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A wanna-be Thai game designer who wanna be a game designer.

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ANNOUNCING SOUL SHEPHERD 2.00

YES! This is like my birthday present :D You won't believe how happy I am to hear this. Will play it as soon as possible!

vacant sky's failure and the trends of selling rtp to stupid humans

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1465600975/echoes-of-eternia-a-modern-take-on-a-classic-desig/posts

From their updates, they no longer use RPG Maker anymore, and money are now spent on original artworks for the game.

@Luthan
I agree with you up until you call TFT jealous. I don't think she's jealous at all. I think she's just upset that these games got or almost got the monetary reward she doesn't think they deserve.

@Ghost
I don't think setting a goal at 20k and let people decide whether it's reasonable or not, can be compared to EA putting game dev studios out of business.
I'm not sure what to response to other points you've mentioned, since I think I've already addressed those in my previous post.

@Kentona
For me, I don't see a problem with that. I think the amount of time the creator spent on the game has as much or even more value than the assets they use. You are the one who put all these resources together and create something that I like. And if I think your time worth compensation, then why not?

vacant sky's failure and the trends of selling rtp to stupid humans

To summarized my wall of text
- I agree that good, finished, high quality game should be monetary rewarded.
- For this to happen, creators need to help make it easy for supporter to support. Help us to help you.
- Everyone has a right to try to make money. In my opinion, this article wants to take away this right from these developers solely because
1.) They use RPGMaker.
2.) It doesn't take them 'enough' effort.

Should the article/rant focus more on unrealistic rpgmaker projects trying to scam people for money, I might have a different opinion on this.

vacant sky's failure and the trends of selling rtp to stupid humans

author=Emirpoen
TFT = Twin Fox Tails

Also, if this article is evil ( I personally think its a world of good), then it is an evil of utmost necessity.

I don't think this article is evil, more like missing the points. Other than what I've said already in the previous post, I'd like to point out some problems I have with this rant.

1.) Using RPG Maker/or not putting 'enough' effort into making a game
I think Sophie answer this better than I do. http://www.sophiehoulden.com/stop-being-such-an-asshole-to-people-who-dont-start-from-scratch/

2.) Using free resources = steal others people work = game is automatically shitty
This is not true at all. Using free resources is not 'stealing'. It's freely available and if it gets the job done, why not? Just because someone's using free assets doesn't mean there is no effort involve in putting them together into a game. Whether this worth somebody's money or not is, again, subjective.

3.) Letting player designing quests/character = Make games for me.
That's one way to look at it, but you're missing a more important point here. It's personalization. This is what cannot be copied and people are willing to pay for. People value something that feels personal to them. To ditch it off as 'working for the developer' is missing a great opportunity here.

It isn't just them that are doing this. If you look at other big games or higher quality games in Kick Starter project, you'll see that there are projects that offer something similar. Have you heard of a Flash game called "I Wish I Were the Moon"? The creator let you replace characters in the game with your characters for $2,000! Of course, to some people, this is insane. Yet, somebody bought it. Apparently, it's worth it in that person's opinion.

As for the part about giving $5 to some games in here, I totally agree. Actually, it would be nice if RMN provides a donation button or something for each project or each developer. It could link to their paypal account or whatever. I'm pretty sure there are people who want to donate, but never thought about it if they aren't reminded.

author=Ciel
author=hima
Regardless, being diligent or lazy has nothing to do with whether you'll make money or not.
That's something profoundly sad and needs to be changed. For it to be changed it is necessary to speak out when individuals completely lacking in virtue are disproportionately rewarded.

Never underestimate the general public's ignorance. While these 'developers' who receive incredible sums of money by clicking New Project and uploading screenshots four minutes later openly state that they are using RPG Maker, many of their patrons don't know what that entails. They don't know what RTP is, or what the engine is. They just see a classic RPG woah and immediately raid dad's wallet. After the video demonstrating exactly how the content in Unemployment Quest was 'produced', the general opinion on the game's official trailer seemed to shift drastically.

