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Software Angels Overview
By Rod Hyde, Rowan SoftwareI opened the forum with a letter / survey that proposed the Software Angels approach. The idea was that sim pilots would commit to pre-order a sim before development started. In this way prospective publishers/venture capitalists would have guaranteed sales to minimise their risk. In return the sim pilots would be involved in the early stages of product design. They would have a chance of defining the sim they wanted.
The idea was warmly received by many people and the forum was used to explore the Software Angels approach and also to see if there were any other solutions.In general people realised that sims were going through a bad patch. Flight sims are among the most costly games to produce and they do not generate the sales to justify the investment. The problem is that the market has not grown significantly but the costs have risen by a factor of ten over the last few years.
The major problem with the Software Angels approach was that we did not attract enough people. About 1% of the people that normally buy our sims registered on the forum. This was too low a base from which to build a core group. The forum discussion showed that the SA idea could work but we had to work on building the numbers. On the positive side the range and quality of the discussion showed that involving the sim community at the start of a project would benefit everybody. There has been a reluctance to do this in the past because it can effect commercial competitiveness.
The forum considered why the flight sim market had not grown. The general feeling was that sims were far more complicated and difficult to get into compared with the sims that were produced in the early 90's. People asked their friends why they didn't play sims anymore and were told that sims were too complicated, took too much time to learn and weren't any fun!
As developers we have got to use the new technology to make it easier to get into our games and make them fun. The depth desired by the hard-core simmer should still be present but it must not frighten off the casual user.
The forum then considered regular and pro versions of a sim. The regular version would be aimed at the mass market and the pro version would be the hard core sim. It is important to realise that there would be a lot of common ground, for instance:
- World generation
- Flight models and basic avionics
- Input and user interface tools
You may be surprised to see Flight Models in the list of "common ground". This inclusion is important. It does not cost very much for an established sim developer to have both simple and complex models in their sims. In fact at Rowan we now have two separate pieces of code for the two models and we can easily maintain both. The regular version of the sim would default to the simple flight model. The option of switching to the complex or realistic flight model gives the hard-core simmer the confidence that the sim could grow into something worth having.
The most significant omission from the regular version would be the dynamic campaign. This is costly to produce and is not attractive to the casual user. Financing the pro version could be through some Software Angels approach.
Another thread on the forum was concerned with using advertising to help finance development costs. We could advertise on our website, on our demos and on the product itself. In the survey most people indicated that they would accept non-intrusive advertising on the product however they would not like
to see adverts that interrupted the flow of the game. Since we started the forum we have taken all these factors together to develop a new strategy. First of all our new web site(www.rowansoftware.com) will be launched very soon. Over the next few months we will be adding pages to cover a wide range of topics:
- Details about future Rowan Sims
- Screen shots and Demos
- Discussion Forums and Surveys
- Wishlists
- Technical Support
- Rowan and end-user supplied add-ons
- Articles and Hints and Tips
- Recruitment
We hope that sim pilots will get involved in the early stages in our design. Then it is up to us to turn the ideas into actuality. Finally we want to persuade people to buy from us directly online. This makes sure that more of your money gets spent on development.
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