[HN Gopher] Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) - Indie gaming subscri...
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Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) - Indie gaming subscription service
for PC
Hey everyone, I'm Pedro, and together with my friend Paulo I co-
founded MagnaPlay (https://magnaplay.tech). Basically, we're a
"Spotify", but for games made by independent creators on PC. Paulo
and I have been indie gamers for the past decade. Both of us have
insanely long back catalogs of games we've always wanted to try,
but couldn't. When we were stuck at home during covid, we were
frustrated and decided to set out to solve this problem. Naturally,
this decision was made during a game of Call of Duty: Warzone. For
consumers, MagnaPlay eliminates the paywall when it comes to buying
a new game. Today, the indie market is incredibly saturated and
prices are increasing. A subscription service, like Spotify, can
make indie gaming more affordable and allow players to try out more
content. For developers, we solve the problem of lower consumer
lifetime values for indie games. Most indie games sell for around
$10 and lose 50% of that to tax and store commissions, so the
average player only nets them around $5 LTV. By introducing a
revenue model which focuses on the distribution of player
subscriptions, we're able to pay developers a recurring revenue
stream, as long as people are playing their game. This way, indie
games can achieve profitability with a smaller player base, which
is crucial as these developers tend to have incredibly small
marketing budgets. MagnaPlay subscriptions cost $8/month. We
divide that up and distribute it to developers based on a series of
data such as time played, play sessions and number of downloads. We
designed this with the idea of helping indies achieve profitability
with a smaller player base, crucial when competition is ever-
increasing. This isn't a new idea, but we offer a few twists.
Namely: a) we only work with indie games, which makes the unit
economics work; b) we don't do streaming--the business model
doesn't really work and it's not as cool as it sounds; and c) we're
trying out all our funky gamer ideas: letting players vote for
titles, let players review games on a review feed and even letting
players choose who gets part of their subscription! By far our
biggest difficulty is overcoming the chicken-and-egg problem of
platform businesses: we need games to get users, and we need users
to get games. We have a few high quality games already, but not
enough yet to draw major interest. Things have been especially hard
on the supply side, because most of the time we're competing with
massive companies such as Microsoft, which really bankroll their
service "Game Pass". We're going to have to be clever and
determined to overcome this problem and it may need some real
hacking...accepting any suggestions! In the meantime, if you think
MagnaPlay is a good idea and would like it to exist in your world,
like we do, we'd love you to consider taking a leap of faith with
us and getting in early. We promise to listen closely to your
opinions about what games to add and how to build this out going
forward! The other perennial question, of course, is piracy. Since
we don't do streaming, all games are installed on your computer,
but since we're a subscription service, we have to validate your
subscription--and however we do that, it has to be effortless for
the indie developers to integrate with. For this, we ended up
building our own DRM program. It consists of a C++ wrapper that
encrypts and compresses games' raw binary, as well as a program
which injects assembly code into the game's .EXE files which
validates the parent process of the program upon running. The
beauty of it is: developers don't need to change any of their
source code! (An interesting tradeoff is that although this reduces
game file size by around 26%, it unfortunately increases memory
usage by around 9%.) Most players understandably dislike DRMs, and
of course there's no perfect solution against piracy, but we're
hopeful that this approach will be non-intrusive enough for both
players and devs to solve this core business problem. We are super
happy to see customers trying out games they normally wouldn't! One
example was Jared, who runs an indie podcast (Indie Game
International on Spotify!): he got word of MagnaPlay and later told
us how he gave this little indie game called Existensis a try and
he absolutely loved it, played it to completion, and then ended up
interviewing the developer on his podcast! So far, this was
definitely the coolest thing we've seen happen on/due to MagnaPlay.
We're happy to launch MagnaPlay on Hacker News and are eager to
hear your feedback on our value prop, suggestions on dealing with
chicken and egg, and on our product, which is available now for a
free trial and then $8/month on https://magnaplay.tech. We look
forward to your comments!
