>>Personally, I'd love to see a Scenario Builder or Event Maker for
>>Dragon Pass - code together a program that lets users write their own
>>events in some kind of basic code, modify existing events, even erase
>>them completely! They could even add their own art to the game if
>>they wanted - otherwise they'd get their choice of the 500 paintings.
>>To make ends meet, specify that only people with the update can use
>>modified events - then put together a website to let them trade and
>>discuss. You could reuse the same art, the same code (mostly) as the
>>original - only the event maker would need to be written.
>
>Except for the fact that the underlying engine doesn't support
>external resources, so people couldn't add art to the game.
Fair enough - I think the ability to add their own events (and thus change the way the story ends, for example) would draw enough fans by itself. There are many creative, imaginative roleplayers out there - and Glorantha attracts them. They want to not only play the game, but also write their own adventures for other people to have!
>Nor do I understand your revenue model. Or is this just a wish list
>as part of a new game?
No - the idea would be that you would sell the Event Builder, probably bundled with the original game on 1 CD. To avoid people copying the Event Builder, you could require the CD to be in the drive for it to work. Old players (and maybe new ones) buy the Event Builder, then write events which other players want to use, so they in turn buy the Event Builder.
The people who buy KoDP seem to be pretty rabid supporters of the game, but right now there isn't much they can do about it...they can buy coffee mugs and trade stories, but neither one will capture their imaginations. The die-hard fans would buy the Event Builder. When they start to write their own events, even their entirely new stories for Dragon Pass, they will start to share them online - and new fans will get into the game, hopefully increasing sales.
I'm making an assumption here, maybe a bad one. I assume that writing a program (or changing the current program) to allow fans to modify, create and delete events from KoDP would be relatively simple - taking maybe 10% of the time it took to write the game in the first place. If you sell the Event Builder package for 50% of the price of the full game and assume only 33% of the people who bought KoDP will buy the Event Builder, you are still making 1/6 the money in 1/10 the time - which is profit, however small.
The best part is that the fans themselves become your best advertisers, and they do most of the work themselves. To get an idea of what I mean, go to the Paradox forum for Europa Universalis 2 and look at how many MODs people have made for the game.
The forum can be found here:
http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=63
-- Me: "I've made a few changes to the rules..." Colin: "Who's surprised? Put up your hand." Me: "Actually, it means we need to make new characters." Colin: "No hands? Anybody?"
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