Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription...
by Pedro_Magna on Friday January 13, 2023 @01:57PM
(#34372244)
Interesting, most of the devs we talk to are pretty concerned about not having DRM. Same goes for implementation, they want the least amount of work possible.
You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is interesting, thanks for the suggestion!
Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription...
by turtledragonfly on Friday January 13, 2023 @02:14PM
(#34372471)
Just curious: do you have any sources for the Apple Arcade pay-for-playtime behaviors? I understand the concept in a hand-wavy sense, just wondered if there's some real data you're referencing.
I'm working on a game myself; interested in what research is out there.
Re:Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription...
by 1123581321 on Saturday January 14, 2023 @08:17AM
(#34380101)
The one that came to my mind was the Bloomberg report about Apple changing their Arcade approach after seeing how much better perpetual play games were at retaining subscribers. https://archive.ph/zm0Th
However, since then they started re-releasing classics that don’t necessarily have daily engagement built into the design.
The other problem that "pay-for-playtime" has shown to have on Apple Arcade and similar is that it penalizes "content rich" games where the player can play through rich, authored content in ten or twenty hours and instead rewards more endless mode game. Not that there's anything wrong with those types of games but this means that eventually, more meaningful games will be driven off the platform and it will be just idle games, puzzle games and farming simulators. I love those kind of games but it can make the platform feel cheap. I think a pay-per-install metric would work out a lot better in the long run for you.
I'll keep an eye on this service, definitely the more outlets an indie has the better.