Author : Pedro_Magna
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-01-13 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
| padobson wrote:
| Have you spoken to anyone at Steam or GOG or the like and just
| asked them for a list of Indie games that don't sell? Obviously,
| one reason they don't sell is that they're bad games, but if you
| can filter those out, then you've got a pretty decent list of
| developers that are probably looking for another revenue source.
|
| I like the idea! There's clear value for Indie devs who need a
| sweetener to get people to play, and there's clear value for
| gamers that like to try a lot of different games but need to
| control costs.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Glad to hear you like it! Haven't done that, but it's pretty
| easy to find some really great hidden gems! We already have a
| few really amazing titles that are quite small on other
| platforms, check out Existensis, Evertried or Super Mombo
| Quest!
| bhelkey wrote:
| > Naturally, this decision was made during a game of Call of
| Duty: Warzone
|
| Your business model revolved around indie games. It seems prudent
| to avoid mentioning AAA games.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >Today, the indie market is incredibly saturated and prices are
| increasing.
|
| Isn't that the opposite of how that's supposed to work?
| quyse wrote:
| Congrats on launch!
|
| Although my immediate thought was - DRM is just wrong. It will
| only punish legitimate players and will be cracked quickly
| anyway. Indie games do not need DRM.
|
| Also I'm generally wary of subscription services. For any sort of
| "serious" game I would prefer buying, so to not depend on a
| subscription where the set of available games may change at a
| whim. However one interesting possibility may be a partnership
| with a platform like itch.io. They have literally thousands of
| games, and a lot of them are quite original, but I'm generally
| not ready to pay for them - as a lot of them are in
| development/not finished/bad quality/obviously overpriced.
| Subscription which gives access to all (or most of) the games of
| itch.io may actually make a lot of sense, encouraging players to
| try much more games. Just a thought.
|
| Good luck!
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| That's a good idea. We like to think that subscription services
| foments this idea of exploration; after all, it makes the
| traditional process of finding, purchasing, installing, and
| finally playing shorter and smoother.
| rbera wrote:
| I'm curious as to how your company focuses on user retention in
| the longer term. Obviously, Spotify or Game Pass have the perks
| of having superstars and AAA studios already onboarded, so
| customers sign on and stick around for new releases by larger
| creators. But with indie games, there's usually not that same
| loyalty to a creator (I can think of only a few famous ones off
| the top of my head). Games are also not as replayable as music,
| especially smaller ones--they're more like video streaming in
| that regard. Is your eventual goal just to onboard enough new
| games every year that users continue subscribing, or is there
| another angle to it?
|
| Similarly, how do you plan to retain devs, especially once they
| become established and choose to sell directly instead? I think
| your most "similar" competitor, Apple Arcade, gave out contracts
| to larger studios to build games, which isn't really sustainable
| in the longer term as far as I can tell, especially when they can
| simply sell their games instead. Is this more of an alternative
| revenue stream for studios? One of the main draws of a
| subscription for customers is exclusivity, which would kind of
| contradict that.
|
| In general though, I really like this concept; it can solve a lot
| of issues with getting indie game dev going in a sustainable
| manner, which is a market neither Game Pass nor Apple Arcade
| really address. Best of luck!
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| User retention is quite tricky, especially for gaming. We think
| that it won't be too hard adding new content, since there are
| so many titles releasing each year, but getting highly
| anticipated titles might be tough. We think part of the
| solution will be adding features to MagnaPlay which go beyond
| just the games. A good example is Spotify, they have a great
| content library like many other services, but they also have
| your curated playlists, artist-specific radios, Spotify
| wrapped, etc. I think getting good user retention will
| ultimately depend upon the kind of community we can build, not
| just the content (although it also is a key part).
