This image from the article is so true it actually hurts. The number of times our company has had a conversation like this would boggle the mind. We are not even a mobile game. We are a free to play PC title and we still get this garbage.
It's interesting that publishers for Asia don't have this mindset. They are willing to actually put money up front, something that no non-asian publisher has ever offered us.
This may not be the best place to fanboy, but I wanted to say how much I REALLY appreciate your guy's model. It's been a total breath of fresh air in an environment that supports the absolutely worst trends in perverse incentives for free to play games; so just, thank you to you and all of your team.
Your staff page[1] doesn't show anybody in business / marketing roles. How do you handle website production, forums, marketing, legal, etc without dedicated staff? Even with a small group making a game engine[2] we're finding that those issues that pretty much require a full-time person.
You get those shitty publisher terms because the publisher has no idea if your game will be good or not. Why would they commit to spending anything before they know what kind of revenue & retention your game will have?
If you release your game yourself to a limited market, prove it has good revenue & retention stats, then shop around for a publisher, you get much better terms.
I think the main issue here is that people don't clearly delineate making games from making money.
You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.
You wanna make money off that? You gotta wade through all kinds of shit, as is usual in most businesses. And before someone mentions Minecraft - it is such an outlier that it's not usable as argument in any discussion.
I don't subscribe to the self-entitled tone of the article that making games in itself is something virtuous and should be basically subsidized. I love Koster though, Theory of Fun for Game Design is what made me really interested in game development.
You're misreading the issue. The issue is whether anyone can make money other than the few oligarchs who got in early. Whether anyone can make money unless they are pandering to the lowest common denominator for the sake of mere profitability. Whether even the top quality titles can make money given the need to spend at insane rates in order to be visible.
It's absolutely true you can do it for the love of it. Not questioning that. But the above is a recipe for a crash.
>I think the main issue here is that people don't clearly delineate making games from making money.
>You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.
Creators still have to pay rent, buy food, and pay other bills. So unless you're privileged enough to be able to pay your bills without making any money, then yeah you do need money to make games.
I think you are correct. Koster seems to get a bit too political in his article, but I think there is room in gaming for a "subsidized" system, albeit more like HBO: one subscription base, content creators get paid essentially based on their number of users/viewers. Such a system does not have to be exclusive of course.
Side note: I also read A Theory of Fun almost a decade ago and it is still one of the better books I have read on the subject.
How about just not selling your soul to soul sucking distributors like Apple or Valve?
The real question is do you want fame and industry class "success" (ie, your game sells millions) or do you want to be creative. Terrible example, yada yada, but Minecraft is still being sold from the Mojang site where the company (and originally Notch) gets 100% of proceeds.
If you want to see millions of people play your games, with millions of copies sold, with front page storefront ads, then yeah, you sell your soul to the entrenched interests. But you don't have to play their game - you just need:
1. An Audience who likes your content.
2. A way to eat as a result of that content.
Really, the obvious answer is the audience plays patron as the article denoted funder. That, in the long term, is the macroscopic way this is all trending anyway.
And I'm not talking kickstarter style get-a-bunch-of-money-at-once-and-blow-it-all. I mean you have an (open) product, put it out there, advertise it however you want (personally or outsourced) and hope that those that experience it think its worth continued funding.
Also, metaconsoles is kind of a misnomer - you have a platform spectrum, from open accessible platforms to walled gardens with padlocks. On one side, you have the wild west of self-hosted downloads for free platforms like Android (without the play store, think fdroid) or desktop Linux, and you progress from there through Windows, the Play Store, OSX, and finally the iOS / old console locked down ecosystem where you need a developers license, development tools from the source, etc.
Yeah, Steam is barely better than a console - they act as gatekeeper and takes a huge cut - but on the platforms Steam supports, you at least have the option to use other platforms as well, like gog, the humble store, desura, or self hosting. When there is whole stack lock down like on the traditional consoles and iOS, you are literally praying at the alter of the corporate owner that they give you a blessing.
I mean you have an (open) product, put it out there, advertise it however you want (personally or outsourced) and hope that those that experience it think its worth continued funding.
It sounds so easy in theory, doesn't it?
Getting a game in front of people who enjoy it enough to give you money is hard. Very hard. Raph's ideas from 2006 around direct relationships and celebrity are still very much on target today -- that's how most successful creators seem to manage it, beyond the randomness of viral outbreaks. (I count entering/winning the IGF as a form of celebrity.)
Beyond that, advertising it is a spray-and-pray that will likely suck up more of your money than you'll ever make, and net you a bunch of high-churn players who don't give a toss about what you've created. Not every game has an obvious niche audience to go after, not every creator welcomes or invites celebrity, and sometimes the weirdest, most un-game-like things hit a nerve nobody was expecting.
My mind keeps circling back to the 'people who bought x also liked..' problem, as mentioned by Greg Costikyan [1]. Discovery is broken, and so on, but it's not discovery - as in players actively seeking out games - I open any store on any platform and I'm inundated with choices. It's being discovered that's broken, being discovered by an audience who will truly appreciate what you've created.
