Why PeaceMaker costs money (contd)

http://www.peacemakergame.com/blog/2008/01/14/why-peacemaker-costs-money-cont/

Al: We understand peoples desire to see more before they buy. We are looking into ways to make our tutorial available as an application so that people can get a better feel for what the game play is like. We tried to quickly respond to peoples initial desire to see gameplay with our video but that doesn’t seem to be enough for many such as yourself. Especially in the game world (PC) this is becoming the norm so we understand. File size and the cost to us for bandwidth have been obstacles as well as the technical creation of the limited version. That being said there are many other things that people purchase with less information than we have tried to provide ( ie movies, even console games etc. ) We hope that in the meantime other peoples positive response to the experience will be enough.

David: Constraining the value proposition to comparisons in the game market ( which we hope to expand as the other David points out comparing us to a book ). We understand that we are not a console game, or even a PC game with gameplay as long or intricate as a game like civilization, which is why our product is less than half of the cost of those games. As for charging 5 instead of 20. This would severely limit our ability to progress as a company. I also hope that our game stacks up to more than 1/10 of the other games and we definitely believe that we stack up to other games that are available for 20.

As for audience, we are always looking for ways as I stated to promote the game in community groups, support events and find funding through foundations and non-profits to reach those audiences that 20 dollars may be a barrier for. If we reach the kind of success that even puts us on the positive side be assured that we will find ways to give back. We have put a lot of effort into this project battling all the way while it was never apparent that we would ever make money. The drive that helped us reach this point could be used for many other positive ventures. We are also looking into ways that we can implement a model where a portion of each sale goes to X like the “Red” campaign. This raises the same affiliation issues that funding and sponsorship did.

Cote’: Thank you for this message. One more thing I will add to the non-profit vs for profit is that it is very difficult to start a non-profit. 1. There is a long period before you can actually get the status of a non-profit and all the legal and accounting qualifications. 2. Foundation funding cycles are long and timing is everything. 3. As a non-profit with no history it becomes very difficult to get larger grants as they want to see a track record first. All of these are counter to a development path that requires funding upfront in order to get to the commercialized, usable, and verifiable product. Foundations have a very hard time funding the “commercialization” portion of development. The are strong on funds for research, validation, and dissemination but it’s not sexy to their boards to give money for legal and copyright issues, as well as the always sexy quality assurance.

The point is: money raising occurs in either case, even if some users are getting the good(s) or service for “free.”

When having a for-profit vs. non-profit endeavor, it seems like having a high level of transparency (as you start doing above) is key to making the for-profit venture feel less “sleazy” than a non-profit venture.

And, to me, avoiding that sleazy perception (real or no) is the prime outward messaging problem to work on for people who are “for-profit non-profits.”