Can games made with AGS be sold?

[JpGames]

I checked and I found out that the minimum wage in Venezuela is around 614,790.00 VEB = 286.669 USD per month. So you should be getting at least some $70 per week no matter what you do (if you work full time). That's still very low for a minimum wage. It's a third of the official US minimum wage, and that's already considered very low in a civilized country. But I guess living expenses aren't that high in Venezuela?

Here in Venezuela you cant buy $ or â,¬ (or any other) in a currency exchange; the goverment have the foreign exchange blocked, so if you want buy it you must pay it in the "black market", around 4000 VEB / 1 US$, not the "official" 2150 VEB/ 1 US$ you can see in the offical change.
And yes, here the living expenses are cheap, but not enough to compensate the difference.
I could speak you about the difference between live in Finland and Venezuela, but i guess this is not the appropiate place.

JpGames

[Candle]

I like your gas prices JpGames!
Venezuela     Caracas     $0.12
Good luck with your game.

[Nikolas]

JpGames, idlu, just some pointers from my head...

(and Steel drummer actually).

Games maybe rubbish, or maybe not. AGS is not meant to create "state of the art" todays games. No matter how hard you try you can only end up somewhere in the 90s or so... Something to consider I guess...

There have been examples of commercial attempts in AGS in the (recent) past. Of all the games that went out I only know that the shivah got some attention. Promotion is far more important than the game being rubbish! Honestly!

Now on the prices issue...

I charge a lot to what I do. I do this for a living. When a game is commercial I'll charge what I think is right for the time I put into my work. I've seen prices like 5$ per finished track! which was highly ridiculous, cause then the guy was setting himself to get 1$ per hour! (<-bad for the industry).

On the other hand though, there are perfectly capable composer and artists, that indeed live in a poorer part of the world, thus can bash the prices down, as well as having a 2nd job and doing what they feel like...

While in the UK or USA it could be hard to get an artist for 15$ per BG, I doubt that it IS that impossible really... It is doing wrong to the whole industry, as to themselves, but this is life, and let's face it. High profile professionals are not looking towards AGS to get saved really, are they?

(PS. Just for the record I don't charge money if it's a freeware game, ok? Just so you know)

[JpGames]

Im pretty sure that 15 $ per BG its a very good revenue here. Maybe, if we were a games company, we must pay more than that, but this in only a project from 3 persons who loves the adventure games and we thinks that we could create something really nice, even if it costs money to us. A lot of people spend money on their hobbies, think on that (paint ball, for example, is a very expensive hobbie, at least here or in Spain, were i live too)

If we finally believes that the game is not enough good to release it as a commercial one, we will release it as a freeware for sure. What we are looking one to tell you the history, not win money or enter in the games industry.

Anyway, the game is still very far and i try to not mention it to avoid make publicity here 

JpGames

[Steel Drummer]

Well I've seen some of your work in the CL, and no offense, but I don't think that it would cost $3,000 to make that kind of art.
And without even playing your first game, I noticed the sprites ripped from another game- that's a big no-no if you're planning on selling a commercial game. 

Thats the reason why we are wasting money: creating the graphics. We found a young local artist and he is creating the BGs, chars and animations. Any 320x200 BG (really good quality)costs around $15, and the game needs 116 !! The game also have 13 chars, all full animated, and around 100 animations. We also need someone who translate it into english, and it will cost around $300-400 more (more than 2000 lines of dialogs only). We were lucky to find an artist so cheap! Only creating the BGs for the intro and some chars and animations we spendt more than $700 .

Of course, we could create the BGs ourselves (like in our first game) and take some chars from the juncmodule collection (as we did in our first game), but then it will be not a commercial-quality game (again, as our first game was) Paul Quest was created only to begin using AGS, and we maked it in only 9 days (thanks again to the people who helped us in the forums) But like i were trying to explain before, to create a good game, you need spend money, and you will VERY PROBABLY not win nothing for that even, if you sell your final product. But I'm sure that you could sell some copys. Thats the point.

Lucky, a fan game maker do not create games for money, just for the satisfaction to know that someone else could play and enjoy his game.

