Feasable Gaming Profit

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

I’m working on a game in blender and am very serious about it. A problem is that releasing the game under a community where Open Source is a must I am finding it very hard to find it profitable.

So I was thinking of releasing it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, to allow free use and redistribution as long as copywriter and license stayed in-tacked, this also allows you to use it without copywriter/license if I give consent, in which I will, just want to track where my models/art is being used.

My plans are to release 2 parts of this game, an off-line single player RPG to help you understand the storyline, and then a MORPG that allows you to play on-line as well. The off-line version is looking to be around $40-$50 USD and the on-line as a monthly $5 USD. If you purchase the off-line version you’d get unlimited MORPG access so the monthly fee is waved, but any expansions you wouldn’t have access to. While the subscribers would be able to have continuous access to new content without purchasing of expansions, there will be limitations as to how much content you’d get @ once since it wouldn’t be fair for someone to only pay $5 USD for a month and get all the content(models/textures/sounds/music) and cancel right after.

I know its a bit tough to give a solid answer since you’d want to see the art and gameplay. Given that the game was about something you’d play on dreamcast would you be willing to pay those amounts?

2

First of all
i dont buy many games

but i have seen some pretty good games that were cheap

so i would say that 5 dollars a month for the online version is really cheap

the single player price is not to high because you would have unlimited access to the online version

but this all depends if the game is actually good;)

(what about that code we were talking about earlier; now i see why you were working on it)

3

The server code will come as well. The whole point of a single/multi payment system is not based on a gamers aspect but rather a developers one. The Multi payment is for someone to have continous quality new content to apply to their games without much restrictions, while the single payment is for the gamers. The developers with subscriptions would pay for the simple server fees while the gamers would be paying for money to keep adding things with expansions.

4

Lol, Your getting ahead of yourself here.

First you need to make BGE history by being the first person to make a game that can justify even a minimal price, not to mention the ridiculus price that you have set.

Your setting a commercial quality game price for something that you are scrounging up on the BGE, an engine that is still afaik chalk full of bugs and nowhere near stable to actually churn out a $50 game.

Also $5 for online mode is just out right funny. What do you think you can make here, WOW? Everything should be no more than a single payment of $5, for the whole package, single player, online and all. And that’s considering that you can actually make a game that’s even worth the entire $5.

Either way, your thinking about the whole pricing bit waaay too early. You have to actually make the game first, and then you can talk about any potential price.

5

Sounds overpriced to me, but I don’t buy many games and have only played a few rpg’s. My theory is that no one actually plays them anymore. They just make them.

6

Many have tried, none (none whatsoever!) have succeeded. Good luck, it will be a hard sell unless your game is knock-your-socks-off fantastic.

7

Fire side.RPG are still played…finding qood ones is the challenge.

$50 translates to 400 ZAR, thats the price of the top of the rage just released and we if u wait a month we drop the price cost, game thats just been released by one of the big game studios…

for me ur game would have to make serious waves before i would fork out that amount.

just a perspective, from another country

good luck though

8

Sutabi:

One thing about online payment: it still su%#z. Specially regarding small amounts of money.

Probably i would pay 50 bucks for a game made by Sutabi. I like his modeling style.

This amount is close to Elephants Dream movie. But there is a lot of diferences between your game project idea and a movie… very difilcult to analise at all…

Orange movie had a pre-sale campaign… maybe if you set up a team and schedule inside a very cool website people are able to contribute. Maybe it need to be set as a “one hit” purchase, i don´t know…

9

Where in the would you gain resell right to entire models/animations/music/sounds/texture for that price? The appeal is for both players and developers.

Server costs at 5 bucks!? Consider that the average transfer bitrate for a single is 15KB, and 15KBs for 24/7 for an entire month is just under 10 gigs. A single gig overage is 0.25 ($2.50 USD total) USD $5 bucks would be more then enough to maintain the server for serveral players (No one can possibly play 24/7 for months on end). Again this is for server mainance, not profit.

The 40-50 bucks would be given to my teammates whom have helped me develop this game. Where would I stand? Contacts are an awsome source and even if I only gain about 1-2 thousand players it would defintly be worth it for further business as I can then move my code over to pyorge to develop a stronger mmorpg engine. If this does go well I hope to break off into a monthly game development service offering everything needed for creating games rather then just selling individual models/texture packs/sounds and music.

I’ve used blender since 2.04 and have experience in all aspects of game development and here comes Social blundering away newbies. You need to let them learn on their own rather then shame them into stupidiy. Yes this is a bit of a lash back, but from the posts I’ve been reading of yours, they mostly arn’t needed a simple PM can do the thick.

10

i probably wouldn’t pay because i dont really play mmo games (especially for money) but alot of people would.
but $40-50 is alot for a game if it is’t really really pro looking which i dont think the ge can do yet mabye when ogre gets finished but not yet.
but if you can do it and make it look pro yes people would buy it.

you can ignore me if you want i dont really care… :slight_smile:

11

Actually Sutabi, I think Social makes some good points. Dont get me wrong, I highly respect you, but the fact is, you are getting way ahead of yourself here.

Its fine to dream, and even plan a little for marketing in the future, but before you start planning prices, and TV commercials(joke!:p) you need to create your idea. Im not really sure how far along you are, but its hard to judge just how much you should price something until your close to the end of development.

Worry about making it before selling it. It has to be fun as hell before anyone will shell over cash for it.:wink:

Theres another problem with your plan…

So I was thinking of releasing it under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

Where in the would you gain resell right to entire models/animations/music/sounds/texture for that price?