The hard part is slicing the gaming landscape, and individuals' different experiences of the same game, to such depth that a Pandora-like algorithm could work effectively -- or relying on independent curation and journalism to step in and highlight the gems among a sea of overwhelming noise.
(If anyone wants to hack on the recommendations side of things, let me know!)
Other storefronts... That would be nice if people could make money on those other distribution channels. Unfortunately, they can't, by and large. Most people don't find the effort worth it to even sign up with Amazon, which has a huge addressable market. I have never even seen a sales report with money from fdroid. For devs who are trying to make a living just from games, anything other than Steam, iOS, and for some people, Google Play, is basically irrelevant. Unless you land in a Humble Bundle.
As far as the loyal audience, yes, I agree with you on that, even mentioned it in the article. But that's not a living wage for most, and the latest research says that sort of environment is more susceptible to a hit-driven winner-takes-all market. That leads to an ugly place as regards the income levels for the typical dev.
Considering what Steam or Apple provide, I don't think 30% is a rip-off.
You get hosting for both your page and downloads, update mechanism, statistics, a DRM that users don't hate, payment mechanism that users trust and already have their credit card registered...
All that costs money if you want to do it own your own, and you also get some exposure.
"How about just not selling your soul to soul sucking distributors like Apple"
Alright, I have a mobile game company, currently very unprofitable.
Also we have our stuff on iTunes, because that is the only way we know to distribute on iPhone and iPad.
Tell me sir, a way to distribute to our end users easily, and I will PROMPTLY figure how to do it.
(by the way, we are already on Google Play too, and almost any random android store you can think, even ones that net us 1 download per month, even carrier stores at the other side of the planet too).
Just a few years ago Valve was being lauded for giving developers a viable new channel that took a very small slice of the pie (~30%) compared to what had come before (>90%). Plus the indies that have managed to get on have consistently noted that the before & after revenue is like night and day.
Not soul-sucking. There are other things to complain about Valve, but 30% for their services is not one of them.
Can you give another example other than Minecraft? Saying Minecraft was successful because it was self-distributed is about as useful as saying Zuckerberg is successful because he dropped out of school.
I like this game, and I equally like the way they got traction. They released a restricted version on The Pirate Bay, although the description of the torrent was as if it was a full game. Not very usual, but nothing new either. But a well written blog post about it (http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...) got them homepage of HN and loads of other press coverage, which helped to take off.
Importantly, the posted version would let you play the game until your software (in the game) was ready to sell and then it would put up a shamer message about how you couldn't make money because everyone was pirating your game.
One solution. Stay out of the app store. Develop on the web in HTML 5.0. No businesses between you and the players there. Once you are a bit hit, you cut your own deal to go onto other platforms like Facebook and the app stores.
Humble Bundle is basically a publisher with a web storefront. They leverage other distribution channels, and critically, have what's left of the gaming press as a very fruitful marketing channel.
They also mostly only publish things that are already hits, so in a lot of ways they are a re-user outlet.
[+] [-] Negitivefrags|12 years ago|reply
This image from the article is so true it actually hurts. The number of times our company has had a conversation like this would boggle the mind. We are not even a mobile game. We are a free to play PC title and we still get this garbage.
It's interesting that publishers for Asia don't have this mindset. They are willing to actually put money up front, something that no non-asian publisher has ever offered us.
[+] [-] existencebox|12 years ago|reply
(on top of that, it's a damn solid game too.)
[+] [-] Pxl_Buzzard|12 years ago|reply
1. http://www.grindinggear.com/?page=staff
2. https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash
[+] [-] socialist_coder|12 years ago|reply
If you release your game yourself to a limited market, prove it has good revenue & retention stats, then shop around for a publisher, you get much better terms.
[+] [-] dsirijus|12 years ago|reply
You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.
You wanna make money off that? You gotta wade through all kinds of shit, as is usual in most businesses. And before someone mentions Minecraft - it is such an outlier that it's not usable as argument in any discussion.
I don't subscribe to the self-entitled tone of the article that making games in itself is something virtuous and should be basically subsidized. I love Koster though, Theory of Fun for Game Design is what made me really interested in game development.
[+] [-] RKoster|12 years ago|reply
It's absolutely true you can do it for the love of it. Not questioning that. But the above is a recipe for a crash.
[+] [-] usea|12 years ago|reply
>You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier experimental game this world has ever seen.
Creators still have to pay rent, buy food, and pay other bills. So unless you're privileged enough to be able to pay your bills without making any money, then yeah you do need money to make games.
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|12 years ago|reply
Side note: I also read A Theory of Fun almost a decade ago and it is still one of the better books I have read on the subject.
[+] [-] zanny|12 years ago|reply
The real question is do you want fame and industry class "success" (ie, your game sells millions) or do you want to be creative. Terrible example, yada yada, but Minecraft is still being sold from the Mojang site where the company (and originally Notch) gets 100% of proceeds.
