Zero Gear - an indie multiplayer kart racing game

one more: "Hypno Glasses"

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I was hoping that the restrictions for free players wouldn't need to be so obviously game-play stunting. I wouldn't have much fun playing against people who were really obviously handicapped.

Here are some of the ideas for restrictions I/we have:

-can access garage but not save new characters (you will always have the default character, but you can see how cool of a character you COULD have)

-limit some settings like resolution / custom key configuration

-free players have less priority when joining servers

-free players have pre-generated name perhaps ("Cheapskate4938")

-free players have no access to steam overlay? (friends / web / community)

-could do something drastic like make free players have a second or 2 delay to fire weapons when pressed, I feel that dumbing down the game might reflect negatively on whether they enjoy the game enough to buy it though.

Overall, we would really like people to still have fun playing the game, with the obvious showcase that you could be accessing a lot more features if you plunk down 10/15/20 bucks.

That is why it is so hard to figure out what you might be able to limit or not without pissing people off. Personally I am most in favor of limiting cosmetic things like not being able to customize your character, not being able to have the name you want, etc. Things that wont be frustrating, but that most people that end up liking the game would probably want to be able to do.

You also have to consider what increased exposure the game might have by having a free version that might allow you to sell more copies as well. If there is no reason not to try the game whenever you want, I would have to imagine there would be a much larger word of mouth factor.

Quote from Skjalg

I think theres a big distinction between how Multiplayer games and Singleplayer games are released (especially indie games).Singleplayer games, like World of Goo, are released with a short demo (a few of the first maps to get you started) and then you gotta buy the full game when you are hooked.

Multiplayer games on the other hand should not be given away for free in the beginning (just at the end after 10 years:P). The steam tactic that many here has posted with free weekends after a few weeks and the game dropping in price over time really works well for multiplayer games since those games usually spread by word of mouth like just "hey dude, come join us" on MSN/Skype. If its free (minus some goodies) when you hear that from your friends then you'll most likely just go with the free version and try to have fun with that, but If you dont have fun with the free version because it hampers you in any way when you play against your friends then you'll start disliking the game and it will just hurt your sales and rep.

my 2c

So, I have been talking a little bit more with my partner about this since I was surprised about the strong reaction to the idea here. Another one of our goals with this game is to encourage a lot of user generated content, whether it is custom characters and karts - or even full blown new game modes and levels. My only experience with attaining a large enough interested group of people to facilitate that is either with a mod, or something else you can develop with for free - or a community built around a few very popular AAA games. I am pretty sure we can't count on being in the latter category, so having a free version to expand our community would really help drum up interest in user developed content I think. Which would be great for us, since an entire community working on the game is going to be a lot more exciting than 2 people.

I think that our goal is actually exactly the example you post above Skjalg, we want people to tell their friends to just download it and try it out with no barriers - and to have fun. While they are having fun though, there should be some very obvious things going on - like seeing everyone else in the game rocking awesome looking characters and karts, and people unlocking achievements, etc. that it is clear you are missing out on those things. If you are playing for free and you see your friend who got you to try it out doing those things, I would hope it would be enough incentive to register the game.

Free weekends are a cool idea, I just think that making people wait a few months to be able to check it out would leave more people to forget the game by then instead of checking out what the game is all about right away.

I also think there are some cheapskates that will never buy the game no matter what, and I would rather have them fill up servers to make the games fun for other people than have them not play at all.

just finished texturing a new char:

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I have been working on some new custom items, and I decided to see what it would look like to string together all the items we have in the game at the moment into one image for fun:

[Blocked Image: http://nimblebit.com/customitems.jpg]

well, I am glad we didn't waste any time looking into porting ZG to consoles - apparently this is the year of the kart game.

I am confident our gigantic legal dept here at NimbleBit would crush puny Microsoft and Sony.