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GOING COMMERCIAL, WHEN AND WHY?
Posts
El_WaKa
3568
El_WaKa
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CloseI'm asking this because I have seen many free games that are WAY better than many commercial games, and because I have seen many commercial games that are just complete shit (Bad Rats and Dead bits on steam)
Personally, I think the best opportunity is when you already have many fans and your game has been played a minimum of 2000 times
(And no, I'm not planning on going commercial any time in the near future... this mostly curiosity and to know if someone here has made a good commercial game before... and sorry for my shit english)
Personally, I think the best opportunity is when you already have many fans and your game has been played a minimum of 2000 times
(And no, I'm not planning on going commercial any time in the near future... this mostly curiosity and to know if someone here has made a good commercial game before... and sorry for my shit english)
Well, personally, I think you hit the nail on the head. I don't go commercial because I don't think my work is nearly good enough yet. Then you see all these other guys doing commercial games, and I take a look at their demos and think there's hope for me, yet. (Seriously, there is some real garbage in commercial games.)
I wouldn't make a commercial RM game. That's not to say I don't think other people should, but I wouldn't do it myself. I don't know what my exact specifications would be, but I guess as a game dev you just know when the time is right.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Now because broke.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Would you? Artists are never satisfied with their own work. If you are ever satisfied that you're good enough, then you don't actually care about what you're doing and you should stop doing it. This makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to know when you've reached the point where other people will value it enough to pay money, though.
Not that going commercial has a hell of a lot to do with how good you are, not really. It's all about marketing. Are you willing to spend more than 80% of your "development" time on marketing? If not, you can obviously still sell your game, but you probably shouldn't expect to actually be successful.
Not that going commercial has a hell of a lot to do with how good you are, not really. It's all about marketing. Are you willing to spend more than 80% of your "development" time on marketing? If not, you can obviously still sell your game, but you probably shouldn't expect to actually be successful.
El_WaKa
3568
author=Pizza
I wouldn't make a commercial RM game. That's not to say I don't think other people should, but I wouldn't do it myself. I don't know what my exact specifications would be, but I guess as a game dev you just know when the time is right.
I wasn't speaking specifically of RM, there are some commercial RM games that are pretty good, but I think is better that if you want to go commercial practice with Game Maker, Flash, Unity or even make your own engine (or just make games for the App store)
Mostly because RPG Maker has a bad reputation (countless joke games and shitty "my first game" made in RM2000, RM2003 and RMXP) and it's not as flexible as other engines, although recently this is changing as there are more and more popular games made with RPG maker (Yume Nikki, Ao Oni, Ib, Pom gets Wi-fi, and many others released on steam)
There are some awesome games on RM, though. Enelysion springs to mind, and Luchi has gone commercial with that. Remnants of Isolation is on Steam, also and that is definitely a game I'd spend money for, if I hadn't already played it, that is. If Marrend and his team ever finishes Myriad Cypher, I could see that one taking off, too. Vindication, Notes on the Edgosian Crisis, COATS, Witchworks, all of these games are absolutely awesome.
Frankly, every engine has shitty games, joke games, and "my first game"'s, as I understand it, RM's reputation is no different from any other engine, except that it's user friendly and easier to work with.
Frankly, every engine has shitty games, joke games, and "my first game"'s, as I understand it, RM's reputation is no different from any other engine, except that it's user friendly and easier to work with.
Enelysion isn't commercial. Tristy could easily be but I don't think Luchi has any plans to make that leap just yet.
Why: Because humans buy trash
When: As soon as possible!!
Think about it, ZeBoyd is really wealthy because he replicated Dragon Quest games and resold them on Steam. "Depression Quest" is famous despite not even being a game. Hyper Light Drifter was greenlit for $600,000 off of graphics that couldn't even convey a 5-year old's understanding of depth and value. Aveyond series, though initially at a rocky start, are able to finance the author's costs of living. Also, this game.
Not going commercial is a personal choice, but it shouldn't have to be influenced by "Am I good enough?????" If you want to try and make some money while doing a hobby you enjoy, then don't let doubt stop you. Those games I mentioned above sure didn't.
When: As soon as possible!!
Think about it, ZeBoyd is really wealthy because he replicated Dragon Quest games and resold them on Steam. "Depression Quest" is famous despite not even being a game. Hyper Light Drifter was greenlit for $600,000 off of graphics that couldn't even convey a 5-year old's understanding of depth and value. Aveyond series, though initially at a rocky start, are able to finance the author's costs of living. Also, this game.
Not going commercial is a personal choice, but it shouldn't have to be influenced by "Am I good enough?????" If you want to try and make some money while doing a hobby you enjoy, then don't let doubt stop you. Those games I mentioned above sure didn't.
El_WaKa
3568
Thanks, now I have another question
What about Patreon? Or even sites like gamejolt and kongregate, where if I recall correctly you get paid 30% of ad revenue (although your game has to be REALLY popular to make something decent)
What about Patreon? Or even sites like gamejolt and kongregate, where if I recall correctly you get paid 30% of ad revenue (although your game has to be REALLY popular to make something decent)
It's a personal choice. If a person has hesitation about making commercial products, the final determinant would be needing money. That's a situation that's different for each person.