If you want to see millions of people play your games, with millions of copies sold, with front page storefront ads, then yeah, you sell your soul to the entrenched interests. But you don't have to play their game - you just need:
1. An Audience who likes your content. 2. A way to eat as a result of that content.
Really, the obvious answer is the audience plays patron as the article denoted funder. That, in the long term, is the macroscopic way this is all trending anyway.
And I'm not talking kickstarter style get-a-bunch-of-money-at-once-and-blow-it-all. I mean you have an (open) product, put it out there, advertise it however you want (personally or outsourced) and hope that those that experience it think its worth continued funding.
Also, metaconsoles is kind of a misnomer - you have a platform spectrum, from open accessible platforms to walled gardens with padlocks. On one side, you have the wild west of self-hosted downloads for free platforms like Android (without the play store, think fdroid) or desktop Linux, and you progress from there through Windows, the Play Store, OSX, and finally the iOS / old console locked down ecosystem where you need a developers license, development tools from the source, etc.
Yeah, Steam is barely better than a console - they act as gatekeeper and takes a huge cut - but on the platforms Steam supports, you at least have the option to use other platforms as well, like gog, the humble store, desura, or self hosting. When there is whole stack lock down like on the traditional consoles and iOS, you are literally praying at the alter of the corporate owner that they give you a blessing.
[+] [-] jlees|12 years ago|reply
It sounds so easy in theory, doesn't it?
Getting a game in front of people who enjoy it enough to give you money is hard. Very hard. Raph's ideas from 2006 around direct relationships and celebrity are still very much on target today -- that's how most successful creators seem to manage it, beyond the randomness of viral outbreaks. (I count entering/winning the IGF as a form of celebrity.)
Beyond that, advertising it is a spray-and-pray that will likely suck up more of your money than you'll ever make, and net you a bunch of high-churn players who don't give a toss about what you've created. Not every game has an obvious niche audience to go after, not every creator welcomes or invites celebrity, and sometimes the weirdest, most un-game-like things hit a nerve nobody was expecting.
My mind keeps circling back to the 'people who bought x also liked..' problem, as mentioned by Greg Costikyan [1]. Discovery is broken, and so on, but it's not discovery - as in players actively seeking out games - I open any store on any platform and I'm inundated with choices. It's being discovered that's broken, being discovered by an audience who will truly appreciate what you've created.
The hard part is slicing the gaming landscape, and individuals' different experiences of the same game, to such depth that a Pandora-like algorithm could work effectively -- or relying on independent curation and journalism to step in and highlight the gems among a sea of overwhelming noise.
(If anyone wants to hack on the recommendations side of things, let me know!)
[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregCostikyan/20140324/213784...
[+] [-] RKoster|12 years ago|reply
As far as the loyal audience, yes, I agree with you on that, even mentioned it in the article. But that's not a living wage for most, and the latest research says that sort of environment is more susceptible to a hit-driven winner-takes-all market. That leads to an ugly place as regards the income levels for the typical dev.
[+] [-] eloisant|12 years ago|reply
You get hosting for both your page and downloads, update mechanism, statistics, a DRM that users don't hate, payment mechanism that users trust and already have their credit card registered...
All that costs money if you want to do it own your own, and you also get some exposure.
[+] [-] speeder|12 years ago|reply
Alright, I have a mobile game company, currently very unprofitable.
Also we have our stuff on iTunes, because that is the only way we know to distribute on iPhone and iPad.
Tell me sir, a way to distribute to our end users easily, and I will PROMPTLY figure how to do it.
(by the way, we are already on Google Play too, and almost any random android store you can think, even ones that net us 1 download per month, even carrier stores at the other side of the planet too).
[+] [-] dmpk2k|12 years ago|reply
Not soul-sucking. There are other things to complain about Valve, but 30% for their services is not one of them.
[+] [-] nemothekid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gedrap|12 years ago|reply
I like this game, and I equally like the way they got traction. They released a restricted version on The Pirate Bay, although the description of the torrent was as if it was a full game. Not very usual, but nothing new either. But a well written blog post about it (http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...) got them homepage of HN and loads of other press coverage, which helped to take off.
Well done.
[+] [-] tiquorsj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mratzloff|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://itunes.apple.com/app/id396085661
[+] [-] tom_jones|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdaltonc|12 years ago|reply
it looks like they fill all of the same roles as Apple. I feel like this might not be the right way to divide the industry.
[+] [-] RKoster|12 years ago|reply
They also mostly only publish things that are already hits, so in a lot of ways they are a re-user outlet.
[+] [-] ausjke|12 years ago|reply
I hope one day that most games are illegal, just like the drugs.
If you have kids, you know what I mean.
[+] [-] angersock|12 years ago|reply
Computer gaming is a hugely important industry, and the reason that we even have powerful computers and graphics cards today.
You need to defend your opinion a bit more if you want it treated as anything other than that, an opinion.