Grimrock

Hello All,

I would like to suggest some sort of Dungeon shop along the lines of the Apple App Store. My reasoning for this is as follows:

I don't think it is remotely fair that someone is supposed to spend perhaps weeks or months designing an elaborate dungeon in their own time out of the goodness of their heart only to have to give it away for nothing - especially as many people who download free stuff then seem to enjoy nothing more than to moan about it on forums and depress the hell out of the designer. I love dungeon designing, and spent many months crafting a huge 20+ level dungeon for Return To Chaos (a Dungeon Master clone) only to eventually give up on the realisation that I was wasting my time because nobody would appreciate it and I'd get nothing out of it. The dungeon was a work of love - all the puzzles were elaborately clever and worked out in detail on paper first, I even pushed the abilities of the editor to the limits to create, for example, a magic room which was present on each level. You had to solve puzzles to gain access to it, of course, but the room moved magically between levels so that you could leave unwanted stuff in it and find it waiting for you on the next level when you found the entrance to the magic room again.

Obviously, it's great to give away things and create stuff for others - I've always been quite altruistic, myself - but we're not all super rich types earning fortunes from software, and it's hard to justify spending months designing something on my own time and then just giving it away to promote a piece of software which is making it's programmers rich. It's just not fair. I currently struggle to earn half of the amount I have to pay in bills every month with the recession, and simply cannot afford to eat let alone spend my time writing something for nothing and giving it to people when I know that writing the same thing for a software company freelance would be making me £50 an hour!!!

So, Only Human, why not set up a Dungeon shop where people can either give their dungeons away for nothing if they want, or charge something small like a pound or two for their work. Like the Apple App Store, you would keep a portion of the profits and pass the rest on to the designer. You could also take payment through PayPal to automate the process and have to do nothing yourself but watch your cuts come in.

Please remember that many of us are struggling to live day to day (My father died and left me a 5 bedroom house with enormous bills way beyond my means) and letting us have something for our work promoting your software would actually be a very nice thing to do. I assume that you would have some sort of requirements in place so that people couldn't just upload a one level dungeon and charge for it - but that would be for you to decide how the pricing could work.

Heh, can tell you now, it will never happen. Can you think of another game where user-created content is sold for the user's profit?

The best you can hope for is a "tip jar" format where you include a paypal link with your dungeon for anyone who wanted to reward you. (This would be open to abuse though - "Tip me to get the combination to continue" etc.) What's the dev's policy on this?

If it's any consolation, any money you would make wouldn't be much compared to the time and effort invested. And that's it really, just like making music and art, people are in it for the love, for the joy of creating something amazing, not just the fastest way to monetize things. Imagine the nightmare of poorly tested, overpriced dungeons - and all the headache of coding, running and policing that. By making the reward solely peer approval and personal satisfaction, people's motivations to make something great are actually inspired.

I (and I'm sure a lot of the community and devs) really believe that the sandbox needs to be free to bring out the best content. How many $2 dungeons do you think users will stomach before getting tired? Economic hardship goes both ways! How many people would never even make it past the first entry hurdle of paying for any extra dungeons?

Good luck making 50 pound an hour for basic level design work! Again, I imagine this kind of work pays the bills but most people are in it because they love doing it rather than to get rich. If your skills are worth that much then you should be able to find a job (or create your own job!) with them.

Sorry to hear about your father, hope you find a way to make ends meet!

Disasterrific wrote:What's the dev's policy on this?

Our modding terms say that you can't sell mods for profit and distribution of mods must be free of charge.

Bad idea.
I hate the concept of monetizing player-generated content- it sounds like something Activision\EA would pull.

petri wrote:

Disasterrific wrote:What's the dev's policy on this?

Our modding terms say that you can't sell mods for profit and distribution of mods must be free of charge.

So a voluntary paypal link would be okay?
What about if someone made an area that you needed a password to enter and asked for money for that?
I really don't want to see that sort of thing happen...

