COMMERCIAL GAMS - A PHILOSOPHICAL & PRACTICALITY DEBATE

author=harmonic
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.

You have a good point, though worrying about people padding out their makerscore is just as much of a trust issue as my worrying about the site getting flooded with zero-effort games I think.

Either way, if not by Makerscore, I do feel like if purchasable games were added there would have to be at least some sort of prerequisite; while RMN is very different in many ways from Steam and Greenlight, the launch of Greenlight showed off how quickly junk can pile up the moment a chance at money comes into play. I'm not saying it would need to be a monetary prerequisite like Greenlight's $100 entry fee, but there needs to be some sort of way of preventing people from simply throwing a poorly-made purchasable game up on the site and never interacting in any other way.

Another alternative prerequisite could simply be a time-based unlock. For example, a user cannot upload a purchasable game to RMN unless that account has been in existence for X months (probably somewhere in the 6-12 month range). This would have the downside of temporarily excluding legitimately talented developers from showing off their purchasable products if they recently joined, but they still would be able to upload free games just fine and wouldn't need to wait too long anyway. On the other side of things, the type of person who would be looking to cash in on a terrible game isn't likely to also be the type who would sit on an account for months just to upload it.

Without any prerequisite, I'm simply afraid there would be too many 'fly-by uploaders' who would really clutter up the site with junk, but even a small requirement in any form for uploading a purchasable game would likely prevent such a mess.

I've said it elsewhere on the site, but I feel like the site will see a greater shift towards featuring Commercial ventures than freeware ones. Banners, banners everywhere.

If you go to the forums, you'll notice we're already experiencing this. And yeah, I have taken issue with it (albeit silently). I have nothing against Sailerius or anyone else who has been lucky enough to get their commercial features advertised on the site, but I do feel like it takes away from the free game advertising. The first time I saw one of these banners, my first thought was "why don't they throw up the banner for the featured game instead? It doesn't get a fixed, non-changing image on the main site anymore, but rather it's just the first of several features to pop up."

Here's my main issue, while I feel that commercial games made in an RM program sometimes have awesome art or at least something worth your buck that other free projects don't (though not all of them do)... most of us are using the same programs to do our work. Free game creators work just as hard (in many cases) to put out a very worthwhile experience for players, and expect nothing in return for their efforts (aside from the occasional download or being seen on the front page from time to time). Commercial developers don't necessarily work harder on their projects, but they want you to give them money for it anyway. It's just my personal opinion, but it feels wrong that we'd be potentially cheating players into buying a less worthwhile game, which could definitely happen ("hmm, this one costs money so it's probably longer/better/more professional than the rest of these free ones").

I mean, to use an example, has anyone ever played Aveyond? You basically tread over the same few maps over and over and over again, making for a longer but cheaper experience than many of the free games you find here. And of course, you wouldn't know it by playing the short demo version of it. This is wrong. And I know that a lot of people will argue that it's a player's own fault for not knowing the difference between a solid, well made commercial project and a cheap, thrown together one, but people who have never seen an RM game before is not going to realize the difference. And, my issue still stands that it's probably going to take away from the advertising of free games that are possibly more deserving of attention.

Here's another issue for you. I'm looking through the list of newly added games, and find a few that I think look pretty cool. Commercial. Commercial. Holy shit, expensive commercial. Commercial... and so on. I don't buy commercial games online. Never have, never will. That's the reason I come to this site, for the FREE games. I don't have to weed through bunches of pages to find free ones, but if commercial games are welcomed into RMN, that will eventually change. Maybe not right away, but somewhere down the line. I know this may not be important to a lot of you, but it is to me.

The thoughts keep coming to me. Everyone sees all the shitty commercial games (like the worst of the worst of them) actually making money, and they decide "hey, mine's better imo, maybe I should make mine commercial too". A bunch of the community shifts towards commercial games, and we have a complete inventory full of average commercial games to compete with. And of course, due to these projects having money to throw around and advertise on other sites, we have even more users attracted to RMN, coming onto the forums and saying they want "shitty, generic, RTP VX game as the enxt featured game". Free games get pushed even further from the spotlight. Free game devs leave RMN.

It's unfair to compare RMN to any oth RM site in existence. It's just better in every way. Allowing commercial games could truly ruin what is so special about it. Maybe I'm wrong, and all these fears are for nothing. But I could be right, and I think most people in my position (a developer {of quite a few games} who knows that they are only in it as a hobbyist and will never EVER be swayed to sell their games) is probably having some of these fears as well.

Hell, I could go on... and I only meant to write a small blurb... so I'll stop here.

sbester, while I understand your concern that people may believe price = quality, I also believe that the RPG Maker community of all communities is the best one for circumventing this danger. Anyone familiar with RPG Maker games (or free indie games in general for that matter) is likely already aware that a free game can be just as compelling as a $15 or even a $50+ game and likewise that a game with a price tag can still be complete garbage.

You also mention "I know that a lot of people will argue that it's a player's own fault for not knowing the difference between a solid, well made commercial project and a cheap, thrown together one, but people who have never seen an RM game before is not going to realize the difference," but I think the exact opposite is the case. At the present time, the vast, vast majority of gamers who are unfamiliar with RM will take one look at a game made in the engine and, even if it uses an entirely custom battle system with unique graphical and music assets, will still say 'ew it's an RPG Maker game' and not touch it. Those who are familiar with RM are likely going to be able to tell the difference between a mediocre game and a good one from a mile away while those unfamiliar with RM generally won't even touch an excellent free game, let alone a below-average purchasable one. Not to mention, RMN has an in-built review system so if all else fails a poor purchasable game will almost certainly receive equally poor reviews.

