Post by ZXOnline in Zedex Tanks - ZX Spectrum 128K comments

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You know, I am the owner of the ZXOnline portal, where many developers publish their developments for the ZX Spectrum platform. The main concept of the portal is to give developers the opportunity to make a profit (or monetary support - call it what you want) when selling copies of their products. To do this, we take various actions, not only direct sales of copies of games, but also all sorts of other methods.

Your method of distributing games is interesting, and this could certainly become another source of income for my developers, but tell me - does your distribution model imply any royalties for game developers? How do you plan to solve this issue? Or do you propose that authors be granted the right to distribute their games free of charge?

Please explain.

flopping@gmail.com36 days ago

Hello, yes I know you have the ZX Online portal and I know it, the idea as I say is to make a database of creators and make themselves known, for this the USB will have a file of each creator, with some data, such as their logo, avatar, project name, website, email, twitter, etc … they can put whatever they want in that file and I want it to be updated every few months, with new creators and other creations, I am not asking for them to give me a game either, it can be a demo, the idea is that for the creators, the USB comes out at cost price and if there is a lot of demand and I recover the initial investment, that this possible benefit is a discount on the cost of the USB, so that it can be free, obviously, no one is forced to buy the USB, it is just in case they want one, or as many as they need, it would be left at cost price, and the users who buy it, would be sold a little more expensive, in order to report that benefit to the creators, I don’t know if you understand the idea a little.

ZXOnline36 days ago

Yes, I understand the idea better now. It turns out that you want to make some database of game developers for Speccy on this USB drive, which will be periodically updated with new data (the mechanism is not yet clear - how this will be done on flash drives that have already been sold, but that's another question). This database will probably not include games that developers are still distributing for a fee, but it may include some other data, like photos of developers' faces and the like.

But I still don't fully understand the value of this information, what will be the key motivation for users to buy this database on flash drives? Could you explain in more detail? How will this information differ from the freely available information that is on WoS, Zxart, and other online resources? Perhaps this information will be a little more "personal", that is, include personal contacts of developers, which would allow you to contact them directly?

Or will this device with developer data be something like a souvenir for a retro collection?

Please explain.

flopping@gmail.com32 days ago

Yes, sorry for the delay in responding. The idea is for the USB to be updated as people learn about it or new creators emerge, through a file posted on itch.io or similar sites. There are some sites where they update games and include some information about their creators. My idea is to also include websites, emails, or any contact information you want, in addition to possible future projects they have in mind, etc. More than a souvenir USB, I want it to be a tribute USB to the creators. If they have paid games or games that aren’t included on the USB, people can access that information and buy or download them from their sites, etc. Also, I want the USB to be something representative of the creators’ work, like a ZX Spectrum model, a 48K, a Plus, or a 128. I don’t know yet; we still have to decide on that among all the members. Well, that’s more or less the idea: to create profiles for each creator with information they want to include and some of their creations, so that people who want to have it can know who’s behind that logo, or avatar, and the games they’ve created.