1000 true fans

[FrieChamp]

Hey peeps, I'm sitting in a really boring lecture and just wanted to share an article on the website of the Wall Street Journal (maybe some of the dedicated Shacknews readers here already read this) about a potentially appealing business model for independent game creators. The example at hand is Flashbang studios, who release their games for free to play on their website (they use UNITY engine for this by the way) and plan to attract a sufficiently large fanbase (in this case 10.000) who pays for extra features to keep the company going. Read more about it here.

I dug a little deeper and also read the the article "1000 true fans" by Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly, the theoretical background to said model (or better "one of the articles out there covering this subject" ). Check out the updates at the bottom of the page too, for some feedback from artists who put this model into practice long time ago and their experiences. Perhaps you are wondering, he also wrote the excellent article named "Better Than Free" some time ago, an essay on the issues artists face in the age of digital distribution (Zaphod will surely remember).

I know this is all not new, but with the steady rise of indie game creation and era of digital game distribution (+ persistance of software piracy) I'm generally very much interested in this topic and I thought those of you with indie developer ambitions might be interested in reading about this too. I'm asking myself how viable this model is actually in practice - I guess Warby can tell his own story with that donations experiment for all the custom content he has made (and future projects)?

Enjoy!

[Jetsetlemming]

So basically what Dwarf Fortress and Toady One rely on?

[Warby]

definitely an interesting read !

[Zacker]

Very nice articles there Frie, thanks!