Seems like it is too small of an audience at this point. I think you'd need a larger test-bed to really get an idea of it; to me it seems like you have a very small audience that is either die-hard or just taking a glance at the project.
Certainly, in some cases it doesn't work, but there are several examples of it working quite well, even outside of discount sales; The music artist "Pretty Lights" has heavy use of samples in his songs, so instead of trying to get licenses to all those samples he instead releases his music for free with a suggested download price. http://www.prettylightsmusic.com/
There are others but I can't think of them now so I won't argue this dynamic without anything to back it up.



Singleplayer-only free version sounds like a pretty easy enough start there. That's essentially how minecraft worked when it had creative playable on it's website and survival only available in the client.



Minecraft modders experience the same hurdles. It comes with the job. And yet, some of the most interesting bits of minecraft have come from mods.



Expectations change, my friend. It doesn't require that you change the aesthetic of the game to appeal to them (as obviously, it already does), but you should be wary of your audience, even outside of your initial target, as your product may have turned out to attract a much larger audience outside of the target. I only mention this because many children don't like to ask their parents to buy things for them online, they simply see it and give up.



It's a matter of principles. Either way, I'm out $5 and have access to the beta, but the principles behind it are more important.

Pre-purchase: I am buying this product under the condition that I shall receive each version of the game in the future, until the final release version. Truth is, if development were to cease, getting back my money would probably be a huge pain.
Donate: I am donating money to the developer under the pretense that it be used for development of their product, out of good-will. I am not entitled to future copies, so if development were to cease then there is no harm done, as I was not given a false promise of receiving the final release version of the game.

It might as well be legal jargon, but out of principle I would sooner pay double the suggested amount via donation than 'purchase' the game under that sort of false promise.



Minecraft had a larger community before it was made commercial, had an up-to-date, fully-functional version of the game available to play directly on their website for free, and had a lot of backing to spread the word of it's existence very easily.

We're not calling pasik unfair by making it commercial by any means, he's more than entitled to do as he pleases with the price. It's just that we feel that he can gain quite a bit of an audience if he plays his cards right, and we think this is one of the cards he should play.



Oh, and thanks for the beta access, friend. There may be some more money coming in the future, right now I'm a little strapped for cash.

Not for 0.5:
http://www.modulaatio.com/runningwithrifles/?page_id=22

Right now, 0.5 seems to be for people who payed only.

I don't see how it was too soon. I'm concentrating on getting the game to a great shape for the so called final version, and it can take quite some time as I'm doing the implementation mostly solo and as a secondary job. I don't know how I would benefit from getting buckets of hype right now, as the final game is still not even close to being released, and let's face it, people can keep playing a single game and talking about it only so much, everyone has a limit. I'd prefer to spark the bigger interest to RWR closer to the final.

Thus, I chose to have a public beta with pre-purchase discount, and I expected the buzz to calm down a little around the game while the early adopters would still give me great feedback and design ideas on the forum, and I still today see it possible that the game will catch on when it's final, there's good modding possibilities, and the game is potentially in Steam or the likes.

For the new comers, there's still the free demo which lets people get in touch of the majority of the game as it currently is.



It's not like I'd need to get the most of the mature audience to get interested in the game, I'm satisfied with much less.



I think the donation-only model would work, if I'd already be a superstar like Radiohead, so that's pretty much out of question by now.

A HIB kind of pay-what-you-want-but-you-have-to-pay-at-least-something might work, but it doesn't help much the teens who have no credit cards/paypal accounts, so that's not much more usable model here either.

That's pretty close how it is with the so called demo currently, with the exception that the demo version isn't quite in sync with the pre-purchase version right now.

Regarding the free-to-play version in the future, I was thinking more in the lines of making it possible to play free online PvP-only, and thus skip all the AI and squad handling stuff in that version. I think such version would appeal to the more casual-minded, and perhaps teens too given there's players out there. In this case, the current demo would still be accessible too for trying out the single player gaming.

It would also go hand-in-hand with my initial design, that the game is foremost a singleplayer and coop game, but there just happens to be a potentially fun extra feature that comes from the system that you can also play against each other on online with a fair player count.

The problems with this currently are:
* there's no server browser, only IP/domain-name based connections
* the online features depend on pretty low lag
* there's no dedicated server support

As you see, the game is nowhere near that yet. Before I get to start with any of those, I'm concentrating on the core game, the single player/coop mode.



Modding is truly important and I'm totally for that, hence most of the files are easily accessible in the game. I still think the modders need to wait for the game to become more mature on the features, there's a right time for everything, and I might release the voxel character/object editor tool as well.



Yeah.. if this turns out to become a kids-game only, then it becomes pretty difficult to make revenue with it. We all know moms & dads are likely to buy a DVD off the shelf rather than use Visa on games on internet, and there's just no way to get RWR on retail in a way that makes sense. Donations and pay-what-you-want models won't help much there, I'm afraid.

EDIT: Anyhow, you were probably after that the teens would create a positive buzz about the game given it's free to play for them, and the few mature players would buy the game / donate. I can see the idea in that, but I just don't know exactly how I would pull it off. Free-to-play would be so much easier to deal with, if I could just use ads or something.

Well, as I said, doing heavy publicity for donations, with threads here and some healthy text put somewhere in the website. Maybe put an unnecessary price under the download, like "If you want to help or reward the developer, please donate X€. Or more!, if you're willing to make that sacrifice.". Sadly, I don't have experience in this sort of things even less when it's related to ads around the internet, maybe TheGent knows some stuff, or anybody else in the forum.

By ads, I was referring to having a free-to-play game version that would feature in-game ads that could bring me at least some revenue, then I wouldn't have to force any limitations in the free-to-play game - you know, similar to how things work in many web browser or mobile games.

Making the full game free doesn't seem like a viable option to me. Joost already tried a pay-what-you-want with Proun with an option of full no-pay free version, ending up with less than 2% of players making a purchase. I think it proves the point that if the option of legitimate full free game is there, even the people with the possibility and the will to purchase a game skips doing it, as it's much simpler to just click one button to download it instead of filling out a boring form and clicking two buttons.

I can't see any other solution here than to limit the free version in a way or another. It's just sad that having two versions doesn't really help in getting the actual game final, there's always the burden of making two releases each update.

The ingame ad idea is excellent, though is it possible to do so?

I don't know, I guess there's a reason it's so uncommon in the usual application-based games.

I for one support free to play. If It was free to play I'd get all my friends to play on it and we could have so much fun, which means I'd probably donate. I'm not paying for a game with a tiny community because it's P2P, that's one of the only hurdles stopping me donating/buying. I WANT 1000 MAN BATTLES!

I do think you should limit it though, I want you to succeed and prosper! I think this game has loads of potential.

I think the ad idea is good.
If you can get it started you can get a much steadier revenue than with purchases.

I really think this is a game than can get a big and (many thanks to modding) fairly stable community.