AGS games being sold! (more or less...)

[EagerMind]

Seperating comercial ventures from the sort of scenario where I decide to make a game myself and sell it...

Actually you lost me here. I think it's pretty clear that Dave Gilbert, the El Ammo guys, and others(?) are trying to go commercial with - that is, make a living off of - their AGS games. Isn't this what you wanted to discuss? I don't think I'm aware of any cases of someone making a game and then just arbitrarily deciding to charge people for it.

How much do I need to make for it to be worth the drop in the number of people who end up playing it?

Well, in the commercial case, it's all about meeting your expenses. In that case you don't really care how many people play it, just how much money you're pulling in (although certainly those two numbers are related). It does seems like there's been some disagreement in the forums about how much - or even if - people should be charging for AGS games.

In the second case, it's a totally personal decision. But frankly, I'd say if you're just charging for your game in the hopes that a few people will give you some money, then you're basically indicating that you don't really care whether people play it or not. But like I said, I'm not aware of any examples of this - but please enlighten me if I'm wrong!

Of course, the marketing strategies for these two cases will be quite different, making direct comparison of numbers difficult.

[CaptainBinky]

I'm not talking with any particular games in mind... these are just hypothetical ramblings

If we're talking commercial in the sense that it's going to be my primary source of income... well we're talking $20K+ profit here - is this even viable with retro point and clicks?

I was kind of assuming that the sorts of returns we're talking about are well below that kind of figure.

I can see the point in selling a game to raise a couple of $100s to buy a piece of software or sample set that you know you're going to need for your next game... but it also seems a shame to lose the audience for that game (which might be fantastic) just to generate that revenue. Like the game is being "used" or something

[lo_res_man]

I find that www.download-full-games.com is a nice service, it has a wide selection of dos games, plus hundreds from other legendary platforms. It also provides emulators for most of them. It has many ways you can "pay" for the service. Most are the usual annoying "take a test" "do a survey" but the best "time for games" method is to write a review of a game on the website. I wrote one for kings quest three and they liked it so much the gave me some extra download privileges.

[Vince Twelve]

Binky, I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing.  It sounds like you're suggesting that it's somehow more noble to thinking that a high download count is more important than the chance at some small profit, but a high download count isn't the only worthwhile pursuit for a developer.

You have to remember that some people are making games for different reasons than the adoration of the masses.  I can't speak for Dave, Herculean, Himalaya, or GhostLady, but I'd imagine that the reason behind some of these commercial games is a love for game making.  If a developer loves making games, then it's understandable that they'd want to continue doing it, and spend as much time as they can on it.  Unfortunately, the real world has certain expectations of a person such as money.  A guy can't survive purely on the enjoyment of his hobby.

If selling his games allows him to bypass the need for a job, or at least supplements his income enough that he can get by with a part time job, he'd probably think that sacrificing the number of players who played the game was completely worth it.  As an added bonus for everyone else, that game maker can now afford to spend more time on each game which generally raises the quality of the games.  Everyone wins.

As for the amount of money the developer is going to make, please remember that the income doesn't just come from one game.  Internet shelf space is unlimited, so when this developer is selling his fifth game, the first one is still bringing in money as well.  And every new game allows a few new people to discover your talent and drives them to your previous games.

As long as the game is of a quality that makes it stand out from the abundance of freeware games out there, there is a chance to make a little money.  Should we begrudge the developer who chooses that over a high download count?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I enjoy making games, but I enjoy money also.  If I can make money by providing games people enjoy playing I will do so.  Yes, I am a capitalist.

[Bernie]

I hoped the ads on my page would at least pay the half of my server costs. Well, they don't, yet I get about 500 MB to 1 GB traffic a day. That probably makes me a sucky capitalist.

[lemmy101]

Hullo. I think what Binky is trying to say, is that we all know that it's going to be quite hard funding the setting up of a bonafide fulltime game development studio by selling indie adventure titles, or rather, you're unlikely to be selling 30,000 copies of a retro point-and-click no matter how good it is.

If you wanted to make games full time, then you would most likely be looking at making quick turnover match-3 puzzle games etc that can be made, then sold to portals all over the internet, within a few months. Sad fact is that's where the real money is at, as vacuous and uninspiring games they are, not in making some retro point-and-click adventure which only appeals to a relatively small percentage of gamers nowadays.

This is why making a point-and-click is by and large a labour of love purely because the motivation behind it can only be more because you WANT to make a point-and-click, because we all love adventure games, not because it's a sound commercial venture to earn lots of money, because the market is too small. So if selling a game was a way of funding development of another game, something more mass marketable and less time consuming like a match-3 game or something would likely be more effective.

That all said neither of us have any problem with people selling their games at all, you have the right to be rewarded financially for your time and efforts, it's just the question of whether the amount that you would make would justify the number of people who didn't play it, being that the game itself is something you clearly care about and would want people to play as much as possible (unlike a match-3 game you knocked together in a couple of months, where you probably didn't care that much how many people missed out)

lemmy

[Vince Twelve]

Who said anything about 30,000 copies?

If they were making crappy puzzle games that could be more easily sold in the casual old-lady market, it would defeat the point of what I was talking about in my post.  These developers are making games that they enjoy making.  I'm not sure why they couldn't make some decent supplementary income off of them.  I'm not sure where you pulled the number 30,000 out of, but it's completely unnecessary.  Maybe it is if you're selling a small casual game that's being licensed to various sites around the net and being sold as part of subscription services where you're earning back pennies for each sale, but take for example the Blackwell Legacy:  $15 * 30,000 copies sold = $450,000.  Hell, if he could make that much he'd probably be making his next game from the comfort of his tropical island bungalow.  At $15, if he can manage to sell even 1000 copies in the first year and continues selling 200 copies in each following year (which I recognize is still a difficult goal), he's made some significant money.  Of course some of that goes to bandwidth and paying his team members, but still, if he puts out a new game every six months, he's got enough to help him avoid a nine-to-five job.  Maybe even enough to avoid a real job all together.

[CaptainBinky]

Binky, I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing.  It sounds like you're suggesting that it's somehow more noble to thinking that a high download count is more important than the chance at some small profit

No, I'm not casting judgement one way or the other - these posts have been made purely in the mindset of curiosity, that's all. As Lemmy and I have both said before, nobody begrudges someone making some money out of a venture that's taken time and care.

I don't know how much money it's possible to make out of AGS games because I've never tried to do it. If it is possible to make enough to fund full(er) time development, then that's great.

What I was originally talking about was if your game made much less money that that - like a few hundred quid total. Is that worth it? Of course you could argue that you don't know how many people are going to buy your game before you try. But something that makes that little could also be argued to serve more funtion if it were free and therefore being used as a marketing device to raise awarness of your games. I guess that's pretty much what H.E. have done with the free Apprentice games and then SJM to buy. People would probably buy SJM off the strength of the Apprentice games so therefore those free games have had some commercial benefit.

As I've said, I'm not trying to argue that one way is better or more noble than the other - these decisions are to be made exclusively by the author for their own motives.