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Payware missions

A

archtx

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unitedstates
Kevin wrote:

"Arch,

Most of the downloading public agrees with you.

My experience so far (and I have been extensively testing the theory) is that the downloading public for the most part won't pay even trivial amounts of money for any quality, however, you've raised an interesting point:

What aspects of the mission's you've flown do you see as most in need of "bar-raising?"

I'm also curious: Would you pay for any addon? Airplane, scenery, mesh?"

Kevin:

Regarding "raising the bar", I would suggest something about the caliber of the default Amazon mission would be a good example. A great story, great dialog, and custom scenery objects, and no glitches.

Almost all of the user created missions I have tried have a few glitches...but probably the largest shortcoming is the lack of highly professional dialogs. As to content, I think that a lot of them have had some good imaginative storylines.

So as not to misunderstand my comment about payware...I was ONLY referring to myself. I have created sceneries, panels and missions....a lot for just my own use, but all resulting from the generosity of many individuals who created the tools. Almost all of my flying since FS98 has been with addon planes. They just happen to be my favorites. Some are better than others, but the ones I happened to like just happen to be freeware. I certainly don't have a beef with payware planes, but I have seen numerous examples where people have paid money for addons and were not happy with the lack of support they got from some vendors. When you give someone something for free...you don't have to support it. I also enjoy being able to "pay back" a little to the hobby I have enjoyed for so many years.

As to whether I'd pay for any addon, the answer is "certainly!". I was happy to buy the MAAM DC-3 and B-25. Good examples of something I wanted that was of high quality plus the money went for a great cause. But there are surely many more examples of quality payware out there. Any of Milton Shupe's planes I would happily have paid for had they been payware. As to scenery and mesh, I have always enjoyed making my own. But would not be opposed to buying some if I wanted it.

Hope that answer's the question.
 
Arch,

All good observations. In fact, I began developing for the same reasons you mention ... I just couldn't find good quality missions out there (certainly, I found a few such as Horst's Kalua Air Taxi and one or two others).

I've contemplated "raising the bar." To do it requires budgeting about $1,000 per mission in my view (this is napkin accounting, but I think it's a reasonable tally). This would get you professional quality voice-overs in English, a soundtrack of no more than two tracks of music totalling about 6-8 minutes and maybe one or two pieces of addon scenery by a reasonably good designer. No new AI.

Could it be done cheaper. Absolutely! But, at the expense of some quality.

I've done some free missions. I've done some pay missions. (I'll continue to do both because I enjoy doing it - and because I agree that it's important to give back to the community.)

The free missions average minimum 1,000 downloads ... the pay missions average maximum 25 downloads at the low low price of an average of $1.75 cents - so, I'm pretty sure it's not a price-point issue. I admit to intentionally only distributing so far helicopter missions. I wanted to see what the bottom of the market looked like. :eek:

For me, so far, this indicates that there isn't much demand for missions - of any quality. I haven't totally closed the book on that opinion as I have some additional market research to conduct with respect to fixed-wing missions, but that's where I am so far.

Anybody else experimenting?
 
I agree there is a limited interest in missions. It would be interesting to know "what people want" for those who are searching for mission ideas. That would certainly hold true for anyone wanting to create payware missions.

The few I have created were solely based on ideas that I wanted to explore, but I have continually been surprised by the lack of feedback. I think feedback is important to all of us to understand ways to improve on the creation process.

I keep track of downloads. In Gypsies1, I addressed the feedback issue by including a Reward Code. The ones that e-mailed the code would receive Gypsies2 before it was uploaded to the usual sites. That way I could more or less guarantee a little more feedback. Gypsies1 was released on Jan 4th, and to date there has been over 3800 downloads. There have been 39 people who e-mailed the code back to me. As it was not that difficult of a mission, I interpret that to mean that approx 3760 people did not complete the mission.

Those 3760 people would be those that:
1. read thru the README and decided they weren't interested.
2. tried it, crashed, and gave up.
3. tried it, didn't like it, and abandoned it.
4. A few too lazy to e-mail the code?

