The King himself (Stephen) is taking a huge internet risk, he plans to sell his latest book in short episodes. Each reader is asked to pay $1.00 before or after they download the chapter, if 75% of the readers pay, then the next chapter will be released. If this is successful I believe this could have a huge impact in the game industry. Imagine selling each level for $1.00, or players subscribing to your game. Let us watch closely...... http://www.stephenking.com/ http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2332180.html?tag=st.ne.1005.thed.ni Edited by - rsnail on 7/24/00 9:42:46 AM

quote: Original post by rsnail

The King himself (Stephen) is taking a huge internet risk, he plans to sell his latest book in short episodes. Each reader is asked to pay $1.00 before or after they download the chapter, if 75% of the readers pay, then the next chapter will be released.

That''s a pretty cool idea, although I don''t know if I''d like reading a novel online. It''s less portable and it''s kind of hard on the eyes.

quote:
If this is successful I believe this could have a huge impact in the game industry. Imagine selling each level for $1.00, or players subscribing to your game.

Let us watch closely......

Edited by - rsnail on 7/24/00 9:42:46 AM

That''s an interesting idea. Instead of shareware, you could just release a few levels at a time for a price.

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." --William Blake

"The road of excess also just ends up making me tired because I'm too lazy" --Nazrix

Think back a few years...a little known game by an obscure company did exactly that already...maybe you''ve heard of it...the game is called "Doom", by id software...

Shareware essentially does that already...and has for years. The first release of most shareware wasn''t even shareware. It was free to use. If the product was good enough to be noticed, and there was enough feedback, the author would consider that incentive to improve it. Then the product would become shareware. As the sales come in, however slowly, the extra cash would become further incentive to keep improving the software. And so on.

But once the incentive goes away, the software usually becomes static.

The Stephen King buck-at-a-time-online-novel isn''t so much an innovative packaging idea, as a clever attempt to see if people will pay $15-$20 for a novel that isn''t in hardback form...and they have to print it themselves. $1 per chapter doesn''t sound too bad...until you realize that there are going to be 15-20 chapters in the book...

DavidRM
Samu Games

The only problem with this is that the effort (let alone the cost) of writing chapter 1 of a game is a lot greater than the cost of writing chapter 1 of a book. Even if he spends 6 months planning the book he could still be up to chapter 6 by the end of year 1. The Quake IV engine wouldn''t even be at the demo stage by then.


Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions

Reuse an old engine of yourself. This should drop production costs significantly.