Selling spring content

[Saktoth]

Caydr brought this up most recently, im sure its been mentioned before, and i did have some guys contact me about 'selling CA' (Haha like i could if i wanted to). I told them if they wanted to, there is no reason they couldnt sell spring content, and offer the engine free as a part of the package. But that they wouldnt get people to sell the spring engine- AFAIK thats illegal, you cant un-gpl it all.

Firstly, is it legal to sell content for a GPL engine? Id assume so- Fang, Smoth, etc have most of their mods as private property (Though smoth GPL's some of his work) and if it is their personal property, then they could sell it couldnt they? (I know smoth technically couldnt as its not based on his IP...).

Secondly, how would the spring community react to someone selling a mod? If it was a well made, attractive mod with a lot of effort put in, would you buy it, would you think its okay but not buy it, or would you pirate it and spread it around the spring community just to piss them off and ensure spring content stays free-as-beer (even though even ATM, its not free-as-speech)?

Its not something im considering BTW...

[HeavyLancer]

If they sold a mod, then it would have to be of really good quality first off to sell. And it would have to have copyright protection and so on probably, which could have some issues. The easiest way would be to use a modified client to handle copy-protection and externally hosted servers. Basically, we're stalking about a completely stand-alone game here.

Oh, and I would reasonably expect them to put something back into the community to get goodwill. Such as bug-hunting and other work on the engine itself.

And lastly, if there was a commercial mod available, they would have to give it a good price. AU$99.95 (the standard price of games in Australia) is not a good price for such a thing. AU$10 on Steam or something like that would work.

[Beherith]

Wierd you should mention this, as it poses several issues. Lets assume, for the sake of the argument, that you would sell CA (not counting the fact that its still got quite a bit of OTA content in).
Also, lets assume an active playerbase on spring of 1000 people. This number is in line with the general consensus.

How many people do you think would purchase it? Seeing as what the ratio of CA vs non CA games are hosted, you would get at most one hundred people who would be likely candidates.

I agree with Lancer on 10$ being a realistic amount of money for a well developed, bug hunted, up to date mod.

Is it worth 1000$, to make a fragmented player base, of whom there wont even be enough people online at once to host a proper large team game?

Unless you wish to use that seed money for advertising, you not gonna get alot of return on it. Even dividing it between the CA devs would give the individual enough money to buy a decent graphics card. Chump change, imho.

I`m interested to hear what good, if any, you think can come out of this.

[Saktoth]

selling CA' (Haha like i could if i wanted to)
Its not something im considering BTW...

Firstly CA is GPL/CC. We couldnt sell it. This is ignoring the OTA thing you mentioned.
Secondly CA has several dozen contributors. It wouldnt be worth selling that as you said- i mean more something like EE, Gundam, mostly 1-man efforts.

This team that contacted me about working on/selling CA were semi-serious about it. They were a bunch of artists, mostly (not enough/programmers) who wanted to make money selling games and were looking for a way to do that. Given that most of the programming in Spring is done for you, i can see how such a group (or individual, given the sort of money we are talking about here) might want to use this project to sell content through.

Really though, looking at CA... CA, and most mods, recruit in-community. We are marketing it to the established player base. We get a few newbies but most CA players are people who played BA and switched. A commercial mod would be TA IP free and FINALLY able to be marketed to the public at large (Which spring needs so badly)- and have the capital and incentive to market it. That could be very good for the spring community- and it wouldnt create too much of a split. Sure, a free mod would have a larger playerbase, but we have a LOT of free mods already! Where is THEIR player base? They dont have the advertising, thats the problem.

I dont think this would be that great a money-making venture, i dont think its something id ever want to do myself, and i dont think most people here would even consider it.

But what are the legal, cultural, and moral implications of it happening?

[Beherith]

This team that contacted me about working on/selling CA were semi-serious about it. They were a bunch of artists, mostly (not enough/programmers) who wanted to make money selling games and were looking for a way to do that. Given that most of the programming in Spring is done for you, i can see how such a group (or individual, given the sort of money we are talking about here) might want to use this project to sell content through.

The first question is, do they have any capital to get the machine rolling? Because nowadays you have to make something pretty original and outright stunning to actually get a minmum critical mass of people, enough to sustain the process through word of mouth and, believe it or not: forum posts and new site submissions. And not just a in the range of at most 10-100 but orders of magnitude more.

The issue here is that you have to offer so much more than spring currently does. (side note: I think, that one of the reasons that spring doesnt have a growing player base, is that it has the steepest learning curve of ANY game I have yet to play. FFS I learned new commands and stuff after getting gold star! )

You could make it super easy and pretty, eg. what C&C turned into for its last incarnation, that might get you a lots of players with a fast turnover, once they figure out that the game can be won in 5 mins with a specific tactic.

