So the idea that has been floating around is to have some higher profile games to be sold on tdc. This would do 2 things, give the author of the game some rewards back for all the hard work that was put into a game but also this would help support the site itself.
If this would ever happen in the first place TDC would still be 98% a free site you would prob not even know anything changed apart from the fact the following:
Take for example Stevens turning the tide game would now contain a "Buy me now and support the site" button under the download link, the buy me now button would bring you to the "bmt micro" payment site options were the author gets paid and tdc receives a small cut. When you would submit your game to our site you would have the abbility to check mark the "Bmt micro affilate" mark so the buy me now button would appear on the downloads page.
This would only be for people who were already going to sell their games in the first place or already doing so. Now we are just helping them get more coverage and get a small cut for it to to help keep the site alive, 2 big plusses for both sides.
What do you think about this? Feel free to way in your opinion!
Edited by an Administrator
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I think it's a fantastic idea! But the problem is that there aren't many games with sell-worthy quality, and quite a few TDCers are pre-job age.
Perhaps with the games that are already shareware or sellware (commercial? Whatever you call it. ) we could set up a test system that does what was said and then bump those games over to a special separate page. If it works out well we could start egging people into making good games to sell.
For now, those games could just be in their own category, until we get more.
(Like racing, fighting, rpg, ... just "commercial" or something like that)
Your just jealous that you're not as awesome as me.
(And my megaman avatar )
Well, my idea was that there are a lot of visitors who are not clickers, but are here just to play the games. They are our built-in audience. They are the same people who go to freeware sites (the ones with all our great games on it, where they make money because 50% of the site is made of ads). These people might pay a bit for quality. You could start a section of high quality games where games are sold for $5 or $10 or so.
And of course you'd need quality control. Have a few people judging which games make the cut and which don't, have them make suggestions of how to make the games more sellable too.
Just be sure to know, introducing this will change this place more than you might expect.
i think 5$ - 10$ is a bit excessive. keep in mind that unless its already a commercial game, most of them would be handed out for free.
if you can get the legal issues sorted out with selling games, giving a cut to the author, taxes, etc., i'd say 1$ - 5$ would be more appropriate.
and hayo your idea is to target the non user audience who comes just to play games. a side affect would be that we would have to pay as well. i think any games sold should be able to be bought with tdc points as well for those who are members. 100 points = a dollar. games would cost active members 100 to 500 points.
this would call into question the structure of the points system. it can take months to accumulate 500 points for a relatively moderate user.
I love the idea, but as OMC mentioned there really aren't many games that are worth selling. Games like Turning the tide, Faerie Solitare, Forgotten Realms: First colony and the like are being sold AND put to TDC, but none of the profits go to the site (Which in all respects is okay.). Games like TNSS could be sold though...
another thing is DRM. how far would we take this system? most lurkers would probably search for the game on google before they pay anything to see if they could find it elsewhere for free. and once bought and downloaded anyone can just upload it elsewhere.
i think this is a neat idea though, and it would probably be the thing that motivates me the most to finishing a quality game. i wouldnt mind dropping a dollar or two for a good game. but it had better be a pretty good game. not the average play for 30 minutes then delete it from my hdd kind of game that is generally found on tdc.
Well, I never suggested the members would not have to pay. I just pointed out the fact that we don't have just piss-poor clickers here. A selling platform would be good for the community, it will give an extra impulse to quality.
You would have a section where you only find games of quality, the ones that would be commercial now if it wasn't so damn hard to sell games all by yourself. So not the average click game, hence $5/$10.
I wanted to use this idea for GB but TDC has a much bigger audience of a certain kind of people.
And just to make it clear, I also didn't suggest selling stuff that is up for free elsewhere. I mean and actual selling platform. Not selling freeware games .
understood but i still think 5 - 10$ is excessive, especially for such a niche game site. think of the itunes app store. you can sell a game up at 15$ but if no ones ever heard of it you arent going to make money. if its a dollar and its something that looks interesting you'll make money as people are more likely to drop next to nothing on something not knowing what it is. you cant expect the average person to take tdc's word that its a "quality" game.
I personally think it's a brilliant idea to try and sell some of the games - perhaps also graphics and audio too, since we have some really talented non-coders here.
We would have to ask, how can the community fund itself? How can we work TOGETHER to make something that is profitable for everyone? A game would need to be good enough to be sold, so it would need to be a community effort I think.
How about this - suppose each project has 100 credits assigned to it. So if you do it all yourself, the full 100 credits goes to you. However, you may work on the idea that you want your project to be awesome. So you describe it to Hayo and say 'look, I need some graphics for this awesome project - I'll give you 20 credits for it'.
Next you figure you need sound, so you go to Pineapple and say 'I can do effects but I need some tracks - 20 creds for 3 cool trance tracks!'
Next you have a problem with the code and have to ask Muz for help. You offer him 10 credits if he'll make you a quick example.
This gives a split like this:
CR
20 To Hayo
20 To The Pineapple
10 to Muz
50 left for you as the designer
---
100 total credits allowed for the project
So you decide you can ultimately sell the game for £10 per copy, and you sell 35 copies.
TDC takes 50%, so for each copy TDC takes £5, Hayo and Pineapple both get £1, Muz gets 50p and you get £2.50.
So for all copies it becomes £175 for TDC, £35 for Hayo, £35 for Pineapple, £17.50 for Muz and £87.50 for you.
You COULD have chosen to go it alone and get the full 100 credits for yourself, but unless you're super-talented, you run the risk of it being not as good and therefore not selling as well as a team effort.
Personally, i'm not keen on the idea of selling games. A part of me just feels that the ability to download and play freeware games is one of things that makes TDC so appealing. Once this site starts putting price tags up, it'll start to drift away from freeware waters and swim with the sharks of commercial gaming. People will begin to ask themselves questions like "Is this game really worth the money?", and average users may walk away from a perfectly good title because of it.
Not to mention, if someone really wants to sell their homemade games for money, I could probably count on one hand the number of people who would be willing to split their profits with TDC. Said people would probably be just as willing to offer a simple donation to the site as well. I just can't see how it would help much.
I hate to be pessimistic about something like this... but I have to be honest about my doubts. I hope i'm dead wrong, but then again, I might not be. =/
The average games (90% of TDC) would still be free. Just the games that have commercial potential get sold. Unlike when the author sells it by himself, the game will get a lot of coverage because TDC has way more visitors than the authors site.
I have issue with having some sort of DRM. Pirates will always find a way around it.
