Project - AGS Game Publisher

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

Many AGS games are superb, still the biggest problems is not the games themself, rather the economical problems,
the lack of money and commercial, to not be able to selling the games except on steam. My idéa is that AGS games
should, or could have help from bigger game companies, like Telltale Games or Double Fine Adventures, as a help
publisher with commercial and selling the games to other countries, for a percental amount, from the game income.

Another thing could be, an AGS Publisher, Commercial and selling games to stores (not only on steam). By getting
help from Kickstarter with this project of creating som AGS Game Publisher. Even if the game is expensive because
of small amount of money, they may have in the beginning, I believe it could work wonders.

A steam version can be sheaper, but the DVD version should be expensive, to get the AGS game publisher to grow.

[monkey0506]

I'm pretty sure that Wadjet Eye Games has functioned as a publisher for at least a few of their games. And I know that Mark Lovegrove is wanting to branch out into publishing through Screen 7 (not sure if he's actually published anything, at least separately from the development cycle).

Adventure games are a niche market at best. That's not to say no one will buy them (Dave Gilbert makes his entire living off Wadjet Eye's proceeds), but there's a lot more work involved in publishing commercial games than most people really recognize (Dave has talked to me about this somewhat). If you've developed something that you feel will make the cut, I'm sure Dave or Mark would love to strike up a publishing deal for your game(s).

[Eric]

Dave Gilbert makes his entire living off Wadjet Eye's proceeds

I have often wondered about it, but thought it too crass to ask directly! That's pretty awesome.

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

I'm pretty sure that Wadjet Eye Games has functioned as a publisher for at least a few of their games. And I know that Mark Lovegrove is wanting to branch out into publishing through Screen 7 (not sure if he's actually published anything, at least separately from the development cycle).

Adventure games are a niche market at best. That's not to say no one will buy them (Dave Gilbert makes his entire living off Wadjet Eye's proceeds), but there's a lot more work involved in publishing commercial games than most people really recognize (Dave has talked to me about this somewhat). If you've developed something that you feel will make the cut, I'm sure Dave or Mark would love to strike up a publishing deal for your game(s).

I have noticed Screen 7, and believe they will growing. I don't know Wadjet Eye Games, but will check it out. My real idéa is more based on a system, where people, who like AGS games, pay say 10-15 dollars a month, to a game publisher company. Of cause these things aren't exactly east, still an idéa some other persons can use to create such game publisher company.

[Dave Gilbert]

I've been basically earning my living by developing, selling, and publishing AGS games for the last seven years! Under the banner of Wadjet Eye Games (link HERE in case you're interested in learning more). I'm supporting myself, my wife, and our newborn baby. So... yeah, it's definitely possible to make your living making these games. Although I'm not sure I understand you fully. Do you mean that AGSers would pay a company a monthly subscription fee and receive high quality games every month? Sounds logical, except that high quality AGS games take a LOOOONG time to make, even when working on them full time. So it would be a long time before those monthly fees resulted in anything tangible. I've been working on Blackwell Epiphany full time since December 2012, and I'm still not done (albeit, our recent baby definitely delayed things a tad).

As for Steam, I sold my games direct (e.g., not on Steam) for several years before Steam finally wised up and accepted them. I survived just fine, although selling on Steam is INFINITELY preferable. It's got the highest market share of any platform out there. People just like buying their games through the service. It's just the way it is.

[Baron]

I've been working on Blackwell Epiphany full time since December 2013, and I'm still not done (albeit, our recent baby definitely delayed things a tad).

Dave is so awesome he's still not done the game he won't start for another month and a half!  What a slacker!

On topic, wasn't there an AGS Steam being built at some point.  Nexus.... or something like that.  It'd be awesome if there was a distribution platform that focussed precisely on the adventure gaming audience, one with the goal of motivating AGS development (ie a bigger cut of the $ for developers) and promoting the genre rather than strict cuthroat profiteering.  But I'm not holding my breath.

[Dave Gilbert]

Blast! Dutifully corrected!

