what is tdv? i don't think i've heard of it. follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982
On 6/13/2015 9:40 AM, john wrote:
I'll do my best to answer each of your points below: Game comparison: I have no clue. I haven't played mainstream games, and really pay them little attention, so have no idea how to compare. However, what I've seen leads me to say something like TDV is relatively close to mainstream - its got story, its got multiplayer, and its got other stuff to do. I'd also put Swamp in that box, especially once you start involving player-written campaigns in the equation. If there were more of those out there, it'd probably be pretty close to mainstream titles. For the rest of your points, I think its important to point out that what's being discussed here is a number of developers, not just two or three, banding together with the intent of getting a product out the door. We're not talking one loan dev doing everything - we're talking several, with community support for every aspect of the job. Finances: If we made a game a truly community project and then went ahead and published a list of things we needed to make it work and their prices for the community to contribute on, as well as pitching in ourselves, I think we could probably raise more money than you think. $100 is a lot of money, but there are probably a couple people out there who'd be willing to send in that much, as well as several others who'd be fine sending in $20 for the project. I'd also like to note that if you make it your intent to make a project low budget, you can still come up with something high quality without spending $5000 on sounds and acting. I'm two years into my own project, and while I certainly wouldn't call it mainstream quality, my total budget (including bgt because I'm being generous) has been... $40, total. $10 for a sound library, and $30 for the bgt license. Of course I haven't gotten everything done (not even close), but every step of the way I'm trying to find ways to use existing or free resources, rather than spending hundreds of dollars on commercial libraries. Time: two points here. 1: even large companies take years to make those games, also. Its not as if they can crank them out in six months, at least not from what I've heard. 2: Yeah, you're right. Its going to take a long time for us to make a really big and high quality game. We'll tell the community that before we go ahead and take their money - something like "please understand that this project is expected to take at least five years before anything is even remotely available for beta." Compensation: this is a community-supported project, built and worked on by the community, every sep of the way. People have already contributed to build the game, it'd be completely unethical to then turn around and tell them you wanted more money for a project that they've been a part of almost as much as you. That said, developers would be spending a lot of time on this - a donation button is perfectly appropriate. You've also mentioned the subject of a common programming interface in the past - I think that would have to be something determined only once the team of developers was assembled. Compromises would have to be made, of course - its pointless to say "I want to write this game in language x" if only two developers in the community know that language at all. There's just no way to figure out what would work before those who were going to do the writing were all there and able to say how comfortable they were with a given interface. -------------------------------------------------- From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 2:03 To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org> Subject: Re: [Audyssey] info AudioGames Game Engine Hi Mohsin , Honestly most of our games seem more on par with mainstream games from 20 years ago rather than 10 to 15 years ago. I'd say comparing our games to Sega, Nintendo, or any other games from 10 to 15 years ago is pretty conservative as I happen to own a number of console games from 2000 to 2005 and a lot of them are far superior to any audio game I know of in terms of audio, graphics, game play, etc. So the question at hand is what to do about it. It is all well and good to plead for better and more advanced audio games. It is even alright to encourage our developers to build better and more complex games. However, until certain issues have practical solutions the audio games industry isn't going anywhere. First, is finances. Our audio game developers are not multi-million dollar companies with lots of money to pay out on royalties for sounds, music, and top notch acting. So one way you can accomplish your goal of better audio games is by helping us find ways to finance our game development. People have tried kickstarter and crowd funding with mixed success. Others have tried taking preorders and not managed to raise the funds they really needed. There are ways of razing money but so far none of the usual ways were too successful at sponsoring an audio game for such a limited market as ours. Second, time it takes to develop a very complex game. Now, obviously if more advanced game engines like Unity were accessible that would drastically cut down the time and effort it takes to create an audio game, but the fact of the matter is such an engine does not exist for audio game developers. Most have to put blood sweat and tears into a creation even with a tool like BGT making it a long and drawn out process to put together a simple side-scroller like Q9 let alone something as complex as Call of Duty, Assassin Creed, or Mass Effect. Until we have a method and means of creating bigger and complex games without taking years to create a game I don't see anyone really doing so. Its not that they don't want to, but that the method and means just isn't there. The problem comes back to time management. If we have a five year period is it better for a developer to spend that entire five year period developing one massively complex game or perhaps writing five smaller arcade games. Those desiring a bigger more complex game would ask that he or she spend the time on a bigger and better game, but it might be more beneficial for the community as a whole to have five smaller and less complex games. Then, there is the issue of the money. If a developer is a commercial developer he or she will make more money off five or six smaller games than he or she will ever make off of one big complex game. The financial returns on an Assassin Creed or Call of Duty just isn't there because there aren't enough blind gamers out there to support such a game financially. In summary what I am hearing from threads like this is a lot of "I wants." How about some solid and constructive ideas to resolve the difficulties of developing such a game and we will see if it is possible. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
--- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
