Project - AGS Game Publisher

[monkey0506]

...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.

But in the case of a third-party client, the client is the middleman. I don't see how you can both "cut out the middleman" and provide a Steam-like games client unless you're a developer who's just producing hundreds of games each year. Dave's on his way, but he's not quite to that point yet.

[qptain Nemo]

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.

On one hand, yes. On another, I think every other gaming enthusiast will agree with me, that when you are actually passionate about games you often realize how little (very often exactly none) effort people put into finding good games. So you find yourself literally begging people to play the quality games you already found for them and still finding some considerable apathy (taste does come into this of course, but it doesn't entirely negate the argument). This kind of instances has the tendency of making the hopeful perception go away and the reality sink in. The reality being people for some reason don't like investing any real effort into getting their hands on good entertainment. Usually that results in that they end up playing things put in their mouths by the most massive PR campaigns. Which means everybody has played Skyrim but they probably haven't even heard about your game even if you shaped it after their most sacred desires. And that doesn't bode well for what you and I are talking about. Only the most devoted niche gamers would bother with scavenging over a bazillion of different niche-specific distribution services (and know about them in the first place) and these people would in most cases find what they want anywhere else. Everybody else will just wait until Steam slaps them in the face really hard with the next title that became high profile one way or another.

So what I fear in this situation is: the indie developers will spread thin over numerous different distribution services with little visibility while Steam keeps growing stronger with its centralization and massive diverse-yet-unified audience. And for all its failings I think Steam benefits from being centralized and unified tremendously. And so I'm thinking maybe indies should join efforts and stay in focus together as much as possible too, rather than fighting the good fight and falling alone.

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. 

I'd argue it's a bit different though. A game is a work of art and no matter how good or bad it turns out to be in the end, it doesn't have a chance of becoming quite as ultimately useless as a game client that failed to catch on. And thus, I'd view spending efforts on the latter a much more bitter waste than even a really bad game.

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.

This part of your argument makes me wonder even more: is this what we should be doing or if we should just use this to promote the games we endorse after putting them on already existing platforms?

ask Dave about Gemini Rue & Direct Draw on Steam

This is pretty much totally unimportant to our discussion, but I'd like to note that this is rather Windows / AGS issue than any degree of Steam's fault.

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.

This part of the argument is very definitely compelling towards your suggestion however. Very good points. I agree that making it easier to make the best of what we already have is a good purpose that provides some solid expectations. Still a risk, but you clearly outlined what the advantages are.

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.

Completely agree with this.

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

Would you agree though that making it actually engine-agnostic even if it's primary ground is AGS community is wiser? I mean assuming that first and foremost its AGS support is impeccable and everything. Like, make it for indie adventure gamers for instance rather than only for AGSers.

edit: I'd like to add a huge HAVING SAID THAT here and draw the following conclusion: I think if one does undertake making such a platform / client, aiming at a certain genre/style/kind affinity (and thus a specific existing audience) and basing it on an existing successful community are both really damn good ideas. Both are courtesy of Baron.

[Baron]

On one hand, yes. On another, I think every other gaming enthusiast will agree with me, that when you are actually passionate about games you often realize how little (very often exactly none) effort people put into finding good games. So you find yourself literally begging people to play the quality games you already found for them and still finding some considerable apathy (taste does come into this of course, but it doesn't entirely negate the argument). This kind of instances has the tendency of making the hopeful perception go away and the reality sink in. The reality being people for some reason don't like investing any real effort into getting their hands on good entertainment. Usually that results in that they end up playing things put in their mouths by the most massive PR campaigns. Which means everybody has played Skyrim but they probably haven't even heard about your game even if you shaped it after their most sacred desires. And that doesn't bode well for what you and I are talking about. Only the most devoted niche gamers would bother with scavenging over a bazillion of different niche-specific distribution services (and know about them in the first place) and these people would in most cases find what they want anywhere else. Everybody else will just wait until Steam slaps them in the face really hard with the next title that became high profile one way or another.

Well, getting noticed in this day and age when anyone can publish anything is the real trick, I agree.  It's hard on Steam, it's hard off Steam.  Cynically thinking, I suppose most people do still just consume what's easy rather than what they say they like, but a discerning few (i.e. tens of thousands) have found their way to adventuregamestudio.co.uk or adventuregamestudio.co.uk over the years, looking for a specific type of gaming experience.  Most of them have taken the risk of downloading weird ZIP files, RARs or even installer EXEs in order to get their hands on that retro point-&-click experience.  If we could streamline that process, via a Steam-like client, we could make it REALLY easy for them to play more of our games (I think this is about where Cailin's Nimbus made it, at least in conception).  But the critical next step would be to ease these players into potentially supporting our budding commercial developers: ideally through playing the freeware they would develop a taste for higher quality or longer adventure experiences, as well as grow comfortable with the community atmosphere associated with AGS (integrating the forums directly into the client -I realise this is feature creep, but our sense of community here is one of our strongest assets).  From there it is not such a leap to becoming a costumer (especially if it was as easy as just clicking something in-client), and if we could do this even at a medium scale then we would have created a springboard for our mid-range developers to take their work to the next level.
      But as compelling as the reasons are, I also agree with you that failure is a very real and even probable result (what happened to Cailin's Nimbus effort over the past few years  ).  You'd really have to pursue this courageously, in the face of a lot of setbacks and naysaying, to make it work.  And that's a lot to ask of someone who would only profit minimally from their efforts in the best-case scenario.  As I say, it's a dream....

So what I fear in this situation is: the indie developers will spread thin over numerous different distribution services with little visibility while Steam keeps growing stronger with its centralization and massive diverse-yet-unified audience. And for all its failings I think Steam benefits from being centralized and unified tremendously. And so I'm thinking maybe indies should join efforts and stay in focus together as much as possible too, rather than fighting the good fight and falling alone.

The motivation to sign up with Steam is no doubt compelling, and I would never discourage any developer from doing so.  Dave says he makes good money there , at least once they accept his games.  But it is a hassle.  And it's not really our target market, in the sense that 99% of Steam users are completely uninterested in adventure games and 0.5% are willing to try weird things but bring unreasonable expectations to the table.  And they take a big cut of the scarce money players pony up, which keeps developers starving.  The alternative, our own in-house Steam/Nimbus-like client, would have the short-term disadvantage of being small, and be dependent on the altruism of community members to be set up and populated with content.  But over time, especially if a critical mass of players could be sold on the concept, it could be an important complementary outlet to other distribution services.

To address your other points, I agree that focussing on the genre would be better than focussing on AGS developed-games exclusively, although that probably complicates the client-development process....  I don't actually know, though: you are 100% correct that my technical knowledge is hazy at best.  I just type up a bunch of code into the AGS editor and then madly click at things until it works....

[qptain Nemo]

Yeah, your proposition is all around decent, but the risks are high. If it didn't mean sacrificing efforts that could be put into making actual games and earning money in more established and straightforward ways, I'd be optimistic about doing something like that. For now, I'll just have to keep that at the back of my mind, I suppose.

And no, I don't think supporting different engines would notably complicate anything, as all sane contemporary engines don't need much of "support" to function, so to speak.

[qptain Nemo]

Relevant: IndieCity is pretty much back to being alive. That pushes me again towards wanting to support them instead of developing an own solution.