[Matt Frith]

I'm pretty sure the AGS distribution platform was discontinued a while ago.  Not sure it was ever going to be used for commercial stuff but I might be wrong. I suppose Peder might be working on something with AGS Archives...

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

I've been basically earning my living by developing, selling, and publishing AGS games for the last seven years! Under the banner of Wadjet Eye Games (link HERE in case you're interested in learning more). I'm supporting myself, my wife, and our newborn baby. So... yeah, it's definitely possible to make your living making these games. Although I'm not sure I understand you fully. Do you mean that AGSers would pay a company a monthly subscription fee and receive high quality games every month? Sounds logical, except that high quality AGS games take a LOOOONG time to make, even when working on them full time. So it would be a long time before those monthly fees resulted in anything tangible. I've been working on Blackwell Epiphany full time since December 2012, and I'm still not done (albeit, our recent baby definitely delayed things a tad).

As for Steam, I sold my games direct (e.g., not on Steam) for several years before Steam finally wised up and accepted them. I survived just fine, although selling on Steam is INFINITELY preferable. It's got the highest market share of any platform out there. People just like buying their games through the service. It's just the way it is.

Yes you understand me correctly. Persons who likes AGS, make games, or everyone who wants to sponsor a game. The games on Wadjet Eye Games, could for short have more commercial, and even be buyed in a store like Amazon, in a DVD box. I don't mean steam is bad, rather, it is easier to see the titles and find them if you could buy them from a game store.

I still believe its pretty expensive to create a DVD version with could be buyed in a store. I just believe, that the creators behind the games could get more attention, contacts and money in this way, than only on just steam. The DVD version must of cause be more expensive, than the steam version.

[frenzykitty]

I'm still amazed that I picked up a physical copy of Gemini Rue in a ToysRUs in Cape Town.

[qptain Nemo]

On topic, wasn't there an AGS Steam being built at some point.  Nexus.... or something like that.  It'd be awesome if there was a distribution platform that focussed precisely on the adventure gaming audience, one with the goal of motivating AGS development (ie a bigger cut of the $ for developers) and promoting the genre rather than strict cuthroat profiteering.  But I'm not holding my breath.

What advantages do you see in this compared to just distributing adventure games on other platforms focused on indie games (e.g. Desura, Indievania)? Because honestly, having your special extra nice distribution platform sure sounds nice, but first of all, it's tremendous effort, and secondly it's hard to estimate how good further fragmenting the market really is for players and developers. Although, tying it to a particular genre may just be the thing that works. But at the same time I must say, in my opinion tying it to one single engine in particular would be a very very bad idea.

And regarding clients, I must confess, I badly want to make a Steam-like game client myself. I already wrote a simple game launcher for myself to track playtime of non-steam games. I'd use any excuse to make a Steam-like client as long as it's a good solid excuse.

[Anian]

Yes you understand me correctly. Persons who likes AGS, make games, or everyone who wants to sponsor a game. The games on Wadjet Eye Games, could for short have more commercial, and even be buyed in a store like Amazon, in a DVD box. I don't mean steam is bad, rather, it is easier to see the titles and find them if you could buy them from a game store.

Excuse me, but what freakin' planet do you think you live on when you, if I understood correctly, think that smaller studios/indie developers would make more money if only they sold nondigital versions of their games?
Is digital distribution (especially of Steam, Origin and other such stores with DRM) faulty in some ways? Of course it is, but today you depend on it 99% of the time if you're not under the tent of a big publisher.
What you're talking about is Kickstarter stuff maybe.

Amateur game production is also unreliable, "sponsoring" games is just too tricky to pull off. Yes, some really awesome games appear, but expectations are also lowered for a lot things. Making people pay for games raises the bar for the length and production values. Also lots of people gain experience through making games and they probably need feedback and recognition from as many people as possible, not judgement from others as they try to sell games that might have some problems (which are to be expected). There have been Bake sales of AGS games and they've done rather well, but I think extending this would just prove to drive people away.
You start to make games that are good enough and you get good reputation for delivering professional looking projects and you'll most likely attract a publisher/digital store, what you don't do is tell people to pay you for games because you make them...

