intfiction.org

I think it will only ever work on a small scale, but I see nothing wrong with that. Several things would have to happen, though.

1) The game(s) would need to be excellent, entertaining, and of pretty good length.
2) They would need to be cheap. $5 each, or maybe $10 for a set of three.
3) The support of the community would be necessary. Look what happens without it.
4) The author(s) would need to build a following. People buy what they already like.
5) It would need to be taken seriously. No half-assed order fulfillment.

#3 and #4 are the hard parts, because it seems so difficult to get the community to support *anything* that strays from established norms. They can be downright brutal and vindictive, from the looks of things. Also, the IF authors who have the best chance of writing IF that would garner name recognition aren't going to charge for their games anyway.

I'd do it just to force myself to write better IF. I'd do it just so I could stay motivated. I have a sick feeling, though, that the community would be against the idea no matter how much effort is put into it.

I'd like to think that the more open-minded folk on RAIF would be all in favour of a commercial project as, hopefully, it would be a step towards the idea of an actual commercial base for IF.

But, saying that, I'm also sure there are enough people out there who *would* like the idea of commercial IF and *would* be willing to give it a try.

It's just a case of finding out who those people are.

A commercial IF game wouldn't even have to be the best thing around. I liked both "Future Boy!" and "1893" yet while there are better free games out there, people still bought the commercial ones. Find the right audience and they'll buy something, even if something similar is available elsewhere. (Why do we buy books, after all, when they're free of charge from the local library?)

The first thing to do, ideally, would be to make a demo version of the game (maybe 5% - 10% of the overall thing), test it to heaven and back to make sure it's totally bug free and you've covered every possible sensible response someone might think to type. Make the demo long enough to give people a genuine feel for what the finished product would be like, end it at a cliffhanger moment... *then* worry about getting the final product done.

I don't really have time to get into a long post here, but I've always thought IF games could be sold. The problem is that everytime I see people seriously discussing it on RAIF or whatever they wind up getting bogged down in unnecessary details like CDs and packaging, when really, what they need to do is go in the opposite direction.

All you need is a professional looking website to host them on, Paypal, and an open review system a la Amazon.

You pay something around five to ten dollars for a game (above that and it gets out of the 'impulse' range) and then download it. Simple.

I actually prefer downloading a game over buying one in a store. Carrying home that pretty box is nice and all, but the contents of it usually aren't anything to write home about it. Manuals are usually thin and printed on cheap paper, and you hardly ever get cool feelies like cloth maps, etc. anymore unless you're willing to shell out $60 or more for the collector's edition.

These days I tend to pay more indie games then mainstream ones. Major reasons for this are that it's more convenient - no messing around with draconian copy protection that punish legitimate buyers, and if I ever uninstall it and then feel like playing again later, all I have to do is hang onto the email they send and can redownload it whenever I want.

Indie games also tend to be cheaper, and at the same time deliver fun and original gameplay...all the stuff that mainstream games sacrifice more and more now for the sake of the shiny graphics that drive the costs higher every year.

Anyway, back on topic, if there was ever a pay site for IF games, it stands to reason that besides the actual game, it would become more common for authors to try and get an edge on the competition by including virtual 'feelies'...PDFs, original art, wallpapers, short stories, etc.

Of course, all of this is going to take up space, and that costs money, so there would have to be something in it for whoever ran the site. Maybe every time there was a sale a percentage of the money would go to the site? Or maybe you would have to pay a small fee for putting your game up in the first place?

Seriously though, I think the main barrier to selling IF would be the IF community itself. Everyone says they want to reach a bigger audience and to see IF taken more seriously, but at the same time they seem to have this mentality that charging money for your work is bad, and won't even take simple steps like moving away from an outdated newsgroup to a website and forum somewhere new people might actually have a chance of finding them.

But in the long run, I think a nice, sleek-looking website to sell IF on would be great for the community. Authors would finally have a real incentive to break out of the snack-sized IFComp mold, and longer, more professional games would become more common. (IMHO something along the lines of the Bulldog series is easilly sellable).

But of course setting up and running the actual site would be the biggest obstacle. I know absolutely nothing about things like that, but I imagine it's harder than it looks.

I believe the games would need to be more story-driven, and less puzzle-driven though, to really capture this market.

I don't know if Barnes and Noble or an actual publisher is the way to go. Like I said in the thread I linked to in the Malinche discussion, I've always thought the way to sell IF would be through a website.