I find it a touch of genius to have developed Machinarium entirely in Flash and allowing it to be seamlessly playable within a browser, as the demo shows. In fact, it's actually quite interesting when you think about how a system like that would work so nicely with the "episodic" format that recent adventure games have been adopting, for example like the products of
TellTale Games.How about a different kind of business-model where players can experience the entire game right on-site, without having to download and install a separate application?
Although that may place a heavy load on Amanita's servers, it could reduce piracy and make the game more accessible to people who tend to be reluctant to downloads and installations by default.
The actual payment and access system could be implemented in a number of interesting ways, like mailing a code to the player for a one-time payment, and they would enter the code on the site once every few scenes, and the server would prevent more than one IP from using the same codes.
OR, the game could be presented in an episodic format: like, players would log-in with their account, register a payment system, and then they would pay $1 or $2 once, for every 2 or so scenes. That is, the first few scenes should be free, like in the Machinarium demo, and after that, each couple of scenes would cost a very small amount of money. That way, players would make a one-time payment for only as much as they like to play.
