Sunday, February 26, 2012

Ad-supported version?

My goal with Dweller has never been to make a commercial game. Dweller was started many many years ago thanks to my childhood passion for roguelikes (I played Moria a little over 20 years ago). I had started experimenting with mobile development (I released a commercial game for the Mophun platform available on Sony Ericsson devices) and it occurred to me that there weren't any roguelikes available for mobile devices. I really liked the thought of trying to convert the traditional 20+ roguelike key-bindings to a device with only 12 available keys and a very limited screen resolution.

Looking back at the years of development it has been a real encouragement to get so much positive feedback from players. Knowing that players have enjoyed the game and stuck by it for so long has really made me want to keep developing Dweller. Thank you!

Still, the thought of getting some monetary encouragement as well as kind words is a nice one. So far the PayPal Donation option hasn't resulted in much money, but I'm truly grateful for the donations I have received. I have toyed with the idea of providing a commercial version of Dweller with more features (new games modes, a new playable class and so on) but Dweller is not there yet. If I ever add a commercial version it will not be at the expense of the free version. My goal is still to make Dweller the best free fantasy RPG/roguelike there is.

Another idea would be to have one ad-supported free version and one ad-free version sold for a small cost. Both versions would have the same functionality but the ad-supported version would show ads at the loading screen (but not in-game). My main concern is how this would be received among the players. Would you stop playing Dweller if you were presented with an ad while the game is loading?

1 comment:

  1. As long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay like the way Angry Birds ads often obscure the playfield, I have no problem with people who make good free games making a little scratch from them.

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