COMMERCIAL GAMS - A PHILOSOPHICAL & PRACTICALITY DEBATE

I vote No for the following reasons.

It'll just be a place to dump your demo
What's really in it for the commercial venturist? The RMN staff has already made it crystal clear that they have no intention of implementing any kind of tools for helping you sell your game. The pros will get connected with Amaranthia or Steam, and not have the time of day for the small timers like here. Realistically speaking, it's just another place to dump your demo and get a few hits. I'm sorry if you feel bad about it being phrased politically incorrectly, but that's exactly all it is.

Negative first and second impressions for the casual gamer
One of the great qualities of this site is that every game is completely free. Someone can just waltz in, browse, pick something that catches their eye, and blast away a Sunday afternoon or an entire week on it.
Of course, the counterargument is that you can just filter your search with "no commercial". But this creates a new step, adding more shit in the way. For what purpose? Anybody contemplating buying an indie game will go to sites that specifically host pay-to-play indie games. The casual visitor comes here looking for interesting, accessible games.
This is where a commercial venturist might chime in, suggesting that in seeing these commercial games, the casual visitor might become interested in paying for it. Reference my first point.

Game quality will not improve
Commercial indie games have yet to prove that a paywall equals higher quality. ie. They won't enrich the community at all.

RMN's reputation will inadvertently decline
It isn't a stretch of the imagination to see where a "This isn't worth money..." comment would lead.
Like it or not, it's going to appear in the main thread, in screenshot threads, and especially in reviews. RMN's feedback mechanisms are more sophisticated than everyone else's. We can critique every screenshot individually, or every character bio, or whatever else has commenting enabled. Everywhere else is just a big ol' forum post, offering not much more than a pair of Like or Dislike buttons would.
As that inevitable phrase rears it's ugly head, the predictable angry reaction by most (not all) of the commercial venturists will carry over to other forums, talking about how elitist and overbearing the RMN crowd is.
This can be circumvented with a staff-enforced pussyfooting policy. Thou shalt not speaketh badly about Aveyond's mediocrity. Though unlikely, this is a new can of worms.

Forum attitude may shift from hobbyist to commercialism
"How can I make this better" vs "How can I make this more marketable"
Same question; different motivation. There'll be a change in the general attitude of the population of RMN. People who've been around the block will know better, but if commercial games successfully overtake hobby games, newbies will enter the field believing that making money is somehow holier than making an enjoyable free game.
The old "money change everything" adage may or may not apply here, but I don't see any kind of positive outcome if this paradigm were to shift.

This is just a phase
This is just my personal opinion, but I wholeheartedly believe this whole moneys-for-gam thing is just a phase being egged on by the sudden rise of kickstarter. Sooner or later, the people with lofty ambitions will accept the ugly reality that when all the income is tallied up, they've been working for less than a dollar an hour. Some of them will make up for it with volume, using sequelitis and franchise power to create an asset base for themselves, but these games will probably be subpar little things not worth the hosting space they occupy.
No doubt there'll be a few diamonds in the rough, but as I mentioned earlier, they'll have other distribution methods.


I made a long post again.

I've been pretty much non-existent on RMN for a while so I hope my opinion still matters. But as someone with 3 commercial games, here's my 2 cents.

I vote yes, but with some real caveats.

It is very important that RMN maintain its character. It should not become a dumping ground for every tom dick and larry's demo. It should still be a site dedicated to the "labor of love" side of making games. I used to think it would be possible to pull this off by having certain standards, but realistically, it is too time-consuming and arbitrary to discriminate against commercial games for being too hacky, too RTP, too whatever. It also reeks of nepotism. The better way to go is to have a strict submission guideline.

Basically, submissions would have to act like they're not commercial games. They can be labelled as such on the game page, but the author of the game cannot simply use the game page as a cheap advertisement. Make a game page, but focus on the game's features, development cycle, what's unique about it, express how much you loved working on the project, post screenshots, concept art, etc. Come at it from the standpoint of an artist, not a sleazy "BUY MY GAM" guy.