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Most players understandably dislike DRMs, and of course there's
| no perfect solution against piracy, but we're hopeful that this
| approach will be non-intrusive enough for both players and devs
| to solve this core business problem.
|
| I think DRM may be less of an objection when the consumer knows
| up front they're not buying the game.
|
| I've never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM, for
| presumably the same reason.
| gizmo wrote:
| > I've never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM
|
| I'm still pretty salty that netflix doesn't stream in 4K HD in
| my browser because of DRM even though I'm paying for 4k.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Ok, fair enough. But that has to be a pretty recent
| development.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| People complain a lot about Steam DRM, but I'm hoping players
| will be less critical on our case since we're a subscription
| service.
| [deleted]
| indoorskier wrote:
| My 2c is to try the funky ideas to get a foothold/differentiator
|
| I think your implicit intuition that indie gamers are keen to
| explore more titles than they currently (reasonably) can, is
| valid. I suspect they're also keen to be involved in early
| development. And devs are interested in early feedback. So you
| could introduce something to facilitate that. Or introduce a
| Patreon/kickstarter type model where you can choose to fund
| development of games from your subscription.
|
| Network effects are valuable to build in/explore - make it super
| easy to stream the games on Twitch, Share clips on YT etc. Might
| help with the chicken and egg!
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Having some kind of "early access/alpha" is an idea we had, but
| something more like patron is a really good idea. Thanks for
| the suggestions on network effects! We're doing our first YT
| partnership on Monday, so I'm excited to see how it goes!
| cdiamand wrote:
| There are probably partners who have significant reach, and would
| be interested in a revenue share with your platform, or maybe a
| white-labeling solution. HumbleBundle, or something along those
| lines comes to mind.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| That's a good idea, I think partnerships are definitely the way
| to go, especially with content producers like HB. White-
| labeling is also very interesting, we know of a few really good
| examples of that in the mobile market. Probably something more
| towards the future though, right now we're focused on getting
| content!
| bierjunge wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but HB includes a lib of 50+ indie
| games with the Humble Choice subscription. Why should they
| split revenue with you as a competitor?
|
| edit: https://www.humblebundle.com/membership/collection
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Yep, that's why we haven't approached them and have focused
| more on indie publishers and devs, although a partnership
| with them could be interesting
| candiddevmike wrote:
| That HumbleBundle hasn't tried this already speaks volumes for
| the feasibility of it, IMO...
| jefflinwood wrote:
| I'm probably the target market for this, and I think it's going
| to have a hard time selling.
|
| I currently pay for XBox Game Pass Ultimate at $15/month. That
| comes with 400 games, although I tend to play the more indie
| games. They do rotate off, so I bought Subnautica, for instance,
| on Steam. I notice that a few of yours have been on Game Pass.
|
| Right now, Epic is shoving free games like crazy through their
| Game Store. I have a huge backlog of games on Epic that I'll
| probably never work through. Some indie games, some former AAA
| games. Same with Amazon - they give away free games every month
| for some reason.
|
| I don't know if this glut of games is going to end well or
| poorly, but I would suggest you don't compete with XBox, and
| instead do a Mac-first indie game subscription service. Apple
| Arcade is pretty poorly marketed, and there might be more
| opportunity there.
| drewtato wrote:
| The developer side sounds pretty bad.
|
| > we're able to pay developers a recurring revenue stream, as
| long as people are playing their game.
|
| That's how normal game sales already work for non-replayable
| games.
|
| Good indie games are usually more like $20. If you want to be in
| this service and make the same amount of money, you'd need your
| existing player count to only play your game for over 2 months,
| assuming the revenue split is the same (which you've left out).
| This is unrealistic; I'd expect people to play 2 or so games per
| month. Your service would need to make that up through a massive
| increase in advertising. This is already what publishers do, so
| you probably won't get any Annapurna/Devolver/THQ/etc games.
| Basically, you're trying to do what Epic did (make a new platform
| and subsidize dozens of games) without making a billion from
| vbucks.
|
| > This way, indie games can achieve profitability with a smaller
| player base
|
| Your service doesn't encourage this. People are going to be less
| likely to stick with a game, so you need more players to get the
| same revenue, assuming all else is balanced.
|
| From the player side, people irrationally hate installing new
| launchers. The DRM thing is probably fine though. It'll depend on
| how often it breaks games and how much performance it takes.
