The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people, Kevin Kelly says — a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers — but it’s a mixed blessing for creators, who face massive competition.
Rather than aim for a blockbuster hit, an alternative strategy is to find 1,000 True Fans willing to spend $100 per year — buying anything and everything, the t-shirt, the mug, and the hat.
So far, it doesn’t look like too many creators are successfully following this strategy, but Arizona-based game developer Flashbang Studios is giving it a try:
For the last year, Arizona-based game developer Flashbang Studios has released a game every eight weeks free of charge to play online on its Web site Blurst. The games have often been bizarre and cartoonish. “Jetpack Brontosaurus” and “Off-Road Velociraptor Safari” play exactly as they sound while “Blush” allows players to control a jellyfish-like creature through a glowing undersea world. On Friday, the company release its newest game, “Paper Moon,” a monochromatic jaunt through a dreary landscape as players control the scenery to advance through the stages. “It’s based on a pop-up book and the song by Ella Fitzgerald,” says Steve Swink, Flashbang’s game designer.Later this year, Blurst games will conduct an experiment. In addition to giving away its games for free, it’ll charge $20 for a six month subscription for additional features such as a downloadable version. Blurst will also be taking requests from fans to add features over time. Mr. Swink and his team calculated how many people they’d need to keep a staff of six and cover a $20,000 per month budget. They arrived at what they considered to be a reasonable goal: only 5,000 people every half-year.