[glob2-devel] sell CDs of glob2?

[Leo Wandersleb]

hi *

since very recently ideas are roaming in my head about why not sell glob2 CDs 
with a nice booklet at supermarket chains.

What would it cost?
-If produced in masses price would drop to 1€/(CD + case + color-printed 10 page 
booklet) at max.

At how much would it sell?
-I'm pretty sure people would buy it at 5€ just from telling at what prices 
other CDs of small games nobody knows of are sold. Just imagine the entry screen 
on a CD cover how sympathetic it would be. Mothers would buy it ;)

Why would someone buy a foss game?
-Simply because people don't know of it. Many people don't have internet or 
don't use google much and are barely aware of such thing like foss. We will not 
reach them in other ways anyway!

Why would the supermarket pay someone to support this? They could just go and do 
it alone?
-Such a marketing would pretty likely bring down our existing yog server within 
an hour from the first one joining. The community complaining about the 
supermarket would bring it bad reputation if the thing was not agreed upon from 
the developers side. The game would be in a buggy state as always (harg!). etc.

How could such a thing be made up?
(-A nice series of 3-5 open source games each sold on a separate CD would be the 
best, as then the case it is foss could maybe be communicated, the project could 
be announced in their paper spam easily and thus people would maybe start 
thinking a bit apart from just playing a cool game. Setting up a concept for 
support and dealing with legal stuff would also more easily pay off.)
-Just a standalone CD of glob2 would sell the same amount of glob2 CDs I guess. 
It would require less agreements among the people involved.
(-An Ubuntu-CD with 1000 games would cost just as much to produce. It simply 
would not target those 98% of Windows users that just want a game and not an 
ideology. In the end I guess it would even not sell as much as just the game.)
(-A CD of glob2 + 20 other selected foss games would sell better. Here I see a 
serious risk the supermarket could do it without the communities. Gaming 
magazines had foss-games including glob2 on them earlier I guess.)

Who would profit from it?
-As said before, if the supermarket does it it will make money out of it and may 
or may not loose reputation and also in parts damage the game. Same with the 
people that actually do this project.

What are your plans?
-I would like to launch a test balloon in Germany (like maybe others would do in 
their countries). I would like to take the money for myself and dedicate my time 
to glob2 at full time. If more money is raised than I need in one year I would 
hire other developers to further boost glob2. All I would need before taking 
such steps is to get glob2 to a state yog can deal with 10.000 players at a time 
with a rock solid and fast game play. All the other features given would already 
justify the said 5€.

Ideas? Comments? Flames?

Greetings,

Leo Wandersleb