|
| My conclusion is this is Moviepass for games. Except it only has
| 11 games.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Fair criticism, the model right now truly favors replayable
| games. If a game sells for $20, it probably gets $10 after
| commissions and sales taxes. That's probably mean someone needs
| to play a game for a little under 2 months to earn the same on
| MagnaPlay, which should be the case as people on average play 5
| games a year on Steam. Consider the extra revenue from players
| who wouldn't normally try out the game, and developers are
| probably earning more per player than on other platforms. This
| is still a bit hypothetical, so hopefully we can confirm this
| when we have more data!
|
| But, to be fair you're right in that we still haven't figured
| out the best way to pay shorter games. Right now, the upside
| for them is more distribution. About the new launchers thing,
| it's a tricky problem to work around. We've thought about just
| using a website, but you run into issues with DRM
| implementation.
| jvalencia wrote:
| I've thought about this problem before too. I think the
| better angle is to put the developers on payroll and get
| rights to the game(s). Then, as they continue to release
| titles, your catalog grows. The company is then about
| creating sustainable indie development, rather than just
| licensing a handful of games and paying a pittance with a
| subpar library. Not sure it would work, but if you can make
| it work, that's super cool.
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| That's right; I agree with you on the content creation
| point. We do plan to make originals, much like Netflix
| creates their own TV shows and films. Yet that's quite a
| burn for an early-stage startup like ours. The long-term
| vision of MagnaPlay must encompass funding developers and
| adding their games to our portfolio. However, in the
| meantime, all we can do is upstage the indie segment by
| giving them visibility, staying true to our cause, and
| supporting developers with community-friendly features. For
| instance, players can distribute 10% of their subscription
| to any developer, essentially crowdfunding exciting teams
| and projects.
| fakedang wrote:
| In my experience, most indie games aren't replayable.
| Everyone I know, myself included, plays it for the story
| value. In fact, there are times when I enjoy a simple
| playthrough of a game by a really good player a lot more
| often than playing the game myself, if they maintain the
| story very well.
|
| Some indie games I've really enjoyed back in the day for the
| story were ones like What Remains of Edith Finch and Binding
| of Isaac. I'm certainly not playing them for more than a few
| days. On the other hand, indie games that I would replay,
| like Terraria and Stardew Valley, are already making
| significant revenue through the current Steam model. In fact,
| many of their current players would have been dismayed by a
| subscription model, which would have led them to not enjoy
| that much of a fan base.
| gizmo wrote:
| I don't think this concept is hopelessly flawed, but solving your
| "cold start problem" (read the book if you haven't) is going to
| be super hard.
|
| Also, I would never use your service because of DRM. GOG doesn't
| do DRM and always has many indie games on sale, which seems like
| a better value prop? I don't think the Spotify analogy works
| because games are already very cheap. I have a large backlog of
| games I'll never get around to playing, and so does everybody
| else. Being able to choose from millions of songs on Spotify is
| way better than having to buy individual albums, but I don't need
| access to a large game library.
|
| Maybe this is another "less space than a nomad" kind of comment,
| but my intuition is that indie games are mostly played by older
| gamers who are happy to just buy a game they want to play. Go to
| gog.com and see how many games you can get for the $100 a year
| you plan to charge.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Great book, already read it! I don't think GOG is very good for
| the developers, and not having DRM would also harm our business
| as we'd miss out on subscribers that pirate games and leave.
|
| I appreciate your opinion on the value prop too. I'm curious
| though, is there anything you feel is missing out from these
| other stores that maybe we could do?
| gizmo wrote:
| You don't have to prematurely worry about losing subscribers
| when you're bottlenecked at getting new subscribers. Even if
| you have 10% monthly churn because of piracy that's fine
| because it means your service is good enough for gamers to
| sign up in the first place! The strategic (but not very nice)
| thing to do is to introduce DRM long after you've got
| traction. Right now, DRM is a solution for a problem you
| don't have.
