So! Just come back from FRC, time to talk about what I've been doing in the other track of this project, so to speak. As I've probably made clear already, I'm tackling this from two sides, while entwining the two as and when I'm able to- these sides being the business side, and the creation side. I've talked a lot about the creation side, but the business side is starting to be a major focus of research for me, so it's time to talk about it some more!
I've been looking into how you go about selling a product, or more accurately how you design a product in order that it is saleable, and how to make those sales. The first thing I've learned, succinctly, is that traditional research isn't going to help.
Less succinctly: The internet makes things weird. Traditional wisdom on buisness is that you have to consider the 4 Ps when setting a product for sale- these being Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. The internet messes with all of these royally.
Place is the most obvious one. Traditionally, you need to consider where you are selling the product from- how people are going to find your shop, whether people will wander past, things like that- but I don't have a shop. I have a website, at most. By definition, people are unlikely to wander past- any journeys here are going to be deliberate- but on the other hand, it lends convenience.
Then there's Promotion. Promotion would have to be almost entirely net based as well- which, granted, is less alien an idea than it could be, but is still the sort of thing there exists very little in any literature I've been able to find. However, there is still hope- I've been looking into services such as Project Wonderful and Google Adwords, which are designed specifically for internet-based promotion.
Product is another one that's an issue. Traditionally, this is the consideration of who your competitors are, and what the Unique Selling Point of your product is. Unfortunately, there happen to be a heck of a lot of people on the internet who make games too. So this tells me my product is going to have to *really* stand out from the crowd in order to be even noticed.
Finally, there's Price. Simply put, if there's no production costs, any money is profit. And even there, I'm starting to wonder whether I really want to charge money for it, or use the free to play model- something proving a popular concept with many modern games. But again, this leads to other issues, such as server costs and maintainance, etc.
So, long story short, I've got to figure this out for myself. Short story long? Anything by Dostoyevsky. (I regret nothing!)
So, that's the state of affairs at the moment. Phillammon out!
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