First of all, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope that you will celebrate in peace and happiness. We are all looking forward to the classic movies, presents and delicious foods of the festive season, and it is always good to call relatives or friends you haven’t seen in a long time in order to invite them to your Christmas or New Years’ Eve celebration. But do not forget to remember the original meaning of the holiday as the celebration of the birth of our savior Jesus Christ.
Second, I would like to ask a question: how can geofiction be monetized? Most “Rich Habits” or “Become a Millionaire” books and sites propose that you turn your hobby into a business, because work that is indistinguishable from leisure for you is bound to be profitable. I think that we can all agree that it is sort of a “hobby” or “passion” for us (this is the reason we’re all on OGF after all). So why should we not attempt to earn money with it?
I have noticed that many computer games have maps that look realistic from below, with hyper-detailed tree cover and such, but very sloppy and artificial from above. I think that perhaps we could sell the outlines of islands or combat theaters made using JOSM - complete with forest cover, building locations, roads and such, left only to be turned into a 3D landscape by the actual game developers, according to the specifications provided by us. We could also learn how to use 3D mapmaking software and attempt to create fully-fledged maps ourselves.
As we don’t have to care about rendering every single rock or tree, we rather spend our time with geomorphological considerations, making our work much more realistic.
We could also intensify the active aspects of our worldbuilding and collaboratively write a novel set in the OGF world or even make fake newscasts or a movie. The novel could be sold as an e-book, and the newscasts or movies could be monetized on YouTube.
Theoretically, we could even sell the whole OGF world to a company (if we improve on its quality) and make big $$$ with it, but I doubt that it is what we truly want.
We could also create a map-based RTS or political game, where players control units and cities on the OGF map.
What do you think of my ideas so far?
Do you have any other ideas?
