Yesterday, the Engine Hacking Marathon by Slade Villena was posted on Gamasutra. I had been planning to use Unity as my game engine, but after reaching Slade’s guide and my recent browser-game immersion, I’ve decided on a drastically different plan.
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Engine Hacking for Ludum Dare
Thursday, August 19th, 2010dimeRocker Marketplace: Micropayments
Friday, July 9th, 2010
The grand finale. Micropayments are now in the Marketplace demo. Here I’m showing a number of things that are common with micropayment systems in browser games. The first is the dual currency system. Up until now the stores have been using the Bucks, or premium currency, bought with real money. Now we’ll be using the game currency, Coins. We can use premium currency to buy game currency, which is earned by playing the game. This allows less frequent players an opportunity to catch up to more dedicated players.
dimeRocker Marketplace: Subscriptions
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010I’ve added to the Marketplace demo with a working subscription system. Many online games provide subscriptions which enable additional content, features, or both. Subscriptions, in my opinion, are one of the strongest business models. The traditional, one-time purchase may be fine for a standalone game, but online games have monthly, reoccurring fees (servers, bug fixes, continual development). I prefer the subscription over micropayments because I like the idea that real money can, in no way, influence anything inside the game.
dimeRocker Marketplace: Retail Store
Sunday, July 4th, 2010I’ve put together a Marketplace demo for dimeRocker’s monetization options. The demo will have micropayments, retail (one-time purchase), and subscriptions. I’ve put a live version of this app on Facebook, so you can see it in action. Right now, I have the retail portion implemented, with the other two coming in the next couple days.