Floating licenses and affiliate program

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Originally Posted by Valarian

However, to play devil's advocate, I'd caution that maybe an Ultimate license may hurt sales in the long run? Would the availability of an unlimited floating license version encourage the expectation that GMs put up the money and players game for free?

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Perhaps, but probably not for new Fantasy Grounds GMs. My player group would NEVER pay any amount of money for an experiment that I am running that might turn out to be a one shot thing. Knowing this I bought a Full and four lites as a bundle.

If the Ultimate version had been available I would definitely have chosen it instead. The cost isn't that much more and I could do it without the annoyance of giving my players licenses for free that I can't use again in the future with a different player without entering uncomfortable ethical territory.

Thus, in my case Smiteworks would have made more money and as a side benefit prevented me from becoming comfortable bending - if not actually breaking - the license.

Putting the floating license plan aside, the financial balance for smiteworks appears to be between the number of new whole player groups running with Ultimate as opposed to the number of new individual players inspired to make Lite purchases by experienced GMs.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out!

-Kevin McD

I'm forced to agree. This is no different that a GM buying the bundle for use that is already practiced. Well, not dramatically different. I think from a business standpoint I might, instead of having the Ultimate License be unlimited users, have it be a sizable number. General practice by most software companies is that the initial license pack with a software license includes 5 licenses. Then you can expand from there.

To me that seems like a reasonable number. Then offer Ultimate License upgrades where they can purchase 5 more users, all served from the GM server.

Right well this removes all my reservations about buying this product. So if the Ultimate is still around in the new year, I'll be putting my credit card on the line for you.

Your concerns are justified. Smiteworks may lose money on these licenses - the problem is that nobody knows and that is why Doug said in another post these licenses are possibly a one time thing.

Smiteworks will break even if the circumstances are that of a DM with a group buying for guys in a specific group who never change.

If the GM who buys the ultimate license has player "churn," turning over players, then on every player after say the original half a dozen - Smiteworks will lose money from a potential sale of a lite license. This potentially is a big problem because (like RPG revenue) there are far more players than GMs.

Smiteworks will gain sales from GMs who use it to run demos or whose games encourage others to buy some sort of license of their own.

I have to say you can not be more wrong. The reason for this is your model of sale only allows for the existence of players playing under one DM. In that instance yes Smiteworks will not make very much money off of this. However you have to look at the bigger picture. Players do not just play in one game. They play the field, and not every DM is going to buy an unlimited license (Oh and if ever DM bought an unlimited license ... SmiteWorks would make a hell of a lot of money... btw.).

Lets say Zwolf starts a game with his unlimited license, and he brings 20 new players to his game. Well eventually he is going to get burned out running games for those 20 players, but some of those 20 players are going to want to keep playing. What are they to do? Well they have a few options. One of them could get an unlimited license and run games for the rest. Some of them could buy lite licenses and go looking through the forums for a new game to join. A few of them might even buy a full license and talk others into getting the lite license.

The bottom line is this new license is a good thing for not only SmiteWorks, but for the DM's and the players. Its a win for everyone.

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Originally Posted by unerwünscht

I have to say you can not be more wrong. The reason for this is your model of sale only allows for the existence of players playing under one DM. In that instance yes Smiteworks will not make very much money off of this. However you have to look at the bigger picture. Players do not just play in one game. They play the field, and not every DM is going to buy an unlimited license (Oh and if ever DM bought an unlimited license ... SmiteWorks would make a hell of a lot of money... btw.).

Lets say Zwolf starts a game with his unlimited license, and he brings 20 new players to his game. Well eventually he is going to get burned out running games for those 20 players, but some of those 20 players are going to want to keep playing. What are they to do? Well they have a few options. One of them could get an unlimited license and run games for the rest. Some of them could buy lite licenses and go looking through the forums for a new game to join. A few of them might even buy a full license and talk others into getting the lite license.

The bottom line is this new license is a good thing for not only SmiteWorks, but for the DM's and the players. Its a win for everyone.

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I think my group will be a good example of that. I bought an Ultimate license, but I've already got a player that picked up a full license with an eye towards DMing, and my campaign doesn't even start until January. That's how impressed the players I've shown have been with FG. If he does decide to DM, then the players that join him will be picking up a lite license (or Full in some cases, I have two others in my group who DM frequently). I'm also going to use my Ultimate to expose people who have never played tabletop to this style of gaming. There's a ton of potential here, and I intend to spread FG around for all I'm worth ^.^ There will be others who won't, but it seems that most of us that have bought this so far have something similar in mind.

We will have to wait and see, but I will give props to Unerwünscht. Even though he originally greeted me by blasting some of my proposed directions for SmiteWorks (:hurt:) , he did probably the most to convince me that the floating license/ultimate license would be a good idea in its current form.

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Originally Posted by ddavison

We will have to wait and see, but I will give props to Unerwünscht. Even though he originally greeted me by blasting some of my proposed directions for SmiteWorks (:hurt:) , he did probably the most to convince me that the floating license/ultimate license would be a good idea in its current form.

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Oh Great now its my fault if it doesnt work out ;)

Thats ok... I am absolutely positive that this was an excellent move, both from the company point of view and the community point of view.

Oh and while we are on that subject sorry for the hostile greeting, you managed to acquire Fantasy Grounds at the end of a long 'fight' between myself and the original owners over their idea of good customer support.

I've been wanting something like this for a long time. Here's how I intend to use it in the new year.

I'd like to kick off an open, megadungeon campaign where the players decide what to explore, who to adventure with and when they want to play. I'm happy to have many different players coming and going as they wish. This option will help me pimp my game on a variety of forums to get the player numbers up.

However, I don't intend to carry my players for very long-- after 2-3 sessions, they'll know if they like my style, the campaign and FGII. If they do, I will encourage them to buy a Lite license to continue playing.

My goal is to bring new gamers to my game using FGII. To that end, I'm willing to pay some money upfront. I see it as a trust issue between GMs and players who don't know each other. As I said in another post:

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If I look at the issue from the potential player's perspective, perhaps $24 is too much to pay for a program you're not sure you'll get much use out of. What if you can't find a game or group that suits you? What if some sweet-talking GM convinces you to buy the program and then you find out his game is awful?

At the end of the day, the $24 may not be the most important thing-- it's that nobody wants to feel like a fool by taking a flyer on a program or a person who doesn't pan out in the end.

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This option allows me to build trust and potentially share my gaming experience with lots of new people.

Thank you for doing this.

The way I see it, I will probably never need more than 3-4 floating licenses. But an ultimate license will benefit me in that I'll never have to TEST that need.

I have a full licence, I bought one such for my girlfriend as well, and for a couple of my other players.

We had one player on a lite but she bought an upgrade as well.

Thing is I run a fairly non-standard system and if I want players I will generally have to sell them not only on the program but also on the system. If I have the ultimate license I won't have to sell them on the program I will just let them slot in and if they like what they see but don't like the license I am pretty sure they'll take a whack or two at FG licenses on their own.

- Obe