And, apart from all this, I think AGS really is an anomaly when it comes to the amount of activity and support you get in and from the community, why limit this?

What advantages do you see in this compared to just distributing adventure games on other platforms focused on indie games (e.g. Desura, Indievania)? Because honestly, having your special extra nice distribution platform sure sounds nice, but first of all, it's tremendous effort, and secondly it's hard to estimate how good further fragmenting the market really is for players and developers. Although, tying it to a particular genre may just be the thing that works. But at the same time I must say, in my opinion tying it to one single engine in particular would be a very very bad idea.

And regarding clients, I must confess, I badly want to make a Steam-like game client myself. I already wrote a simple game launcher for myself to track playtime of non-steam games. I'd use any excuse to make a Steam-like client as long as it's a good solid excuse.

I think a good example of a weird situation with a separate client is EA's Origin - a client from a publisher with a lot of big games under it's belt, still had trouble and had to offer a lot of free stuff and stop sales of it's games anywhere else, just so they could pick it up from the ground. I know I was hesitant to use it even though it's not that obtrusive, but laziness is great within users and will I install another software on my pc, just so I can play some AGS games (and by "I", I mean the random person the net, not someone who frequents the forums and such)? I think you'd already lose half the people, who would otherwise just download the game and try it, but see they have to install stuff on their pc and then download etc. and just give up and forget about the game without even trying it.
There's already sites mentioned before and many more that offer you distribution (and certain level of promotion) of your free indie game.

[Dave Gilbert]

Yes you understand me correctly. Persons who likes AGS, make games, or everyone who wants to sponsor a game. The games on Wadjet Eye Games, could for short have more commercial, and even be buyed in a store like Amazon, in a DVD box. I don't mean steam is bad, rather, it is easier to see the titles and find them if you could buy them from a game store.

I still believe its pretty expensive to create a DVD version with could be buyed in a store. I just believe, that the creators behind the games could get more attention, contacts and money in this way, than only on just steam. The DVD version must of cause be more expensive, than the steam version.

Sadly, the exacty opposite is true. Physical copies of my games sell HORRIBLY. The manufacturing and shipping costs are so high that I barely break even on them. I actually lost a bit of money on the Resonance boxes, which is why I went back to selling the very basic DVD snapcases for Primordia. They are expensive to make, time consuming to produce, and REALLY expensive to ship. Not only that, they are hard to sell. Fewer and fewer people really care about having a boxed copy of a game these days. I'm sometimes tempted not to bother making them at all, but I like having them.

[qptain Nemo]

I think a good example of a weird situation with a separate client is EA's Origin - a client from a publisher with a lot of big games under it's belt, still had trouble and had to offer a lot of free stuff and stop sales of it's games anywhere else, just so they could pick it up from the ground. I know I was hesitant to use it even though it's not that obtrusive, but laziness is great within users and will I install another software on my pc, just so I can play some AGS games (and by "I", I mean the random person the net, not someone who frequents the forums and such)? I think you'd already lose half the people, who would otherwise just download the game and try it, but see they have to install stuff on their pc and then download etc. and just give up and forget about the game without even trying it.
There's already sites mentioned before and many more that offer you distribution (and certain level of promotion) of your free indie game.

I think Origin is both a good and a bad example. It's bad in the sense that you can't ignore the fact that EA are total cunts who only care about profit and do everything for its sake, including chasing others' money (Valve's in this case). So their attempt of competing with Steam for the sake of competing with Steam isn't really indicative of how some indie-friendly digital distribution platform with very different goals (e.g. improving on the discoverability on Steam and helping indies get noticed instead of just trying to be Steam) might've fared. But it's good because it does illustrate just how hard it is to compete with Steam even for somebody with a lot of juice. No one really wants games on Origin, everybody wants games on Steam.

[monkey0506]

No one really wants games on Origin, everybody wants games on Steam.

This is absolutely true. I'm a total vulture for free Steam keys, but no matter how many people try to give away Origin keys...I'm just not interested.