I also have an issue with splitting profits with TDC. I think DeadmanDines was the only person to give an example with percentages, and it was 50%. I think 50% is a bit excessive for a do-nothing third party.
Isn't there also something in the standard licenses that you're not allowed to sell klik games without Clickteam's permission?
I have issue with having some sort of DRM. Pirates will always find a way around it.
The idea of DRM (for me anyway) is to stop Joe Bloggs just sending it to his mates. Pirates will always crack your DRM. It's a balance between having just enough to stop the average user and not having too much to annoy honest Joe Bloggs.
I also have an issue with splitting profits with TDC. I think DeadmanDines was the only person to give an example with percentages, and it was 50%. I think 50% is a bit excessive for a do-nothing third party.
I think you've totally missed the point of this thread.
Isn't there also something in the standard licenses that you're not allowed to sell klik games without Clickteam's permission?
In the standard version there is. In the Dev version there isn't. In the standard version you need to add in a CT logo or something.
The entire idea of selling higher quality games on TDC would be to get people to help donate to TDC while getting something in return. I'm sure that when we submit our games, it would still be an option whether we wanted to even have it check out as a potential selling game, regardless of the quality of the game. Plus, I don't believe $5 or $10 is excessive. If anyone is going to pull out their credit or debit card to buy anything online, anything under $15 is usually not going to be subject to much discrimination. The trick is getting people who actually want to pull out their credit or debit card, or getting kids under 18 to convince their parents to let them.
Rather than buying games though, I'm sure we'd both shut some people up and help TDC out a bit by creating something of a credit system where you buy points. The points currency would be accurate though in that you wouldn't have to buy a lot more points than you intend to spend on a single game. If you want a game that's 10 points, you can buy a point package of 10 points. This also gives TDC a way to bring in more immediate money for when people buy points but don't use them right away. When people go and spend points on games, than you have a system that calculates the dollar value of half of the points spent on the game, and adds it to their account. If at the end of the month, they make over a specific amount of money, they can have it sent to them. This way we can have a minimum balance of how much money someone makes before TDC is obligated to handing it out. This also helps TDC keep funds in their hands to run the site.
Also, you're allowed to sell games made in MMF 1.5 Standard and MMF2 Standard. You just need to include Clickteams logo as part of the agreement. No permission or royalties needed.
Yes, that's all. You have the logo in the game. People who make commercial-level games will be aware of this already.
EDIT: I really like your idea Brandon, the credits and then payback later. But if it's not automated to send the money immediately to the creators, that's a lot of moolah going through TDC's hands and could potentially lead to some messes. (though admittedly nothing big) Particularly if bills are paid but someone didn't get paid correctly beforehand. Are the head admins comfortable with that? Site coding hiccups are all ok when nobody's money is on the line...
I'm sure many of you have run across this before but I think any Rev. Anthony at Destructoid does a good job of inspiring those of us who hope their is commercial viability for small indie games.
I think it is a good idea. Thus the one who said 50% that is really too much. 5-25% percent is more likely for the site. But then the site should consider making legal and things stuff to make this work. Basicly making a way to pay off the creator -s. And that seems unlikely to me, since there are a lot of other sites who sell games like popcap and alike who are more popular and were made exactly for that purpose. But i am all go for this idea. Since the market of small games is increasing.
And for those who are saying about that their games will be cracked and that is problem its really idiotic to say that, i mean blizzard games get cracked probably the soonest than any other, as with most good games. So if your game is cracked that probably means its good. There are always people that doesnt have the means or the money to buy games, or wish to test games before they buy them.
If you have standard version of mmf2 you only need clickteam logo in intro screen. You can read it in mmf2 help - runtime agreement. And you can sell it.
And for those who are saying about that their games will be cracked and that is problem its really idiotic to say that, i mean blizzard games get cracked probably the soonest than any other, as with most good games. So if your game is cracked that probably means its good. There are always people that doesnt have the means or the money to buy games, or wish to test games before they buy them.
I'm saying that DRM, in general, is just retarded. There is no system that is perfect. The best DRM platform I've seen is on Steam and XBLA. All you have to do is be online to play the game (or in the case of XBLA games, be playing on the Xbox that purchased the game.) Everything else? Either DRM bad enough where it doesn't stop pirates at all but still punishes the people who bought the game, delays pirates until they can circumvent the system but still punishes the people who legitimately bought the game, or completely fucks the end user's system (as with SuckROM that EA is so keen on using).
So let's say that Klik games do use the Steam style of DRM, where you just have to be online to validate your copy of the game. Is such a system really worth investing the time and money into developing an authentication server? Will the profits of the game (or the money from the developers pocket) offset the cost of maintaining a server (bandwidth included)?
There's more to DRM than just stopping people from redistributing your game. I think it's stupid to incorporate DRM on such small games, for more reasons than I gave. (I'm writing a more lengthy post, and DRM is one of the topics I cover. I also go into more detail about the three points I mentioned in my previous post.)
I do think the admins would need to come up with a portfolio of ideas and then talk to an accountant about the legal implications, since they would become a kind of business. So it's all good fun. But yeah, the suggestion of 50% was just for illustrative purposes, I dunno what they would try charging really.
The best bet in my opinion is having users whom have commercial titles be offered the chance to give their ref feral code information, just like Steve mentioned, We do it at Gamesare with BMTmicro and it has bee proven effective...
Submission of games proceeds as normal, if a submitter has a commercial title and provides TDC with their affiliate codes, then not only do they get the game posted, but it could also be posted with a buy link, and better positioning on the site. They get something and TDC makes a bit of money, and this method does not require a ton of revamping and fits well into the current system
DRM is a waste of time. Only about 10% of people pirate anyways, and DRM just annoys people. It only works for about a week until pirates can hack it anyway. Spore became the most pirated game of 2008 just because of its annoying DRM.
Just sell the Klik games and media and then you'll be fine. I really like the Idea. I mean, TDC + Clickteam already gives the author lots of coverage and this will make even more coverage. And if ads generate money based on the amount of people who see them, then more people will see them and generate more money. It's win-win.
And **** it, people are willing to pay $10-$15 dollars for computer games that are **** so why not awesome Klik games? They don't even need to be good to be bought!
If someone is selling their came with BMT Micro, the author can still sell the game as they please on their own but the TDC can post a affiliate link on the its. If the game is bought on the tdc some profit goes to both the author and the site, something to look into for sure.
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EDIT: I just watched the video and I agree with that guy. I only wish I had a job, then I would donate money.