What these people are doing feels disingenuous to me. It's awful and lazy and TFT was more than right to speak out against it. Some people might like to drop several grand on a project created in five minutes, and I guess that's a 'valid' piece of the game consumer market. But there's another side that demands more, and that part of the market has to make its voice heard too if quality content is ever going to be produced.
I think this is the same scenario as Aveyond. When it came out, people were complaining about how it was using RTP and it shouldn't charge money. Turns out one of my friends who know a lot about RM still enjoy it regardless of its use of RTP. She love it so much that she wrote a walkthrough in Thai! It's true that you shouldn't underestimate general public's ignorance, but we shouldn't overestimate it either.

Secondly, I think you give monetary reward too much credit here. People create high quality games even without monetary reward! Cave Story, Spelunky, Last Scenario, Alter A.I.L.A, Princess Princess, Heartache, Clock of Atonement, ... the list goes on and on.

There are many people here that created quality games without charging or even asking for money. I would love to reward many people here with money, but you'd notice that they never ask for it. Most people here don't even show you a way to support them with money. Somehow, getting money from what they've created become a bad thing or never cross their mind. If you want monetary reward, then make it easy for people to help you or reward you. These guys in the article did, and that's what they got.

Getting paid from what you do isn't a bad thing. And even if your games are free, it doesn't mean someone can't show you how much they love your game with monetary reward. We need to stop thinking that getting money from our game is evil or we don't deserve the money. People pay because they like what you're doing.

Also, it seems like there are people who enjoy Unemployment Quest : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/412101570/unemployment-quest-a-non-epic-rpg/comments

author=GZ
I agree with Hima that a lot more people should be looking for ways to fund their projects -- to compete with these projects and find support -- but I don't agree that projects like Echoes of Eternia are a good thing when talking about Kickstarter.

In a scenario where more people are asking for funding, projects like EoE will win backers over because they promise ridiculous features like 30+ hours of gameplay, voice acting, high quality art, complex battle systems, and anything else that will get people to back it. Ask yourself, what are these backers going to think if the game never comes out or doesn't meet any where near it's sky high expectations? At the very least, I can't imagine it will inspire them to back more projects, especially ones with realistic goals and budgets. This doesn't help more legitimate developers at all.

That's because on Kickstarter you are selling an idea, not a game. Can any indie developer really promise what EoE wants to be? They are essentially promising a PS1 era RPG made by a team of people who have never made games before. There are no downsides to promising the world to backers, and it's been proven to work time and time again.
I agree that not finishing a project after it gets its funding is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, this happens more often in non-epic rm games, from what I've seen.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keric/cracked-a-puzzle-adventure-game-for-touchscreen-de/comments
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesingularity/freeq-an-interactive-radio-drama-indie-video-game
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rinkuhero/saturated-dreamers-igf-fee-and-misceallenous-deve-0
The first two games are already abandoned, regardless of how much customizations or progress they've shown. Saturated Dreamers is still in progress.

I agree though, that if a project is abandoned after it gets its fund, it will only be bad for Kickstarter. Still, there is nothing you can do right now. It's up to the backers to study and do some research on the creator before they invest in the project.

Currently, this doesn't seem to be a problem with Kickstarter. You'll see that there are many projects get its fund, so the ratio of complete/fail project must still be in the acceptable range.

This point reminds me another problem with this article. It lumps EoE into the same category as Unemployment Quest, which is a finished product. If you are going to talk about an ambitious project getting money from backer and never plan to finish it, that is fine and I agree that this is a bad thing. I can't say anything regarding this point right now because I don't know the creator and their previous works well enough to make any judgement.

Also, I think it would be fair if you stated the money these projects asked and their statuses.
1.) Vacant Sky : Asked 20k, Got 10k, failed.
2.) Unemployment Quest : Asked 1k, Got 10k, succeeded.
3.) EoE : Asked 10k, Got 40k, succeeded.

One failed. One didn't ask that much and luckily got overfunded. Only one project that is questionable. This doesn't seem to represent a strong case. Look at other game projects in Kickstarter, you will see various non RPGMaker got funded as well.

vacant sky's failure and the trends of selling rtp to stupid humans

author=Marcus
I never said it was stealing or even deceitful. I did say it was lazy to charge money for something you've made with the RTP and that if they are charging for an rpg maker game it should be something they've spent a lot of time customising and making it unique.

