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 Forum index » Meta » General META Discussion
Making ARGs Business.
Moderators: imbri, ndemeter
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ItWasntMeISwear
Unfettered

Joined: 15 Feb 2005
Posts: 503
Location: Illannoys, USA

 		I'd hate to be the one to state the obvious here, but wouldn't creating ARGs for authors be a decent business plan?

1) It would give the players a chance to interact with and learn about each main character before the book hits the stands.

2) It could provide a way for people to keep up with their favorite story characters (Harry Potter ARG anyone?).

I know I dream a dream here, but it seems like a marriage made in virtual heaven.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 7:21 am
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial
taozero|Qatar wrote:


Now, assuming you have that serious cash on hand to throw into an ARG that may well flop, and of course assuming you aren't microsoft, and care about your money, *and* that you get that large of a fan-base - their donations/purchases, IMO (without reviewing financial figures from PPC) will never be enough to make a profit and keep an ARG alive for any substantial amount of time.

And yes, imbri, I'm talking about large, public ARGs, not private ventures meant for corporate team-building exercises Wink


Well, RPG are a money making business (for books etc.), and Ever Quest is surviving as a pay to play MUD so I can see ARG's eventually getting to be self supporting. However those are situations where there is a static product that is always available. ARGs (so far) have been unique experience that are not (generally speaking) repeatable (that may chage if there is a "pay-to-play" which will need to have some ability to be reproduced time and again fro incoming players, otherwise you loose the "word of mouth" draw)

With the exception of Companies like 42 and Mind Candy who are hired by a company to advertise a product, I don't know if there will be a way to generate enough income to completely cover the cost of the game, pay the PM's for their time outlay (we are talking nearly fiull time 8 - 10 hours or more every day of the week for some of them) and still have money left over. I'm curious to see how the puzzle cards for Perplexity do... That will be a good test to see if in game merchandise is a viable method of payment.

Free will donations: while there are people who do donate to games they are enjoying, so far, there has not been a game at this point that had massive amounts of donations enough to cover the financial outlays of the PMs. It certainly will never make enough to pay the PMs for their time.

SO... I guess what I think is...

Advertising/marketing/pay-to-play (either option) will generate money for the PMs to cover the full cost of making the game (and maybe a salary for the PMs)

pay-to-play - my personal feeling is that this might not work because of the one time nature of ARGs in general. It may change as the player base grows, or with a game that is continuing/reproducible


Merchandising - so far the cafepress shops selling T-shirts etc. have not brought in much in the way of income, but that may change as the player base expands, and I am waiting to see how the PPX cards do...

Donation base... more than likely will NEVER cover the cost of the ARG - even with donations that are "in-kind" (i.e. hosting/registration/stuff). This may change, but there will always be a portion of the community that can't pay/wont pay.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 9:12 am
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