Or you could go with the old spring way of offering a very complex system, that takes months to master, but wont attract the general gaming populace for that very reason. See why the wii is so popular? You can explain the rules of any of its games to a layman in under 5 minutes.

Enough negativity out of me, no more replies until I actually have something constuctive to add.

[smoth]

Nothing is near sellable and if bandai wanted to sell gundam rts all I would ask in return is some content and maybe some action figures .

[SwiftSpear]

Nothing is near sellable and if bandai wanted to sell gundam rts all I would ask in return is some content and maybe some action figures .

Smoth develops games on the barter system

[Nemo]

Eh. In terms of looks I feel like PURE or S44 or Gundam or SWS (and probably others) are sell-able. Whether people would actually pay for them is a different story (even if they're as deep and look nearly as good as a commercial game, people hugely resist selling things they feel they have a right to, ie mods.) The really funny part about the "A mod is only worth $10 AUD" comment is that individually mod makers have put in WAY more hours than any individual game dev on a commercial title, I would wager. I mean, what the hell. who are you to determine the value of this work when it's not all that different from a game most people happily pay way way more for? IN FACT - a higher price will actually contribute to people's perception of enjoyment and quality (for the arcade example: if you pay quarters and start playing an arcade game, you'll have more fun than if you played it for free, since you have a greater investment in it. also, since the game took your money and gave you nothing tangible in return, it stands to reason that you must be getting something for your money - namely enjoyment. thus your brain acts to resolve the conflict between paying and receiving nothing physical by making you feel like you're really enjoying the game).

so a game for 10AUD will likely just get sneered at - price as an indicator of quality. if it were up to me, I think I'd set the price of S44 (version 1.0, everything done, 20hours+ of singleplayer+tutorial, a smooth interface for all of it, ect) around $25 USD. It's still way cheaper than a new commercial game (usually 40-50 USD) but not so low that the perception of low quality would be a problem.

Before anything could be sold you'd have to 1) improve the GUI enough so that it looked good without any widget-ing and such 2) make a separate client/server with some kind of protection and smooth singleplayer interface 3) have at least 20 hours of single player content. With those three..yeah, I bet you could sell S44 or PURE or SWS or Gundam once smoth finishes the reworking of it, legality and angry communists aside.

[HeavyLancer]

The really funny part about the "A mod is only worth $10 AUD" comment is that individually mod makers have put in WAY more hours than any individual game dev on a commercial title, I would wager. I mean, what the hell. who are you to determine the value of this work when it's not all that different from a game most people happily pay way way more for? IN FACT - a higher price will actually contribute to people's perception of enjoyment and quality (for the arcade example: if you pay quarters and start playing an arcade game, you'll have more fun than if you played it for free, since you have a greater investment in it. also, since the game took your money and gave you nothing tangible in return, it stands to reason that you must be getting something for your money - namely enjoyment. thus your brain acts to resolve the conflict between paying and receiving nothing physical by making you feel like you're really enjoying the game).

so a game for 10AUD will likely just get sneered at - price as an indicator of quality. if it were up to me, I think I'd set the price of S44 (version 1.0, everything done, 20hours+ of singleplayer+tutorial, a smooth interface for all of it, ect) around $25 USD. It's still way cheaper than a new commercial game (usually 40-50 USD) but not so low that the perception of low quality would be a problem.

You seem to miss my point. It should be a realistic price for a mod. The AU$10 was an example. And a fair few people actually do pay attention and research stuff before they buy it. To them the $25 USD may seem like EA prices (I.E you pay full price for an underdeveloped/still-in-beta game) and be put off. I think it is best to avoid this argument and use discretion.
Or, do it the Radiohead way and have people pay the price they want for their music (or game in this case).

Oh and funnily enough, I get a lot more enjoyment out of Spring than I do from other full-version games I have legally purchased, such as UT2004 and Starcraft. The community might have helped in this regard.

[Forboding Angel]

Actually... Eventually I plan on selling Evolution for like 1 buck (to pay for the cost of printing the crap for the CD), however, that said, it will still be free under the non restrictive CC license. The only reason for selling it is to increase exposire, not because I want money. I could give a crap about the money, hell I would be perfectly happy if ppl read the back of the cd, checked it out online and got it for free. IMO, selling CC'd content is to garner exposure, not to generate income.

Hell, selling for a buck would be enough. The idea with selling in a store or storefront, is jsut to grab ppls attention who would not normally ever see the product, nor even attempt to look.

