The Official Aldorlea Games Forum

by **LikaLaruku** » Sun May 01, 2011 1:37 am

Man, I wish I could get a subscription to Aldorlea with automatic montly payments of $5-$20 a month; I'd drop Bigfish since they only ever release hidden object/dash/match 3 games anymore, & those put me to sleep. I can play an RPG all month long.

Like if you're dependent on working friends or parents (or even kids & grandkids) to gift you a game subscription, they'd be more cool with small installment payments than being begged to spend $15-$30 in one shot when the price of groceries, utilities, & gas keep going up while their paychecks stay the same size. & I don't know about you guys, but nobody is hiring where I live. It's crazy even for the lowliest of jobs; a college degree to work at Payless, no more than 3 isles open in any store. Every penny I had at my last job went to paying off interest on my stupid student loan.

Ooh, I'm ranting about the economy again... +::cry

Anyway, I think it might increase game sales, that's what I wanted to say. +::Thumbup

& while I'm far from a financial expert, wouldn;t it make a more steady stream of income?

by **Indinera** » Sun May 01, 2011 9:20 am

Thanks for your thoughts ^^
In fact I wouldn't know how to set this up, beside I'm usually pretty busy with the game making itself!
But the games I release are usually pretty big, even for $20 or more you are likely to get many days of playing and even more if you want to find all the secrets. Not that bad a deal.

by **titaness** » Sun May 01, 2011 11:08 am

Lika, love your name BTW!! I certainly understand your problem!! I first came to Aldorlea from BFG
myself for the same reason's as you!! Indy's, right about the "bang for your buck"! If you got the Laxius
Force trilogy, for example, you can literally play for months on that one series. They are HUGH! I've been
playing and replaying them for at least 2 years now, and ALWAYS find something new! You can play with
differnt combos of characters, strategies, etc. I challenge you to complete all the side quests. I STILL
haven't! The next gift time, you could maybe get the independent games like Dreamscape, Asguaard,
and Katie's Quest, and by the time all that is done, maybe the MM series will be done!! Of course, by
then, that "TRICKSTER" Indinera will probably have created a whole new world for us to explore!!
HEHEHE!!! Anyway you do it, it's definitely worth the money for the amount of joy and fun you'll get!
One 2 hour movie visit cost's more!!!! (Yikes, scary thought!) And, we are all always here to help
you, and we don't cost a dime!!! +::YAY

by **debhi** » Sun May 01, 2011 7:15 pm

yes.....bfg.....is pretty much lost to me due to only hidden objects and match 3. But I did finally buy a game through them that overcloud9 developed. That was a deal. But the games here have so much play back and you can keep playing forever. I am replaying mm anticipating mm4. Love our tricksters games due to replay value. Alot of game for the bucks. And people help are fantastic. You get lost just speak up and someone will solve the mystery for ya. Great bunch of people...........

by **Indinera** » Sun May 01, 2011 7:27 pm

by **LikaLaruku** » Mon May 02, 2011 6:03 am

It's not about value, it's about people who have no bank accounts. Many people on Bigfish are unemployed or children & were gifted a year's subscription & it's the only way they can buy games at all. That's the point I'm getting at. Outside the instalment payment system, these people will only be able to get games directly from Aldorlea twice a year (Birthday & Xmas).

Paypal does an installment payments thing: https://www.paypal.com/pdn-recurring

by **Indinera** » Mon May 02, 2011 8:18 am

On my side it's not that simple either. If you still want bigger games, then they just can't be priced like the short ones.
I CAN also make short games, I just believe the gaming experience to be better if the game is deeper and has a bigger scope.

by **Rabbit** » Mon May 02, 2011 9:58 am

There's a BIG DIFFERENCE between Big Fish Games and Aldorlea.

Big Fish is a large company that resells hundreds of games from hundreds of developers. Because of their huge amount of product, it makes sense for them to offer a subscription plan. They'll never run out of games to sell to you.

Aldorlea is just one very talented and productive guy who makes games in his spare time. A few selected games from other developers are distributed, but not sold (Plimus resells them), from the website. A subscription implies a commitment to produce a specified amount of content in a given time period. I don't recommend that Aldorlea make such a commitment. I've seen another independent game developer try this... and it ended up being discontinued with a whole lot of customers getting game credits that they can't redeem yet. This is because life is what happens when we're making other plans.

I know that everyone here on the forum is very happy with whatever Indinera manages to create every year, whether it be 2 or 3 or 4 games, large or small. I'd hate to see him compromise his style by attempting to stay on schedule with a subcription plan.

by **feyone2** » Mon May 02, 2011 12:32 pm

I really enjoy having the long format games with lots of content and would hate that to be compromised...so stick with it +::Thumbup

If you can find a solution that suits everyone, well and good; but that's not usually the way of the world.

by **LikaLaruku** » Wed May 04, 2011 1:08 am

I didn't say charge them like small games. Think of a subscription to pricier games as a student loan; if we can't pay you $30 all at once, we can give you a little bit every week or every paycheck & it still gets paid off (only unlike a student loan, it won't take 50 years to pay of, lol).

Until then, it looks like I can only afford 4 games from you a year; 2 on birthday & 2 on Xmas. 5 years ago I could have gotten them all at once, no problem. It won't be this bad when the economy gets batter, but it's gonna take a good 10 years before we rise as one & slay the cheap work overlords who are outsourcing overseas. (I'm telling you man, it's a plutocracy; the government wants us to stay poor).

by **D-Squall** » Wed May 04, 2011 1:17 am

Hi.

I just noticed the discussion of this topic grew stronger and I noticed that you mentioned about buying games at birthdays and christmas.

I don't know if Indy will do this again this year, but last year he made some promotion to low the price of some games. Like Asguaard, on november the game Asguaard was celebrating the anniversary of one year, in order to us celebrate too Indinera lowered the prince of Asguaard by 30%.

Christmas, Indy did even better. He made a Laxius X-Mas and lowered by 30% the price of Laxius Force I and Laxius Force II.

I don't know if he'll do this again this year, but who knows. Maybe if he appears and read this post he can answer.

by **Indinera** » Wed May 04, 2011 6:40 am

^^I have done that and also given away free game copies through contests!

Until then, it looks like I can only afford 4 games from you a year; 2 on birthday & 2 on Xmas.

It's looking quite good this way, as it kinda fits my usual release schedule.

by **briony** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:54 am

I too have tried games from BFG but found that I liked the RPG's much better. The money spent on a epic game is much more worth it than short ones, and these games like Millennium, Laxius Force etc give so much enjoyment where they can be played over again. Also I have no problem downloading games from this site and that's a bonus!! Where subscriptions comes in -most times you have to buy so many games to qualify for a bonus and that can add up over a period of time. Much better to save up for 1 epic game.