Regarding Dyhalto's post, I disagree with a few things.

Paywall: RMN's attitude regarding commercial games is inherently disapproving from the get-go. Yes, you are right in that many paywall games have no reason to have paywalls. Trust me, that infuriates me, as someone who invests respectable resources, money, expertise, and time into making a unique product that has a reason to exist. However, again, it is too arbitrary to simply dump on paywall games because of the bad apples, and it is also too subjective in terms of determining what constitutes a game that deserves to be commercial, and what doesn't. Sales usually determine that - money speaks louder than anything.

This is just a phase?: Indie games trying to cash in will never go away. The demand for indie games may fluctuate with fads and trends, yes. However, RMN's userbase is quite small, and no one in their right mind should (and hopefully, will) put their eggs in this basket. I did not work for less than a dollar an hour. I made good money. Others do too. However, I also hired a video game marketing specialist, partnered up with Oberon, Big Fish Games, Amaranth, Aldorlea, etc, etc. You can't just tell people you made a game, dump it on places, and hope. Commercial success can be done, but certainly not by relying on any sales from RMN, which won't, and really shouldn't, be at all significant. The same goes for the RPGMaker community as a whole. I'd would, however, like for my commercial games to enjoy the same "labor of love" exposure as my non-commercial games do. (It should be noted that crappy commercial games DO NOT do well. Don't worry, the market is powerful and does a much better job of exposing the truth than any rules or arbitration.)

Whoa, let's not deviate from the topic at hand. The original subject is important.

Sorry harm. I didn't mean to talk you down.
I stand by my original paywall != quality statement, but you're mostly right about the phase part. Yes, indie developers will never go away, but I'm of the belief that as time passes and more people get into the field with hopes high, the general price of games will come down, lowering the profit potential. There'll always be exceptionalism, as you've demonstrated and a few others in this forum seem to be going the direction of, but on the whole, this'll soon be an oversaturated market and a poor way to pay the bills.

edit : hmmm... there's a Submit hotkey somewhere on this keyboard.

I honestly think the recent trend of indie games = tons of money is a phase that's going to pass soon. It came from a lot of different places:

• the first smash indie games like Audiosurf and Braid
• the growing technology & ease of making a game (better indie engines & tools)
• the growing ease to sell a game, via Steam, the App Store, etc.
• Indie Game: The Movie, which showcased games that were huge indie successes (and didn't show failure
• Minecraft, which on its own made so much money that EVERYONE noticed
• Kickstarter, which allows people to beg for money on a global scale, coupled with public investors who don't know real potential from promises

This is only theoretical, but these things lead me to believe there's an influx of indies who desire fame and success, and don't enjoy or appreciate the process of making a game... but of course everyone here knows games are not easy to make. I'll throw down a fortune-teller prediction here and say that in the long run, a large percentage of these new indies drop out when they realize that fame and fortune aren't just around the corner - those things exist, but unless you're making games because you love to make games, your motivation is going to die before the money arrives.

To tie this back into the original discussion... maybe we would have to deal with people who just wanna cash-in on indie games. But over time these people will fade away, and the ones who stick it out and keep making games because they just love making games, despite only selling a few copies or making mediocre sponsorships, will be the ones who get better and better, and hopefully, eventually make some truly great stuff. I'd like to support people like that if possible.

I agree that some of Dyhalto's points are pretty valid; for example, players getting confused which games are free and which aren't. I'd hate to drive people away.

One word : {Sigh}

I say yes. Will try to not to rant too much ;m;

People who would post their commercial demos here will probably be the same users as always, I doubt many commercial developers will land here especially just to dump their demos unless they want actual feedback. There is next to no benefits for them from an advertising point of view: hobby game developers rarely buy RM games.

Be it because we always inherently feel like "we could do better" or "it isn't worth our money", I've rarely talked with any RMer who feels comfortable with actually buying those games. If we do, it's usually because we've been utterly convinced to do so by the game's quality, good reviews, etc, but it's very rare.

