Comment by lowbloodsugar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lowbloodsugar | Hacker News Reader

Ooof, well I'm looking at my purchase history on steam and in 2022 I made three purchases for a total of just over $50 and played _none_ of them. 2021 I bought 8 for ~$200, loved 5 (finished 4 of them), and played 3 kinda (one didn't run on M1 MBP). 2020 spent $400 on mostly mainstream games (like Civ6). The one game I hated was a relatively expensive indie game at $38. Loved and finished all the mainstream games (or played them to death in the case of Civ6 and its updates). Bought and never played amongus. The two indie games rated 1 never played and 1 hated.

I don't mind spending money on games I like, and even games I might like. Unless the game turns out to be a swindle, I don't mind paying for them. Even the one I hated, I didn't mind paying for: they'd put a lot of effort into it, they just missed the mark massively.

The game I play the most has a free version limited to the tutorial, so I got to try it before I bought it. I personally would be served better if I could try more games without paying for them if they were shit.

Does paying $8 improve the situation? I can try a lot of games. The games that I play a lot of would potentially earn more money from me in the long run. My favorite game I've put in over 200 hours over two years. I paid $20 for it. Would that developer make more money in that period from magna than the cut they got from Steam?

What about the games that were fun, lasted maybe 20 hours of play time, and would normally get like $5 cut? It would suck if they got less.

Makes total sense. We talked to other people who had a similar headspace: exploration is essential, though purchasing each game is not necessarily the problem. One of the things you gain from subscription service is curation; the idea around there is to minimize those encounters where you absolutely dislike the game, either because there's an audience voting for the titles you see or because there's a recommendation system that filters stuff you might not like.

On the point of trying out more stuff before you buy them: we considered adding a section on the platform for alpha/beta releases. It would allow developers to test and get feedback throughout the early stages of development while allowing players to engage with titles they would otherwise avoid. It would be separate from the revenue share model as these games wouldn't be fully baked and, therefore, at a lower standard than those on the "official" portfolio. We might be able to roll out this feature in the coming weeks! Would that be something you see yourself using?

And absolutely, in the context you gave, you would help developers a lot with our model. Think about it this way: the 200 hours you played on that game got compensated once: when you bought it. On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.

I've played some beta games on steam. Fermi Paradox was beta when I tried it, IIRC, and it was fun then. If people are playing beta games, I think the devs should be getting paid, tbh.

>On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.

Do I want to pay $75 a year for that game though? And if I play that game for 20 hours in one month, and also play a new game and complete it in 20 hours, how much does that new game get? Many games are very much play-once and done. Like I don't think I'll replay Hob again, but I still think it was one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2021 (when I discovered it on PS4). Likewise Carrion (actually I did replay that one coz people are chewy).

This may be a thing just for the whales, but maybe have a thing like reddit where I could rate a game positively and back that up with cash (like over and above the $8/mo). In a way, the pay-what-you-want bundles offer a similar mechanism, so the idea may be validated already.

I'm also realizing that most of the games I think of as Indie, I played on PS4/5 or Switch. Dead Cells, Hades, Manifold Garden, Celeste, Carrion. With Manifold Garden and Celeste I even bought the soundtracks. (Spend a lot more on consoles than steam, and finish more games there).

With shorter games, the model is still a challenge. Pay-what-you-want is an interesting idea.

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