{"id":845,"date":"2011-01-07T13:13:17","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T19:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/?p=845"},"modified":"2011-01-07T13:22:49","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T19:22:49","slug":"paid-game-betas-arent-for-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/paid-game-betas-arent-for-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Paid game betas aren&#8217;t for everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/betafail.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-846\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" title=\"betafail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/betafail-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/betafail-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/betafail-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/betafail.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>So, I just sent out my &#8220;hey everyone, come get a refund&#8221; email to all the people who purchased the Stealth Target beta.  There are a number of pretty high-profile indie games that have built an entire business upon being a paid beta.  <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.net\/\">Minecraft<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolfire.com\/\">Wolfire&#8217;s Overgrowth<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.datarealms.com\/\">Data Realm&#8217;s Cortex Command<\/a> are a few that come to mind.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some analysis on the subject, and why it didn&#8217;t work for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.galcon.com\/stealth\/\">Stealth Target<\/a> .. and at the same time, the factors I think that would be important to having a successful paid-beta project.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Commitment to a larger vision. <\/strong> In the case of Stealth Target, I had a larger vision, but I eventually realized it was too grand for me to realize. \u00a0I&#8217;m more of a small-scale game kind of guy at this point. \u00a0Perhaps later in my game development career I&#8217;ll be doing larger projects, but right now, a &#8220;Galcon-sized&#8221; game is about as large as I can manage. \u00a0I think paid-beta games need to be larger to justify the whole &#8220;user-buy in to help fund an epic game&#8221; concept.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Commitment to regular updates.<\/strong> I&#8217;m only one dev, and when I take a month to work on Galcon updates, and then take another month to take a break, suddenly the beta users haven&#8217;t heard a peep from me about the game in 3 months. \u00a0Pretty weak &#8220;paid beta&#8221;. \u00a0If I had a team and I had someone always working on the beta so it kept living despite my other obligations \/ plans, it might have gone better.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Building a development team.<\/strong> Yeah, I just touched on that, but it really does make sense. \u00a0I could have a team, but my lifestyle doesn&#8217;t allow for it at the moment. \u00a0My hours are too random and my work schedule too unpredictable. \u00a0To have a team you have to have some consistency in your life, otherwise (I&#8217;m pretty sure) your team-members will get pretty tired of you. \u00a0I think having a team would help deliver the quantity and quality of content and updates to make a paid beta make sense.<\/li>\n<li><strong>You can&#8217;t change your mind and be crazy.<\/strong> I still plan on finishing Stealth Target, however, I&#8217;m no longer planning on doing a desktop release of the game. \u00a0The paid beta was for a desktop version of the game. \u00a0So changing to a iOS-only plan really isn&#8217;t possible. \u00a0The only way to cleanly resolve this was to terminate the entire beta and issue refunds. \u00a0Really, for a paid-beta to make sense, the users have to have something they can depend on, and changing platforms mid-stream is just asking too much.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyway, to wrap it all up, here&#8217;s the email I sent out to folks who already bought the game today:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Hi,<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Turns out the business model of doing a pre-beta-sale really doesn&#8217;t\u00a0make sense for me. \u00a0I&#8217;m more of a &#8220;do what I feel like&#8221; kind of guy,\u00a0and committing to making some sort of super-great-game in some kind of\u00a0pre-beta-sale promise just isn&#8217;t something I can really do. \u00a0I think\u00a0in the case of &#8220;Stealth Target&#8221; I bit off way more than I can chew.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>I&#8217;m hoping to finish Stealth Target this year, but I&#8217;m probably only\u00a0going to release it to mobile platforms, so I don&#8217;t even think I&#8217;m\u00a0going to be launching a desktop version.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Either way .. I&#8217;m offering refunds to anyone who wants one! \u00a0Just\u00a0reply to this email and say so.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Thanks for coping with a crazy indie-dev \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0Your support is greatly\u00a0appreciated and I hope I can churn out some cool games that you&#8217;ll\u00a0enjoy in 2011!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Cheers!<br \/>\n-Phil<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>P.S. Also, thanks for all the feedback you have given me so far on\u00a0Stealth Target. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been taking notes on just about everything!\u00a0You&#8217;ve been a huge help!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And, who knows what the future will hold for Stealth Target. \u00a0If the mobile version comes out feeling really good, I might try and release it for the desktop. \u00a0But the important thing for me is to know that I&#8217;m not obligated to produce a &#8220;desktop-sized&#8221; title when I&#8217;m really making a &#8220;mobile-sized&#8221; game. \u00a0I&#8217;ve got a lot of things I want to do this year, and I want to do them in the order that I want them to. \u00a0A paid-beta project would have &#8220;cramped my style&#8221; so to speak, and I don&#8217;t want to subject my users to a shoddy paid-beta experience.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks!<br \/>\n-Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, I just sent out my &#8220;hey everyone, come get a refund&#8221; email to all the people who purchased the Stealth Target beta. There are a number of pretty high-profile indie games that have built an entire business upon being a paid beta. Minecraft, Wolfire&#8217;s Overgrowth, Data Realm&#8217;s Cortex Command are a few that come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crazy","category-development","category-dynamite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philhassey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}