Hey guys, I have a good offer for those of you who use a compatible system (Which is any e-mail notification system for registration/purchase)

The Intro:
DCS is fairly unique in the indy game industry, we offer a commercial web based game, FaitH, which is agressively moving to the top of the genre, quoted in Compuer Games Magazine as "Browser games don't get any better looking than FaitH." What we are looking for are those of you who make standalone products with online registration/downloads.

The offer:
We want to establish a value-added system by giving away copies of our games to everyone who purchases yours, free. Since you are using online based sales, the cost to you should be nothing to impliment and it will appear that you are giving away a product valued at over 10 dollars USD with each sale for free.

The reason:
Unlike many of your products, our 'fee' is not one time. We are looking to establish long term repeat customers, and if giving away an account is what it takes to get them to try our product, so be it. Most of you reading this do not have competing products to our game, which is an online strategy/RPG. This is going to be our market test before we use printed media to distribute the same offer to places like Electronics Botique online sales. We want to use this method to predict how many customers it will generate and what their return rate will be.

The requirements:

I honestly do not care if you have 1 sale a month or 1000 sales a month, but the one requirement I do have is that you are producing a product with a pricetag of over 10 dollars USD. Depending on responce we may limit this first trial run to a couple of indy producers, but rest assured, if it succeeds we will set this offer as a standard way to add a great deal of value to your products.

The conclusion:
Please do not hesitate to post or e-mail (located at the bottom of the page) questions. Anyone who wishes to get on board with this idea should do so via e-mail, and please include an approximate number of sales per month (so we know how many accounts to generate). Your sales information will be kept extremely confidential.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman

Not that I have a game that meets these requirements but it doesn't sound like there's really anything to be gained by giving away a trial period for you game when someone buys their game. Especially since you already give away a 2 week period for your game to anyone on your website.

Now unless you're offering some affiliate system where there's some payback if the user continues their account with your game I see no reason for anyone to take you up on this offer. Any person selling games would be just as well off giving away a random demo with their game than your offer.

Thanks for your post and concern:

The answer to why is pretty simple. Selling anything is all about giving your customer what they percieve as value. The more value they see from your product the better. Now, you can play the trial version of our game for free, sure, but the free version contains many restrictions and the first type of account comes in at 10 dollars (premium accounts are 20 and cutomized accounts vary in price).

The way I see it, if it generates one additional paying customer for you from someone who says to themselves "hey, ill buy it and if nothing else get a free account to that other game" and in turn all those other people only generates US 1 return account then we have both come out of it better than we were.

So, I hope that answered your and anyone else's concern.

Really, I am not trying to profit from other people's games, I am trying to create a mutually beneficial environment.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman

PS: Incentive affiliate systems are something we have in the works, but those systems probably wont involve free accounts.

Why does FaitH have a capital 'H'?

Why do hotdogs come in packs of 10, but hotdog buns come in packs of 8?

No, seriously, the final capital H is part of a long term strategic move to increase our own visibility (it apparently worked with you). Other titles you see from us may employ the one word two capital rule (none of which will have more than one word... we aren't leet spelling our titles).

A good, but little off topic, question :-)

Feel free to post questions about FaitH on this thread though.

For the record, DCS is a team of three and possibly soon to be four-five full time people. Marketing/PR, art/PR, and programming. We expect to hire our fourth person to take over the split PR jobs in 3-6 months and the fifth to assist with our next title.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman

Seems like a good idea. Unfortunately our game is almost finished but won't have a registration key system. Will have to have a larger full version download.

One thing about the FaitH capital letter thingy. It probably works fine on a title screen but the first time I read it with a normal font like this one, I read it as Fait H not as Faith - if you get me.

Well, if you can think of a way to incorporate the idea drop me an e-mail and I will see what I can do.

You may be right about the normal font thing, but if it could spark even this much discussion I say it is a working idea. Granted, FaitH's title was chosen before I was hired, so I can take neither credit nor blame for it.

Keep up the constructive posts though and good luck with your upcomming launch!

Joseph Lieberman

No, seriously, the final capital H is part of a long term strategic move to increase our own visibility (it apparently worked with you)


For what it's worth (and sorry for being off topic), it actually had a negative reaction with me. It made me think that of l33t haxors putting a website together.

However, the screenshots are beautiful, and the big H works in the logo (I think), just not in plain text.

I'll be keeping an eye on this, I'm really curious to see how the web medium works for that kind of game.

Not to brag, but somewhere on dexterity I read 'If your first game gets 1,000 sales in your first year you are in the greater minority'

We have over 1,000 'sales' in year 1 :-)

Future looks bright!

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman

PS: Thanks for the compliment!

Interesting... and your product line (at least FaitH ;)) would fit with our product line (at least with some parts)... have to think of this
(but first we have to complete our game, then some more discussion)

For those of you that contacted me I thank you.

For those you you who missed this post take a look, we are still interested in a couple more people.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman