State Transition Games

From Adam Colton
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This is really a side project, not a business project, but I need a way to collect money so I'll do that through the ST LLC.

Our specialization is Multi-player JS/Canvas games.

I want to build one of the "virtual board games" first.

The first 2000 will be charged $3/year, the next 2000, $4/year and after that everyone else pays $5/year. If I can get 10,000 (a lot, but not unreasonable) I'll get $44,000/year. Enough to justify putting a bit of work into it.

Classics

For pVp games, I'll want to build a ladder and ranking system. This could be re-used on some classic games.

  • checkers
  • backgammon
  • Arimaa
  • chess
  • go
  • risk
  • connect 4

I could also build some AI engines to make these fun for single players, possibly turn them into tutorial versions.

I think the model I would use here (and this could extend out to other games) would be 3 tier system. Anonymous, registered and members. Only members can create a game, they also will have their scores recorded. Registered users will have their ranking recorded, but will not be able to create a game, they must wait to play against a member. Anonymous can play against a member, but they won't have a ranking.

Strategy

I think there's a big potential for "party games" or "virtual board games". Most people have smart phones. Having the server manage the "board" but having the game focus on player interaction is a lot of fun. It also gets a lot of exposure. It's a much easier starting point than something like the Space game that really needs at least a dozen people logged in to play.

Marketing

Every account get a 1 month token every month. You can only apply the token to new accounts. But you can close an account and immediately reopen it. We want people who have already signed up to be able to play with friends who have not. This creates a sense of value (limit) but also exposes new comers in a positive way. And for games where you setup a match before hand, members should be able to invite any non-members to play. For instance, in Simple RTS you only need one member to play, but that member can setup a game and invite several friends (I think RTS will support up to 6 players). If you give a free trial to someone and they activate (purchase), you get one month added to your subscription and you a a bonus token to give away.

One challenge we may run into later is a sense of "why am I paying $3 for 10 games when I only play 1 of them". We may need to fight this. One step is to give people a 'games' library, so they're not constantly bombarded with games they don't play. If the problem gets extreme, we can add an "Elite" account that give "unlimited access". The goal isn't to sell elite accounts, it's to have people think they're getting a deal by only paying for the games they play. The "Normal" account would still actually have unlimited access, but it would have the limit that you can only have 5 games in your library at a time, but you can swap them out without any side effect (loss of score).

Game Ideas

Tools

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