JpGames

Well most AGS game teams aren't made up of people that are paid. They just do it because they want to have the satisfaction that comes from making a game.

[vertigoaddict]

I'd like to make games with commercial quality (Great backgrounds, storyline, gameplay, etc) and give it away free.


But if I really need the money or couldn't go to colledge, then I'd try anything, including trying to make a living with AGS.

[ildu]

Can I just suggest one thing. If you're going for high-res backgrounds, you might wanna consider Wintermute. They've recently made it free for commercial use. And it's a little more mediasexy for commercial ventures than AGS.

[Dave Gilbert]

You're likely to make most of your sales of AGS games within the AGS community, I imagine because we're slightly more willing to pay a little extra for a game in order to 'support the community'.

You'd be surprised, SPC.  The AGS community makes up a small chunk of my sales, but the majority comes from folks who have never even heard of AGS.  The folks on this site are used to playing free games, so that was to be expected.  The first thing I noticed when I started selling my games is that fewer AGSers were playing them, but they got noticed by more "mainstream" gamers.  A commercial game generally attracts more attention than a freeware game would.  You'll get more press, but that doesn't necessarily mean more sales.

As with most things, it comes down to marketing.  It's not a matter of releasing the game and hoping for the best.  It's almost been a year since Shivah was released, and six months since Blackwell was released, but I still try to get them reviewed or mentioned on gaming sites.  The initial crazy buzz has died down somewhat, but it's important to keep getting the word out or people will forget you even exist.    It kind of sucks, actually, because while you are working on your current project you still have to support your previous projects. 

The important thing is to not be discouraged when people don't start buying your game right away, or start complaining that you are charging money.  These things take time.

One important thing is to talk to people.  Contact other indie developers, pick their brains, and ask their advice.  I've learned so much just from chatting with people in the game industry, and I'm always happy to pay the favor forward.  Feel free to PM me, if you like. 

[Gregjazz]

You're likely to make most of your sales of AGS games within the AGS community, I imagine because we're slightly more willing to pay a little extra for a game in order to 'support the community'.

You'd be surprised, SPC.  The AGS community makes up a small chunk of my sales, but the majority comes from folks who have never even heard of AGS.  The folks on this site are used to playing free games, so that was to be expected.  The first thing I noticed when I started selling my games is that fewer AGSers were playing them, but they got noticed by more "mainstream" gamers.  A commercial game generally attracts more attention than a freeware game would.  You'll get more press, but that doesn't necessarily mean more sales.

I concur. Same exact thing here. Not to say we didn't get any AGS community-related sales of course, but the majority of the sales were from more general adventure gamers and gamers.

[alkis21]

Can games made with AGS be sold?

I certainly hope so.

[Andail]

Interestingly, the fact that "outsiders" buy commercial AGS games to a higher degree than AGS-ers is pretty understandable.
AGS-members live in a huge symbiosis where everybody helps eachother, and where one specific creator's training ground is made up by the collection of material he's taken part of (for free); all the art, music, games, tutorials, etc.

Since I don't charge for my work in the critic's lounge (where I've provided feedback ever since the board was created - a progress I was involved in, if I'm not mistaken) I'm not going to pay people money just to support their careers as game-creators.
I will, however, pay for games if they appear interesting enough.

[m0ds]

Hehe, well said Andail.

Yes, AGS games can be sold, the question is, should *cough mystery manor cough* they be sold!

[alkis21]

Interestingly, the fact that "outsiders" buy commercial AGS games to a higher degree than AGS-ers is pretty understandable.
AGS-members live in a huge symbiosis where everybody helps eachother, and where one specific creator's training ground is made up by the collection of material he's taken part of (for free); all the art, music, games, tutorials, etc.

Since I don't charge for my work in the critic's lounge (where I've provided feedback ever since the board was created - a progress I was involved in, if I'm not mistaken) I'm not going to pay people money just to support their careers as game-creators.

I suddenly feel extremely guilty... 

In my defense, I did create a free game for everyone to play so I'm not a complete leech. I also offered CJ payment for the privilege of using AGS, but he politely refused to accept it. I honestly wish I could afford (in terms of time and money, which sometimes is one and the same) to keep creating free games, but I can't. I saw the opportunity to do something I'm good at and enjoy a lot for a living, and I honestly believe I have what it takes to make it happen. I realize I'm sort of taking advantage of other people's hard work, I'm grateful to all of you and I don't blame you if you look down on me.