Disasterrific wrote:

petri wrote:

Disasterrific wrote:What's the dev's policy on this?

Our modding terms say that you can't sell mods for profit and distribution of mods must be free of charge.

So a voluntary paypal link would be okay?
What about if someone made an area that you needed a password to enter and asked for money for that?
I really don't want to see that sort of thing happen...

No, it's not okay to charge any money.

Well, I think it's terrible that we live in a world where big companies make loads of money and the small people have to scrape together pennies to live. If I was a software company selling games, I'd be encouraging people to sell content for my games as long as I made my cut. Clearly, I won't be spending any time building the 50 level superdungeon I otherwise would've done

50 pounds an hour, by the way, is a pretty standard rate for self employed computer developers. I charge this rate when I develop, but I work in a niche database software market and you probably get a couple of jobs a year paying a large one off sum and then nothing for months, so it doesn't pay the bills. I actually know several people who charge 100+ pounds an hour and have no problem getting work - they work, of course, in slightly more mainstream programming. I was not, of course, suggesting that anyone could make 50 quid an hour for designing levels - unless, of course, they work for super-uber software giant incorporated.

It always amazes me that people don't want to pay for anything these days. When I see something that sounds good on the Apple App Store, I just grab it without even thinking about the price - it's only going to be 99p or something and if I bought a similar product in a shop it would cost 49.99 - so it wouldn't even occur to me to consider the price. If it turns out to be useless, I wouldn't even worry about it - what's 99p, about 15 minutes work on minimum wage? Who cares? And I don't have any money to spend. If I see one more person on the App Store saying they won't buy something for 99p unless they get a free demo first, or demanding their money back because they don't like it, I shall scream. Most of these developers are like me, somebody trying to make ends meet. I had somebody buy a software product from me a couple of months ago, which made me happy because it paid some bills, and then they demanded their money back saying that somebody had used their credit card without permission and PayPal just took the money out of the bank and crippled me for the month.

OnlyHuman - case in point. A company just jumping straight in with "our terms and conditions say" without even thinking about how unfair the terms and conditions might be to the little man. We are expected to read through 60 pages of T&Cs these days (which nobody does, of course) and the law is entirely on the side of the big companies over the small man. Surely it should be around the other way - companies who make millions every year should be forced to help small people who make minimum wage and can't afford to eat.

Moan over. Back to struggling to live

I really didn't get the answer for this (and I'm sure there are people wondering this one too): Are voluntary PayPal links okay? This way those who really want, can drop few pennies for the modder, but it's not necessary at all. And how about this: Is it okay to put your download behind adf.ly links to get some minimal income from the ads? Of course, it would be more than good if modder also provided a link without it, so the mod/add-on can always downloaded for free (which is how it is in rules/agreement/policy/legal-thing), but people who want, can support the modder a little with small things like adf.ly links or PayPal.

I've seen this done for Minecraft mods and texture-packs. That way modders can get that very small income, mainly to just buy their beer or two for creating something enjoyable for the community to use for free, compensation for their work, if community chooses to do so (like I've said before, it's all how the downloader feels like, FREE is the way to go too if one wants it that way). It doesn't get anyone rich, unless community is HUGE and mod is very popular among masses.

So, incase I've been unclear: Everything is free like it should, but supporters will support if they want to do so for their own free will.

I'm considering designing a dungeon myself but I want to do it for the fun of the creation process and the payment of knowing other people enjoy playing through it.

I sympathize with you regarding having little money. If this is your primary concern however, and considering you're a programmer, perhaps you should create a game from scratch and sell it. It's more work but you would have complete control.

SharinaDarkstar wrote:OnlyHuman - case in point. A company just jumping straight in with "our terms and conditions say" without even thinking about how unfair the terms and conditions might be to the little man.

I suppose you meant almost human, and I find it funny that you imply that a 4-person startup is one of the "big boys" =)

It's their sandbox, they make the rules, and I totally see why they don't want other people exploiting their hard work. If you don't like it.. well.. code your own? =)