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

Yes you understand me correctly. Persons who likes AGS, make games, or everyone who wants to sponsor a game. The games on Wadjet Eye Games, could for short have more commercial, and even be buyed in a store like Amazon, in a DVD box. I don't mean steam is bad, rather, it is easier to see the titles and find them if you could buy them from a game store.

Excuse me, but what freakin' planet do you think you live on when you, if I understood correctly, think that smaller studios/indie developers would make more money if only they sold nondigital versions of their games?
Is digital distribution (especially of Steam, Origin and other such stores with DRM) faulty in some ways? Of course it is, but today you depend on it 99% of the time if you're not under the tent of a big publisher.
What you're talking about is Kickstarter stuff maybe.

Amateur game production is also unreliable, "sponsoring" games is just too tricky to pull off. Yes, some really awesome games appear, but expectations are also lowered for a lot things. Making people pay for games raises the bar for the length and production values. Also lots of people gain experience through making games and they probably need feedback and recognition from as many people as possible, not judgement from others as they try to sell games that might have some problems (which are to be expected). There have been Bake sales of AGS games and they've done rather well, but I think extending this would just prove to drive people away.
You start to make games that are good enough and you get good reputation for delivering professional looking projects and you'll most likely attract a publisher/digital store, what you don't do is tell people to pay you for games because you make them...

And, apart from all this, I think AGS really is an anomaly when it comes to the amount of activity and support you get in and from the community, why limit this?

What advantages do you see in this compared to just distributing adventure games on other platforms focused on indie games (e.g. Desura, Indievania)? Because honestly, having your special extra nice distribution platform sure sounds nice, but first of all, it's tremendous effort, and secondly it's hard to estimate how good further fragmenting the market really is for players and developers. Although, tying it to a particular genre may just be the thing that works. But at the same time I must say, in my opinion tying it to one single engine in particular would be a very very bad idea.

And regarding clients, I must confess, I badly want to make a Steam-like game client myself. I already wrote a simple game launcher for myself to track playtime of non-steam games. I'd use any excuse to make a Steam-like client as long as it's a good solid excuse.

I think a good example of a weird situation with a separate client is EA's Origin - a client from a publisher with a lot of big games under it's belt, still had trouble and had to offer a lot of free stuff and stop sales of it's games anywhere else, just so they could pick it up from the ground. I know I was hesitant to use it even though it's not that obtrusive, but laziness is great within users and will I install another software on my pc, just so I can play some AGS games (and by "I", I mean the random person the net, not someone who frequents the forums and such)? I think you'd already lose half the people, who would otherwise just download the game and try it, but see they have to install stuff on their pc and then download etc. and just give up and forget about the game without even trying it.
There's already sites mentioned before and many more that offer you distribution (and certain level of promotion) of your free indie game.

Yes something similar Kickstarter, but not sponsoring their project, rather sponsor their commercial and publishing. I agree that the hommade games could have some technical problems, thats quite true.

[Eric]

I've been basically earning my living by developing, selling, and publishing AGS games for the last seven years!

I saw an announcement on Twitter today that you've convinced another big name in the AGS community to do the same with Wadjet....

[Dave Gilbert]

Yep! Just hired Mr. Ben304 full time! So not only are these games sustaining my living, they are now sustaining Ben's.

Which is... kind of terrifying, now that I think of it!

[Baron]

On topic, wasn't there an AGS Steam being built at some point.  Nexus.... or something like that.  It'd be awesome if there was a distribution platform that focussed precisely on the adventure gaming audience, one with the goal of motivating AGS development (ie a bigger cut of the $ for developers) and promoting the genre rather than strict cuthroat profiteering.  But I'm not holding my breath.

What advantages do you see in this compared to just distributing adventure games on other platforms focused on indie games (e.g. Desura, Indievania)? Because honestly, having your special extra nice distribution platform sure sounds nice, but first of all, it's tremendous effort, and secondly it's hard to estimate how good further fragmenting the market really is for players and developers. Although, tying it to a particular genre may just be the thing that works. But at the same time I must say, in my opinion tying it to one single engine in particular would be a very very bad idea.

