I would pay as long as there was a few hours of fun!
I hope others would agree with me, because I'm developing a single-player game with the same model. ;)

Wow, and I thought I was one of the only ones making a single-player game.

We can look at Regressia as a good example for this.

Regressia had a cost of $6 I believe, but you could play the first hour or so for free. Eventually it became free to play as very, very few people purchased it (IainPergerine noted he made a little over a hundred dollars off of it after a year). Which is a shame, because I found Regressia to be a very fun and well-made game.

What played into it not selling very well I suspect was its lack of advertising. It doesn't seem like he tried to market it very well outside of the BYOND community, which is already shooting yourself in the foot since most of our users don't stray too far from the anime games. On top of that, most BYOND users are all too weary to pay for something on BYOND.

Given that we now have the standalone client however and with some marketing I think it could work out very well.

I would like to fool around with the stand alone, but I believe (from Tom's recent post) that the game has to be listed first. Is that correct?

Single players are fun but they get played out quick. But I think if the game is fun enough Ill be willing to try it out.

LordAndrew wrote: Stuff about Regressia

Regressia's biggest financial failing was that I didn't care. My motivation was to make the best game I could; my strategy to accomplish that goal was to charge money for it. I knew I couldn't charge money for something that I didn't feel was top notch. In terms of my original goals for the project, Regressia remains a huge success. I did learn some lessons about making money with games, though.

* First, if you want to make money off a game, identify that as a goal from the start, and design your game based on that goal. You can't just make something good and expect money to come from it. The financial model has to be well thought out far in advance, and you have to build your core gameplay to support it.

* People don't come to BYOND to play single player games. If you want to make money with BYOND, you have to have some social component to your core gameplay. This can mean competing for high scores on the hub even if people don't play on the same server. If you really want to make money, don't make a single player game.

* Pay to play is not a viable strategy. You'd be better off offering customization and fun extras for cash, but letting people play the entire game without paying. Check out RealmOfTheMadGod.com for a good example of this.

* Wow from the start. You can't make them a really weak newbie and expect them to stay around and give you money. From the very instant they log in, you have to give them something awesome and fun to do.

* It's all about player retention. You have like 30 seconds to win a player. I see it all the time, people log in, look around, give something a try, and then log out. They don't care how much red they want in their hair, they don't want to see a bald man in a diaper, they don't want to read your server rules, 5 page back-story, or giant help file. They will assume the arrow keys or WASD move them around, it's up to you to let them know that pressing space bar kills stuff. Again, check out Realm of the Mad God for a perfect - Genius! - way to introduce players to the world.

* Play Regressia. It's fun, you'll like it.