|
| Other than exclusives, I can't think of anything that would
| tempt me to join your platform.
| nithayakumar wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. YC W22 founder who loves gaming and used
| to work in the gaming industry here. Love the concept and I'm
| excited to see how you guys grow
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The website does nothing to sell the games. The homepage contains
| a single title card for each one, and the more in depth page
| shows the title card with a one paragraph description and three
| vague tags. Compare it to steam, where each of these games would
| have a page with videos, screenshots, and a lengthy write up.
|
| I find it hard to believe many people will sign up to play eleven
| games they've never heard of and know next to nothing about. More
| likely, they'll search for one of the games to get more
| information, find the steam store, and consider buying it there
| easier than signing up to a new platform.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! The website needs some work to sell
| the games better, we're working on it!
| moneywoes wrote:
| What is your GTM strategy to get gamers and game developers
|
| Who do you target first and how
| SnooSux wrote:
| This is something I'd like to check out! Have you given any
| thought to curation? I would play more indie games but frankly
| many just aren't worth my time.
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| That's a great question! Initially, MagnaPlay's entire idea was
| building a smaller portfolio (~50-100 titles) compared to our
| competitors; we'd be focused on quality over quantity --
| essentially becoming the place to play the best indies. We
| would do that by collecting player engagement data, serializing
| reviews, and flat-out asking for which games our audience
| wanted to see on our platform. While we still haven't changed
| that strategy in the short term, we see ourselves adding more
| and more titles with time and eventually allowing MagnaPlay's
| community do all the curation instead of relying on more
| abstract agents like the team's preferences :)
|
| So, picture this: if you like puzzle games, for instance, you
| would essentially be put in the "Librarian" role/house (much
| like how Hogwarts would put you in Gryffindor if you're brave).
| All so you can see fewer and fewer titles that aren't worth
| your time!
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Ooof, well I'm looking at my purchase history on steam and in
| 2022 I made three purchases for a total of just over $50 and
| played _none_ of them. 2021 I bought 8 for ~$200, loved 5
| (finished 4 of them), and played 3 kinda (one didn't run on M1
| MBP). 2020 spent $400 on mostly mainstream games (like Civ6). The
| one game I _hated_ was a relatively expensive indie game at $38.
| Loved and finished all the mainstream games (or played them to
| death in the case of Civ6 and its updates). Bought and never
| played amongus. The two indie games rated 1 never played and 1
| hated.
|
| I don't mind spending money on games I like, and even games I
| _might_ like. Unless the game turns out to be a swindle, I don 't
| mind paying for them. Even the one I hated, I didn't mind paying
| for: they'd put a lot of effort into it, they just missed the
| mark massively.
|
| The game I play the _most_ has a free version limited to the
| tutorial, so I got to try it before I bought it. I personally
| would be served better if I could try more games without paying
| for them if they were shit.
|
| Does paying $8 improve the situation? I can try a lot of games.
| The games that I play a lot of would potentially earn more money
| from me in the long run. My favorite game I've put in over 200
| hours over two years. I paid $20 for it. Would that developer
| make more money in that period from magna than the cut they got
| from Steam?
|
| What about the games that were fun, lasted maybe 20 hours of play
| time, and would normally get like $5 cut? It would suck if they
| got less.
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| Makes total sense. We talked to other people who had a similar
| headspace: exploration is essential, though purchasing each
| game is not necessarily the problem. One of the things you gain
| from subscription service is curation; the idea around there is
| to minimize those encounters where you absolutely dislike the
| game, either because there's an audience voting for the titles
| you see or because there's a recommendation system that filters
| stuff you might not like.
|
| On the point of trying out more stuff before you buy them: we
| considered adding a section on the platform for alpha/beta
| releases. It would allow developers to test and get feedback
| throughout the early stages of development while allowing
| players to engage with titles they would otherwise avoid. It
| would be separate from the revenue share model as these games
| wouldn't be fully baked and, therefore, at a lower standard
| than those on the "official" portfolio. We might be able to
| roll out this feature in the coming weeks! Would that be
| something you see yourself using?
