Would you PAY for a Pokitto game?

But, here is the issue: people do not donate.

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I am telling you what my personal opinions are on the matter, I am not claiming others would necessarily behave the same way.

That said, donations seem to work (a little too well) for Twitch streamers, so perhaps it’s more complex than just “people do not donate”, perhaps there are factors that make people more or less likely to donate?

I only pay for games that make me happy, i.e. if they’re completely libre, suckless, portable. I never pay for proprietary games or games that force me to pay.

So if you ask me, I support the pay what you want / buy me a coffee model, and I also humbly think that would fit this wholesome, mostly hobbyist community best. We can both pay the developers and keep everything free and education friendly.

I’d definitely strongly oppose paywalls or perhaps even popups asking for donations. I think something like a small donation button somewhere can’t hurt.

If my donation could help someone make the kind of SW I’d like to see for Pokitto (such the CC0 minimal library etc.), I’d definitely love to do it.

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I think some indie developers offered to release the source code of their game under an open license if they collected a fixed “ransom” during some fundraising campaign. This probably won’t work for a Pokitto-exclusive title - I mean, it would always be the same people paying. :wink:

I guess having a PC version on itch.io for a low price or pay-what-you-want would work better if you want to make a bit of money.

Personally, I would not ASK for money for a Pokitto game, anyway. Because then I’d be obligated to take very good care of it and never release anything.

Itch.io seems reasonable, I’ve got my game there and people sometimes send a dollar or two. The advantage may be that new people will discover Pokitto through that website which has a big following.

Same, I couldn’t take the pressure of basically being under obligation to make a professional product and offer nice support just because it was a paid thing. If you’re making a commercial product it changes the whole mood of the development and it may become stressful rather than fun. That’s why I only consider the optional tipping option, a person can simply download the game, see if it works and if they liked it, and then decide if that deserved a tip.


Another idea: a game jam with money prizes that are pooled together beforehand. Not sure if it’s a good idea but it’s an idea. Opinions?

EDIT: Just noticed this forum automatically replaces the word itch.io with a link to the website.

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A nice idea. If I could not make an own game and wanted more games for Pokitto, I could give a couple of euros for the jam. I think Pokitto community should grow bigger first, now the majority of active members are coders.

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Not a good idea for me. It could stop potential users to enter while the main scope should be bring more people try make a game.

IMO I’m not against ask money for a game made for Pokitto. If the original question was just to clarify if that is possible, I see no legal way to stop someone ask money for something he made. That’s said is highly improbable that a Pokitto game dev team will make a lot of money. There are already very good games free and open source here and I hope to see more and more.

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I think any potential Pokitto creators would make games regardless of whether or not they got paid. We’re all here for fun after all.
I know for a fact that asking for a voluntary donation will not make anyone rich, it’s more of a show of gratitude than a money making venture.

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Unless they had to program outdoors. :wink:

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20 posts were split to a new topic: Discourse Forum maintenance costs

I very much agree with this.

I feel that as long as I haven’t actually made any promises or accepted any incentives then I am beholden to no one and can drop my projects as soon as something more interesting comes along. (For the same reason, I tend to keep most of my projects secret, in case I decide to stop working on them.)

Ironically this is actually one of the things that makes me reluctant to even accept donations. If I accepted donations, I think I’d feel bad if someone had given me money because they liked something I was working on and then I decided to stop working on it for whatever reason.

The main problems would be:

  • Unless we acquired more forum members, it would probably be the same people winning every time
  • It might put less experienced programmers off entering because
    • They’ll think the judging is going to be more strict if there’s a monetary prize
    • They’ll think a monetary prize will attract a lot more competant programmers, meaning the competition will be tougher
  • It could get complicated if there are teams of people working on jam entries

That could potentially be mitigated by having a less serious, less competative jam run alongside the one giving out money/prizes.

(Personally speaking, prizes actually make me slightly less likely to enter a jam, but I expect I’m the exception rather than the rule.)


Programming indoors in 30°C heat isn’t much fun either to be honest. :P

For the sake of turning this into an actual poll…

Game creators, would you ask for money/accept money for the games you create?

  • No, I would never ask for people to pay for my games
  • Maybe, depending on the circumstances
  • Yes, I would ask for money

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If you would (and you answered ‘Maybe’ or ‘Yes’ to the above poll), which payment methods would you be happy with using?

  • Donations
  • Pay what you want
  • Paywall

0 voters

If the game has really good production values (for a hobby game) and I play it a lot I might be thinking it is fair to donate few euros, but I think that is not the usual case (for me at least). My own games are made as a hobby and I am having fun in making them :slightly_smiling_face: I would like to keep the dev time short so I do not get bored. I do not expect anyone to pay for them. I rather would like to get feedback and comments.

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For me personally I enjoy making games as a hobby, but PtaD is so far the first project in all my years that I can actually finish and have a well polished game. However, I wouldn’t put the Pokitto version beyond a paywall, at most for a larger game like that I’d do a pay what you want model with 0 being a perfectly acceptable amount. For making money on my game development (as being an indie dev is one of my big career goals with game dev) I’m liking dev on the Pokitto due to it’s forced limitations and then releasing the Pokitto version as free and open source while making an “enhanced” version (mostly just upscaling or gimick effects like making it look like you’re playing it on an old style TV) for other releasing on other platforms commercially.

I view such a donation system as more of, “Hey I really like this game you made and would love to see more great games for you so let me buy you a coffee.” After all programmers are just machines that convert caffeine into code right :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue:

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This is exactly the type of currencies I’d promote as exchange for a game.

Users could accumulate Pokitto Credits writings feedbacks to the developer and use them to unlock newer dowloads.

A micro economy game centric.

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That sounds like a fun idea. Have the starter of a thread be able to award a point to replies that were helpful or encouraging etc.

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At the very least it would be really cool to show on a user’s profile how many games they’ve released and the total like count of their games. But I think this might be beyond Discourse’s built-in capabilities.

The game developers could release a “pre-release” version for people enough Pokitto Credits, a week or few days before the actual release.:grinning:

Edit: That is also a benefit for devs to possibly get early feedback to the game before the actual release.

Edit2: Plus that could encourage people to actually register to the Pokitto Forum: To get pre-release versions of incoming games.

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It should be relatively straightforward to count a user’s submissions to the games category, and tally the likes from that. Theoretically it could probably be done by just scraping the pages with a crawler.

Though it’s not the most sophisticated way of doing things, so the information obtained from doing so might not be particularly useful.

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(I’d also add the number of WIP in addition to the released games :stuck_out_tongue:)

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