I couldn't edit as replies were already made.
This is such a tough topic to comment on and i honestly cannot (yet) see a way out of this, though most people have already offered some in-depth ideas that could work. I'll keep thinking...
I don't like the idea of TDC turning into a selling platform. I have several reasons for not liking the idea, and I also have several suggestions to make such an idea more feasible.
Selling the Games
I take issue with selling games because for most people, it is just a hobby. Being just a hobby, there are a great many games that are garbage that are on the site. There are a select few games that I find would be worth paying for, and a bit more that are worth having on the site. If you let people start selling games, then you start running into the issue of quality control (QC). When you start doing QC, two things happen: Better quality games pop up more frequently; Users with lower quality games start to get offended. Another issue with QC is that there has to be some standard for approval, such as a judging panel or several benchmarks. How do the judges, benchmarks, or whatever the criteria may be, get chosen? Can those judges/benchmarks/etc be relied upon to complete the task? A final issue I see with QC is that it must be implemented. If it isn't, then any schmoe with a crappy game will sell it. It would be good for supporting the site, but equally (if not worse) as bad for the site's reputation.
Personally, I think a quality control system would work as follows: An author makes a project page for their game. From the project page, as an admin, they are able to purchase a license from the TDC store (using points) that lets them sell that project; This license would have to cost more than the amount of points given for starting a project page, perhaps 250 points. Then, as the game is completed, the retail version is submitted to a panel of judges who play, review, and grade the game in question. If the game passes, then it is put up on the site for an appropriate amount. If the judges deem it as being a bad game, but able to meet their criteria, then the author may go back and revise their game for resubmission. If the judges say the game is absolute garbage, then the game is rejected for commercial use and a percentage of the points (60%, for example) used to acquire the license are refunded.
Here's what the proposed QC system ideally accomplishes: Users are invited to participate on the site more often, as they are required to start a project page for their game to buy a license to sell it. As they need DC points to buy the license, and more points than starting a project awards, they will need to partake in other ways to get the points to fund their license; Posting on the forum, submitting articles, etc. This can lead to unnecessary spamming, but points are removed when posts/threads are deleted anyways (right?). Now, because they have a license, they're granted a spot in a queue for the judging process. It's obvious what the judging process is for. If their game is denied, for being garbage and not worth resubmitting or whatever, then the user only gets a fraction of their points refunded from buying the license. What this reduced refund does is encourage people to produce the best games they can. If they purposely submit crap, then they have to spend more time on the site in order to be able to purchase another license.
DRM
I take issue with DRM for two simple reasons: It sucks; It doesn't work. DRM, in it's best incarnation, works by validating your copy of the game that you purchased, whenever you start the game up; You just have to be online to validate your copy. Steam does this, and for the most part it works. The issue with this "best method" is that when the Steam authentication servers go down, you can't play your game. When Steam finally goes offline, you can't play any of the games you bought. When you don't have internet access, you can't play of the games you bought. Another "best method" for DRM exists for the Xbox 360. You buy a game (or premium content), download it, and then you can play it, online or offline. At it's core, XBL's DRM just provides you with two licenses to play the content: One for the Xbox that the content was purchased on, and one for the gamertag that was used to make the purchase. A problem with this method is that you can share the content with one friend by buying the content on their Xbox using your gamertag, granting them the "box license" while you get the "gamertag license." In a way, I'd say this method is better than Valve's method. You can continue to play your content long after the authentication servers are gone, and you still access the content if you're playing on another Xbox.
But DRM goes beyond it's implementation on the user. Sure, games can be authenticated however you want, but there's still something missing from the equation: The server to do the authenticating. How many people are willing to buy a server, set it up, and code a DRM system for it? Granted, one game developer only has to buy a server once. But will the profits of the game offset the cost of maintaining the server? Most people, with game development being a hobby, would have to buy the server out of their own pocket. Then there are the costs of just running the server after it has been purchased to consider. The server will have to be turned on all the time, so the electricity bill will go up. The server will have constant access to the internet, so the internet bill will go up. Some ISPs will not allow a server to be run on a residential-grade connection, so there is the start-up cost of upgrading the connection to consider. Then, depending on how popular the game is and how big the authenication codes are, there are bandwidth costs associated with the system, too.
There is one final reason why DRM is just a bad idea for Klik games, and another reason I take issue with selling games...
The Daily Click
Yes, the site is one of the reasons I take issue with selling games on TDC. It isn't that I wouldn't want to support the site if I sold a game, it's that TDC doesn't do anything. TDC is a do-nothing third party. I would not be willing to support TDC if all the site does is give me a way to sell my game. And why should I? TDC doesn't host any of the games, as far as I can see, listed on the downloads page. Articles, project pages, and forums are great and all, but if I have to find a place to host my game then I'm not going to share my profits with a site that redirects to my game. This is also why DRM won't work, because TDC has no say in what can and can't be regulated on someone else's server.
TDC is a great site, but it all it does is point to another site for downloads. There are no bandwidth fees incurred for letting users download off of other servers. I take issue with that. I would not share profits with a site that uses the bandwidth of other sites. I'd rather share my profits with the site that is actually using the bandwidth to serve the game. Leeching (and profitting) off of other people's bandwidth is wrong. I don't take issue with the ads on TDC, because those are shown in the forums, and posting on the forums uses TDC's bandwidth.
There's a simple way to address this. TDC just needs to host the commercial games on it's own server. Ideally, all games listed on TDC would be hosted on the TDC server, but that's probably asking too much. With TDC serving up games from it's own server, a DRM server (also hosted by TDC) is perfectly legitimate.
TDC doesnt have to turn into a selling platform. It can contain one, using the built-in audience. People who wanna do this for free just do so, people who have to pay the rent or pay for their kids can use the platform as a way to make a bit of money and help the site at the same time.
Have people 'log in' with their TDC account to act as DRM. But only require a log in if you're using a new computer. If the computer (ie specs) changes then have it request another log in. I doubt people would be willing to share their TDC account info around so that will prevent it being shared. An admin could come up with an SDK or frame to drop into games to support this.
But it fails because a lot of guests download games too.
If this would ever happen in the first place TDC would still be 98% a free site you would prob not even know anything changed apart from the fact the following:
Take for example Stevens turning the tide game would now contain a "Buy me now and support the site" button under the download link, the buy me now button would bring you to the "bmt micro" payment site options were the author gets paid and tdc receives a small cut. When you would submit your game to our site you would have the abbility to check mark the "Bmt micro affilate" mark so the buy me now button would appear on the downloads page.