|
| And absolutely, in the context you gave, you would help
| developers a lot with our model. Think about it this way: the
| 200 hours you played on that game got compensated once: when
| you bought it. On the other hand, if you are subscribed to
| MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially
| giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I've played some beta games on steam. Fermi Paradox was beta
| when I tried it, IIRC, and it was fun then. If people are
| playing beta games, I think the devs should be getting paid,
| tbh.
|
| >On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and
| mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of
| your subscription to its developer every month.
|
| Do I want to pay $75 a year for that game though? And if I
| play that game for 20 hours in one month, and also play a new
| game and _complete it_ in 20 hours, how much does that new
| game get? Many games are very much play-once and done. Like I
| don 't think I'll replay Hob again, but I still think it was
| one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2021 (when I
| discovered it on PS4). Likewise Carrion (actually I did
| replay that one coz people are chewy).
|
| This may be a thing just for the whales, but maybe have a
| thing like reddit where I could rate a game positively and
| back that up with _cash_ (like over and above the $8 /mo). In
| a way, the pay-what-you-want bundles offer a similar
| mechanism, so the idea may be validated already.
|
| I'm also realizing that most of the games I think of as
| Indie, I played on PS4/5 or Switch. Dead Cells, Hades,
| Manifold Garden, Celeste, Carrion. With Manifold Garden and
| Celeste I even bought the soundtracks. (Spend a lot more on
| consoles than steam, and finish more games there).
| pugio wrote:
| Seems like it's only for Windows... except all the screenshots
| clearly show Macbooks / iMacs.
|
| I like the idea of the service, but wouldn't use it unless I can
| run it on Mac. Streaming for indie games would be perfection, as
| I don't have the time to go deep into a AAA title but would love
| to quickly start up some cool short indie game on demand.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| > The other perennial question, of course, is piracy.
|
| What research have you done to show that it is an actual concern?
|
| The one I always come back to is covered here in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 where the data
| shows that video game piracy actually generates more sales than
| it costs.
|
| Or is it not based on actual data, just a requirement you've seen
| from the developers or publishers?
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| It is both a requirement from the devs/publishers, but also for
| ourselves. Without DRM, someone could make a free trial, pirate
| all our games, cancel their sub and play them out without
| paying. That's a pretty interesting article though, I guess it
| shows the power of word of mouth negating piracy? As even those
| who pirate it will talk to their friends about games they are
| currently playing.
| all2 wrote:
| So make them pay up front? Or limit the free trial to a
| selection of games? Or limit the games to demos of existing
| games? There are so many options here to limit your exposure.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Those are all valid points, but I think the trade off might
| not favor them. Although piracy mighttt in some situations
| help games, I don't see how it could help us. No free trial
| would mean we miss out on users too. Plus, from what we've
| been talking with devs, they don't seem to like the idea of
| being DRM-free.
| jnovek wrote:
| I'm just an anecdote and probably only represent a small
| population, but the DRM makes it an instant pass for me. This
| kind of thing is up my alley, too -- I was an O.G. subscriber
| to Humble Monthly.
|
| Most of my gaming these days is done on Linux with Steam +
| Proton and, unless y'all plan to support Proton (or some
| other variation of Wine) I don't hold high confidence that
| this will work. Even if it does I'm on my own, trying to run
| a slightly different version of the game from everybody else.
|
| (I guess this is relevant in the wider market -- your games
| won't be playable on Steam Deck.)
| setgree wrote:
| To ask the obvious question -- many musicians argue that Spotify
| has been terrible for artists [0]. Let's say you grow as big as
| Spotify. Will you be terrible for devs?
