New TD reader here. We're doing something similar with our game and it's worked out really well. The reason? Our first game was free and people have been playing it for 7+ years. Gamasutra wrote up a summary on our preorder numbers: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25036
Our RtB is early access to our tools, artwork and alpha. The alpha isn't ready yet but our SketchUp-style level editor and environment art is, so you can get an idea of what the game will look like and start building your own maps. We also have two tiers of support and an astonishing > 90% of our pre-orders have been the more expensive version.
We also did a pre-order bundling deal a couple weeks ago where we teamed up with fellow indie Wolfire Games and we managed to get a lot of press and good revenue out of it. The sales details are here:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Organic-Indie-Preorder-Pack-Postmortem
I would highly recommend to other indie developers to think about ways they can release bits of their game early to get buzz and possible revenue!
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Natural Selection 2 is similar
New TD reader here. We're doing something similar with our game and it's worked out really well. The reason? Our first game was free and people have been playing it for 7+ years. Gamasutra wrote up a summary on our preorder numbers: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25036 Our RtB is early access to our tools, artwork and alpha. The alpha isn't ready yet but our SketchUp-style level editor and environment art is, so you can get an idea of what the game will look like and start building your own maps. We also have two tiers of support and an astonishing > 90% of our pre-orders have been the more expensive version. We also did a pre-order bundling deal a couple weeks ago where we teamed up with fellow indie Wolfire Games and we managed to get a lot of press and good revenue out of it. The sales details are here: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Organic-Indie-Preorder-Pack-Postmortem I would highly recommend to other indie developers to think about ways they can release bits of their game early to get buzz and possible revenue!