by thundergod » Sun, 11Jun19 22:39
Unless I'm misremembering (and I very well might be), Shark put a password on Desire & Submission 2 that strongly encouraged one to play D&S 1 first to get the password and the backstory. Obviously this doesn't force anyone to do anything, and there will be plenty of folks eager to give out the password elsewhere or here via PM. But that's the sort of thing I'm talking about...a minor but present barrier to full and open access.
And as for the point...well, if the purpose is to keep cranking out underdeveloped games as fast as possible, then there's indeed no point. And I don't see any real way to make people who are never going to pay for something suddenly decide "hey, I want to pay for this!" (or go through the effort of finding a password the difficult way, or playing a game on their own rather than just following a walkthrough). But there *are* people who pay for these and other types of games, and there are various ways authors reward those who do while doing their best to keep others out. It seems to me that the best thing an author can do is to build loyalty and a sense of reward among actual paying customers. That requires quality games, which means that steps necessary to achieve that (like making each game less work but making the overall reward greater) should be considered. And it may also require taking steps to deliver an actual reward vs. not paying, which means that any barriers -- even minor -- that help assure paying customers that they're getting something exclusive (or) better (or) earlier than the general public are good.
It seems to me that someone willing to pay for the games from a given author is already inclined to appreciate ongoing rewards for that behavior. And so, a serial in which one game finishes with a password that unlocks the next game, or one game finishes with a password that unlocks member-only content, is a decent gesture towards that sort of reward. No, no one's going to be able to lock their games down in privacy and for eternity. But if the games are appealing enough, *those who are already willing to pay for them* aren't going to balk at taking the necessary steps to play for "keys" that unlock future content.
A hypothetical example: let's say some alternate universe GoblinBoy had asked for some sort of password or trivia answer that demonstrated one had played Camping Trip before one could begin School Dreams 3. And let's say he monetizes a fraction of that in some way. I think a fair number of people -- not the majority, certainly, but some -- would have made sure they got whatever word or info they needed from CT in order to play what was already being reviewed as a terrific game. Yes, people would have begged for and received the answer from others for free, but high-end security isn't really the point here; some authorial control is better than none if the purpose is monetization. Now, suppose that the password/key/whatever from CT didn't just unlock SD3, but set the player on one of the two paths that were theoretically promised by CT: choose Melissa in CT, you play SD3 for Molly; choose Becky in CT, you play for Kirsty in SD3. In the current system of free access to everything, there's no motivation other than GoblinBoy's desire to never, ever sleep to write *both* those games. In a hypothetical system in which he's making some money from it and more if he can deliver both, there's a motivation.
So: what is Chaotic's motivation to produce high-quality games? It's entirely possible that there's more than enough money to be made pushing out indifferent to fair games. But maybe there's more money to be made by making higher-quality games and building a dedicated audience, something more like what Shark or Puso have done. If it's the very "serve the paying public" process that's dragging the quality down and thus limiting the number of paying customers (as I noted way upthread, I wouldn't consider paying unless the games got a lot better, but I *would* pay for the next GoblinBoy game...I know I wouldn't *have* to, because eventually it would get out there for free, but I'd be motivated to do so because I know I'm going to be rewarded), then find a way to take the pressure off the quantity so a focus can be put on quality while still retaining paying customers. That's all I'm suggesting with the dual ideas of splitting games into series and linking them in some fashion beyond using the same characters.