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
| gregjw wrote:
| Xbox Game Pass operates a similar model but from a mixture of
| AAA titles and indies and they're renowned for being a great
| platform to be on.
|
| Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass,
| but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is
| bad to their vendors.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| AFAIK game pass is losing money at the moment and is still in
| the "pay a premium to get content on the platform" phase.
| They haven't switched to the Spotify "screw the content
| providers" phase yet.
| waboremo wrote:
| Spotify was in that phase since it's creation. Contrast
| paying amounts between Apple Music and Spotify to see that
| in numbers.
|
| Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it
| can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles)
| but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games
| around first party titles. This means that until the
| landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered
| nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing),
| being an invited third party means good income, due to the
| revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways.
|
| Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets
| its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't
| based on how many times a game is played.
| setgree wrote:
| And they may never get there because Microsoft can float
| loss leaders indefinitely if they can justify them in
| strategic terms.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Nope! We pay devs by distributing player subscriptions at the
| individual level, not the aggregate. I.e. what others play on a
| given month doesn't affect how we'll distribute your
| subscription in that month. This way, devs are meritocratically
| paid according to how many people are playing their game, and
| it doesn't matter if that is 1 person or a 100,000. We consider
| adding diminishing returns and other factors to our model to
| maybe help smaller titles, but there are no solid plans at the
| moment.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I predict that will change the minute a hot indie game that
| would significantly boost your subscriber count says they
| want some amount up front/guaranteed to be listed on your
| platform (and the math checks out).
|
| Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no
| way to be held accountable to this system.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| We could offer more stuff on top of the distributed
| subscriptions. But, we're not going to be changing our
| model without letting developers know. I'm pretty sure we'd
| be committing some kind of fraud.
| sharemywin wrote:
| you could always allow the indie devs to vote on
| "exceptions" to the model.
| setgree wrote:
| I'm not sure how this addresses the fundamental problem,
| which is that Spotify pays a very low price per stream, so
| you have to be a huge star to make any money, and Spotify is
| taking a large part of the proceeds in the meantime.
|
| Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an
| incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for
| which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0].
|
| For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to
| make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit.
| Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers
| demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry
| Birds For Tots will maximize engagement.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope
| it works, but everything you say about your commitment to
| devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to
| get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds.
|
| good luck!
|
| [0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-
| is-...
| robswc wrote:
| >so you have to be a huge star to make any money
|
| Forgive me if I'm missing something, however I don't
| understand what exactly is wrong with this. Isn't this the
| case with any "art-type" career?
|
| Are there any services that pay a flat-rate per stream?
| btown wrote:
| This is a necessary first step, but I think it's only part of
| the solution. It's not enough to just improve the visibility
| of a set of indie games, as Spotify did for artist visibility
| - you also need to provide ways for creators to benefit from
| mega-fans with disposable income, while ensuring that balance
| is sustainable and not predatory.
|
| Spotify's merchandise stores and concert notifications are
| IMO a pitiful shadow of what they can and should be, and what
| you can and should be - imagine a Patreon-esque system with
| tiered badges and in-game supporter perks, with verification
| built in at your DRM layer, the Discord tiered-role features
| that Patreon integrates with, award-gifting, etc. Draw a hard
| line at what kinds of monetization is and isn't acceptable,
| and become a breath of fresh air in the monetization debate.
| There's so much possible here beyond subscription
| distributions, and you could cement your reputation as an
| innovator and ally to a whole world of brilliant creators.
| k3liutZu wrote:
| I wish Spotify (and iTunes) would do this as well for music.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Please add game streaming. It is as cool as it sounds and is the
| only way I play now (via Chromebook - first via stadia and now
| geforce now). My gaming PC now sits and collects dust because
| streaming to a thin & light Chromebook is just better for me.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Get this on Steam Deck and I'll sign up. It's the best casual
| game experience out there for my money, and I think that
| experience would match the spirit of your store well.
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| Interesting idea! Adding MagnaPlay to the Steam Deck might pose
| an exciting challenge... We've developed our platform on a
| cross-platform stack, so it might be possible. I'll take a look
| at the feasibility here.
|
| And hey, indies are super casual, and a 300Mb launcher runs on
| any system. Give our platform a chance; maybe it is just casual
| enough for an evening gaming session after you close down all
| your Chrome tabs and spot our logo on your Desktop...