My wish is to create a great game that will become known to the wider public, hopefully something you'll all be proud to say "it was made with AGS". In fact, I wish more people tried to create commercial games; some of you have much more talent than the average commercial gamemaker. I want Chrille Blomqvist to do Monkey Island 5, Gabriel Knight 4 and Indiana Jones 5 next year.

Naturally, I don't expect any AGSers to buy Diamonds in the Rough unless they're 100% sure it's worth the money.

[Dave Gilbert]

Rule #1 about indie dev: never feel guilty about doing what you love, or about charging for it.   I felt that way myself, once.  If you read enough books about game dev, you'll see that "Indie Guilt" is a very common thing.

[Andail]

I didn't mean to induce some sense of guilt, I just offered an explanation to why AGSers will be less likely to pay for indie games.

I think it's beneficial for our community if people actually succeed in selling their games. Unfortunately, lots of people (maybe not on our particular scene, but in many other indie-environments) nurture practically impossible dreams, and end up trying to sell crap products which just damage everybody's reputation. Some people just don't realise what it means to actually start charging money for their products; some can't cope with the pressure and demands, and how all the feedback suddenly turns 150% more critical.

So, making good games commercial will create good media attention and facilitate for future projects. Trying to sell bad games will have the opposite effect.

I support Dave 100% in his commercial ventures, maybe especially because I know how commited he's been to this indie-scene of ours (not to mention his patronage of the RON community).

[SpacePirateCaine]

I stand happily corrected. I'll admit, I like the fact that there are more sales outside of the community - the logic is certainly sound, and I'll also admit that it was mostly hypothesis, so it's good to know that I was wrong. Now, that does, I'm sure, lead to some semi-unfounded feelings of guilt from community members who are essentially taking and not giving, but such is the nature of a producing community. I'd like to rely on outside consumers to pay my bills, as opposed from hand-outs from people I know.

I approve of what Andail said - reputation is a very important thing to think about. AGS is a vastly varied community, and the level of quality ranges from Rich Phycho to Amazing, which means that you can only expect that you'll see all of the above (and most likely a lot of the prior) most of the time. I personally have very little faith in my own ability to produce something of the level of quality that should be expected in a commercial product - and this is why I don't imagine I'm ever going to sell my work. By and large, everything AGS that has had a price tag so far has been of the quality to expect that price tag to be respected - and in my opinion, the bar needs to be raised for the products to be taken seriously.

I like that the major share of available releases here are freeware - it means that I have plenty to play without needing to use up my own money to do so. Five dollars isn't very much in the grand scheme of things, especially for hours of work on a labor of (hopefully more) love (than anything else), but I'm still reluctant to pay with so much free available to me. What do I want to pay for? Something I know I'll get the money's worth from. That's why I like demos - I know that if I play the demo once, quit in the middle and never play to the end, I probably won't want to spend the money. If I get all the way to the end of a demo and want to see what's still to come, I'll be much more ready to shell out for it. I have heard some people say they don't like releasing demos (though I'm hard-pressed to find good examples), but in my humble opinion, it's imperative (for me at the very least) to let me taste the ice cream before I buy a cone.

I honestly don't know exactly where I've been going with this post - It's near five in the morning, so it's very possible some comprehensibility has been lost. To sum up, I understand how I was wrong - that's pretty groovy - and the logic is pretty sound, on a second mulling-over.

[Gregjazz]

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with wanting some compensation for your hard work. If we weren't selling Super Jazz Man, from the overall viewpoint we'd be losing money (webhost costs, not to mention our time which could be spent elsewhere).

[vertigoaddict]

Slightly off-topic but still in topic, wasn't 'Echo Night' (Playstation) made with AGS?

[m0ds]

If they did, how the hell did they port it to PS2?

That probably means they didn't...

[alkis21]

OK, I feel a little bit better now.
Regarding the reputation of AGS, I'm fully aware of the danger and I regard the whole project with a sense of responsibility.