. Good thing we've got books, magazines, movies and TV to cover us otherwise I'd have to let go totally of four of the best AC artists I've ever had the pleasure of working with and that would surely suck big time.

This business, if you can call it that, has become way too cutthroat to actually survive without stepping on someone's toes somewhere... or sadly, without being ripped off in some way by someone, somewhere... Used to be that everyone helped each other out. I can remember those days... not so long ago. Seems to me that they are long gone...

It's sad to say that the future doesn't bode well for the "payware" dev who does it just for the bucks. Unless and until some big company (who?) comes up with a fortune to make a new sim from scratch using existing tech and that pushes the limits of what that can do, we're not going to see a "renaissance" of flight simming. I think that era is dying slowly but surely. It needs new life. Something to perk it up. Some new software that comes from this decade would be good. I worked on the game Battlefield 2 and I can tell you that this kind of engine, were it able to deal effectively with the coding that flight simming needs... well.. WOW. That WOULD be cool.

Anyway, suffice to say that Milviz isn't going "away" quite yet but... it hurts when sales aren't all that you hoped for.

Btw, Nine Inch Nails released an album and told people "pay what you will" and they actually made money off it. So, it is feasible to do it that way. Though I certainly wouldn't want to try it...
 
Jim,

I'm still a big fan of freeware scenery. Specially really well done Florida military bases. :applause:

I'm almost completely the opposite when it comes to scenery. Other than wide area overhauls like UTX & FSG, the only payware scenery areas that I have are Fly Tampa's St. Maarten Complete and Joe Watson's Central Fla GA Airports Volumes. Everything else are freewares.

FAC
 
warchild said:
The only way i can make any of this work for me is because i have social security...
Click to expand...

I'm still a year away from being eligible to draw on my SS benefits, and even then will have to sacrifice 25% of my full benefits at age 61...

...however, that plus what I'm earning now will at least kick me up closer to the official poverty level here in the U.S. :USA-flag:
 
Bjoern said:
I'm still waiting for a company to experiment with a "pay as much as you want" approach.

Might be good for reclaiming some customers.
Click to expand...

A company did. You know what? They averaged just over $2 for a FULL game. World of Goo. Look it up. If people are only willing to pay $2 for a full game, im scared to see what they are willing to pay for a single addon aircraft.
 
IanP said:
Most people will pay nothing. When one of the big bands (Coldplay? Someone like that) did exactly the thing you are suggesting, the average (mode and median) payment made was a massive nothing. Collecting most of the payments that were made cost more than the amount received. It was a stunt and unlikely to be repeated.
Click to expand...

It was Radiohead ("In Rainbows" album) , and you are correct. You could choose your own price for the pre-release download version, and most didn't pay. Their site pre-ordered vinyl and physical copies, and allowed you to download mp3's. It was marketing genius...they got a lot of press for it, and a lot of people downloaded it, then told their friends. After the release, the "choose-your-price" version was pulled, and sold at the normal price on itunes and the like. Supposedly they made more money off of the pre-order alone than all the sales of their previous album.

That business plan doesn't really transfer to flightsim, but then again isn't that kinda what donationware is?
 
Give it away for free,no amount of $$$ will buy that warm fuzzy feeling you get :D not to mention the freedom to tell the rivet counters to go **** and delete it if they dont like it ;)
 
I dont know how Piglet does such quality work, and give it out for free! He must have a NICE job! Or he is retired.
Click to expand...
LOL!
My A&P job gets me by. I lead a simple life, no wife or kids to worry about. No drug habits or lovechild payments either!
Time is one reason I stay freeware. If I went payware, or otherwise got involved, I would have to do so much more, than just making and releasing planes.
Since I stopped chasing the "Technology Dragon" I can concentrate on the actual business of poly pushing, and improve speed and workflow.
Wozza, got that right! :)
 
Gibbage said:
A company did. You know what? They averaged just over $2 for a FULL game. World of Goo. Look it up. If people are only willing to pay $2 for a full game, im scared to see what they are willing to pay for a single addon aircraft.
Click to expand...