So, I am certainly not surprised at the number you quote willing to spend even a very modest amount for a payware mission.

In these days of Steven Spielburg and X-box, etc., and in light of the fact that the majority of FSX owners are not serious flight simmers, I think it would take something really amazing to initiate very many sales.

To sum up MY OPINION.....create the mission YOU want to create, because YOU want to create it. If someone else enjoys it....so much the better. You've made a new flight-sim buddy. Afterall, it is just a hobby.....let's not take ourselves too seriously!
 
Keep in mind that most people say the most when they don't like something and often say little when they do. At least that's the way it seems to me...
 
Good point.
I remember being quite disappointed about the lack of impressed feedback upon my EDLM-scenery. But after some time I found a lot of it in several posts and screenshots on different forums. People did download (and use) it - they just didn't tell me. And that's ok. If I would give a feedback for all the stuff I downloaded... :D

Example:
Those 3760 people would be those that:
1. read thru the README and decided they weren't interested.
2. tried it, crashed, and gave up.
3. tried it, didn't like it, and abandoned it.
4. A few too lazy to e-mail the code?
Click to expand...

I downloaded almost every mission that's available for free yet. And I finished, erm, none...

In your case there were several points that prevented me from flying the mission longer than 5 minutes. It would lead too far to point them out, but I can say that allthough I liked the mission idea (remembering another great book: "Nightflight" by St. Ex) I started the mission and thought: it's rather the same as flying in non-mission mode. Eventually a "mission failed" will pop up when I go too high, and that's it.
Correct me if I was wrong, but I'd like to see more atmosphere in a mission - that goes for all missions on the market, not specially for this one.
And I think if missions give a nice touch of atmosphere there will be a market for it. Let's wait for the Adventure package to prove that. :)
 
Arch,

As regards the feedback issue - I didn't expect much going into it. I just naturally assumed, as Paul has hinted, that the only feedback I'd get is if somehow I screwed up an install, or had a major plot hole or something.

I was wrong. I was astounded by the feedback I got on the Palm 90 mission. Just totally taken aback. It was uniformly positive on both my site but moreso on avsim.com. I was totally surprised that so many people would take the time to say how much they appreciated it (knowing myself that it was certainly not perfect by any means.)

So, I was certainly grateful to get that positive feedback.

It had, alas, no effect on sales of any of my other missions. :eek: In fact, the ONLY criticism that I've ever received about the mission's I've produced that I'd call 'negative' said something along the lines of: "How dare you try to sell something!"

Cheers,
Kevin D. Greene
http://fsxmissions.blogspot.com/
 
I'm afraid, that is a total distortion of the truth, Kevin. The criticism was that you had joined a forum ONLY to advertise your payware, not that you were daring to sell something. You, and anyone else is perfectly entitled to sell anything you wish, but obtaining free advertising in the way that you did is a misuse of the facilities offered. Your actions on this site do not bring the same criticism because your use of the site is as an active member and I would not have mentioned anything but for your distortion of the facts.

I wish you only the best of luck in what you are doing, please stick to the facts in future.
 
Graham,

I think that's probably a fair criticism - and why I've changed my mind regards posting information about missions that require a donation or cost money on any site. It was too confusing for some people when I'm distributing both kinds of missions. My impressions of some sites are that posting something in a forum about anything that comes with a cost is sometimes OK, sometimes not. Sometimes it seems to depend on what mood the forum moderator might be at any given time.

I sent email requesting a ratecard for advertising on your site, but I never got a reply. Perhaps I sent it to the wrong person. (In fact, I haven't gotten a response from avsim.com either.) Can you email me at: pokerpundit at gmail dot com with a ratecard?

Incidentally, my comment was not directed towards any specific individual, but just in general some folks are "freeware only" evangelists.

Cheers,
Kevin D. Greene
http://fsxmissions.blogspot.com
 
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Thanks to both of you to argue in a way that should become a model to everybody. :)
And, Kevin, that actually puts your negative feedback counter to "0". :D
 
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