For example, Kentona, who has a job, and a family, and one of the most-downloaded games on this site: Hero's Realm. If he got fired from his job, then...? Could he support his family by selling Hero's Realm on Steam? That thought might occur to him.
There are a lot of factors. No one lives forever, and, parts of your body are going to start to fail long before death. If your job involves a lot of walking, and the cartilage in your knee wears out, what do you do? How about health care? (If you live in the United States, at least. When my father had surgery on his brain tumor, the cost was over $100,000... mostly covered by his job insurance. But if you don't have a job?)
It's all about looking down into the tunnel and determining if it's a tunnel, or a pit.
For example, Kentona, who has a job, and a family, and one of the most-downloaded games on this site: Hero's Realm. If he got fired from his job, then...? Could he support his family by selling Hero's Realm on Steam? That thought might occur to him.
There are a lot of factors. No one lives forever, and, parts of your body are going to start to fail long before death. If your job involves a lot of walking, and the cartilage in your knee wears out, what do you do? How about health care? (If you live in the United States, at least. When my father had surgery on his brain tumor, the cost was over $100,000... mostly covered by his job insurance. But if you don't have a job?)
It's all about looking down into the tunnel and determining if it's a tunnel, or a pit.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
To sell it on Steam he would need to make Hero's Realm HD, with remastered non-ripped graphics. (Actual HD completely unnecessary.)
Benjo
0
Flappy Bird was huge, and you could easily remake it with RM. Like someone else wrote further up...
The right people have to see it at the right time, then they'll do all the sharing. I just read an article about people who got fired from their jobs for sending out a controversial tweet. One girl had only 170 followers. She tweeted a distasteful joke, then one of her followers shared it with his 15,000 followers and it spread from there. Most fires start small.
Personally, I believe that amateur game-making shouldn't be about money. "Back in the day" the software most of us used had been cracked and translated without the permission of the developers. We didn't have the option of going commercial.
But that's my opinion. If you want to sell your product, go right ahead.
EDIT: Just realised that I didn't answer your question. You should go commercial when your game is completed. I wouldn't buy a bottle of coke containing only the postmix. As for the reason why, that is your question to answer. If you want to go commercial then it's your choice, not ours.
author=LockeZ
It's all about marketing.
The right people have to see it at the right time, then they'll do all the sharing. I just read an article about people who got fired from their jobs for sending out a controversial tweet. One girl had only 170 followers. She tweeted a distasteful joke, then one of her followers shared it with his 15,000 followers and it spread from there. Most fires start small.
Personally, I believe that amateur game-making shouldn't be about money. "Back in the day" the software most of us used had been cracked and translated without the permission of the developers. We didn't have the option of going commercial.
But that's my opinion. If you want to sell your product, go right ahead.
EDIT: Just realised that I didn't answer your question. You should go commercial when your game is completed. I wouldn't buy a bottle of coke containing only the postmix. As for the reason why, that is your question to answer. If you want to go commercial then it's your choice, not ours.
LockeZ
If you are ever satisfied that you're good enough, then you don't actually care about what you're doing and you should stop doing it. This makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to know when you've reached the point where other people will value it enough to pay money, though.
Well I don't exactly agree. I mean, I think it's possible to be to some degree satisfied with your work, but still agree that it is not perfect and that there are many ways that it could still be improved. I mean, the only way I really know if I'm making a game I want to make, is if I feel some degree of satisfaction to how it was done. If I'm not satisfied at all, I edit it or remove it until I am somewhat satisfied with it. I thought that was part of the dev process.
pianotm
as I understand it, RM's reputation is no different from any other engine, except that it's user friendly and easier to work with.
I don't agree. There's certainly still a degree of stigma towards RPG Maker games, even if it's less than before due to the amount of high-quality games coming out of the engine.
Magi
Hyper Light Drifter was greenlit for $600,000 off of graphics that couldn't even convey a 5-year old's understanding of depth and value.
What are you talking about? Hyper Light Drifter is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, seriously, the art direction is colourful, vibrant and exciting. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's definitely not terrible as you say.
LockeZ
To sell it on Steam he would need to make Hero's Realm HD, with remastered non-ripped graphics. (Actual HD completely unnecessary.)
People would be really willing to do this.
...
My advice would be: go commercial when you think your game deserves to be sold. When you think that someone dishing out their money would be worth your product. I've been offered for one of my games to go commercial but I haven't taken up on it yet because I don't believe any of my games deserve to be commercial, at least not yet but I'm not sure if ever. I don't want people to be paying money for something that isn't worth it.
Remnants of Isolation fully deserves to be commercial. It's a fantastic, complete game with 2.5 hours of gameplay and it is one of the best-designed RPGs I've played, it certainly trumps the great amount of RPG Maker games I've played. Last Word was also pretty decent. I've heard Oneshot is going commercial, after being ported to XP, but I'll leave my personal judgement on that game for a possible future review.
