CNET on Monetizing Games

by on 3 July, 2008 - 01:39

Good article today on CNET called "29 potential video game monetization methods". Of course, there's nothing here amazingly new and never heard before but if you're the type who likes lists, this is as good as they come. As it happens, some of these models are older whereas some are just picking up speed.

On the other hand, there was one item that attracted my attention as being sort of forced in there:

Freeware (get lots of users), it's not a plan to make money, but then again, if you make something that's very compelling you can expect offers to acquire your software, company or technology.

Of course, alot of freeware content creators hope that someone will eventually notice their work and offer a blank check for it but chances of that happening are considerably slimmer than you'd think. That is to say, for every succesful project that got noticed by a large company, there are a few dozen others that simply didn't pull through. Maybe their product wasn't good enough, maybe it came too late or maybe, despite their efforts, they just couldn't attract a community to it. In other words, no one cared about it. Besides, if you DO create a succesful freeware product, there are other ways (mentioned in the CNET list) of monetizing it rather than waiting for a fat corporate cat to come and unload a truck of money in your mum's backyard in exchange for your userbase. I mean really, that should be the last thing you'd need consider, in my opinion. Certainly, I'm not saying you should refuse (or accept) any truck filled with the aforementioned money that just happens to pull outside your garage but this isn't really something you'll want to create your business plan around. Is it now?