DARKEN'S PROFILE

I'm going to drop in this topic late and give a wall of text.

I do not know about most of you but I cannot help but fucking worship these people. The other night I played the trial for Eternal Eden for giggles. I was expecting heavily edited graphics with a prominent trace of RTP. You know, the usual Laxius bullshit. But what was unveiled shocked me...



Nothing has changed, no don't pay attention to the default window graphic, look at the word for word default terms. And if this image could play sound, you'd be hearing an RTP midi. Only thing changed was the actual title screen graphic. Clearly this is a mark of genius, you may be thinking to yourself "HOHO! Darken's just being sarcastic! Making an abstruse implication that these people are business fiends and monsters! That clever fox!"

But I am not.



Absolutely nothing has changed except for the faceset. Keep in mind I'm not talking specifically about the graphics here. The author doesn't even bother changing the class name or the menu terms. I'm still awestruck as I type this. Back in the days of RPG Maker 2000 and up, I wanted to change EVERYTHING, I wanted to stay away as much as possible from making my game resembling a "Hey guys I made this with a point and click program!" game in the slightest. I even spent long hours trying to make CBS, CMS, and other three letter abbreviations that start with C and end with S (of course these ended up in project failures due to taking forever to make numbers appear). But now, this game comes along with absolutely no intentions of hiding the RTP, changing the terms, or even slapping down a bunch of scripts that most XP/VX users have the fortunate option to. I've seen stuff like Laxius Force and all that, but this just takes the loaf. It's almost if the author opened up the Database window and all he saw was the Actor screen and nothing else.

Surely with this being 20 bucks, people would notice the obvious RTP and not buy it? That is indeed, not the case.

I've played many indie RPGs made with the RPG Maker software and Eternal Eden is by far the most aesthetically pleasing.

RPGFan Review

Eternal Eden was made with Game Maker or RPG Maker or some other kind of engine like that, but it's not very noticeable - it performed well and felt like a solid game.

Cynical Stuff

Of course those of us who have touched RPG Maker and have at least played one VX game, would notice this! There are a lot of us who are familiar with RPG Maker, would this cause any competition for our fair-minded people? No, absolutely not. Why? Because of honor. Most of us would refuse to produce a below mediocre RTP game in a short period of time and sell it for 20 bucks and market it so that indie review sites pass this up as an 'old school console RPG' and using points like 'it doesn't try to be more than that' as a selling ruse.

I'm not a business expert. But there doesn't seem to be much risk involved. Very small investments need to be made, thanks to companies like Plimus and the like. Sure you could say that you still need the game to be long regardless of it's quality with a 'OVER 70 QUESTS' tag attached perhaps resulting in actual time put towards it. But that's just the thing, this is the stuff that most of us do in our spare time. So even if there is marketing work to be done, at least you made a game. Something most of us are all striving for.

There is a worst case scenario however, If everyone one of us were to take this idea and put it to practice, then you'd just see games like this EVERYWHERE. And most of the audience would start thinking "Hey, these games...look.. ALMOST THE SAME." This would cause an epidemic of decrease in sales for everyone. Of course people who do know their stuff about custom graphics and coding would be able to outshine other games. This is why you don't see these kind of games advertised here or here OR even here. Most of us (especially those indie people with top hats and cave story posters) can see right through this shit. If for a second we abandoned our honor and realized the potential $$$ for little effort, serious competition would happen.

You're probably thinking I made this post to 'start shit up' and bandwagonlol but keep in mind that I'm not being sarcastic when I say these RTP marketers know their stuff. I used to enjoy reading topics on several other indie forums bashing stuff like this and thats all fun. But I never knew games could get RTP default as this. They're making money off of something easy to do. Something frowned upon yes, but you can't help but wonder "Gee I wonder if I can get in on this."

Granted this isn't the only legit exploitation (if that even makes sense), there is also things like cloning. Some guy will see an indie game with a brand new idea, study it, make a replica entirely in flash and get big bucks from the ads on said hosted site on freegames.com or something. However even that requires effort, you still need to code, you still need an artist to make it more original and you will most likely have a deadline.

With what we're talking about, you're using the easiest point and click program (even easier than fucking game maker) with graphics already there for you, and absolutely no competition. Bullet proof.

So without shifting the topic's question too much: Have any of you ever considered this path?

For me I'm not much of a shrewd business person, and I do have a lot of stubborn honor. Someday I might consider this an option to put money in my pocket, though I'd probably end up using 100% original graphics like most people here would because internet reputation is very important. 8)

:'(

2Dark

http://www.rpgmaker.net/games/716/for that hell game perhaps?