When I was in the service I worked in the Emergency Room. As you know
military medicine is free of charge. What ended up happening was our
Emergency Room became subject to many problems better suited for the
Primary Care Clinic.
Many of us believed that if we charged $5 per visit we could drasticly
reduce the number of nonemergency visits to our ER. Separate the wheat
from the chaff so to speak.
The same can be applied to the internet but first there must have
something of value to offer.
The newspapers you mentioned obviously have something that people want.
In order to obtain that information a small fee is attached. Consumer
Reports runs similarly. For, I believe, a $1 fee each month you have
access to informative, but most importantly to some, trusted reviews and
reports on products and services.
You also mentioned AOL. AOL takes much of the complication out of the
internet. They have done this with the partnerships, creating their
own walled communities, and with an interface that makes it all easy to
navigate. The well travelled to the neophyte are served.
Again it is an example of providing something people want at a price
they are willing to pay.
The real issue here Dudette is having something of worth to offer. If
you have something of worth it is then a question of what the majority
of people are willing to pay.
The problems with what you are discussing are apparent.
Charging for something that has no value above and beyond anything else
that is readily available upon the internet is not a wise move.
A good example would be Geocities deciding to charge the consumer for
services that they could receive at Tripod or any other site host for
free.
Now if they offered features and capabilites above and beyond those
offered by the other sites, only then should they even attempt to
charge.
The other danger in all of this is the attitude that internet must in
some way become a means of exploiting the wallets of the consumer at
every turn.
I've played your games and even enjoy a couple of them. I wouldn't for
an instant pay for them. They are after all simple javascript games.
That is not said to devalue the hard work and effort that have gone into
building them or to say that they don't have some worth.
Sega now offers a gaming network with true interaction, incredible
graphics, supporting several genres of games. All for a price that is
less than what we pay for WebTV each month. Several hundred thousand
people find that of value as they pay for it.
Other gaming networks exist and charge but again we are talking about
far superior graphics, faster speed, and most importantly interaction.
It appears to me that your games are best served being played by those
people who don't have the capability of playing on networks as those
mentioned above.
It would seem to me that rather than charge we internet handicapped stb
users for games at a monthly or hourly rate, that it would make much
more sense for the cable companies, telcos etc to license your games for
use in their limited boxes. After all they are the ones providing a
service and need to be the ones to deliver little bells and whistles to
their subscribers.
This is simply a question of worth. One last example is the DishPlayer.
You have an extremely antiquated version of DOOM, a decent version of
YDKJ, and one of the best Solitaire games I've every played. While a
nice selection of games, and while I'm sure a good many people have
played them for hours, I don't see them being worth paying for.
