ERoberts
08-10-2005, 04:16 AM
The idea of an Indie "portal", or community-controlled download site have been discussed many times. The idea described in this post is not mine, but posted with permission (hope I get this right, sounded like it could work when it was described to me).
The appeal of the indie portal idea generally seems to be the chance of attracting more visitors by having your game on a site with lots of other games, but without having to sacrifice most of the profit from each sale.
Some of the problems pointed out are:
1) who would do the marketing to attract visitors?
2) who decides how the site should look, what changes should/shouldn't be made at any point in time?
3) who owns the site? (if an offer is made to by it, who could accept and get the money?)
4) who decides which games are presented at the "top-slots"/most noticable positions of the site?
5) what if some games are not good enough, bringing the whole quality of the site down, what can be done for quality control?
There are obviously other benefits and problems, but from reading old threads about it, these seems to be the main ones.
A possible way to get this to work, is to have a site where you buy in to be one of the legal owners of the site. The details of this would of course need to be worked out with a lawyer, but the key here is that each member would pay a substantial amount of money to become part owner of the entire thing, giving them a vote in everything to do with the site. This money would be used to pay for the site, bandwidth and such. (On a side note: To make the barrier to entry low, the site could give the members interest free loans over, say, a hundred years or so, meaning that you would only pay $5-10 per month, but still, from a legal point of view, would be one of the owners). This could be a solution for problem 3.
A system could be implemented that could let any member put up a suggestion, and the other members allowed to vote for it within a given time limit, and most things about the site could be decided this way. If someone found the game to be of too low quality, they would put up a suggestion for that game to be evicted from the site, and if a majority agrees, it would be gone. This could solve problems 2 & 5, especially considering that every member is basically a board member, and therefore have legal right to have a say in these matters.
And then we have problems 1 & 5, and here's a possible solution for both of them. Each member is responsible to market the site. You can market it a lot, or a little, or not at all, it is all up to you. But the more traffic you bring to the site, the better positioned your products will be on the site. There could even be banners/ads on the site specifically promoting the members products, and the more traffic you bring to the site, the more times your ad will be shown.
Obviously, if you are the type of indie that wants to be in full control of everything, or build your own site from which you sell all your games, then obviously this isn't for you, but I suspect NO portal could ever be appealing to those types of indies.
But I have the feeling that a large group of people here WOULD like for something like that to exist, and maybe this post can be about trying to find solid solutions around the problems, instead of just identifying the problems and say "can't be done, won't work".
A note: I'm not interested in setting up a site like this or to be a member of it or in any way involved in running it, if anyone wants to set something like this up, feel free to do so. But myself, I'm only here for the discussion on a more academic level...
The appeal of the indie portal idea generally seems to be the chance of attracting more visitors by having your game on a site with lots of other games, but without having to sacrifice most of the profit from each sale.
Some of the problems pointed out are:
1) who would do the marketing to attract visitors?
2) who decides how the site should look, what changes should/shouldn't be made at any point in time?
3) who owns the site? (if an offer is made to by it, who could accept and get the money?)
4) who decides which games are presented at the "top-slots"/most noticable positions of the site?
5) what if some games are not good enough, bringing the whole quality of the site down, what can be done for quality control?
There are obviously other benefits and problems, but from reading old threads about it, these seems to be the main ones.
A possible way to get this to work, is to have a site where you buy in to be one of the legal owners of the site. The details of this would of course need to be worked out with a lawyer, but the key here is that each member would pay a substantial amount of money to become part owner of the entire thing, giving them a vote in everything to do with the site. This money would be used to pay for the site, bandwidth and such. (On a side note: To make the barrier to entry low, the site could give the members interest free loans over, say, a hundred years or so, meaning that you would only pay $5-10 per month, but still, from a legal point of view, would be one of the owners). This could be a solution for problem 3.
A system could be implemented that could let any member put up a suggestion, and the other members allowed to vote for it within a given time limit, and most things about the site could be decided this way. If someone found the game to be of too low quality, they would put up a suggestion for that game to be evicted from the site, and if a majority agrees, it would be gone. This could solve problems 2 & 5, especially considering that every member is basically a board member, and therefore have legal right to have a say in these matters.
And then we have problems 1 & 5, and here's a possible solution for both of them. Each member is responsible to market the site. You can market it a lot, or a little, or not at all, it is all up to you. But the more traffic you bring to the site, the better positioned your products will be on the site. There could even be banners/ads on the site specifically promoting the members products, and the more traffic you bring to the site, the more times your ad will be shown.
Obviously, if you are the type of indie that wants to be in full control of everything, or build your own site from which you sell all your games, then obviously this isn't for you, but I suspect NO portal could ever be appealing to those types of indies.
But I have the feeling that a large group of people here WOULD like for something like that to exist, and maybe this post can be about trying to find solid solutions around the problems, instead of just identifying the problems and say "can't be done, won't work".
A note: I'm not interested in setting up a site like this or to be a member of it or in any way involved in running it, if anyone wants to set something like this up, feel free to do so. But myself, I'm only here for the discussion on a more academic level...