This would only be for people who were already going to sell their games in the first place or already doing so. Now we are just helping them get more coverage and get a small cut for it to to help keep the site alive, 2 big plusses for both sides. It is actually a great idea and should have been done much sooner if you ask me.
Edited by an Administrator
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I see what you mean Rikus. I don't think it would change much anyways since a few games here are not freeware already.
And it's just an idea in a s**tstorm of other ideas but what about selling TDC edition games, like get popular freeware games here and having a paid version with a few extra levels/features or whatever. It doesn't have to be much extra work for the devs either. I'd certainly buy an extended version of some of the freeware games here. Even though I might be in some tiny minority
Rikus is totally right. I might add that it would get more people to try to sell their games because of the help of TDC, which can be a good thing. The community is old enough to have a selling platform.
Aha... so if this system is implemented, it will only affect the games that are already being sold in the first place? That sounds a lot more manageable than going through the trouble of implementing an official Quality Control system.
So let's suppose someone makes a game with MMF2 and decides to sell it while telling people at TDC about it. Under normal circumstances, the most their game would receive is a mention on the front page if it's sweet enough. But with this system, the developer would have the option of getting their game extra exposure/coverage on the site in exchange for a cut of the profits, yes'm?
That being the case, i'm starting to warm up to it. It kinda reminds me of what's going on with Clickteam's front page. Two games - Moonlight Sonatas and Cy-Clone - have been sitting up on their front page for quite a long time now, and goodness knows how many people have seen the games up there. Matter of fact... what if people who submitted commerical games to TDC got their own little spot in the Daily Spotlight? If enough games are submitted in this manner, perhaps the spotlight could be tweaked to rotate through all of the commercial games randomly every time the front page is loaded.
Exactly. I think we all agree. People use TDC to get coverage anyways. Let's have them support us. If they want to of course. Maybe... require a free demo to insure quality control?
I'm going say that we need to stay as a free games platform - the thing we should concentrate on is reducing our bandwidth, which isn't being helped by using ASP (plus a lot of the site was coded 5+ years ago, and could do with re-coding, in my opinion).
I really do think that re-coding the site in PHP will help a lot - though it will take a lot of hard work and a lot of time. Clubby may disagree with me though (I'm not really sure how much ASP has an effect on bandwidth and such, I'm sure Clubby will have a better opinion). I just think that TDC has been a place where games have been free, and I think it would be a shame to change that.
Originally Posted by Rikus I think some people are confused.
If this would ever happen in the first place TDC would still be 98% a free site you would prob not even know anything changed apart from the fact the following:
I think you're confused. I know you didn't address me in particular (mostly because 'some people' is such a great weasel word), but regardless.
When I say "selling platform" I don't mean "turn TDC into a 100% premium, pay-to-download site," because that's fucking retarded. Why? Because whenever money is involved in a way that is absolutely mandatory, everything that is wrong with a site suddenly becomes much worse.
But even if you involve money in a speculated 2% of content to support the other 98% of content, then you're pretty much becoming a business. And if you're going to dabble in business, then you better do it right, or the business will fold.
Flava I think you are missing the point, the site will remain free. Really you will not see much of a difference other then the fact that the people who sell their games commercially now like turning the tide will be able to have a a "buy me now" button on the download page instead of a user trying to find its way to the devlopers site they can now just click that if they like a game atfer playing the demo and want to buy it.This would give the author more exposure to potential new people and while doing so tdc gets a cut from that sale.
Thats it, all other free games will still be here, only difference being if someone decides for themselves to sell their A+ game they can now get some more support from us and we get something in return to.
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Good grief even things like this turn into arguments! It's really not all that complicated or even that much of a change. Just a little extra revenue for the site.
You could always design a free, special frame that we distribute to people serious about creating commercial games on the site. The frame will be a secured verification not much unlike Gwordy on Clickteam, where you type your usename and password in from TDC, and then once it confirms that you can not only login, but that the game you're playing was bought on your account, it lets you continue. Also, you can set it up so that you wont need to keep typing it in, it would remember it and as long as it's capable of connecting to TDC and confirming all that at startup, it might only be a 2 or 3 second inconvenience for legit buyers.
That's got to be the closest thing to Steam, which I think we all agree has a very solid DRM system.
Yikes Adam, I am glad you are so dedicated to this
When you strip all the fancy words away tdc would not turn into a business we would bassicly be a affilate to someone else selling their games on the download page.
Same with people clicking on ads and we get a cut from google of that click, now we would get a cut off a payment from a game being sold.
Thats really it, nothing else would change it would be in addition to the donation and google ad funds. We are not here to run a bussiness we are here to keep the site going in our spare time and trying to find creative ways to do so.
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You should not forget about the legal aspect. If I make a game and sell it and earn money then I have to own a business and pay taxte and so on. Here in germany I need to form a company and pay for health care and such. It's a big investment. I cannot simply say I use this site to sell my games and get like 100-200$ a month. It will not work. I'm sure germany is not the only country with those restrictions. If you are below 18 your parents have to do all this.
Must be different over there. o_o I've never heard of such regulations here in the US. Otherwise I don't think my website host would let you use their webstore template without signing legal documents.
And also, would not BMT Micro be taking care of the transactions?
We just need some people to look into that. But normally a selling platform would take care of most of that. There will always be a part you have to sort out yourself, prolly in the form of freelance profit.
This idea might be a bit extreme... I haven't read through all the posts yet.
What if TDC had a Pay-Per-View section of the site? You could charge a small amount to people to access special material that wouldn't normally be available. I'm not sure what, exactly... maybe people could submit preview versions of their games for any subscriber to access, for example, or have access to a special site, ie, the Clickzine or something.
The idea of Pay-per-view on TDC is forming images in my mind that are very upsetting
I would really advise to come up with a solution that is not just there to create money for hosting. It should be a real feature and expansion of the website, the community even. People who want to have a try selling their quality games get help from the coverage TDC gives them, they help TDC with a part of the profit. It doesn't sound too hard at all to me. The only real problem I can see coming are huge arguments about how good a game should be to be sold on TDC, people freaking out because their game was rejected or people complaining TDC is selling crappy games making the rest look bad.
Their should be no argument, If a developer has a game that is commercial and wishes to get a bit more exposure on TDC, they provide the Affiliate code, nothing more, TDC isn't making ant judgment calls on quality and the users shouldn't hold TDC in account for a game that sucks submitted as a commercial title.
