This post is not for me to say "RWR should be totally free forever." What it is for me to say is "Theres a time and a place."

By that, I mean this:

RWR is a currently unknown game with a very small community of players, thats shown in particular by this forum. Those who post on the forum really want good for this game, and as you can see there are not many...

By putting RWR into a paid state, then less people will play the game and promote it around the world. If the game has tens of thousands of players, this is alright. But if the game only has tens of players, then it will work as a negative. Money may be made in the short term, but by the full release of the game there will be less players, and thus less money.

Therefore RWR should not require a purchase to have the full game YET. In the future, I am all for it.

However, I understand that short term money is always a good thing. So instead of a "Pay to play" basis, I propose this:

"Premium Membership"

Premium Membership costs £5, same as it currently is. However, the premium membership will include the following exclusives:

- Ability to CREATE a multiplayer server
- Special rank on the forums
- Access to the "Premium" subforum on this forum
- The final game when it is out.
- Knowing that you are supporting RWR


That way pasik still makes money, but the game community can continue to grow in a positive way. The advantages of this system are that:

- More money in the long term
- More people will play the full game and help it to grow
- More people are encouraged to join these forums, and help to support the game and pasik.

That's pretty much how it seems to be working guy.

At first it was pay for .4 and beyond, but recently he added a stripped down version of .4 with no multiplayer for those who don't want to pay yet.

So the game right now is basically:
Pre-order the game now, get multiplayer, a discount, because the price will go up as time goes on, and get the game earlier than none-premium (He posted the premium first, waited, then posted the stripped down basic)

Besides, beta is usually a good time to start asking money for the game.

Wow, I'm really going on the TL;DR wagon here, but here it goes:

I think this is the best time to move on to the pre-purchase & beta-access -model, as I still have some important new features coming to the final game. If I'd keep going on with the free-to-play, I could end up in a situation that there wouldn't be a significant difference between the latest free-to-play version and the final game, which would make less people motivated to purchase. In general, people tend to buy something to get something new, rather than pay for the enjoyment they already got, I think. There are positive exceptions to this, those that find supporting a cause worth money even if they wouldn't get anything out of it immediately, i.e. donaters.

Playing the demo beta 0.4 for free, you get to see the basic gameplay RWR has with single map with plenty of bases. It's now evident that you can easily spend a couple of hours with it and have fun, that should be enough for most cases to either stop playing and wait for the final to not to over-play it, or, if really loving the game, use the discount now, pre-purchase the final and continue playing the latest beta.

Getting on the pre-purchase, in time you get to see stuff made on top of that. Currently it means multiplayer (0.4), later it would mean a new map with a new theme with tightly positioned buildings, roof top access, stuff on roofs for cover, mortars (0.6?), more maps, explosives for stealth?, laser sights? (0.8?), and then polishing, balancing and finalizing everything for 1.0 final release. If everything goes well, the development doesn't even need to stop at 1.0, the vehicles would be a nice add-on I'd like to implement, and again more maps and whoknowswhat.

One option is to wait for the final game, play a final demo which restricts the gameplay in some incredibly annoying way, and pay the final price - that's how it works in the normal world - and for some people that's the best solution as they don't want to play unfinished games or follow a game project develop bit by bit for several months.

I know marketing the game is going to be a huge challenge, but I feel the free demo beta offers already enough gameplay for the folks who find the game one way or another, to decide whether they would find the (final) game something they would pay to play or not. If they like the free demo, I like to think they'll talk about it to someone generating a little word of mouth, even if they choose not to pre-purchase it immediately.

Both of you have good points, i think the best is to make a pre-purchase version and a demo version.
And it's already done, so you should include a link to pre purchase the game in the demo and then advertise the game with the demo.
Also the demo should be a real demo, and not a beta or alpha version of the game, but the game (with all the bug fix and optimization), minus multiplayer and other new features.

like that you could focus on the game will people test it on the demo.

Also you shouldn't be afraid about lack of advertising, there is a lot of way for that. (forums, RPS or other websites... internet is a really good place for indev).

I agree. I probably won't update the demo each time I update the beta, as updating the demo and ripping something out of the actual game takes time out of actual game development, but, I'll try to update it as often as I can.