As a matter of fact, a computer store down the street from me has already agreed to put up a poster and sell printed CD's ($1). Like I said before, it's not about the money, it's about grabbing someone's attention.

Believe it or not, but "Hell of a deal" trumps "free" in many cases. It really makes no sense at all (to me anyway), but that's the way a lot of people think. Thank you capitalism.

[HeavyLancer]

Actually... Eventually I plan on selling Evolution for like 1 buck (to pay for the cost of printing the crap for the CD), however, that said, it will still be free under the non restrictive CC license. The only reason for selling it is to increase exposire, not because I want money. I could give a crap about the money, hell I would be perfectly happy if ppl read the back of the cd, checked it out online and got it for free. IMO, selling CC'd content is to garner exposure, not to generate income.

Hell, selling for a buck would be enough. The idea with selling in a store or storefront, is jsut to grab ppls attention who would not normally ever see the product, nor even attempt to look.

As a matter of fact, a computer store down the street from me has already agreed to put up a poster and sell printed CD's ($1). Like I said before, it's not about the money, it's about grabbing someone's attention.

I couldn't agree with you more sir.

[KDR_11k]

I don't think it's illegal to sell GPLed material, the "free" in Free Software refers to the freedom to modify, not the freedom from payment.

Sure, to make Spring look commercially acceptable there'd have to be some more design work (mostly graphical, i.e. well-painted textures on the UI and stuff) and of course the compatibility issues with newer hardware and ATI would have to be fixed but it's relatively minor IMO. It might be hard to make Spring look state-of-the-art but many second-rate RTSes don't manage to look that either.

Not sure how much I'd pay for a mod but I do know Valve regularly sells former mods as full games and that seems to be working out.

[AF]

It's stated clearly that you cannot charge for GPL software. You could charge for the CD case and the CD you burnt it on, and for distribution costs but the software itself must remain free, and you must always point the user to the original distributor/creator you got it from, as well as what changes you've made.

[theHive]

It's stated clearly that you cannot charge for GPL software. You could charge for the CD case and the CD you burnt it on, and for distribution costs but the software itself must remain free, and you must always point the user to the original distributor/creator you got it from, as well as what changes you've made.

Please read this (particularly High or low fees, and the GNU GPL)and re-evaluate your statement.
Selling Free Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

[AF]

Please re-evaluate your correction. I stated that the software must remain free, however you can charge for distribution.

So to clarify:

It's stated clearly that you cannot charge for GPL software. You could charge a million dollars for the 30 cents CD case and the free CD you burnt it on, and $2 trillion for the $1.99 distribution costs but the actual software itself must remain free, and you must always point the user to the original distributor/creator you got it from, as well as what changes you've made.

There's nothing wrong with charging an arm and a leg for gpl software but you cannot charge for ownership of the software itself, and there's nothing stopping the end user redistributing it for free.

[theHive]

Please re-evaluate your correction. I stated that the software must remain free, however you can charge for distribution.

So to clarify:

It's stated clearly that you cannot charge for GPL software. You could charge a million dollars for the 30 cents CD case and the free CD you burnt it on, and $2 trillion for the $1.99 distribution costs but the actual software itself must remain free, and you must always point the user to the original distributor/creator you got it from, as well as what changes you've made.

There's nothing wrong with charging an arm and a leg for gpl software but you cannot charge for ownership of the software itself, and there's nothing stopping the end user redistributing it for free.

OK, sorry. Your point makes more sense with the additions.

I misinterpreted what you meant.

[Saktoth]

+1 to Forb, its sad that people would rather buy a game than get a free one though. We need to be thinking about these sorts of things though, recruiting from within the community is a dead-end.

Anyway, if you can charge a trillion dollars for the CD case, can you not charge a trillion dollars for the models, scripts, and other copyrighted material, and offer the engine for free?

Isnt that the same deal?

[Forboding Angel]

Depends on your Copyright of your material.


For example the License that Evolution is under allows me to sell my content, allows anyone else to modify my content and package it as they wish, the only stipulation is that no one else try to sell anything that I have made (Without written permission from myself). Otherwise it can be redistributed, modified, whatever you can think of you can do to it. As I said, the only restriction is that no one else tries to sell the content and if they use it all they have to do is put somewhere (that is at least somewhat regularly seen, like maybe in an installer readme, etc etc etc - from the way I read the license) where they got it from.

In my opinion this is the best way for me to do things, because I want people to be able to use stuff that I make and be able to do their own thing with it, without having to worry about me going all argh/gpl on their asses, and the fact that it makes a mention that I was the original creator, which is plenty for me.