"DRM is a waste of time. Only about 10% of people pirate anyways, and DRM just annoys people"
excuse me? you have that backwards sir. i think the estimated piracy rate on world of goo was near 90%. get your facts straight. more people pirate than actually pay money for things.
Originally Posted by cEcil = MC^2 "DRM is a waste of time. Only about 10% of people pirate anyways, and DRM just annoys people"
excuse me? you have that backwards sir. i think the estimated piracy rate on world of goo was near 90%. get your facts straight. more people pirate than actually pay money for things.
Really, it depends on the game, and platform. PC games obviously get pirated much more than console games.
You can't cite one game and offer it as a rebuttal, though. Cite a few other games before saying that 90% of users pirated a game. You can provide Spore, but it doesn't count for your citation (because Spore was already mentioned in this thread).
I'm opposed to this simply on the idea that theres too few games to make it worth the coding time for you guys
All the high profile games which are commercial quality are already sold elsewhere, and everything else is freeware and changing that is not a grand idea. Unless TDC became the distributor, it would run into problems, and theres so ridiculously few games of sufficient quality (and which we'd all love to see as free releases) that it would be more of a "one time" thing.
If someone decided to donate 20% of their proceeds from a game to TDC, that would be awesome, but theres no need to create a system for it since it would never be used
Originally Posted by cEcil = MC^2 "DRM is a waste of time. Only about 10% of people pirate anyways, and DRM just annoys people"
excuse me? you have that backwards sir. i think the estimated piracy rate on world of goo was near 90%. get your facts straight. more people pirate than actually pay money for things.
Really, it depends on the game, and platform. PC games obviously get pirated much more than console games.
You can't cite one game and offer it as a rebuttal, though. Cite a few other games before saying that 90% of users pirated a game. You can provide Spore, but it doesn't count for your citation (because Spore was already mentioned in this thread).
how does only citing one stat make it any less valid? 10% is still waaay off from the actuality. im not going to cite more just to further my point, he can look them up if he wants. games distributed without drm is far above 10% piracy rate. and consoles arent even in this topic, of course its pc we're talking about.
My point is still valid. And I just made some research and it applies to all countries not just germany or europe. If you earn money by commercially selling games you have to pay taxes. In Germany this applies every year, I make a report and send it to my financial center. In germany I can make 410€ a year free of taxes. Excluding donations, who do not count towards business. (However be careful, this might get invested by the government)
I have a regular job so I do not need to pay for healthcare and such, also I have permission from my company to take a second job as long as it is not the same type of business. (Many people forget about this until there company finds out you sell games on the internet and you get fired asap! Make sure you double check!)
I could earn 410€ over the year without anyone telling anyone.
If I earn more or expect to earn more I need a Tax-ID Number and I have to file monthly / quarterly / yearly reports stating my in and outcome. My Tax rate is 37% right now. If my yearly sallery increases above 60.000€ the rate raises to 43%.
That means I have to invest around ~100€ to get the Number and let's asum I earn 3000€ a year in total that would be 1110€ I would need to pay taxes.
I'm pretty sure this is in every country at different requirements and rates. Anything else might be illegal.
OT: About piracy, those downloaders on the net are not the real problem for the companies, they are amnoying but they are not potential customers. Problems are people that download and resell downloaded software on the market and sell it on the streets and over the internet. Making profit of a stolen product ist just more then wrong.
Originally Posted by Rikus a "Buy me now and support the site" button under the download link
There are three types of klik game: Commercial, Commercial-quality-freeware, and the rest.
For the commercial games (Noitu Love 2, etc), I don't see anything wrong with Rikus' suggestion above. It won't solve TDC's financial problems in one go but every bit helps. Let's not have Clubsoft paying for the damn hosting himself in future, that's insane.
For the commercial-quality-freeware (Knytt, Eternal Daughter), creators who wish to support TDC could release a slightly updated version for a small fee. For example, extra levels or "director's cut" (unreleased) content. This is probably an idea that could use more discussion about distribution etc.
Someone already mentioned this but I didn't see a reply: Don't Clickteam help TDC out when the donation pot is low?
^I was thinking exclusive content as well . . .maybe expansions to games.
Replying to OP. I think it is an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work too well.
99% of games submitted are below average or average and a lot of people spend less than a month making their games and neglect to fix bugs etc.
Maybe if you had a set of judges(bleh did i really just imply that I trust judges on tdc?) that could determine whether or not a game is worth selling(zero bugs, good presentation, etc.). Maybe post a list of guidelines and ideas to encourage more professional game development. Articles DO help, but how many people do you think actually look for articles on how to make your games more professional etc.?
I am kind of an elitist and definitely a perfectionist when it comes to judging games since I take it very seriously, so I don't believe I would make a great judge. One bug, minor or not, would result in a rejection on my part =/. And no, I don't think I am perfect with no room to improve =p.
Another idea would be to have competitions that costs to enter.(I think a tournament where a handful of sprites are given to all the entrants and the one to make the best game with those sprites alone wins would be interesting.) I know it is illegal to not pay out what you take in, but surely there is a loophole . . .Maybe a system for donating x percentage of the winning games prize money could be determined . . . or you could just depend on the winner to not be greedy and donate some of the money. I guess you could charge a small subscription fee to competition eligible users . . . but that falls into the "TDC is no longer 98/100% free" category.
TBH, I wouldn't really buy them. If I had money, I'd just rather donate it. If I had a great game, I wouldn't really put it up for sale here, I'd post the demo here, like all the other shareware guys do. I'd donate some of that profit to TDC, Scirra, and Dwarf Fortress, among others, since the main reason I'm not donating is because I have $0 in my Paypal account.
Personally, I don't think this idea would make any more money than the old TDC Merchandise idea. Remember the mug, t-shirt? A bit overpriced for the quality, so I didn't really get them.
However, if I was a guy making money off indie games, I'd like a "Buy this game" button on the downloads page of my demo. That button would link to the purchase page of my game. Then, at the end of the month, I'd get a PM/e-mail telling me how many people clicked that button and the IP address, and I'd give TDC a few cents based on the clicks.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Putting my 2 cents in, I think donations are the way to go with little to no worries about tax evasion. However, does "Donate anything to get the game (no "free" downloads, but pay whatever you wish in donation)" fall under this also? I would think that though it's mandatory donation, technically you are just donating to the creator to keep going with his/her projects or to say good work on the current game, not actually being sold a product. However this depends on the creator giving a little back to TDC and making a donation themselves, so TDC is not taking commission and therefore technically not a business selling products.
