Hello everyone,
It seems that the main concern about the Marketplace on the buyers’ side is not having enough information on what you are buying. This can somewhat be remedied for visual assets with more screenshots, videos and so on. Being a Blueprint content developer however, I can understand that anyone who’s thinking on buying my system would naturally want to test it first since the usability of the system depends on your specific desires and the nature of your projects. I can relate to that, and just because I’m a developer it shouldn’t make me forget the perspective of a buyer. For that purpose, once it is released, I’ve thought of sort of like a trial system that is based a bit on trust :
If you mail me asking to test my system before buying it, and if you confirm here from your account on the forum that you’ve mailed me (of course I’d have to look how credible you are, so I wouldn’t be able to provide this service for just anyone with a few posts-unfair as tho it is, still it would be better than nothing) I would give you a private link to download my system; you’d test it however you want and if you like it, you’d buy it on the marketplace. Providing this service I would kindly ask that you leave a comment or review of the system somewhere once you’ve bought it (thankfully we do have a review system in place now for that : ) ), be it good or negative. It would help me the developer reach more people, increase the credibility of my system due to the reviews and comments it’ll get, and I’d be giving people without unlimited budgets to spend on their games a good service (myself being one, I’d be glad to do such a thing hehe). It would help the buyer in that not only would he/she get to test it, if he/she cannot test it due to credibility issues there’d be more reviews than many other systems around on it so it’d help make up their minds.
I realize I have absolutely no means of knowing whether you continue using it without actually buying it, still I will trust on my judgement on it since I can already name many people on the forums whom I’d trust with providing such a “manual trial” service. I value credibility more than the money I will make out of this, so if I lose a potential buyer; say someone who’d normally have to buy the system to try it but he’d try it with this trial and not buy it seeing as he will not be making use of it - then it’s all the better for both of us, I’m more glad that there isn’t someone who’s spent money on my product and is unhappy because of it.
I am an independent developer, this is a small community with a promise for a great future for as long as we understand that it is building trust and credibility that we should focus on and not the amount of money that we will make from each other in short term. Someone gave the example of Rama, how he does everything for free and how he ends up making a well deserved name for himself which in return opens up greater possibilities for him in this industry. Personally for me the only gain I am hoping on making from this venture that is the Marketplace is being able finish developing my game with what I’ll earn from it moneywise and hopefully building trust in people since this is where I will turn to when I need to add people to my current development team, or if I need any help, or if I need assets etc.
Anyway, what would your opinions be on me providing such a service ? Do you think it would be abused too much and I’m being too naive ? Do you think I should do it ? If it is successful it may open up the way of such trial systems for other BP systems as well which would increase the overall quality and usability of the Marketplace imo.