foundmediagames.com

Tag: gaming

  • The Price of Longevity

    Video games started out as a very niche hobby. The price to play and the technical know-how required for early gaming was too high for many of us to even consider. Nowadays, everyone with a smartphone can carry an entire library of titles in their pockets.

    This ease of access comes with a price, and to help give games more longevity we will actually need to make them less easy to play.

    This sounds like a distasteful proposition but we argue that gamers are already in this position. While a publisher is supporting a game it’s very easy to join a lobby, play a game and have your stats be automatically saved across multiple devices. When a publisher pulls support for a game this situation becomes reversed: very often the only way a community can continue to play is thanks to a couple of very tech savvy members who can deploy and maintain server instances. Much of the time the greater community stops playing altogether, creating a situation where the remaining players have virtually no one to play with.

    We plan to move this model back in time a little bit by creating a situation in which the each player needs to have a little bit of expertise to manage their own game instance. We expect that this will lead to player bases that are smaller than modern games, but we can eliminate the drop-off moment when that base drops to 0.

    Join us on our discord and socials to talk more about this proposal. We would love to hear what you think.

    https://discord.gg/2AapVZDB

  • Who we Are

    Found Media Games is a play on “lost media”: books, TV shows, movies and music that are no longer available. It’s a loss for everyone when pieces of art like movies or books become lost media, no matter how important or how obscure they are. The founders of Found Media Games feel that’s it’s equally tragic when the same thing happens to video games

    The choice to sunset a game title is a business decision, not a technical inevitability. We see an opportunity to create online games that are made from the ground up to be resistant to sunsetting. Our game technology can reduce the server costs for games to 0, letting the players decide when they are finished with a game, not publishers.

    We are excited to talk more with the gaming community about what might be possible and whether this is even the right time for this idea. Join our socials and discord to engage in discussions and learn more.

    https://discord.gg/2AapVZDB

    https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/329217

  • Intro

    The Experiment

    Found Media Games is an experiment. Across the games industry we see one prevailing business model:

    1. Free to play
    2. Micro transactions
    3. Advertisements
    4. Games as a service
    5. A game’s lifetime is tied to its continued profitability
    6. Copycatting

    This model works for many games but it leaves the hardcore fans out in the cold when the rest of the players have moved on to the next greatest thing. Found Media Games aims to take a fundamentally different approach to the business of making and publishing games.

    How We Got Here

    By now gamers are used to seeing announcements of sunsetting titles nearly every month. Despite how unique and innovative these games often are, the publisher’s decision to sunset is solely based on whether they are profitable over a long term. No amount of effort from the developers and love from the community can sustain these titles if the mass of the player base has moved on due to better marketing for other games or the whimsy of influencers.

    Why the Experiment?

    This cycle has left many players feeling jaded. Why invest your time and effort into a game if you know the title could simply go away because of a publisher’s bottom line?

    Found Media Games will try to do something different. Our games are designed to last forever and will still be playable as long as there are players that want to play them. Our games will also be free of micro transactions and advertisements that interrupt the play experience.

    The Rules of the Game

    Found Media Games will operate with these principals:

    1. Serverless online experience: you can play your games online without a server. The servers can’t be turned off if they don’t exist.
    2. The community is responsible for the community: the community for a game will exist as long as there are players engaged with it.
    3. Pay once, own forever: You pay for the game to download it. After that you keep it forever. We won’t ask for extra money through micro transactions or force you to look at irritating ads.
    4. No AI: real art, real design, real audio.

    We hope you will join us as we embark on this experiment.