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Why hasn't anyone monetized a Twine game?
Note: if someone has, or knows someone who has, monetized a Twine game I'd be very interested in reading up on the specifics. Please include links for further reading!
Based on Google results, I haven't found anyone who is currently selling or has tried to sell a Twine game product. I did find a few instances of someone tried to hawk Twine itself as a product. Just to be clear, that's not at all what I'm referring to in this post!
So... I couldn't find any previous posts discussing monetization (which kinda shocked me), though it's great that Twine has such a big community of (should we call them freeware?) developers. But with Choice Script, Storium, Story Stylus, and quite a few other options out there (most if not all of which allow or push monetization), what's stopping someone from selling a Twine game, assuming that demand could be generated for said game?
Just wondering.
Based on Google results, I haven't found anyone who is currently selling or has tried to sell a Twine game product. I did find a few instances of someone tried to hawk Twine itself as a product. Just to be clear, that's not at all what I'm referring to in this post!
So... I couldn't find any previous posts discussing monetization (which kinda shocked me), though it's great that Twine has such a big community of (should we call them freeware?) developers. But with Choice Script, Storium, Story Stylus, and quite a few other options out there (most if not all of which allow or push monetization), what's stopping someone from selling a Twine game, assuming that demand could be generated for said game?
Just wondering.
Comments
Have you looked into the Choiceofgames apps on app store? These feel very much like Twine games and do not have any visual aid to the text passages. The Lifeline series is also a text-based game, and these use visual aid to enhance the player's experience.
https://gregbuchanan.itch.io/paper-drumpf
Here is a game which also has the appearance of a Twine game and is available for free download, although you can choose to purchase it for a sum that you think is appropriate.
These are two different publishing forms which I think are interesting ways of getting games out there. Is this something like what you had in mind?
Could you describe your process of doing this? Or do you have links to relevant articles that helped you with developing your product?
The game also includes an actual "real" book which is a dev diary where he shares his thoughts and all so that might be of some interest for you.
It's not Twine that has to be monetized, it's the game genre you are producing. All games can be monetized, and there are a hundred ways to monetize a game. I've seen games that charge PER DECISION (a penny to be exact), but most just stop the reader unless they pay a small fee.
Any Choice of Games game makes decent revenue a year for at least 2 years, so it's possible. Note that COG didn't build a game, they built a brand. And a 60k email list. Their format is basicaly Sugarcube and simplier than most games I've seen on this site. Total monthly revenue is more than most supercars. Yes, monthly.
I've also been told that STEAM is better for monetization than the app stores but I'm not sure if that is true just yet because I haven't released on that platform yet. Remember that there are others stores as well- Amazon comes to mind.
You will need a team. I do digital marketing and social cs for companies in LA so let me mention the power of advertising cannot be overstated. Facebook in particular. Keep you CPC under $.01 global.
Bottom line... Know your genre. Know your audience. Spend a bit on advertising and social media. Good luck. Contact me for any serious inquiries.
Twine sellers are silently banking to keep competition low.
There is actually a Visual Code Editor for ChoiceScript now, called Chronicler. It's very much still a work-in-progress but the public release version seems stable enough and has been well received. The developer is currently working on Chronicler 2, aimed primarily at improving the user interface. It might be worth checking out:
http://choicescriptdev.wikia.com/wiki/Development_Tools
Is that maybe counter-productive, do you think?
The closest comparison appears to be the Choice of Games "brand" (along with their "Hosted Games" label, of course, which if anything has an even greater selection of published games) where the marketing is firmly centralized and finding other / similar themed Choice games is easy, so maximizing sales. New players are introduced to the brand through something which particularly catches their eye (a Zombie story, say), and then start poking through all the many other offerings to see what else they can find of interest. But only because it's easy to do so, surely?
It seems to me that maybe serious Twine authors should be working together, not apart, considering the high Choice of Games monthly turnover you're talking about there?
This is a good idea, maybe you should start talking to some of those authors about contacting some web and mobile based developers to develop such a platform to host their stories/games on.
It's a little like the "chicken and the egg" problem, you need both the technologies as well as the content for the concept to work.
Fair point. The reason I was querying this (being a noob around these parts and in no position to run the farm) is that in reading between-the-lines above I got the distinct impression that some at least have the eggs, but were hoarding them to hatch their own chicks, while others have the chickens looking for somewhere to lay their eggs!
I guess I was just struggling to understand why, considering how long Twine has now been around, the two hadn't already somehow got together, in some shape or form.