Why not get a cafepress.com type thing going with cool TDC designs? I'd be more than happy to submit designs for shirts/mugs etc which people might really like and want. Also, creators of popular games could submit designs of characters/logos from their games so people can buy them which works as a donation toward TDC's hosting.
I think that the authentication server is far more trouble than it's worth at this point, unless this community was at least 5 times bigger.
My point is that we don't need to provide a service such as this to help pay for hosting. People should choose whether or not a percentage of their earnings goes towards the DC - which at the end of the day is exactly the same as a donation. For example, if James uploads Tormishire to TDC, it should be up to him whether he decides he gives a percentage of his earnings to the DC as a donation (I'm just using this as an example).
I'm not sure I've got my point across there, but what I'm saying is that introducing it as a service here probably won't change much. More people might decide to charge for their games, but I can't see people paying for games which they would have gotten for free previously. And even if people do pay for the games, the majority of that money would rightly go to the game developer (given that they choose to donate some to TDC). It would hardly help our hosting problems at all really, in my opinion.
I think we should be coming up with other ideas - maybe charging for VIP membership (though we would need more features for VIP members in order to make that worthwhile). We should also look into reducing the bandwidth of the site from a coding point of view - the code is god knows how old, and I'm pretty sure that it can be streamlined and more efficient in many places.
If everyone is set on this idea then we should go for it - it might help us a bit, but I really don't think it'll change our current situation.
It's times like these that I really wish English was my native language.
I think some of you guys still don't realise how hard it is to sell a game when you don't have a place to start.
I am really against the idea where people who have commercial games out there send a share of the profit to TDC, most of them don't make a lot of money with it. It would make earning decent money with this hobby even harder.
When I look at the money I made in the last 5 years, 70% of it comes from my jobs as a teacher, 29.9% comes from freelance graphics jobs and the remaining 0.1% from selling click games and playing guitar in the streets.
If I was to donate 50% of what I make with making games right now, I would have to send about $4. And have the other $4 myself. A year.
I remain that this would not just be a way to help TDC, it would be an enrichment to the community, new opportunities for clickers. And of course you have to pay taxes if you make a lotta money with this shit.
I would have to say 'no' to selling games on TDC. It probably won't make enough money. Either Clickteam should bail TDC out (TDC generates way more than $800 per year for Clickteam) or convert the site to .php somehow, and then sell games.
Discarded pizza boxes are an indispensable source of cheese.
Well all bits help I guess. AND it will help people who want to try and sell their games. People who are not doing so right now because it is too hard to get proper coverage.
Actually, getting only a tiny amount of money would be the perfect reason to have this. If say, 100 people recieved on average $0.40 of pithy donation money a month, that should be more than enough.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Of course we need other ideas besides donations from games as it seems to be accepted the fact that click games don't really make a of lot money. I suggested to keep it as this donation thing and the creator chooses to donate or not to TDC because of the whole business and tax evasion issues. Even then, I don't know what the go is with users having to pay money for subscriptions to a service (the VIP membership), because that would also fall under "Goods & Services".
This is an interesting development for me, as I am in the proses of creating a game that I'm planning on selling. Also one of my friends who is a fellow Clicker has made some games that I feel he could make a little money from.
There are some things I think you'd have to take into consideration though. Some have already been mentioned above. Firstly quality control, there should be a few people judging games that are submitted. People who come to buy wont to know there getting a decent product. Then there is the issue of copyright infringement. A game that is to be sold shouldn't have any content ripped from other games.
You might wont to think about allowing the creator to set the price within a range. Like say, this is just an idea, between $2 and $20. With a listing of how much the Daily Click will take. Maybe the judges could lower the price if they think the game is still worth selling but they feel the creator is asking too much. But they should probably notify the content creator beforehand.
I think the games that are submitted should have at least 4-5 screen shots and if there is no demo to try then there should at least be a video of game play. Maybe linked on youtube or something.
The last thing I can think of is that not all download submissions should be considered for this. Only work specifically submitted for sale should be considered. Otherwise any judges would have just too much work to do with all the downloads.
Anyway, that's my take on it. I have to agree with Hayo on a lot of what he has said. Putting up more adds couldn't hurt ether. Maybe even some adds for the games that are being sold on the daily click?
"Oh, my god! A lightning monster just ripped out this poor woman's eyes, and your mocking her shrubbery!" - The Spoony One
Something else that you could try is forcing people to log in each day, but each time they do so they HAVE to click on a banner to generate some form of cash if they actually want to get into the site.
I don't know if this idea is gonna fly or not, but I'm working on a new game with TDC's distress call in mind which I might sell if I feel it's good enough.
In that case, I would sell the game exclusively here, and I wouldn't mind giving TDC 75% of the sales, since the game is being made mostly to help the site. Of course, it would be priced according to the quality of the final product, and if the admins think it's appropriate.
Also it would be nice if more people did the same thing, I think it would the help the site quite a lot and it could make much more money that simple donations.
One idea, if we didn't want to mess with having to file some business paperwork, is to only keep a portion of any profits made up to the limit, before we'd need to do official stuff. Then 100% of the profits would go to the author!
That may have already been said, but there's too much I haven't read to read!
You should look at outsourcing images, that should decrease the bandwith a lot, also the board style could use some fixing. For example when I type this text the whole thread is loaded into a frame, why not the last post only? Also looking at threads always shows the full thread, you should remove all and only allow page views. This should also decrease the bandwith a lot.
yes as mavado said there is a lot of places on the site that eat bandwidth that are just plain unneccessary.
if you are on an asp host im sure it would also support php as well? if not you should be able to install it yourself. unless your host is stupid. and you could just slowly convert pages over to php. it doesnt have to be done all at once.
Yes, let's do that. My first input here: we can have games that are commercial on other sites sold here as well with some sort of special content and with a good portion of profit going as a donation to the site (as suggested by someone else already). We could add the Submit to Klikdisc checkbox on the submission page so that things are simultaneously submitted to Klikdisc. Then we sell the disc here and/or make a profit based on how much of the content came from TDC. We set up a more efficient frame for the site as opposed to everything being loaded on every page, so that things like the Header, background image, Link Bar, Search, Admin Alert, Worth a Click, General Poll, and GOTM Poll are loaded only once. Remove the All option from forum viewing and the review should only include the last 10 posts. Host more images on other servers so as not to burden this one. I can't think of anything else. Most ideas would have been suggested already but I'm just supporting some.
