Just a mad idea...
I find it MUCH easier to finish off, improve and expand a game thats 95% finished than I do to start a new title.
I know other developers who are the opposite, and hate the last 20% of work, but love getting new ideas up and running.
The reason starship tycoon (http://www.starshiptycoon.com) sold so well is that it was in development gradually over 7 years. The game was up for sale years ago (under a different name) but I kept taking it and improving it, adding better graphics, more content, tweaking the GUI, adding a better tutorial etc etc, until its conversion rate went up and up.

So heres the idea:

You make a game which you finish and put up for sale, it makes a few bucks but nothing stellar. You become annoyed and jaded with its lack of success. (I ave some games like this, I know others here do too). You find it hard to start a new project, you would prefer to tweak a finished one, but you cant face going back to that game.

So why not swap games?
You could either do a swap, a %tage deal, or a straight financial sale, but why not sell the game in its current state to another developer?
Could I do a better job of improving Alien Flux and raising its sale rate if I had the code and art?... maybe, who knows? could AFS owner increase the sales of Starship Tycoon even more?

Sometimes a fresh mind and fresh enthusiam is all thats needed.
So dont let your middling-sellers wither on the vine. lets swap games!!!

P.S This is a VERY half baked idea. but I thought it was worthy of debate ;)

extremely funny that you mention this idea. i was thinking the excact same thing yesterday while checking out some top-down racers (Tiny Cars 1 & 2,... also one of your games, know which one i'm talking about!).

i thought there are so many games out there with potential but you can see the developer got tired and stopped updating the game. some fresh hands on an old project could work wonders. a re-brand of a more or less unsuccessful game should be beneficial for both sides (nothing to lose).

unfortunately i don't have a game to swap :rolleyes: . still think it's a great idea.

It's an interesting idea - as long as the game is "well done" technically. That is, very clean code, one-step build process, one-step installer making process.

Tweaking somebody else's messy code could be a nightmare...

AF's already open source...

Cas :)

I released one of mine:

http://www.positech.co.uk/phpbb2/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=616#616

But this is OLD code and thus definitely NOT GOOD code.. ;)