Hello everyone,
first of all i have to say, your approach is awesome! Your great Ideas and slow but continuous proceedings might lead to a Genre Leading Title.
A few years ago, i had the Idea for a Game much like yours. My experiments with diverent Engines led to a lot of knowledge about what does not work. ^^
Finally i canceled the work on this Topic.
I think the Idea about how to integrate the community might at least be of interest.

In my oppinion if there is a "Free and Open Engine", the community will take it and do the other stuff like models, scripting scenes, etc... The only thing you have to do is, enable the community to let their ideas get alive. This means extend the Engine with by the community requested features and let the community use free tools to create content. Maya must not be the Weapon of choice!

You are exactly following this plan until now. - OK you suggest Maya for modeling and your prgramm is not free but really cheap which is also good.

After you released V3, it might be a good idea to start integrating your community and make them productive content developers. Give a platform to them for sharing user content. Observe how often content is downloaded and how it gets rated by other users. Create a sophisticated algorithm which identifies Top Content. Create your own currency which is used to buy such Top Content. Someone can earn your new Money by uploading Content, participating at the Forum or even buy it with real money.

At first uploaded Content is free until the Algorithm identifies it as valuable (may take a few days, dont set the threshold to low!!! you need free content to attract new users) If someone downloads free content the author gets nothing because it costs nothing...
Top Content has a variable price like stocks. Hughe request -> high price | lower interest -> lower price
The devs get a certain percentage x, the Author gets the rest of the fee. Yes indeed this will lead to microtransactions, and this is an awesome approach as ppl only have to pay for what they like to have. And compared to other games, content is able to massivly change and influence the gameplay of your title.

Of course the Author is also able to release the stuff totally free, which means the algorithm ignores the content rating and downloads. This has to be checked at upload time. Once uploaded, content can't be deleted by the uploader and gets property of XMoon. Also the license can't be changed afterwards.

I propose this because i think you really should earn money, because you did a good job until now. I also understand your current model of charging new stories and features. Sometimes some cents now and then is more then a few dollars every half year...

Greetz

Like most games, this forum will be the platform to release mods on to.

Granted, now that you mention it, if Steam were to allow adult games on there site (or an adult-themed version of Steam created), the Steam Workshop (or it's non-existent naughty cousin) would be a neat way of doing it.

I personally think what would work better would just be a storefront provided by the developer for a cut. People tend to balk at paying for something previously free.

A simple Forum maybe the right place for a little bit of content sharing. For this game, tons of content will be created by users. I think handling content with a simple forum will end up in a mess. Maybe a shorum (SHOp and foRUM)((sounds like Showroom... nice idea we came across.^^ )) is the right approach.

Yeah, Steam is okay. They even allow you to play games offline.
Steam Workshop seems to be a good starting point. Of course it needs customizing. I think there will be something out there in the www which perfectly fitts the needs of the community.
You really should be able to sort the stuff by release date, rating, category, heat, price etc...


Yeah, people suck - always want everything put wont pay for nothing. But remember, greed and envy are mighty friends if you want to sell something. The few days the stuff is for free creates a hype about really cool content, ppl who don't have it will pay to get it! Just think if i could offer you Early Access to V3, how much would it be worth to you?

A real world example (without naming names): There was a 3D modeler who made a popular model that he was giving away for a long time. Then, out of the blue, he started charging because - in his words - it had gotten popular. (Quite a lot, but still lower than professional prices.) He got shit on pretty bad, stopped selling the model, and generally withdrew from the community. Had he said from the start he'd be charging for it and that the giveaway was temporary, he'd have gotten a lot less flack. Or if he updated the model and sold the new, improved version.
Besides, with a community this size it's better to give review copies to 1 or 2 forum members. Or release content for free to generate hype for the other content you sell.

Everybody knows from start, good content gets charged. If something is good, it should be worth to pay a few cents for it. Never said you should charge a lot of money for content, just a few cents.
Lets say the author needed 40h to code an awesome AI Script. He should get his work rewarded, so 40 *10$ = 400$ devided by 10.000 downloads ~ 4 cents or 0,04$. Lets double it so 50% for the author and 50% for XMoon = 0,08$ or 8 cents. Do you really think thats to much?

Don't forget, i allready statet that you have to select if your uploaded content can get charged or is totally free at upload time! So it is still a community decision if microtransaction will get accepted. If this famous company which once started the hype about Smart Phones did not enable the Authors of Apps to earn money, they would have attracted lesser high profile devs! They allready have proven that the System works.

I think you missed my point. Let me put it this way: if someone releases an AI script and the reviewers say something like "Not only can you titfuck her, but she'll blow you while you're doing it." then I'm going to buy it. And I'd pay a dollar, not just a few cents. One the other hand, if 1000 people got the script for free but I have to pay for the SAME THING (and it's not because I missed a special event or whatever) than I'm going to say "fuck you, jack". Even if it's only a penny. Why? Because nothing of value has been added, yet I'm expected to pay for something that had so little value everyone else got it for free.
Release free stuff to hype yourself, then charge for the highest quality stuff.

Ok now i got it. Well, checking all uploads by hand might create a lot of work load.
Sorting might also be a question of taste. Sometimes one likes something what the other hates. I think collective Intelligence is the best mechanic for sorting out, this needs the stuff to be for free until some of the community tested and ratet the content.

I think the platform should follow the law of the market.
No demand -> low price
High demand -> high price

This way once charged features could get free again if the demand decreases significantly. The Authors will be at constant preassure to develop better stuff, to get back their top ranking. This System will definitly lead to higher quality stuff, which makes the whole Title even better.

Nobody forces you to pay, if you dont want to. Consequence is you have to come along with the free stuff...



Your behaviour shows, greed and envy works. You are already envious of those who downloaded "once free" content which you missed because you underestimated it.

Economics conundrum, much?

So, on the one hand you have the basics of economics that states that price is directly proportional to demand and indirectly proportional to supply, which therefore means that something that was free at low demand should be not free at high demand.

On the other hand, nobody will want to buy something that has a raise in price if the good/service in question does not increase in value.

Well, what if we take another page from the Big Book O' Economics and set price ceilings within the algorithm? A mod/addon would therefore never exceed a given price, with said price being proportional to the number of characters of code in the script (spaces and comments excluded), therefore not allowing prices to spike beyond what many players could spend, while also giving a quantifiable value to the amount of effort put into a given mod, so that a simple blowjob script won't be equal to a complete start-from-scratch story simply because their popularity is the same.

If by "works" you mean it drove me away from it, yes. (I wouldn't turn down a free mod, btw. Especially if it's the first. It would be more likely that the mod was being given away before I started playing the game.)

We already have a platform for distribution, price setting, etc.: this forum. One can easily find out how much people are willing to pay, simply by asking the community. No complicated algorithm needed. No algorithm can determine quality outside of human input.
Popularity does not equal demand. Something that is popular because it is free might not be in demand when it has a price tag.

@TheMohawkNinja, basing the value of a script on its length sounds like a good idea, but it really isn't. Instead of well-written scripts that do a lot of stuff, people would just write bloated scripts that do very little. They might even pad the script out with useless code that does nothing.
Plus, a number of modular scripts is better than a monolithic script. In the first case, you can pick and choose which ones you want to use. In the second, you get a script that doesn't play nice with other scripts.
Determining value requires a human element.