[casual_games] Different Payment Models

[Jeff Murray]

Chris, that is sooo right it's untrue. The kind of models that support micropayments are also the models that mean a significantly higher development cost. Couple that with the 'hit and miss' nature and it's just as much as a gamble as putting money on the horses.
 
Casual games are so throwaway in nature that micropayments just don't make much sense. Take it further, into independent development of games and you're looking at a huge 'build it and hope' factor unless you have an already established idea which you're building on. The problem with starting small and building up is that users quickly get bored of the lack of crap you can give them. It has to be an almost constant flow of crap to keep them interested, or at least a significant enough amount of crap from the getgo to get them to go part with cash!
 
Jonas, the whole 'casual games paypal' idea seems interesting ... if you can provide developers with some APIs to get started with and reduce the dev time significantly (by clever item purchase / unlock design) you may well be on to something there... the biggest problem every customer of that service would face would be security, though. How can we be sure that payment has actually gone through correctly when we're dealing with 500+ different games with code of varying integrity? The authors would have to retain responsibility for their own security and my spider senses detect a legal minefield!!
 
Anyhoo ... after Chris' email I felt inspired to throw my two cents out there!! :)
 
Jeff Murray.

Jeff Murray | Game Programmer

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