And regarding clients, I must confess, I badly want to make a Steam-like game client myself. I already wrote a simple game launcher for myself to track playtime of non-steam games. I'd use any excuse to make a Steam-like client as long as it's a good solid excuse.

Well, I'm not going to talk you out of making a Steam-like client for AGS!  So here's my thinking:

it's hard to estimate how good further fragmenting the market really is for players and developers.

It is not unreasonable to assume, given trends over the past decades taking us from a mass-consumer market to a specialized niche-market ...market, that further market fracturing will continue.  Just as in the past people would go through the effort of switching DVDs or CDs in their drives to change games, I don't think it would be such a stretch to run a different client for a different type of genre.  The motivation to do so would be entirely dependent on the quality of games on that client, of course, but if the system were properly calibrated to 1) give better cuts to developers 2) give better deals to players (i.e. by cutting out the middleman) and 3) sponsor a sense of community beyond just a commercial platform, I think it could be successful.

it's tremendous effort

Well ...yeah!  So is game making, though.  How many hundreds of hours have I slaved away at it... For what?  I guess it's just a passion thing.  Obviously you're going to do things for your own motivation, but let me set out a vision.  A Steam-like client linked to the main page of the AGS forums (from where there are several hundred downloads a week already -in the past it sometimes topped 1000).  Because this client is developed to support AGS games, publishing them is as simple as a click of a button.  No fussing around with compatibility (ask Dave about Gemini Rue & Direct Draw on Steam), pestering a middleman who's going to take a huge chunk of your profits to please please please consider your game (ask Dave....), or players who are used to the paradigms of other genres (ask Dave about the casual market....), or trawling the masses for people who like old-school point-and-click (because anyone signed up would already be a fan).  (Dave's great! ).  I wonder how much of Dave's time is spent on the non-development end the business?  If you could cut that "wasted time" out, how many more games would he make?  More broadly, developers who are just starting out may well find that overhead overwhelming, a disincentive to make quality (commercial) games.  I realise AGS doesn't have the market power of Steam, but there ARE more than 7000 forum members, and surely many more visitors.  So setting up an AGS Steam-like client would be at first an exercise in market development, but it could pay large dividends down the road: a ready market for indie-developers at the touch of a button.  This would encourage developers to make more games (because they are squandering less time on the non-development end of the business), and would also benefit players by providing them with more games.  Even now, for a mid-range indie developer just starting out, a low-cost launch environment that nets him 1000 paying downloads could be the difference between launching a game-development career (meaning many more wonderful games to play) or finding another career path in life.  As the client attracts ever more users, the potential market grows.

What about beyond just the commercial developers and the players?  Well, I think the client should support non-commercial games as well.  This would attract players to the client who might not be interested in paying for games now, but may well later, as well as provide a reason for the client while the commercial game inventory is being built up.  So the client would act as a platform for all developers in the community.  For commercial games, I think a cut should go towards the maintenance of the forums: I don't think it need be much, but people are carrying the costs for this place themselves at the moment (Chris previously, now Peder).  Finally I think the developer of the client should get a small cut, to compensate him for the effort of building it in the first place but also to encourage him to keep it up-to-date.  But as mentioned above I think the lion's share of proceeds should go directly to developers.

So in conclusion, AGS Steam-like client is a win-win-win-win situation for developers, players, forumites and the guy who builds it.   

[Peder 🚀]

So in conclusion, AGS Steam-like client is a win-win-win-win situation for developers, players, forumites and the guy who builds it.   

Well there was Nimbus by Calin Leafshade:
https://github.com/pederjohnsen/Nimbus

I think he is thinking of picking it back up too! (As he asked me for this link to the source a short while back).
And if he does I'll be gladly helping out again with providing server space and hopefully me and AGA will integrate AGS and AGSA to share the games database so when people add games it's available from both sites and the client.
(After all both sites are now on the same server, seems a waste to double up on screenshots etc..)