Gaming as a Service

[Mouser]

You dodged an earlier question:

Who retains rights to the finished game?

Can the person who paid for this service make copies of the game and give them to others?

If they can give them away, then they can sell them (doctrine of first sale and all that).

I've seen this idea tried in other markets, books where the parent would have their kid's and their best friends' names in the books, and other similar things. I don't think the idea  has ever really caught on very well. I don't see non-gamers having enough of an idea of stuff to customize for a 'gift' for someone else, other than simple stuff like names, and you can pick your own name in most games anyway.

Just my two cents, but I don't see this as a viable service.

 

[Hamilcar]

The whole "rights" topic is very complex to digest. There is an EULA incorporated into each one of the final products, that once compiled and deployed into the Installers, would be able to be displayed through the installation Wizard. The game itself has the License Agreement embedded as well.

Hope this helps.

The other thing to analyze as well, is that the client being able to sell or make copies of any of our products wouldn't be of much value for them, since the product would have been already personalized for them, so trying to sell it to another person, wouldn't be too much of a problem, unless their customers have the exact same personal information and personal stories, I wouldn't see this as a motivator to sell the product. further more, the product comes prepackaged, with an actual limited edition box, that has also been personalized. Which means that they paid for it as a premium service in addition to the standard shipping package ( if that was the case ), so, the way we see it, the customer has a personal connection with the product, and thus makes it very difficult to want to sell it or make pirate copies of it.

Also, because of our concept and because we're dealing with Generation C mostly, we want to bring them to the "Instantly Connected" Era, which means they have means to share our product via Social Media and other networking sites, already embedded in the final delivery. So the idea IS to share their experience with others. It was made for them from the get go, so they are free to do with it what they please. Just like it applies to any other gift. Think about a Music CD Album, you're not wondering who retains the rights for the songs of certain singer, you know that you own the Plastic disc and are allowed to play the songs, but you don't own any intellectual property from the involved parties that made the album. Same thing. Hope it answers your question.

 

[BadMinotaur]

I've seen this idea tried in other markets, books where the parent would have their kid's and their best friends' names in the books, and other similar things. I don't think the idea  has ever really caught on very well. I don't see non-gamers having enough of an idea of stuff to customize for a 'gift' for someone else, other than simple stuff like names, and you can pick your own name in most games anyway.

It doesn't have to be a rigid process. Imagine my earlier example of a parent wanting a graduation present for her son. She calls up Hamilcar's GameGifts Inc. or shoots them an e-mail. She says something like, "I want to get my son a personalized game for his graduation present. He likes something called World of War or something and plays a Skyrim game." So Hamilcar responds, okay, what else can you tell me about your son? The mother says, "Well, he has a high school sweetheart, they've been dating since they were sophomores. And they were voted the cutest couple for the yearbook! He's really good with his hands, he builds shelves and tables when he's not playing games."

Okay, so that tells us a lot. The son likes fantasy games, clearly, so we know our setting. He seems to like RPGs, so we know that's what we're going with too. Based on what we heard, we can put their names in the game, and make the game about a carpenter whose village sweetheart is stolen away by an evil force -- if you're getting really clever, make it the school's rival team mascot or something. So it's a small quest where you have to save your sweetheart, and at the end the King invites you to the royal ball for your improvised heroics, where the palace attendants remark, "My, you're the cutest couple we've ever seen!"

Voila. Personalized game with personalized events. And that's really scratching the surface only, there's a lot of ways to customize an experience like this to make it really individual. GameGifts could have kept asking questions about the son and everything there could be mined for some kind of personalization.

(for the record, I know my example game didn't sound like the most original thing ever, but the point was to illustrate that a non-gamer could easily provide enough material for a custom game)

Seriously, this looks really exciting to me. I'm jealous I didn't think of it myself.

 

[Hamilcar]

It doesn't have to be a rigid process. Imagine my earlier example of a parent wanting a graduation present for her son. She calls up Hamilcar's GameGifts Inc. or shoots them an e-mail. She says something like, "I want to get my son a personalized game for his graduation present. He likes something called World of War or something and plays a Skyrim game." So Hamilcar responds, okay, what else can you tell me about your son? The mother says, "Well, he has a high school sweetheart, they've been dating since they were sophomores. And they were voted the cutest couple for the yearbook! He's really good with his hands, he builds shelves and tables when he's not playing games."

Okay, so that tells us a lot. The son likes fantasy games, clearly, so we know our setting. He seems to like RPGs, so we know that's what we're going with too. Based on what we heard, we can put their names in the game, and make the game about a carpenter whose village sweetheart is stolen away by an evil force -- if you're getting really clever, make it the school's rival team mascot or something. So it's a small quest where you have to save your sweetheart, and at the end the King invites you to the royal ball for your improvised heroics, where the palace attendants remark, "My, you're the cutest couple we've ever seen!"