I have been discussing the recruiting thing quite a lot lately. I do not try to pull people from other mods to "Convert" to evolution. Imo that's jsut stupid, if they want to sometimes play a game of evolution, then play a game of it... I don't see why I should be trying to make some sort of religious followers out of people that probably came to the engine because of "TA in 3d".

Now, sometimes I will spaem main with updater links when I want a game, but on the other hand, I'm not really advertising. I want to advertise to people that know nothing about spring. I have broken my back to make the game simple and userfriendly to play, as well as have a lot of unique stuff to the game (a lot of content is still being worked on). As I see it, a full fledged attractive website, and even some advertising in local stores and stuff is the way to go. Mebbie I can score a few small scale interviews with little emagizine groups, etc etc etc.

Coming back around to the point...

What Saktoth is saying is exactly right. I can walk up to someone hand them a cd and they will never look at it. That same person sees a game for a buck in the comp store, is somewhat interested, and will buy it (cause it's only a buck right? Even if it sucks it was pretty much worth the money), that person will then take it home,install,play. Why? Because even at only a dollar they have a small investment in it.

I remember buying an old ass copy of xenophage for 3 dollars from the store in question (B.E.Tek Computers in case you're curious - http://www.betek.com). Even though it didn't seem that interesting, I still spent a few hours playing it because for 3 bucks, it was a ncie little distraction. Because I had such a small investment in the product, it didn't really matter if I liked it a lot or not.

In the end a lot of this is psychological stuff, but it is also fact for the majority of humanity. Go Capitalism

[Nemo]

You seem to miss my point. It should be a realistic price for a mod. The AU$10 was an example. And a fair few people actually do pay attention and research stuff before they buy it. To them the $25 USD may seem like EA prices (I.E you pay full price for an underdeveloped/still-in-beta game) and be put off. I think it is best to avoid this argument and use discretion.
Or, do it the Radiohead way and have people pay the price they want for their music (or game in this case).

Oh and funnily enough, I get a lot more enjoyment out of Spring than I do from other full-version games I have legally purchased, such as UT2004 and Starcraft. The community might have helped in this regard.

No you!

The stuff I'm talking about aren't just random BS I'm spewing. Price theory and cognitive dissonance are in fact real and not particularly recent ideas from economics and psychology, respectively. Price acts as an indication of quality. If you set it too low, there WILL be a section of people who don't buy it because the low price indicates low quality.

Additionally, it seems to me that EA's tendency to charge high prices for very buggy games is still working out just fine for them (given that they're one of the richest game companies..). I'm reasonably sure that a ridiculous number of people bought battlefield 2 and 2142 despite the fact that their initial releases were pretty unfinished. And given that an EA price is around $50USD, charging $25USD doesn't strike me as unreasonable in the least. I mean, seriously...10AUD is the price of a single meal in a medium-crappy restaurant. The effort invested in that sandwich and drink or whatever is maybe 10 minutes. The effort invested in a mod is often in the thousands of hours if you combine various people from the team (no, I'm not kidding). Besides, even if you did set the initial price at a point where too many people were unwilling to buy it, you can always go lower. However, once you've lowered a price you really can't raise it (especially in an internet setting where raising the price will just attract more attention from pirates). I suppose if you factor the pirating problem in, then a lower price may make more sense (especially given that it likely will be small enough to distribute fairly easily via torrent), but I doubt it's significant enough to justify the impression of low quality (since then people won't even bother to torrent it, they'll just ignore it...).

What forb says is true - you will probably garner more purchases in terms of raw number by a super mega cheap price. However, given how little of an investment was made in the game, the game has to be that much better in order to merit the player sticking with it, whereas with a $25 charge they have some personal incentive to keep playing (the aforementioned cognitive dissonance), and thus you'd probably have more success as far as building and maintaining a playerbase with a higher price.

As for not enjoying SC or UT2004 as much as spring, that's likely the result of time investment being more valuable to you than the monetary investment of buying the thing. And using your own experience to try to prove a general theory false is usually a poor way of going about things

PS you can sell the content spring uses as well as whatever its shipped on. so if you distribute it online you could charge a bazillion dollars for bandwidth fees and a million more for your mod, but you couldn't charge people for spring itself.

[CarRepairer]

Before the days of the internet, in the era of the BBS, I used to get $5 shareware games from any random store (even supermarkets carried them) and I'd have a blast playing those games for a long time before they got boring. Well worth the investment for a kid who has only a few bucks in his pocket. Better bang for the buck than going to the movies for instance.

Times have changed of course but you can still walk into a supermarket and see those same types games near the cash register next to the magazines and candy bars. So it hasn't changed too much.