Possible idea that may attract investors

Hello All!

I am new to all this (as in I just discovered this within the last hour!) and so far this game seems very exciting to me. I am a huge fan of Age of Empires, Civilization, and Spore. I have plenty of Ideas for the game but I fear I will waste your time because you probably have heard them all.

Please keep in mind that I have no real talents/skills to bring to the table. I am only hear because this potential game sounds incredible and I hope it becomes a reality. I apologize for wasting anyone's time in advance (also, I'm at work so I don't have much time to read all of the other posts!).

So it is my understanding that some games require a monthly fee too play online. I know that if I took the time to create my own species and advance them to the space age then I may be willing to day a dollar or two a month to play online against real people.

It is also my understanding that a game called second life has a fake money/real money exchange rate. So if your dedicated/skilled enough you can make some money from it.

So my idea is; Say you have a game in which people have the option to play online for a small monthly fee (like $1-$5). They can exchange this money for space dollars or whatever you want to call it and then use that virtual money for trade within the game (buying/selling planets, technology, resources, secrets, this list goes on and on). People can even rent things to others during trade agreements. And given how many elements there are on the periodic table, I can imagine that in order to gain new tech or produce something there will always be something you need that someone else has.

I can see people who work hard to have large empires will gain large profits.

For every trade from virtual to real money or vise versa, the game owners can tax a small percentage to gain a profit.

To avoid people blowing all there money and loosing there house, you can limit the amount of money they may put in the game per month (example, only $100 maximum).

I would imagine that if the game had a potential to make more revenue then it would attract investors. You then would have the resources to make the game in a timely fashion with the best quality.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rip off future players of the game, I'm trying to see if a top quality revolutionary game can be made within a timely manner if it had more funding.

Again I apologize if this has been discussed before. And I know I'm supposed to give ways accomplish my ideas when I post, but I really don't know how you would accomplish this given that this is not my area of expertise.

Any answer would be greatly appreciated. I wish you guys the best of luck and hope to play this game soon!

I'm in no authority on this game at all, but here's my opinion:
First of all, i haven't even heard of a multiplayer features planned (i haven't looked very closely either tho), but implementing these things would greatly complicate the later stages of the game, there would be a lot of potential security risks that would have to be taken into account, not impossible but would take significant time.
Regarding investors, the people behind this project has stated that if money became needed for some reason, a kickstarter would be started, which it seems from community feedback would do quite well, investers bring legal complexity that i don't think the founders are too interrested in.
Monthly fees may scare away players, however optional it may be.
The income generated by subscriptions could theoretically be used to maintain and evolve the game, but really if it gets to that stage without money, i don't see a reason it should suddenly need it.
I don't think "buying" things from other players suits this type of game very well, I could be wrong tho.

This really makes me sound like a pessimist but it's just my humble opinion from no particulair seat of importance! if you got counter argument i'd like to hear them

I think crovea's pretty much spot on there - at the moment, multiplayer seems extremely unlikely, and even then it can only really be implemented for a single stage. Anything to do with money in Thrive is effectively redundant, as our whole development ethos rests on the fact that we are asking nothing of our potential players. As crovea said, if we can reach the space stage without any funding at all, we certainly don't need to add it.

As a result of those points, I'm afraid all your considerations on the in-game currency system are unneeded. Thrive probably isn't the sort of game where something like that would work anyway, even if we did have a development budget and online multiplayer features.

rrosa wrote:

Hello All!

I am new to all this (as in I just discovered this within the last hour!) and so far this game seems very exciting to me. I am a huge fan of Age of Empires, Civilization, and Spore. I have plenty of Ideas for the game but I fear I will waste your time because you probably have heard them all.

Please keep in mind that I have no real talents/skills to bring to the table. I am only hear because this potential game sounds incredible and I hope it becomes a reality. I apologize for wasting anyone's time in advance (also, I'm at work so I don't have much time to read all of the other posts!).

So it is my understanding that some games require a monthly fee too play online. I know that if I took the time to create my own species and advance them to the space age then I may be willing to day a dollar or two a month to play online against real people.

It is also my understanding that a game called second life has a fake money/real money exchange rate. So if your dedicated/skilled enough you can make some money from it.

So my idea is; Say you have a game in which people have the option to play online for a small monthly fee (like $1-$5). They can exchange this money for space dollars or whatever you want to call it and then use that virtual money for trade within the game (buying/selling planets, technology, resources, secrets, this list goes on and on). People can even rent things to others during trade agreements. And given how many elements there are on the periodic table, I can imagine that in order to gain new tech or produce something there will always be something you need that someone else has.

I can see people who work hard to have large empires will gain large profits.

For every trade from virtual to real money or vise versa, the game owners can tax a small percentage to gain a profit.

To avoid people blowing all there money and loosing there house, you can limit the amount of money they may put in the game per month (example, only $100 maximum).

I would imagine that if the game had a potential to make more revenue then it would attract investors. You then would have the resources to make the game in a timely fashion with the best quality.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rip off future players of the game, I'm trying to see if a top quality revolutionary game can be made within a timely manner if it had more funding.

Again I apologize if this has been discussed before. And I know I'm supposed to give ways accomplish my ideas when I post, but I really don't know how you would accomplish this given that this is not my area of expertise.

Any answer would be greatly appreciated. I wish you guys the best of luck and hope to play this game soon!

Welcome to our team!
Here is my best answer:

As far as concept goes we will have no online multiplayer, as its very hard to setup servers. However, if game becomes more popular, we could just COULD add it in a update. And we curently don't need any money.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

And we curently don't need any money.

But what happens when/if we do?

I think the freeware approach is very altruistic but ultimately a little unrealistic. We should at least try to charge a bit of money. Free alpha and free beta, then charge like $10 on the full release while those who already had the alpha and beta update to the full release for free. If only $10 on the final release, the game would cost as much as a steak burrito/drink combo meal from Chipotle... if they didn't already have the game. If they don't want to pay, worst-case scenario they'll pirate it. If you're good at something, don't do it for free.

If that's an unpopular opinion I'll just shut up and never speak of it again.

I don't think real-time multiplayer would work anyway you put it. If anything alien pollination among the stars should be more like Will Wright's original vision, i.e. a planet that someone played on will turn out the way it did in their game... and it gets put into your game.

Well, the only reason we'd need money is because something goes horribly wrong with one of the developers' computers or some better computer is needed. The developers aren't working for monetary gain, just because they wanted a game like Spore, but infinitely better.