You gotta be careful with that…If you dont limit some rights, than people will just take that content, re-package it, and then sell it for there own profit. Make sure you known exactly what your license to your game means from a legal stand point, and that it prohibits re-sell or re-distribution of the game.(that is, if you intend on going commercial)

Your price…does seem way too high. 5$ a month for the service sounds reasonable if its a great game and there are a few players to play with, but 40-50$ is way too much for the single player version. 10$ sounds more reasonable to me, and thats if your game is just absolutely awesome. Study the prices other indie developers set, you’ll notice that they next to never go above 20$, otherwise they wouldnt sell.

Not that making a sellable indie game with blender isnt possible, because it is. If its a great, innovative concept, really fun to play and it “feels” complete, and it runs well on most modern machines, then go for it! Otherwise, keep working, and I wouldnt get too consumed with price and marketing until those things are true.

Heres some links, hope they’re helpful:


http://www.playfirst.com/about/developer.html
http://gamedevs.realarcade.com/GameSubmission/faq.jsp
http://www.indiepath.com/
http://www.igf.com/index.html (the games which were nominated and won might give you some inspiration)

12

Can you give me a link to some of the games you already made? I would really like to play them and see your experience in action. Thanks.

Also, please understand that my earlier post was not written with the intent to hurt your feelings or “put you down”. It was simply my opinion, and I only gave it because you asked for it.

Although, you have to admit that you are definitelly overpricing this. Fireside, TomorrowMan, Plantperson and scaboots think so too from what I gather, so it’s not just my “evil” opinion.

I admit that I was a little angry, because you started a thread on determining a price of a product that you didn’t even make yet. I mean you didn’t even have a working demo, yet you already started setting ~$50 prices, and online fees. That’s why I said that you are “getting ahead of yourself”.

The entire thread looked like it was in dire need of a reality check, so I decided to give it one. That’s all.

It was nothing personal toward you as an individual. So relax, we are all friends here (or at least that’s how I feel).

TommorowMan>

I think your one of the only people left on theese forums who don’t assume my posts to be along the lines of “screaming hate crimes”, just because I write them in an upfront manner. I think Sutabi imagines me screaming at the keyboard and playing darts on a picture of his avatar when I post.

PS: Good luck with the ZENITH project. I’m a fan, can’t wait to play it.

13

I had written a large message, but decided it may have given away ideas that you may have been working on awhile. I’ll PM it to you.

Let me just say, best wishes and good luck but $40 seems steep for a small team’s game, and no $mega company’s marketing campaign. Gamers are spoiled these days.

Also, the creative commons issue - doesn’t make sense to expect to sell freeware??

Maybe sell just the online gaming. I think that has the best of a small chance.

14

Hahahaha… Dude ive never seen your work so i cant make any judgements but 50 dollars for a blender game?? I mean c’mon! I wont even pay that much for a commercial game, unless its like friggen “Halo good”. Be a bit more realistic here. I doubt anyone would buy it for that price. I dont doubt you have the skill or the coding know-how because from what I see people seem to respect you a lot.

You should at least have some development screenshots if you’re going to introduce a price so high.

15

I think you could make some decent games in the GE and then sell them for like 3 to 5 bucks or a pack of them for that price.

While OGRE would allow graphics to farther justify a higher price you do realize that 50 bucks is over the top. The only games I know of that are that price is high quality commercial games that takes a large team years to complete. I have never seen games made by one person sell at a price that high.

If there was a game made in the Blender GE for 50 bucks more likely people would rather buy Halo or Rise of Legends or one of those games for the same or lower price.

16

Heh, Social some of the guys have been here for quite awhile and have pretty good knowledge in and out of the Blender GE. Sutabi’s one of those guys. Some of those MMORPG posts I would say the same thing, but I choose not to mostly, cause making mistakes is how you learn. But for Sutabi on the other hand, :DI think he can pull it off.

I pretty much agree with what Tomorrowman said. $5 monthly is reasonable. But for a single player game with dreamcast type graphics, I’d say don’t charge over $20 as well, unless there’s revolutionary gameplay which would actually get the player to shell out the $40.

I think blender is going down that road where you could make a profitable game. Like Social said, blender’s structure is not quite there yet. I’m still not quite sure how you’d be able to get 1000-2000 people on your servers for the game before ever moving it over to pyogre. Saluk’s python networking tests haven’t nearly gotten near that number. :rolleyes:You have a monstrous task ahead of you.

…Looking forward to when snailrose’s implementations all fall into place.

Jason Lin

17

I’m clearly in a different situation and a bit less ambitious, but I would like to emphasize that the Blender GE can definitely be profitable if you find the right market. The maze game I created is currently selling for $14.95 a copy and is doing decently (9 copies sold in 9 days during the slow season). The price is experimental for now, and I may lower it, but I also think that it may be worth that amount for people who enjoy mazes. Blender was easily sufficient for a project of this sort, since the game doesn’t require lots of animation, action, and AI, just a program to allow modeling, texturing, and some basic logic bricks and Python scripting. If a game is interesting and engaging it doesn’t have to have tons of eye candy.

18

I think the best bet is to give the game away for free and charge the subscription. It’s a lot easier to hook people that way. Even give them one month free play. Do a sophisticated turn-based fight system so no one has an advantage, even modem users could play. Work on as much social cooperation as possible.

19

I’m in agreement with Social that you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. Regardless of your talent with the Blender GE, I don’t think any living person could make a commercially succesful MMORPG alone. Just look at Star Wars: Galaxies; it was developed by a team of dozens of highly experienced professionals and is still broken on many levels. Setting high goals for yourself is good, but setting humanly impossible ones is not. Maybe you should try something less ambitious?

20

??? FREE, heck i come from a 3rd world country (they tell me that any way, most of it ain’t) but if i worked my butt off it would never be for free.

prehaps a nocked down version, less levels or charactors or something, if its worth it (and less than $20) i most probly would buy it.

but at $50, eventhough i do a lot to support idie stuff, it must be worth it!