Gamer Superstar

Chapter 91 91 - Monetization

Watching her concentrate on controlling the mouse while looking at the screen and shaking her head brought a proud smile to my face.

Selena was very surprised when I told her I was making a game, and even more surprised when I showed her the gameplay and how much fun it was.

Since she tried to play The Lazy Song in easy mode, the goal became to get an S in The Lazy Song at least once. She did very well, the problem was that there were some jumps between the last notes, she wasn't used to moving the mouse that fast, and she missed one or two notes, so her grade dropped to A.

It wasn't until the 12th try that she finally got the S she so desperately wanted.

I could see a big excited smile on her face as she looked at it.

"What did you think of the game?" I asked.

Staring at me as her smile turned into a more stoic face, she answered objectively. "As a music game, it's the most fun game I've ever played, the way you thought of making the players play the notes while clicking around the screen is really cool, I'm sure it will do well when you release it on the internet."

I nodded at her, that was exactly what I was thinking for the game.

"But how are you going to monetize it?" she asked confused. She asked confused. "Or rather, do you intend to monetize it at all?"

"Yes, I intend to monetize it, but in a different way." I said.

One thing I realized was that there are almost no free to play games in this world, the vast majority of games use the pay to play system where the player pays $40 to $60 to play the game, and within the games there are still microtransactions.

"My idea is to keep the game free, but have a $5 a month subscription with some perks for players, like customizations, badges for the profile, letting the person put gifs on the profile, customizing the banner, and things like that. Just aesthetic things, nothing that affects the gameplay," I said. I said, causing her to raise an eyebrow in surprise.

"But then you make a lot less money, right?" she asked confused.

To which I nodded. "Yes, I know that if I release this game for $20, I'll probably get a few thousand sales and that'll already make me a few thousand dollars, but my goal is to make this game something sustainable... even if I only get $5 for every 50 players, that's a good way to attract new players and grow the player base of the game. My goal with this game is not to become a millionaire, but to do something I enjoy in my spare time and to get a new platform to promote my music.

Listening to that last part, Selena's eyes lit up as she thought about the possibility of promoting her songs.

Someone might download the game to play songs by a B-list artist, but within the game they discover a song by a D-list artist that they enjoy playing, wouldn't they look for more songs by that artist?

Thinking about it that way, this game would be just as good a promotional platform as Spokify, depending on how many players it could accumulate.

"Since you want to keep the game free, it's even possible to put ads in the game, like mobile apps, and give players who pay the $5 the option to not see any more ads." Selena came up with an idea that I thought was very good.

"Yeah, that's a great idea!" I smiled, making her stare at me for a second and then turn her eyes to the computer screen.

This idea of her advertisements reminded me of the mobile games from my previous world, games like Flappy Bird made thousands of dollars a month just from the advertisements that ran on the app, I should just put less aggressive advertisements and it would be a great source of extra income.

"But what are you going to do about the music rights?" She asked worriedly.

"About that... I have two different methods in mind. There are songs that will be pre-installed in the game, which I will need to copyright, but players will also be able to make their own songs and make them available for download in an in-game tab, these songs that players make will be considered fan-made, which won't create the need for me to copyright them since I didn't make them." I explained.

Upon hearing this, Selena's eyes lit up in surprise. "That's very clever!"

"I'm just not sure what to do with the copyrighted songs... I don't know if I should pay, how much I should pay, or anything like that..." I sighed as I sat down on the bed next to the desk she was using.

Since she was using my new laptop, we were in my room at the old desk I was using instead of in the basement at the PC.

After thinking for a while, Selena managed to come up with something. "I think you can think of it on two fronts, one focused on getting some copyrighted songs to pay for themselves after a while, using the profits from the game, and the other focused on using non-copyrighted songs to leave in the game as a success story. If the game does well, the artists' companies will ask you to put their songs in the game to promote it. Even if they still charge you, you can get discounts for it.

Hearing this idea from her, I thought it made sense, only one point left me confused. "How would I get music royalties to pay later?"

Selena looked at me with a smile and replied. "I can talk to AJP's manager about it, with how much potential I've seen in this game, I think it's hard for her not to be interested in it with the same mindset as me..."

Hearing this explanation, I was excited.

"But how much do you think the songs would cost?" I asked worriedly. I should know how much it would cost first to know if it would be worth it, after all, if the price was $10,000 per song and I had to buy 10 songs, I would just be taking on a gigantic debt for something that the game would take months or even years to pay off, depending on how many downloads it got.

With a small hand on her chin and her head down, her long blonde hair covering her face slightly, Selena began to mentally calculate how much it would cost.

"I think it would depend on the artist's rank, with rank D artists it wouldn't cost more than $1,000 per song, rank C artists would be around $2,000 and rank B artists that figure should come to at least $5,000, rank A artists I'd say at least $10,000..." She thought as she spoke, making my heart race.

"Those prices... they're pretty high..." I was shocked.

"That's because of the promotional opportunities your game has, if I remember correctly, when a company buys the rights to a song to use in a movie or game, those values are at least 10 times higher. Since your game would give a good boost to the artists' careers by making these downloaded songs available in everyone's games, the price would drop a lot because the artists would gain popularity from it," she explained. She explained.

Even though I thought the prices were high, I thought that if someone wanted to use my songs in their game, I'd think the same way she did, and it made a lot of sense...

"How many songs do you think I should buy?" I asked a little worried.

"For Rank E artists, the songs are cheaper, you can get as many as you think are good, I'd say your own songs already cover as many songs by Rank D artists as the game needs, even if you're not Rank D yet, your popularity is almost there. I'd say it would be good to have at least five C-rank songs and two B-rank songs in the game to try to attract a larger audience," she explained. She explained, but nodded in agreement.

"For the rank E songs, I was thinking of promoting the game as an opportunity for these new artists to promote their songs, so instead of saying the game needs their songs, I would say something like they need the game so I can get the rank E songs for free." I explained, causing Selena to look surprised and nod.

"That's a good idea." She replied. "I'll talk to AJP's manager and see how we can work out the payments for the songs in the game, knowing how well you get paid by MeTube, I don't think she'll be afraid of you not paying."

Hearing this, I nodded, even though $20,000 for these songs was a lot of money, I didn't worry too much from the point of view that these songs could help promote the game and possibly make me more than that per month.

If I only got an average of 30,000 players playing, if every 50 players paid $5, that would be $3,000 a month just from that monthly fee, not counting the advertising that would run in the game, which would potentially make more than that subscription.

It wasn't impossible to get at least $6,000 a month for those 30,000 players, and as the number of players increased, that number would also increase significantly.

When I thought about how many ways I could make money, I realized how much I was diversifying my income.

Millionaires would be proud of me haha...' I thought laughing. I thought with a laugh.