Poll Question 053 - Would an “Honesty” payment system work for PC Games?
Does Honesty Pay?
Radiohead have made a bold move regarding selling their latest album. The BBC reports that “Radiohead’s plan to let fans choose how much to pay for their new album.”
This week’s poll question is:
Would an “Honesty” payment system work for PC Games?
Demographics
The demographics of CD buyers, especially Radiohead, and PC game player must be quite different and I am sure their management team did some research before making this decision. The questions is would it work for PC Games that you download?
I say download because there are different costs involved in buying from a retailer and this would just be too complicated to work properly. But with a download service it’s easier.
The thing I find most interesting is that you are asked to pay before you download and listen to it. Did they do that because people as less likely to go back online and pay or for other reasons?
Perhaps each downloader could be given a code for reference purposes and after they have listened to the album or played the game in this case, they go back online and pay what they feel it is worth.
My Version
The player downloads the full game and plays to just after halfway. AtT that point the game is paused until a code is entered. Don’t panic it’s not as bad as it sounds. At this point the player is required to go online and finalize his or her “purchase”. In exactly the same way that the Radiohead system works the player can enter zero and receive the required code.
This would allow the player to actually see what they are getting for their money, in a similar way to a demo, but also force them to go back online as well.
If the game is good enough then the developer will receive the reward, assuming you believe the gaming community is honesty enough! It would also remove any need to produce a demo, which may take some resources away from the actual game; I don’t really know how that part works.
If the player reaches the half-way stage and can’t be bothered to get the code then they probably wouldn’t have paid for it anyway.
There should be no need for hackers to create code generators because the codes are free and take very little time to get.
My Confession
Personally I don’t think it would work for gaming for a number of reasons. Firstly, I believe a lot of players don’t actually have the spare cash anyway. Secondly, my faith in human honesty isn’t what it used to be. Sad, but true.
What do you think?
The Results
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