A few weeks ago, I went to the NYGaming June meeting. I wrote on Socks, Inc. over at Indie Game Mag, and on Cloud Assassin over at I Heart Chaos. I also really enjoyed the Herograph demo, I’ll have more to say about that soon!
The best part of the evening was during the Cloud Assassin demo, when someone asked how they planned to monetize the game. See, in my work for Next Island and as a journalist, I often find myself hearing about how to make a game more viral or how to monetize on Facebook, and I have to admit it saddens me. As a player, I imagined the industry bubbling over with groundbreaking ideas, of developers bringing interactive stories to players, and coming up with exciting new game mechanics, and it breaks my idealistic heart when I find instead checklists of success metrics, ARPU, MAU, and the buzzworded “fun factor” slipped in as an afterthought. (Oh hey, friends, the next time I’m complaining about being broke, would someone please point out the direct correlation between being broke and avoiding every part of my industry that involves making money?)
Anyway, the developers were asked how they planned to monetize, and one guy paused for a moment and then said they weren’t interested in monetization as much as they had a great idea to make the game they wanted to play.
And the entire room applauded.
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