FACTORS IN PLAYERS' DECIDING TO DOWNLOAD A GAME:
If it looks good aesthetically, is presented well on the page in a way that clarifies what the game is about and what makes it different than others, if it's free, or has a free portion, or at least is priced low relative to the volume of playable content that seems to be included, if there are comments or ratings or similar activity, and if it's in a style and/or gameplay genre that I like, I'll be likely to play it. There are a ton of factors that influence the probability of downloading.
INCENTIVES AND BARRIERS:
But basically you need compelling positives that entice the potential player - and minimal barriers to entry. The biggest barrier to entry is usually a price tag. The reason that demos, or more recently, iAP/DLC and the freemium model have overtaken games lately (as annoying as that is) is that the idea of downloading a game for free removes that initial barrier. But there is nonetheless going to be a barrier in any game that aims to cover costs of production, whether it's the initial price tag or a bunch of microtransactions later on. [Or both]
A CASE STUDY RELATING TO MY OWN PROJECTS:
In the case of my biggest upcoming indie gamedev project (Miniature Multiverse) the cost to me as a developer is 1000+ hours of work, unpaid, on making the thing, plus $1200+ in development costs which I mostly covered by doing a TON of mind-numbing sub-minimum wage gigs on mTurk and the like. The idea for this took shape in 2010, the release is going to be literally a decade later. [mid or late 2020]. I now am confident it can be finished before end of 2020, as much of the game is already done at this point (far more than has yet been shown to the public).
If it has a tagline, it's something along the lines of "Myst-like first-person view puzzle/adventure game made with varied, realistically detailed O-scale miniature environments". It's sort of like exploring a litany of fantastically weird model railroad sets, from the POV of a tiny figure.
The price point for players, after all that struggle, and painstaking effort? $1.50, plus a $1 pack of extras [making-of stuff, etc] for fans who really liked what I did. And that's when it isn't on sale. This Easter weekend I'm putting preorders for both the game, and the extras, and FIVE very substantial already-released asset packs for game developers, on sale in a gigantic bundle of 90% off. I.e. a bit under a dollar for seven things bundled together. It's crazy. I also think that if past track records are anything to go on, the sale - even as good as it is and with all I've done to promote it - will result in less than $10 raised in all. (I've had occasional similar sales and after all of them, I've still made under $50 total so far on Itch.IO. And while that's well over 20 sales made, nobody has yet rated anything I've sold. They can't be bothered. I even gave keys out to a handful of handpicked successful game devs on Itch for free, half of them didn't download my stuff, and the half that did, none of them commented, rated, or offered useful feedback. They just took the freebie and didn't review even though I encouraged them to do so. It's getting really frustrating. Especially since I know firsthand how much things improve the moment the first review or two show up. I opened an Etsy shop in 2015, sold nothing until 2019, fortunately my first buyer posted a five-star rating and then things sort of exploded over the next three months (that is, until the coronavirus largely gutted the market recently) and the same thing happened for me on eBay a few years before that - I sold some stuff literally for a penny + free shipping. And someone ordered it. I took a loss there but it got me my first rating, and things improved after that. I now have 387 ratings on my eBay seller account, and so far anyway, 100% of them are positive. So I'm optimistic that what has happened with eBay and Etsy will happen sometime fairly soon on Itch, and then maybe my Itch profile will then begin to sort of steadily gain momentum: HERE IS MY ITCH PROFILE. (Watch for the sale April 10-12, 2020.)
A few examples of just some of the stock 3d assets [setting aside the 150+ video elements, and 1400+ image texture maps across these five asset packs]