But they sold 83'250 copies, which even at average of 2$ per copy makes nice money for 2 people in 13 days. :)

http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

The last table is funny, shows which nations are 'cheap'.
 
Gibbage said:
A company did. You know what? They averaged just over $2 for a FULL game. World of Goo. Look it up. If people are only willing to pay $2 for a full game, im scared to see what they are willing to pay for a single addon aircraft.
Click to expand...

A lot of small animals also produce a heap of dung. ;)

As I said, trying can't hurt. Do it over the course of the winter holidays with one or two products and see where it goes. Bonus bravery points if the product is brand new.

I bet that there are people out there who would pay the "regular" price nonetheless.


some1 said:
But they sold 83'250 copies, which even at average of 2$ per copy makes nice money for 2 people in 13 days. :)

http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/

The last table is funny, shows which nations are 'cheap'.
Click to expand...

Empeck's mentioning of WoG's success was what made me think the idea was also pretty nice to get into the flightsimming world.
 
WoG had major advertising from many sources - particularly both online and print gaming media. Is Little FS Developer going to get that?

Likewise, neither Radiohead nor NIN, I suspect, have any trouble paying the mortgage and as has been pointed out by several people, they had physical media backups for income in addition to the "free" or "pay what you like" download releases. Does the comparison really stand up when you compare it to a developer who only releases by download and has no physical media to fall back on for even a little income?

I was taking the physical media side out of the equation (sorry, I should have stated that) because it doesn't apply to the majority of FS developers.
 
I'd be happy to go to a "pay what you please" model... just as soon as my mortgage holder, local grocer, utility company, and internet provider decide to do the same. Until then, I'd rather not volunteer to put my neck on the tracks in the hope that the train will be gentle.
 
IanP said:
Is Little FS Developer going to get that?
Click to expand...

Online - yes. Print media - yes.

FS specific sites/magazines only though.

Does the comparison really stand up when you compare it to a developer who only releases by download and has no physical media to fall back on for even a little income?
Click to expand...

Don't your products burned on a CD/DVD and shipped via mail count?
 
To me, anyone (in general Bjoern) that would advocate a "pay as much as you want" business model is nothing more than someone that wants something for free. It defies all logic to let a customer set a vendors price point. How many times have we seen discussions (I use that term loosely) here where the customer complains about a vendors decisions on a product, especially price and this usually comes from a customers ignorance towards the development process and their "I want" factor.
 
Mathias said:
A payware product reaches just a fraction of a comparable freeware offering.
Now go check the average downloads over at SimV, AvSim and flightsim.com and you get the idea where FS has gone over the past couple of years.
A file that has reached 10.000 downloads on the freee sites within a couple of weeks 5 years ago barely gets 500 hits these days.
Click to expand...

I'd say that's because the quality of freeware, and amt of freeware has gone down. But that's only because it takes a whole heck of lot more time to make native FSX stuff. And most people don't have the time or money to do it anymore for free.
 
MCDesigns said:
How many times have we seen discussions (I use that term loosely) here where the customer complains about a vendors decisions on a product, especially price and this usually comes from a customers ignorance towards the development process and their "I want" factor.
Click to expand...

Here I'll repeat what I said in the last thread that had an argument about add-on prices.

Look at any other popular game: Arma, BF2, Crysis, ArmaII, Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2. These are some of the most popular online computer games currently. If you look at the modding/add-on communities of these games you'll see that extremely high quality add-ons are released for free on a regular basis. If someone were to release a single helicopter for ArmaII and try to charge $50, even $30 for it, they'd be laughed out of town.
 
djscoo said:
If someone were to release a single helicopter for ArmaII and try to charge $50, even $30 for it, they'd be laughed out of town.
Click to expand...

Well aware, been there, done that. I went thru the same thing doing commercial work for SIMS2, BUT I also made plenty off it despite what critics had to say. The main difference is that payware is accepted in this community, so the analogy doesn't apply.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top