[Question] Selling Your Game in Parts

[klifton21sg]

Hi guys, I have a question that requires some advice.
How would you sell your game in episodes in a way that customers would need to own the previous episode to play the next?

My concerns:

1) If I were to sell my game for $1 per episode, how can I ensure that customer would need to own the previous episode to play the next?

2) I don't want to overwrite the main game because that would mean they only need to pay once for the latest version to get everything released so far.

3) I have thought about not archiving my scripts, in that way I can leave out the scripts for the previous episode, so if they did not own the previous episode the game will not run. However, that would mean that my scripts will be visible to casual copying and changes by the users themselves.

4) I don't want to release my game individually because if my game has 12 episodes then that means customers would need to install and run 12 different applications in their computers which I do not think is professional.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[XxrenxX]

From a personal point I don't see a point in having to pay for a game via chapters/episodes when you could just buy the whole thing at once one time. But here's some ideas, but it's not a solution for all your concerns. I'm also not much of a coder so if there is any easier methods to what I said feel free to correct me.

First to ensure that someone has to play Chapter 1 to be able to play Chapter 2 you could use something like this.

Code: Select all

#Chapter 1
$ chapter_one = False
#the chapter contents would go here.
$ chapter_one = True #meaning they've read the chapter and gotten to the end

#Chapter 2
if chapter_one: #meaning if they've past the = True it will continue here
	$ chapter_two = False
	#chapter 2 contents
	$ chapter_two = True
else:
return(mainmenu)

When it comes to purchase I wouldn't be able to help but the only thing that immediately comes to mind is creating a type of file upon purchase that will connect itself to the main. such as each script file being labeled on the episode and at the end of each one use the if statement so that if they have chapter 2 it will go there, and if they don't it goes back to the main menu?

But this doesn't really help avoid your concern regarding having the files available for editing by said purchaser.

[SONTSE]

1) https://www.renpy.org/dev-doc/html/pers ... Persistent here is official example of exactly what you want.
2) This marketing strat is famous for being frantically hated, thus I doubt it is optimal in terms of profit. But it's up to you

[Imperf3kt]

2) This marketing strat is famous for being frantically hated, thus I doubt it is optimal in terms of profit. But it's up to you

It does work well to the consumer's advantage for some things, especially novel based games - if I don't like a game, I don't pat full price, I can buy chaoter one and decide not to buy any more.

Having to own all previous episodes as a prerequisite to buy a new episode sounds bad though, it's commercial bullying in a way.
Ren'Py is quite capable of handling individual DLC items and not giving people the in purchased items when they buy the latest item.
You'll want to look into renpy.update and dlc.

https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/updater. ... hlight=dlc