From what I gather, the people who actually purchase these commercial games regularly are an entirely different crowd. That's why some "low quality" commercial games can make any sells at all: the buyers are usually not developers. They do not know what goes backstage and how much or how little works into everything. RMers and similar DO, and are much harder to impress, so to speak.

Basically, I doubt this would change anything on the site. There will always be crap games, commercial or not, as well as great games. Some will have a link leading outside for the full download, but so what? You know from the get go that project WILL cost money, the maker is not being secretive about it, and he's probably there only because he's a regular from the site or soemone else, wanting feedback to improve his commercial game. You can always ignore them.

I honestly see nothign wrong with the whole thing. RMN is not this huge plataform where every single newbie wants to be for publicity; a few strangers may pop in and try to just dump their demos and nothing else, but I think it would mostly be the regular users trying their luck and wanting feedback.

Besides, if the worst happens and some absolute dickshit lands here and shows a terrible commecial project, he will just probably get booed out of the site XD

Part of the issue is, we don't want that crazy ol' mob. It tends to drag up a lot of ill-will towards others and the site as a whole and we come off looking like utter douche-nozzles. Also, there can be issues with allowing the mob to attack a money-maker's page as opposed to a normal hobbyists - for instance, since these games are seen as 'livelihood' by some makers, they might drag legality issues into the site because of negative feedback.

That said, I'm not wholly against the idea. It has merit. We'd have to make sure that people know that we're not to blame for any bad reviews or critiques (and make sure they agree with that!*).

Also, one of the biggest things we'd have to worry about is people using their lockerspace to host the commercial games. That would be a big, fat no-no, for legal reasons. Of course, we'd have to look into a way to check for that or something. :\

If we can over come those two issues, I have absolutely no issues with the idea.


*Maybe make a box for commercial games that they can check and have some general rules pop up about. If they agree to it (which most people would do out of hand anyway >:D ) then we're covered. Of course, there might be people who don't bother checking the box, but maybe then they wouldn't get their game shown under the super-awesome commercial tab~ (Not saying to segregrate, but having a special, easy-to-find area where only those with the box ticked can be seen might be an idea. Let them appear within the normal games list too, but this area could be just for commercial games so those who want only them can easily find them. :\ )

Kentona has said about a billion times that even if commercial projects are allowed game pages on RMN - it still won't be hosting any commercial downloads, all downloads on RMN must be free of charge. People with commercial projects will be allowed to have free downloads hosted on RMN (say, a demo or early build of a project for feedback purposes etc) but that's all. Just thought this was worth pointing out again.

author=Seeric
I think it could be a good idea to allow commercial games as it would help both RMN and the game gain a bit of publicity and could help at least slightly remove the massive stigma against games made in RPG Maker (and other engines which don't necessarily rely upon 'real code'). However, I do think some restrictions should be in place, such as:
Minimum Makerscore:
This is a big one which I think should really be included. Simply put, if a person wants to add a purchasable game/games to RMN, they need to have first accumulated a minimum Makerscore, probably something like 500 or 1000, which is relatively low, but which still requires a degree of effort to achieve. This way, it shows that they have been in at least some way an active member of the community and don't plan to just use RMN as a form of 'free advertising' for their game and move on. Without this or a similar restriction, I have to imagine that quite a few people would simply cobble together terrible zero-effort games, slap a price tag on them, and then upload them here, which would both hurt the site and further damage the overall general viewpoint of RPG Maker games.

I disagree with minimum makerscore. Poor Soli (and whoever else has to deal with peoples' ways of getting makerscore) should not be expected to discern the validity of the inevitable attempts to deliberately pad makerscores to the bare minimum. It's just not prudent.

Overall, I think RMN just needs to learn to trust people, and their opinions. Trust that the people who deserve to share their project on here will put forth the time and effort to do it right - trust that if someone doesn't do it right, that they'll be at best ignored, or at worst, e-lynched.