THE FEATURED GAME THREAD

I could respond in more detail, but since you'd dismiss it there's no need. Just know that commercial devs care just as much about their work and artistry as any hobby dev, and that acting like some games are "important enough to RM culture" to break the "rules" is a gross old guard viewpoint that isn't helping anyone.

You can't just cherry pick your favourites, Dyhalto. It'd be unfair to all the people who put so much hard work into their games, regardless of commercial viability or not.

If ever a day comes when there's less hobby games than Commercial games on the site then that would mean that people aren't making hobby games anymore so why wouldn't we change to support our community?

Like, seriously, being stuck in the past over something like that is silly. There'd be no reason for RMN to exist if the games stopped coming, so we'd have to cater to where the games were at eventually, however I don't see that being an issue because even now there are a shit ton of people making games that aren't commercial even though there's the ability to do so with relative ease. The day the submission queue has only one or two freebie games and 20 commercial ones is the day we probably should shift focus, but again, I doubt that's coming any time soon.

Feature Game holds prestige... to some. Some people who make free games just dump them here and move on, never bothering to look back. Should we then remove their games from counting too, because they don't care about the 'prestige' of it all? No, of course not. Tying a persons emotions and thoughts about being Featured to whether they should be Featured is just silly talk. :/

And here I thought RMN was a place for developers to interact no matter their game goals.



GRS, it shouldn't be too hard to put something in the description or on the image banner for a commercial feature to show it is commercial. Not sure about putting the icon next to the game on the list page (that'd require Anky to whip something up) but on the actual front page that wouldn't be hard to include in the banner/description, sure. It was my intent that such a thing be done anyway, especially with Game Spot (it'd be marked as Commercial).

If we decide to even use commercial games I'll ask anky about the viability of it. This is all supposition atm. XD

To be fair, we've depleted Pom and DM quite a few times. They're just really, really popular still. Can't be helped - it's what happens with a system like ours. Nothing is going to be perfect, there's always going to be small issues. Thankfully there's a lot more spots for games to be shown off.

I don't ever think there'll be a time when the front page is only commercial games, so it's not really an issue - there's always going to be free games being spotlighted in the varied ways that exist for spotlighting.

I mean, I don't hear anyone kicking up a fuss when a commercial game makes it on the new and notable list and that's a pretty hefty spotlight that can last for longer than a month, so...

Think someone else mentioned this before but I'm not sure where the notion of "competing" against commercial games on RMN came from....as gamedevs technically we're "competing" against gamedevs both within and outside of RMN, right? Someone can choose to play a freeware game or Ara Fell or Overwatch.

If, literally, the only thing in consideration for a feature is financial backing, yeah, commercial games would come out on top of non-commericals every single time. Thankfully, a featured game has to be well-designed, and the fact that a game has financial backing does not automatically mean as such.

*Edit: I sometimes think it's as hard to get a Misao as it is to get featured. Then again, Misaos represent the best in a given year, chosen by a large sample size (it's a "people's choice" award, after all), whereas features represents the best ever overall, chosen by a much smaller sample size.

Or... something like that?

author=Lucy_Fox
I just think a commercial game should get all chances a free one has. After all, we always can set such games on our Christmas wishlist, if they should be too expensive. ;P

And it would be somewhat... unfair to feature some random-not-so-good game cause it's free instead of a commercial one that is great. :)

And if we started to get non-indie games, like what if Bethesda made a game page for Skyrim on RMN? It's a silly example, but it shows you where this could go.

There is a difference when you compare hobby games to commercial games. You can argue that commercial gamemakers still have the same amount of passion and drive that hobbyists have, and you might be right. But there is a difference. The difference is that commercial games can't do whatever they want anymore. They have to do something that sells.
Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not. But I like the hobbyist games, where you're not limited to what the majority of people like, and you can make something unique without caring about what other people think.
I like those sorts of games, and I like the sorts of people that make them. It's a personal opinion, but whatever.
I don't care for equality in this matter. I don't want commercial games on RMN.
It's too late since they are already here, but I can still voice my opinion on it, I suppose.

author=Red_Nova
Slippery slope fallacy, kory.

The slippery slope isn't a fallacy. Especially not here.
A year ago, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The notion wouldn't even be entertained. Instead, a year ago we merely allowed commercial games on RMN. Now it's advanced to this point. (my one year ago timing might be off)
A better analogy for kory would be "what if harmonic grew into a large game company with a team of full-time employees"? At what point do we tell him he's not an indie dev anymore? Two employees? Five? Public listing on the NYSE?


I can never get why people know and understand the boiling frog syndrome, but still disbelieve it when it's pointed out.

author=Dyhalto
The slippery slope isn't a fallacy. Especially not here.

In all fairness, I don't think it's necessary or helpful to paint a semi-dystopian picture of RMN in order to try and make a point. The free hobby RPG Maker game community is not going to disappear over night. So as a long as we make sure to keep our focus on that demographic, I'm confident that us being a little more open to commercially oriented devs isn't going to ruin everything from one moment to the other.
That being said, keeping a reasonable balance here is going to require effort and awareness. Which means that those among the memberbase who are critical of such a development will have to call for a step on the brakes if things get out of hand. In short, let's try not to resist change immediately and purely out of principle, but let's not be naive about the possible consequences either. It's not like RMN's policies are a machine that cannot be stopped any more once set in motion. There's real people behind this site who should all be open to reason, just like us.

author=Ratty524
What does that have to do with the overall quality of the game itself? Both sides deserve to be recognized in some shape or form if they make good games (which probably won't happen soon with harmonic imo), so I find this rule on only featuring free games to be ridiculous.

So, let's talk about that, then. I know I might get flak for the following statements, but in the specific case of Ara Fell, are we sure a Feature would actually be justified? I mean, I haven't played the full game myself, but I watched a few hours of footage of someone playing it. And in all honesty, to me it just seemed like a pretty average, generic RPG. Really, I don't understand what all the fuss is about, apart from possible nostalgia by people who had been following the project for a long time, and the fact that it sort of became a flagship for commercial RMing recently. But just the game itself, I don't know. I'm pretty sure there's a number of other (free) games available on the site that would be just as worthy of being featured.

This is not me trying to hate on Ara Fell - I'm happy for its developers that the commercialisation of their project went so well. But that fact alone doesn't oblige us to consider the game to be better than others, does it?