On the matter of selling games: possibly a "Premium" system, where games can be submitted and tagged as including premium (commercial) content, where they offer a full game with content that can be bought using DC points or real money. Actually that's a bad idea, never mind.
EDIT: Oh yeah, let's all go bandwidth hunting, finding things that use up too much. And when you view your post, it should give you just the page it's on, not all the pages.
My suggestion would be to have a section called Premium Games or something like that where the paid games would be located, and every time a new game is accepted, it will appear in the place where it is now the Daily Spotlight, which imo is useless because that's what news posts are for.
Every paid game would have it's own download page much like the regular downloads, but with a Buy Now button, the Download button would have "Download Demo" instead, and the price would be listed somewhere separatly.
EDIT
@omc: I disagree, that way TDC would receive very little profit, and I don't think taxes are applicable here since it's a community site and it's not owned by a company.
If you're looking to save bandwidth, it might be time to overhaul the site entirely. Not just changing the coding from ASP to PHP, but changing the layout and site features, too.
Originally Posted by Chris Street Something else that you could try is forcing people to log in each day, but each time they do so they HAVE to click on a banner to generate some form of cash if they actually want to get into the site.
If you are using google, that's in violation of their rules. You aren't allowed to ask, force or in anyway encourage people to click on the ads. People are only supposed to click out of genuine interest.
I remain convinced that the DC community has enough talent in it to make a very successful sellable title. The community should really pull together on this, even if we only do it once!
How about it? We make one project as a test case and see if as a collaborative work we can sell it out to the non-click community. Because in a community with the amount of talent that this one has, there is no reason at all why it should not be able to operate in some way to fund itself.
the community has before, and failed. remember the tdc online rpg game?(im not talking about the recent tdc world) never happened. it may have just been that the focus of the game was ABOUT tdc but it still failed.
Originally Posted by DeadmanDines I remain convinced that the DC community has enough talent in it to make a very successful sellable title. The community should really pull together on this, even if we only do it once!
How about it? We make one project as a test case and see if as a collaborative work we can sell it out to the non-click community. Because in a community with the amount of talent that this one has, there is no reason at all why it should not be able to operate in some way to fund itself.
Regardless of financial status, I would love to see TDC put out a good game as a community. But that would mean all the top coders and artists and idea men in one group doing one thing, with ONE project director, and I don't think they'd have time to do that or would necessarily want to do that.
Guy A has an idea
Guy A tries to make the idea
Guy A asks guy B to help with graphics
Guy A asks guy C to help with audio and music
Guy A asks guy D to help with some coding issues
Guy A sells game using platform as the provider (so all leads go to that one platform)
So very much Guy A in control, with a vision, and asking others to help him realise that vision in return for a cut of the profits.
I'd organize a community project. If it turns out to be worth paying for, it could become a commercial venture with all sales going towards supporting TDC?
Those dire times would run out before a suitable project could be finished. And the likelihood that enough sales would be made to bail the entire site out of the hole for a reasonable amount of time is a little slim. It costs something like $80 a month, doesn't it?
I think it would be a lot more profitable if several developers made a game each than everybody uniting to make a single game, specially considering 95% of the community projects I know died before they saw the light of the day.
Deadman Dines' idea FTW. I only read the first and last page, but it's a solid idea.
I'm thinking their are a lot of 'help' on projects and credits is perfect. With TDC as the 'publisher' it'd make it very easy on TDC to go off of percentages or credits for projects.
Although, I've never sold games, not aware of the complications behind it. Ex. Accountant? lol
thinking is like pong, it's easy, but you miss sometimes.
I havnt read this whole thread so I hope this isnt a repeat of somethign that has been said already.
This does sound like a good idea, but the main issue would be how to police what is worthy of being paid for and what isnt. If this was set up, every joe blow submitting a game on TDC will tick the option to enable payment just for the hell of it, I mean what has he got to lose? And most of the games will be crap and not worth the money.
IMO let TDC remain freeware. There are already games portals in place for paid games, let the users who want to make money focus on that instead.
Lol, I've seen only one team project get finished, and even then, the effort of trying to keep them moving burned out the team so much that people dropped out shortly after
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I suppose the core purpose of this thread is discussing ways that will actually help TDC.. it's true, pretty much every group/community project dies here before it becomes anything. So the focus of supporting TDC would be looking at reducing bandwidth and something viable which may return some profit to TDC to assist hosting costs.
I haven't read all this topic but I think if we worked in teams to make an awesome large game with hundreds of features, with lots of people working on it we might be able to sell it and make lots of money for TDC!!
Although I think the community game idea is nice, the problem I see with it are:
1) It'll probably never get finished
2) If it does get finished, it'll probably take more than a year to get it to a decent quality worth selling
3) If it is a decent quality worth selling, the number of people who will buy it will be limited (probably only people who visit DC on a regular basis)
I'm not saying don't go for it - I'm just saying it isn't going to help solve our hosting problems in the short term. We only have enough money to last us until September at the moment.
Then you should start right now. No need to recode but you could cut out a few features already, pick the page views that eat most of the bandwith and comment part of the code out. For example this answer frame.
Then present to the community how much you pay each month for the upkeep and list how much money in donations you need to keep the site running. Move the Donation frame to the top, above the user panel and maybe add three colored light to show if you are good to go for this month. Constantly remind people that they should donate to keep the site running. For example on the download page add a nag screen befire you can submit.
In general add layer ads to the page from another ad vendor.
And finally If people donate give them TDC points for their donation and make an option to purchase TDC points for money. Use the same donation button. I'm sure you can motivate a few people to spend a bit of money on a site they visit regular.
Unless I'm mistaken the amount of bandwidth doesn't seem to be the problem. (Unless of course we were able to cut down to a smaller cheaper package. But that would take a LOT of optimization since there would still be need for a big cushion.) Clubsoft said we weren't even near the bandwidth limit... The problem is that the money just isn't there.
cant be assed to read tru 8 pages of post but here's and idea why don't we just ask the people who already sell click games for a percentage of their money? they got big because of the feedback and support they got here so least they could do is do a favor in return. If you get their money your out of hosting trouble for sure!
"We have come to a point were the site gets so much traffic that the bills for running it are getting to high to be paid and the ads are not cutting it. I am hoping we see some donations to get us trough the next couple of months but this is a serious problem for the future."