But in my experience, too many developers that deserve to get money for their work are anti-commercial, and too many developer who are just money-hungry try to find ways to sell their trashy or incomplete games, without having an understanding of whether they're wasting peoples' time and money or not.
It's hard enough having your game be not a waste of peoples' time. It's even harder to make it worth that money. I'd say out of human decency, make sure you've got a product that will benefit people before you start asking people to dish out money. Don't just do it because you're desperate. Make sure you're actually offering something that's nice for them to play.
I don't think I'll ever get to that place. Maybe one day, but it seems out of reach right now. I wouldn't pay to play any of my games. Why should I ask others to?
author=CashmereCatMagi
Hyper Light Drifter was greenlit for $600,000 off of graphics that couldn't even convey a 5-year old's understanding of depth and value.
What are you talking about? Hyper Light Drifter is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, seriously, the art direction is colourful, vibrant and exciting. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's definitely not terrible as you say.
I'm not here to belittle anybody's opinion, just giving facts. I said nothing about the graphics not looking exciting or vibrant, despite my reservations about the project there are various areas that have been presented which create a very unique and mysterious sense of place. My misgivings about the style are mostly in regards to the fact that the art is objectively wrong where it needs to count and suffers from poor value gradations which can make the player's orientation in the world space ambiguous. It's also rough and unfinished in appearance, but that's practically an art movement in the pixel world now. I'm too tired to push against that current any longer..
Anyway, I was using Hyper Lights as one example of likely commercial success in part because it goes to show somebody without a basic art background can sell an idea. This is a good thing for everybody who wants to make games commercially. The concept is more important and there seems to be this consensus that as long as the graphics can convey a concept at its most fundamental level then they are okay. I don't like this stance and I made a point to show it in my earlier post.
Oh. OK I get what you mean. That's actually a veritable stance to have, although I do still like the concept of a game that doesn't obey depth rules. Not that that might have been intentional or anything, I don't really know about the technicalities of art, but as long as it's pleasing to the eye, I'm generally OK with it. Besides, gameplay matters more, and as you said, you don't have to obey the specific rules to create a certain vibe.
author=LockeZ
Not that going commercial has a hell of a lot to do with how good you are, not really. It's all about marketing. Are you willing to spend more than 80% of your "development" time on marketing? If not, you can obviously still sell your game, but you probably shouldn't expect to actually be successful.
It's been mentioned before, but very much this. I am not a marketer. I am terrible at networking. If you want to go commercial, you need these skillsets. Or to have someone on your team that possesses them. The only reason I have any game actually for sale out there is because the game won a contest, and the company promoting it has an awesome marketer helping out ^_^
Also, it may just be me, but commercialization takes a lot of the "fun" out of GAM MAK. I want to make the games I want to see in the world, not the ones that I think will sell well and trend well. Making a game that maximizes on what would be popular and appealing to the average paying game player is not appealing to me.
author=unity
Also, it may just be me, but commercialization takes a lot of the "fun" out of GAM MAK. I want to make the games I want to see in the world, not the ones that I think will sell well and trend well. Making a game that maximizes on what would be popular and appealing to the average paying game player is not appealing to me.
I'd like to think there's a place out there for the games that we want to make that doesn't involve appealing to the mass market. Leave that to the AAA's and we can make the niche stuff for the niche people out there :D we can't be the only ones around who like the kind of games we make, right? Maybe we won't make millions, but maybe we can make enough to live... I've seen plenty of strange games out there with really passionate fans!
...but yea, marketing is the rough part. Making a niche game means you gotta make sure that the people who are really into that niche hear about it. I can talk about the kind of games I make and why I want to make them all day, but I'm super shy about contacting people who might want to listen, like game news sites, indie game sites, podcasts. I'm being dumb, because it's their job and they probably want to hear from excited devs. It's just really hard to feel like you're not annoying them ;-_-
Anyway, I think there's no shame and no guilt in asking for money for something you worked hard on, and if you wait until you're "good enough" you may be waiting a long time. The real limitation to making something commercial is time - do you have the time to market and support something that people have paid for?
author=pianotm
If Marrend and his team ever finishes Myriad Cypher, I could see that one taking off, too.
At this juncture, I'd be happy just to finish it! I can only speak for myself, though, and I really haven't given any thought of going commercial with it.
author=slashauthor=unityI'd like to think there's a place out there for the games that we want to make that doesn't involve appealing to the mass market. Leave that to the AAA's and we can make the niche stuff for the niche people out there :D we can't be the only ones around who like the kind of games we make, right? Maybe we won't make millions, but maybe we can make enough to live... I've seen plenty of strange games out there with really passionate fans!
Also, it may just be me, but commercialization takes a lot of the "fun" out of GAM MAK. I want to make the games I want to see in the world, not the ones that I think will sell well and trend well. Making a game that maximizes on what would be popular and appealing to the average paying game player is not appealing to me.
Good point! I may be selling my own interests and ideas short. There's certainly nothing wrong with testing the waters and see what works and what sells ^_^