If someone pours hundreds/thousands of hours into making a great game, I really don't see a problem with letting them ask money for a well-made product if they desire to do so. Likewise, developers who do not desire money for their products are unlikely to hop onto the 'commercial games' bandwagon as they would have likely already done so on sites other than RMN.

To wrap things up a little, I'll sort this into a best-case vs worst-case scenario:

Best: The site gets some good games, both new ones and existing which which previously were not allowed. Indie games made using RPG Maker and similar engines get some good publicity and the stigma against them lessens a bit, allowing people the potential to make a living (or at least a decent amount of money) doing something they're passionate about while developers who choose to maintain their products as freeware can be taken more seriously even on sites not focused on RPG Maker.

Worst: A bunch of cheap cash-in commercial games appear. The truly terrible ones get filtered out before they are even allowed on the site while the subpar ones receive terrible reviews and fade into obscurity after making a handful of money. RPG Maker and similar engines get terrible press and the majority of the gaming community reaffirms their already highly-negative stance on such games while the RPG Maker community continues on as always and nothing really changes. As hosting commercial games proved to be something of a disaster not worth the effort, RMN goes back to barring commercial games and everything goes back to the way it was here as well.

Basically, I realize that there are risks involved if things go poorly and there will certainly be a handful of terrible cash-in games in even the best of scenarios so allowing purchasable games is a gamble no matter how RMN goes about it, but I think the potential benefits to RMN, to the RPG Maker community, and even to the indie community as a whole far outway the potential downsides, especially since those downsides can always be reversed by the removal of commercial games, so it seems like a risk worth taking to me.

I believe the gist of this current discussion is that while we (the RMN community) don't mind and will even readily accept commercial games, we don't want them at the cost of negatively affecting the freeware games that we currently have and always had.

Dyhalto, Liberty, sbester, others, and myself have consistently voiced concern about the possible ramifications commercial games might have on the free games that the RM community has always nurtured and developed. I personally believe that these concerns are extremely valid and should be taken into heavy consideration because free games are what the RM community has been constructed on, free games are the very foundations of our community.

Another problem I see is that, while we seem to be open to the idea of commercial ventures on RMN, there doesn't seem to be a clear demand for them. Much of the "Yes" votes consist of "Mmm, yeah, I don't see why not." or "Yeah, commercial games would benefit RMN!" but as of the 3-pages-worth of posts as of this writing there hasn't been a single post clearly along the lines of "Yes, please allow commercial games. I want to submit my/our commercial games here on RMN!", not even from the commercial developers who have voiced their opinions here. Even some of the "Yes" votes are also voicing concern for any ramifications that commercial games might have. Maybe I'm missing something, but, like WIP back when he was still in charge here, I'm just not seeing the demand personally.

There are also an astoundingly larger number of "No" votes compared to "Yes" votes as of this writing if we were to simply tally up the vote count from those that have clearly stated as such. While this obviously doesn't mean much it is also food for thought: Are we just not getting enough "Yes" votes voiced yet or are we truly against the idea in general?

Overall, given the genuine concern for the well-being of free games on RMN should commercial ventures come in, a lack of clear demand for commercial games on RMN, and a seemingly generally negative outlook on the proposal, I'm coming to the conclusion that while RMN isn't against the idea of commercial games we also aren't willing to take the gamble. I think that as the RMN community, we just don't consider commercial games worth the time, effort, and risk involved in bringing them here.

@King Arthur- Well said.

I would also like to bring up something that's been mentioned in the past, perhaps as a compromising solution, since I'm not trying to be a total jackass to the commercial devs here. RMN2? A separate but affiliated site for commercial-only games.

I know, the funding for such a thing is the big problem there, but maybe for a small fee (since it'd already be dealing in money), people would pay to have their project profiles featured on the site, rather than the donation route we currently have for RMN. That may actually attract some more worthy indie developers while weeding out some of the small fries making RTP first-time crap fests. Obviously, it's an even bigger gamble than what we've been talking about in this thread, but I can tell you now that I'd be much more willing to accept and maybe even contribute to such a thing if you could keep the two sites relatively separate.

Just an idea that was thrown around on the latest podcast, credit where it is due :P

author=KingArthur
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^ What he said.

author=Seeric

• On both sides there seems to be a sense of 'it would be ok if they were kept on a separate section/website'.

No, this is not the consensus and not a good idea. Separating them only reinforces the idea that they're mere advertisements. With RMN's character, lack of marketplace, and user base, separating them would have absolutely no point, and would waste engineering resources designing that infrastructure.

I vote no. Even with the stipulation of having something free needed to be posted on RMN, here's the long term problems I am seeing. To me RMN has always been a great database of freeware games with a great and growing community. However like any other idea like this, things were getting cluttered. Games were being created and hyped up, and they were never being released. Hiatus left and right, game pages with no downloads and for a while it was like the same sorting through the hay for a needle approach to finding a truly great AND finished game. Add commercial games to the equation and you just have even more that a person needs to sift through. Also I never really supported RPG Maker as a commercial platform. However if we MUST include commercial games, I think a better review and grading system more of a community Upvoting system that others do to prevent an overflow.

author=Seeric
At the present time, the vast, vast majority of gamers who are unfamiliar with RM will take one look at a game made in the engine and, even if it uses an entirely custom battle system with unique graphical and music assets, will still say 'ew it's an RPG Maker game' and not touch it.

Uh, if they're unfamiliar with it how can they tell it's RPG Maker game?