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Comment on the website itself: You may want to consider trying to
| pre-load the images that are in the slides on this page:
| https://magnaplay.tech/devs - initially there was a very obvious
| delay in how long the images took to load, until they had been
| loaded and cached. It may be worth pre-loading the next image or
| images so that it is already downloaded by the time the user goes
| to the next slide.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! Will look into it
| joeld42 wrote:
| Hi, this sounds very interesting. I'd consider it as an indie dev
| if the DRM stuff weren't there, IMO any injectable DRM stuff is
| going to cause more problems than it solves, and piracy is not a
| huge concern anyways (it's "crappy free marketing"). Also "not
| changing the source code" isn't really a big selling point, if a
| indie dev is going to release on a new platform, making a
| specific build for it is not a big task. Big platforms like Steam
| don't require any DRM, the developer can of course still add
| their own.
|
| The other problem that "pay-for-playtime" has shown to have on
| Apple Arcade and similar is that it penalizes "content rich"
| games where the player can play through rich, authored content in
| ten or twenty hours and instead rewards more endless mode game.
| Not that there's anything wrong with those types of games but
| this means that eventually, more meaningful games will be driven
| off the platform and it will be just idle games, puzzle games and
| farming simulators. I love those kind of games but it can make
| the platform feel cheap. I think a pay-per-install metric would
| work out a lot better in the long run for you.
|
| I'll keep an eye on this service, definitely the more outlets an
| indie has the better.
| turtledragonfly wrote:
| Just curious: do you have any sources for the Apple Arcade pay-
| for-playtime behaviors? I understand the concept in a hand-wavy
| sense, just wondered if there's some real data you're
| referencing.
|
| I'm working on a game myself; interested in what research is
| out there.
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Interesting, most of the devs we talk to are pretty concerned
| about not having DRM. Same goes for implementation, they want
| the least amount of work possible.
|
| You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're
| trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is
| interesting, thanks for the suggestion!
| rossirpaulo wrote:
| Excited to be building this with you, Pedro!
| Vermeulen wrote:
| Why not the streaming model? Seems like it'd work nicely with
| subscription.
|
| Always thought the appeal of Stadia could have been I could try a
| large variety of games on any platform and not have to deal with
| installing them (especially for AAA games, though indie games can
| also get giant).
| Centigonal wrote:
| Streaming is very capital-intensive and requires significant
| tech investment and potentially code changes from developers.
| Being a marketplace operator is asset-light - you develop a
| minimal IP (the marketplace app) and, if the product is
| desired, marketplaces are viral, enabling rapid growth. A
| marketplace that's sufficiently large allows a small company
| (how many people are needed to build the Spotify apps?) capture
| revenues from a very big market (nearly every musician in the
| world, alive or dead). it's a way waaay better business model.
|
| Also, Google tried streaming, NVidia tried streaming, both have
| had little success. Imagine going to your YC partner and saying
| "yeah, I know google and NV tried it and failed, but we'll
| succeed, because... it's indie games?"
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Placed it really well! Ultimately, it comes down to the
| business model. Streaming is very capital intensive and
| requires more tech built out, both from us and the devs
| (adding barriers to entry to MagnaPlay). Streaming is
| definitely going to be something of the future, we just don't
| think it is 100% there yet, costs still need to drop a bit
| further.
| root_axis wrote:
| Not a fan of this model - it's a race to the bottom that devalues
| games and trains game audiences to be impatient and fickle.
| davidpfarrell wrote:
| It used to be that EFF contributions came with a reward of access
| to MagnaTune (http://magnatune.com/) which _feels_ like it has a
| similar spirit - Is that you guys too?
|
| If not, then interesting that you both choose "Magna*"
| Pedro_Magna wrote:
| Not us! Funny coincidence though. We chose "Magna" because it
| means great/big in latin, maybe they had a similar idea.
| Interesting service too, hadn't heard of it before. Was it
| discontinued? I saw the website didn't have an SSL certificate
| anymore.
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