Really if they can make that much money for an rpg maker game then they should do it.

But if anyone can make money doing any standard of rpg maker game, with little effort put into designing things for themselves then it's just going to be lazy and cheep.

I'm not picking on their game because I haven played it. The blog mentions a guy using a story and title from another game though and making most of his game from RTP, which is pretty damn lazy. I'd prefer a funded rpg maker game to be a groundbreaking story with visuals and audio that is entirely generated by the maker...then it would have earned it's place as the one you pay for.
Maybe it wasn't clear, but my previous post was a reply to the whole article and not any comments in here in particular.

Regardless, being diligent or lazy has nothing to do with whether you'll make money or not. As I said, different people have different requirements to support a game. I don't see a point of arguing over 'your requirements are different from mine'.

Yes, anyone can make money doing standard rpg maker game. However, let's think about that situation for a second. What if there are many projects that use RTP pop up and ask for funding? There will be competitions, if the audience overlap. And competition means you have to raise your quality. Currently, it's possible because there is no competition. That's why I want more people to go out and ask for funding or do something.

TFT is the name of the author of this article ^ ^;

vacant sky's failure and the trends of selling rtp to stupid humans

TFT, I have to say I disagree with this.

Yes, to you and me, this game isn't worth our money, and we aren't going to support it. However, this doesn't mean they can't ask for people to support them, or other people shouldn't support them.

We come from a different background from people who support these projects. We don't like RTP and think it lacks originality because we've seen it so much that we are sick of it. However, just because one use free resources doesn't mean that one can't ask for monetary support. A game isn't just about resources or story or features, but it's how everything is put together. Like other creative content, its value is very subjective, and that's where crowd-funding comes. You can pay whatever you feel like! You chose $0, obviously, but others disagree and chose something else.

From what I've seen, they are transparent about what they do. They tell people about the engine they're using. They tell people that they use free resources.(Also, it is not stealing. Stealing would mean the original file is gone. :) ) People tolerate this differently and some people just don't care and like the idea and the presentation enough to support them.

You might have a problem with them setting their funding goal too high in your opinion, but you must not forget that if they can't reach the goal, they won't get anything. This leaves audience to be the judge, not just you or me. And if they reach their ridiculously high goal, then that means they have found their audience ( I am not talking about the case of deceiving or tricking people into funding a project here. That's another story.) All the backers can also see the current amount of money the project has accumulated. So nobody force them to overfund the project.

To me, this is not a bad sign. This is a good sign! Whatever you make, if you can find audience, you can make money. Seriously, people who fund these game aren't likely to fund games that you like, and people who fund games you like, aren't going to fund these games. There's enough audience and money to go around.

I hope this encourage people who always think your game doesn't deserve money to step out and ask for help or some kind of funding. You might be surprised at how many people want to see you succeed in what you're trying to do.

iOS and Android version is 90% complete.

author=dragonheartman
I have a 4.0 device (Samsung Galaxy Nexus), which I think is something like 720x1280. Let me know if you need a tester.

Awesome! Thank you for offering to be a tester. Once I got everything ready and upload the apk file I'll let you know :)

...

What happened!? D: *hugs*

Testing and Dropbox

I can't believe you haven't used Dropbox until now! I actually bought myself an account already, because it's just that good.

If you need project management tool, I suggest using Trello : www.trello.com It's free, and really really easy to use. I'm currently using it for listing features or feature suggestions, as well as bug reports. It's also really motivating to see each feature get done visually, letting you know that you're one step closer to finish the game :)

Some suggestion on directory listing, since I had problems with this when there are more assets.

Project Name
|
--- Code : Scripts, database, game scenario, anything programming or database related
|
--- Business : Stuffs regarding game's promotion/marketing. Review written by other people, etc.
|
--- Graphics : Name should be obvious

From here, you can create further subfolders to be more specific. I think it's much easier this way and I can find what I'm looking for easier as well.

Good luck finishing the game! Can't wait :D

Version 6 and Changes to be made~

HA-ME-HA-ME-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

Naia must have loved watching Super Robot anime <3<3
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