Need advice on selling game

[hallsofvallhalla]

So I have worked on and off again with Quests of Crocania and have added many features. I have noticed quite a few PHP mmorpg scripts going from anywhere between $15 and $1000.

I was actually thinking about setting up QOC much like a mmorpg builder with a backend and make it very customizable and then selling it for $10 or so.


Looking for comments, suggestions, rants. ect.. on the idea.

[kaos78414]

Personally, I say go for it. While a lot of people are going to say the market is already flooded, and it's too hard to make one that will be flexible enough to where you won't look at a game made with it and say "Oh that was made with such-and-such engine," I think there's a market for it.

Think about trying to make it extensible via modules so that people can develop addons for it for specific features. Then you can kind of go bare bones for the software itself, and give the modules away for free (or, similar to Joomla!, addon developers could charge for their modules).

[hallsofvallhalla]

I have went through no less than 30 free PHP game scripts...RPG..MMO..ect.. in the past 2 days and not one..no not one is ready to play out of box. 95% of them are very outdated and still use improper coding that results in errors with new php and mysql.

Many were way beyond fixing and have been dead for some time. The ones that do run out of the box seem to be $50+. This is what gave me the idea.

[Jackolantern]

Sounds like a good idea, but I would re-think the price-point. Your engine will automatically be considered cheap, rigid, and probably outdated because it is selling for $10. That is the old, but very real, price = value idea. Software has changed a bit as far as "free" goes due to the open-source initiative, but once you start charging for it, you are assigning it a value in the eyes of potential buyers.

So my suggestion is either just make it open source, or charge more for it, maybe $50 or $60. If you go for the latter, get a domain name for the site, and get it professionally designed to be flashy, and to show, not just tell about, the features. Websites make a ton of difference with game engines. There are literally thousands of people who chose Dark Basic Pro over Blitz Basic because the DBP website was just more exciting (I was one of those people).

[Last Known Hero]

I agree with Jack. Put a real price to it, even $40. Thats a nice chunk in your pocket really and its cheap enough that people would want it.

[hallsofvallhalla]

awesome points...thanks

I too fell for the flashy DBPro site

[Jackolantern]

awesome points...thanks

I too fell for the flashy DBPro site

It really works. It can be hard to get people interested in something that can be kind of abstract like a game engine. But if the site lists many features, shows the possible end-products, does it all with a good looking design that will make people think about the design of their own game, and just gets people excited about it, people will go for it.

[hallsofvallhalla]

RC did a good job of that as well. Looking through QOC is see it still needs allot fo work before I would sell it so this may be a extended project.

[kaos78414]

I'd be willing to help a little, especially if you plan on going OO with it.

[Callan S.]

I think the assurance it'll work right off the bat is probably the key element. A customer could fix an error, but that's like buying a steak dinner that's underdone but saying the customer could go cook it more himself. How do you prove it works right off the bat? I dunno - perhaps a video showing the a from scratch instillation and play?