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[HungryHobo]

I've been thinking a bit about this a bit.
What makes the dev model for DF so much more viable than many other donation based projects?
As it stands while Toady One will almost certainly never get rich from DF he is making something like a living wage.
Now of course a coder of his calibre could probably make more working for some company but he seems to enjoy DF which is always a big plus in a job.

What I've been thinking about is what makes the DF project different from many other donation based projects which don't net their creators much more than beer money despite being high quality.

I think there's a few main elements to this:

1:  He has built up a significant user base.

Now of course this isn't the whole of it since many free software projects which have a lot of users don't net their creators any decent quantity of cash but it is an essential element.

2:He has no other day job and people know it.

Us users know very well that he has no other job and that he needs the donations if he's going to keep adding to DF. which leads on to

3: He is continually adding to the project.

Many free products are sort of "fire and forget" but people are far more willing to part with cash in exchange for the possibility of getting something in the future rather than for what they've got in the past no matter how good.

4: To a certain extent he treats his userbase like his managers.

He gives monthly reports, and updates the dev list every few days what he's been working on.
Without that many people would probably decide that in the weeks, months and even years between releases he wasn't doing anything.
When I worked in a tech company I liked coding but I detested making out the monthly brag sheets for my manager.(I did this, and this, and this etc)

5: A high quality product.
DF is of course a very high quality product.

6:He listens to his user base for suggestions and requests but doesn't blindly do what whatever people shout for.

If you're developing a game and you base all your decisions on what the users ask for you're going to end up with a very generic game theme that will gradually approach  this:
"Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Cowboy Hobos With Chain-Katanas And Several Revolvers And The Power Of Friendship Fighting Vampire Nazis With Dark Magic Riding Cyborg Dinosaurs With Head Mounted Lasers Voiced By Kevin Michael Richardson Attacked by Snakes On A Motherfrakkin' Submarine Jet With Desert Polar Bears Crashing Into An Ancient Zeppelin With Alien Anacondas In SPACE With Chuck Norris And Samuel L Jackson With Lesbian Time Travelling Bikini Werewolf Catgirls Dual Wielding Febreze Part 2: This Time, It's Personal"

Which despite sounding cool is just.... well old.

7: He allows users to go nuts modding the game and has added enough capability that we're approaching the point where the above could be modded into the game if wanted thus keeping the geeks who like modding games happy and adding new content for those who would otherwise get bored.


So guys, got any more elements which you think make DF viable by the free model?

[Halconnen]

For 6.: Someone has to make a mod for that, though. :3

[GRead]

3: He is continually adding to the project.

Many free products are sort of "fire and forget" but people are far more willing to part with cash in exchange for the possibility of getting something in the future rather than for what they've got in the past no matter how good.

This, more than anything else I think. I imagine his involvement with the community helps as well, and DFs quality is certainly a large part, but the fact that DF is a work in progress helps inspire people to support its development. After all, if no one donated, DF would stop where it is. This leads to one other point:

DF fills a mostly neglected niche. There are very few games like DF out there; in fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head that's more than, say, a 10%-25% match on gameplay elements. It's not like there are a million other games like DF out there. So fans of DF don't exactly have much to substitute if Toady were to stop development.

[Qiu]

the fact that DF is still in alpha version and already better than most finished commercial games.
And let's face it, DF is the ultimate geek game.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

7: Magma

[NFossil]

DF is actually a good game.

[Jiri Petru]

1. He's continuously speaking about donations, thus making people aware of them.

This is I guess the main reason. By no way I mean it negatively. It's just people generally don't think about the possibility of donations and need to be reminded all the time.

[bombcar]

He's very open about the amount of donations received; and we know he's putting them to good use.

Many small "projects" the donations disappear into a hole.

It is likely that Toady One has received more donations than OpenSSH!

[Sunday]

I think the devlog helps a lot.  I know with games like Cortex Command where - even though I know that logically the guy is working on it - there's no way I'd donate because there's no tangible way to realize the game is progressing until he releases a new version (and that seems to happen only once every year at the most).

[Bruwin]

I think one main factor is communication. There's a lot of donation projects out there that say "Hey, we need money so we can work!" but they never feel the need to actually say what they're working on currently, how it's coming along, etc. Toady One treats DF as if it were a job that he loves doing, and he includes very regular status reports. And he put out a product that people want to play, which is something bigger companies can have trouble with sometimes.

People don't feel that they're tossing money into a bottomless pit, where they'll never see a return on it. The people who are donating are people who want to play, so the more money he gets, the more freedom he has to code. I guess I'm trying to say that there's a lot of people who don't really see it as a donation, but more of an investment in a game that they're interested in. Really, if someone walked up to you and told you that 5-10 dollars guarantees that your dream game gets coded, wouldn't you jump at that chance?

[Grimlocke]

DF is a very unique project, if it were to somehow fail, there wouldnt be a replacement in all the world. No commercial company would ever get close to the complexity DF has, and any attempt to make a similar game would most likely take years to develop to any point someone would donate to. If they even get there at all.

Thus people donate to preserve DF and contribute to its improvement.

Also, Scamps.

[Garrie]

1:  He has built up a significant user base.

This is of course important. It is very unlikely that non-players are donating much.

2:He has no other day job and people know it.

While there might be some people somewhat motivated by this most of us are probably too selfish to care. I know lots of people without a job, some of them I might invite to dinner, but I don't know any of them I'm handing money to (might be different if one of them offered to mow my lawn, in a way Toady is "mowing my lawn").

4: To a certain extent he treats his userbase like his managers.

He gives monthly reports, and updates the dev list every few days what he's been working on.

This is the reason that makes me more likely to donate to Toady. I have been playing Angand since frog-knows, and never donated to a dev team or a community site. But next release Toady is getting me to part with some $(Au).

[Puller of the lever]

DF is a very unique project, if it were to somehow fail, there wouldnt be a replacement in all the world. No commercial company would ever get close to the complexity DF has, and any attempt to make a similar game would most likely take years to develop to any point someone would donate to. If they even get there at all.

Thus people donate to preserve DF and contribute to its improvement.

Also, Scamps.

This (especially Scamps!).
DF represents everything I search in a game, when I found it years ago I thought: "Wow, that's the game I daydream during the boring university-home train session, someone lurked my mind!"
So the donation are a way to preserve this rare and unique game, the videoludic version of WWF and panda. 

[Mylar]

I hate to be just another person saying "scamps" but seriously...

The devlog is intertwined with status updates about the man's >>CAT<<.

Seriously, who does that?

I'd have to say that is a pretty "different" feature from other donation based projects.

His whole game development process is like that. He is doing it his own way, he is very open about what he is doing, and it turns out an awesome game.

Geek point of view: If it works, it's good. If it's crazy and works anyway, it's awesome.

[bombcar]

The devlog is intertwined with status updates about the man's >>CAT<<.

Shouldn't that be ☼CAT☼ ?