Voila. Personalized game with personalized events. And that's really scratching the surface only, there's a lot of ways to customize an experience like this to make it really individual. GameGifts could have kept asking questions about the son and everything there could be mined for some kind of personalization.

(for the record, I know my example game didn't sound like the most original thing ever, but the point was to illustrate that a non-gamer could easily provide enough material for a custom game)

Seriously, this looks really exciting to me. I'm jealous I didn't think of it myself.

We're always open for new excited people to join our teams, BTW, I'm really excited to hear you grasped the concept so quickly. We can chat in private if you're interested in hearing more.

 

[amerk]

I still don't exactly grasp what the concept seems to be, but if you feel confident and passionate about it, Hamilcar, I say more power to you.

I'm viewing sort of like a Holiday Gift Shop / Flower Shop. Around certain events (holidays, Valentine's Day, Birthdays, anniversaries, etc) you would probably visit an online shop or a flower shop and place an order for a gift, and have it customized to fit the person you are giving it to. Maybe just a name for a lesser expensive package, or a customized saying/poem for something more expensive. A lot of these online shops include various packages (chocolates, popcorn, cookies, vases, etc).

I'm gathering that Hamilcar wants to do a similar feature, basically offer a customized game as a gift. The person orders it, says what they'd like the story to be about, the details of some of the events, and so forth, that they can give to the receiver.

An example could be a mom wanting to wish her son a happy birthday. So she orders this game, wants it to be themed around her family, gives them a bit of a description of herself, her son, and her husband, and wants the theme of the game to be about her son's birthday. Maybe she wants to tell a classic tale of how gifts aren't everything, and family value is most important, or whatever. These guys (Hamilcar's crew) then creates the game for her to give to her son on his birthday.

Another example could be a guy is trying to find a clever way to propose (like in that youtube video awhile back) and hires Hamilcar to create a game using his name and his SO's, and in the course of the game his in game character proposes.

It's a sound idea, but maybe one that's going to take a lot of effort to gain popularity. The biggest concern I see is that most order within a month or two of the event and expect about 6 weeks tops. This may require the person to order their personalized game several months in advance, to ensure it gets made and delivered on time, and not everybody thinks that far ahead.

 

[Hamilcar]

I'm viewing sort of like a Holiday Gift Shop / Flower Shop. Around certain events (holidays, Valentine's Day, Birthdays, anniversaries, etc) you would probably visit an online shop or a flower shop and place an order for a gift, and have it customized to fit the person you are giving it to. Maybe just a name for a lesser expensive package, or a customized saying/poem for something more expensive. A lot of these online shops include various packages (chocolates, popcorn, cookies, vases, etc).

I'm gathering that Hamilcar wants to do a similar feature, basically offer a customized game as a gift. The person orders it, says what they'd like the story to be about, the details of some of the events, and so forth, that they can give to the receiver.

An example could be a mom wanting to wish her son a happy birthday. So she orders this game, wants it to be themed around her family, gives them a bit of a description of herself, her son, and her husband, and wants the theme of the game to be about her son's birthday. Maybe she wants to tell a classic tale of how gifts aren't everything, and family value is most important, or whatever. These guys (Hamilcar's crew) then creates the game for her to give to her son on his birthday.

Another example could be a guy is trying to find a clever way to propose (like in that youtube video awhile back) and hires Hamilcar to create a game using his name and his SO's, and in the course of the game his in game character proposes.

It's a sound idea, but maybe one that's going to take a lot of effort to gain popularity. The biggest concern I see is that most order within a month or two of the event and expect about 6 weeks tops. This may require the person to order their personalized game several months in advance, to ensure it gets made and delivered on time, and not everybody thinks that far ahead.

Granted, you do have a valid point in the timing arena. However, we do have a prototype for each one of our initial offerings /portfolio, since we won't be able to launch with every single customization option there is, until later on, and as others have stated, this would have been already premade with multiple different premade emotions to explore, events to personalize, ideas to convey, etc... and the customer would have it easy to feel attached to our existing portfolio, from where the customization would be made very easy from there on.

On our initial testings, the time to deliver didn't exceed more than a couple of days on the most common themes. The larger the customization, the larger it takes, obviously, but in the worst case scenario, we're looking at approximately 1-2 weeks, including shipping to the customer. Most of it would be delivered in a few days.

 

[amerk]

Okay, that makes sense, a sort of template that you can use over and over and just change a few things around. Now that actually makes a lot more sense, and you can have multiple templates around different themes, with people choosing the themed template and paying less for a shorter game with less custom material, and more for a longer one with more custom material.

 

[Hamilcar]

Great talking with you guys. I think I got the insights I needed. @Celianna or @Lunarea or @Mods, please close this topic now. Thanks!