I was driving to the post office today, and since the tape deck in my car spits out any tape I insert, I had to listen to CDs (normally I do satellite radio, but that plays through a fake tape you stick in the tape deck). Luckily, the Jonathan Coulton collection was in my car! And thus, I was inspired during my drive by his Thing-A-Week collection. Think about this idea:
I make a game every week (a small one, obviously). Of course, I couldn't start that until the Gate was done, what with both being fairly all-consuming tasks. Anyway, you pay $52 for the privilege of access to the Game-A-Week library. That's $1 a game! Oh, I should've mentioned, I do this for 1 year (hence 52 weeks). You could sign up to the library any time you want - have faith in me and order before the first week is up, or be a cynical stickler and wait until all 52 games already are done. Membership is permanent, you just pay once and you have access to all the games for all eternity.
There would be no demo for this, just tantalizing screenshots that non-members could see and drool over (week-long games are often quite droolworthy, you know). And what kind of games would you see? Well, you've seen my 48 hour games. They'd be 120 hours better than that. I get more time to make them, and I don't have to start from scratch! I think that's worth a buck.
I love making quickie games. As my wife pointed out, I work much better under pressure than during my aimless meandering normal life. That would be a really fun year for me, full of creativity and random weirdness.
Of course, other ideas might include things like buying the games individually or various sub-packs, or whatever. Lots tougher for me than just having the one simple package, though. But it would be fun to (eventually) offer different things, like the Professor Flounder series (a bunch of games made at various points during the year which star a highly educated flatfish), or the Strategy Pack, or whatever.
Anyway, what do you think of that? Would you pay $52 for the greatest entertainment experience of your life?