For the record, I think it's a good idea to have those commercial klik games out there here too, helping to support the site both financially and content-wise.
Hope club wont mind me posting this here, but if we are doing to get really down and dirty on the technical side of things:
"Cost is due to the fact DC has its own dedicated server, we use alot of space, and cpu time. Had to move to a dedicated machine because we were killing the account on shared hosting (i.e. 200 sites running on the same server), plus other peoples poorly codes scripts in the background would cause everything to grind to a halt, not much that can really be done. PHP would help slightly, but not enough to warrant rebuilding the site completely from scratch just yet.. that's possibly a future project, but it's a mammoth task, we're talking months of work.
Be sure to follow us on the twitters for the latest and greatest: @dailyclick
If the switch to PHP will help, then switch to PHP. Take the ASP site offline, put up a generic PHP forum in it's place. Downloads, articles, and reviews can all pretty much be emulated by using threads. Things like projects, the store, and a proper front news page, are all features that can be coded (in PHP) later. Also, having 213k forum posts, both to store and sort through, probably isn't helping the server.
Originally Posted by maVado Then you should start right now. No need to recode but you could cut out a few features already, pick the page views that eat most of the bandwith and comment part of the code out. For example this answer frame.
Then present to the community how much you pay each month for the upkeep and list how much money in donations you need to keep the site running. Move the Donation frame to the top, above the user panel and maybe add three colored light to show if you are good to go for this month. Constantly remind people that they should donate to keep the site running. For example on the download page add a nag screen befire you can submit.
In general add layer ads to the page from another ad vendor.
And finally If people donate give them TDC points for their donation and make an option to purchase TDC points for money. Use the same donation button. I'm sure you can motivate a few people to spend a bit of money on a site they visit regular.
I like Mavado's suggestion about the donate button.
Have it in your face a bit more and let people know HOW much you need in revenue for each month. Set them a target so that people will think 'hmmm they need a few more bucks, I am sure I can help contribute'.... Plus the TDC points for contributing gives some extra incentive.
The issue about money has been rasied for a reason and that is that more money is needed. If you need to recode the site in PHP to help minimise bandwidth, then so be it, get it done. This is (usually) a great community and I am sure people will help when they can.
I just think selling games is not the way to go about this
Originally Posted by Adam Phant If the switch to PHP will help, then switch to PHP. Take the ASP site offline, put up a generic PHP forum in it's place. Downloads, articles, and reviews can all pretty much be emulated by using threads. Things like projects, the store, and a proper front news page, are all features that can be coded (in PHP) later. Also, having 213k forum posts, both to store and sort through, probably isn't helping the server.
Far easier said than done. Switching to PHP would mean recoding the whole thing from scratch, and means that everything would have to be recoded.. downloads, forums, projects, etc. And it's probably going to reduce BW usage by like 20% or so, which isn't going to make much difference.
Then again, bringing down the site for a year would greatly reduce traffic.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
"Bandwidth isn't a concern, we pay for a set ammount which we're not close to going over "
"We use less than the 2TB a month we have allocated, so we're fine for bandwidth for now "
Now, I don't know if we're aiming for a smaller package so we don't have to have so much allocated, (I doubt that could happen since it's a dedicated server. Those are usually one package.) but it seems if things were so tight, we'd have already done so a little bit if that were an option.
Not sure if that's even relevant. Just wanted to make sure it was out there.
Originally Posted by MuzFar easier said than done. Switching to PHP would mean recoding the whole thing from scratch, and means that everything would have to be recoded.. downloads, forums, projects, etc. And it's probably going to reduce BW usage by like 20% or so, which isn't going to make much difference.
Then again, bringing down the site for a year would greatly reduce traffic.
Generic PHP forum means things like phpBB, vBulletin, etc. No need to code new forums when a solution already exists.
The bandwidth isn't the issue, and switching to php wouldn't solve it either, but in the other hand most .asp if not all are very expensive, while there are countless cheap and even free php hosts, which could make the monthly bill decrease a huge lot and therefore save the site. I believe the main solution is there, but in the meanwhile the site needs to be funded somehow, donations are definitively not enough, ads don't generate much income (they are a bit badly placed imo btw, they should be more visible) and atm something like premium accounts doesn't look like a good idea because there aren't enough regular users here.
The idea of selling games is the only one that seems more realistic to me, but it still doesn't guarantee survival, specially if there are not enough good games to sell.
Also I think the DC arcade with some well placed ads might also help quite a lot, most portals like newgrounds gets small fortunes out of advertisment.
Originally Posted by OldManClayton I think killing this TDC before the new one is ready to replace it would be very unwise.
Yes. I don't know that anyone would be very happy with losing everything and starting over entirely. I know I wouldn't be. That's a huge step backwards. If anything, you'd code the php and either slowly replace each page one by one or all at once, but not deleting one before you have the other.
Johnny Look is right. I think A) the arcade would bring money with good ads, and B) selling is a realistic idea.
One other thing, suppose people pay for exclusive advertising? Like, if James wanted to he could buy an ad spot on a top banner or something for Lunnye Devitsy, and his ad and other purchased ads would cycle in and out.
Has anyone tried to maybe get this site affiliated with some affiliates of main streamers? It's not directly linked to the main stream, but it might bring in some money if not invite a ton of new people to the community which brings renewed interest for Clickteam which might bring them a high enough profit to help TDC or the less direct way would probably just to rely on the added attention to boost ad income on TDC.
I mean on the scale of most communities, this one is pretty miniature, and as nice as it is to know everyone to a shallow degree compared to most communities where no one knows anyone, if it's the difference between losing the site or not, I'd much rather have more people than to lose the site.
I concluded the average of this community is too young to get the idea, crying shame. Consider it implemented at GB in 2013. And I hope this won't turn up here half-assed like my previous two ideas.
If we're using no more than we have been previously and the cost of running the site has not changed, why is TDC suddenly out of money to keep it up? Was the payments all Clubsoft's money previously, or did TDC actually have enough regular donation to see the costs through? It's occurred to me that everyone's freaking out like this is a business on a plummet into deep bankruptcy or something. Is it simply that Club has been put out of pocket a little too much and he just wants more help from our side to make it easier on him, or doesn't wish to have to spend his own money on the running costs? (Obviously, it's not easy to pay for server/host/domain on your own.)
Apologies if the post is a bit forward, (I'm not being rude, just trying to understand) the situation is just somewhat unclear (OMGZZ RECESSION WURLD WIIDE!!), and it's quite obvious selling games is not going to earn enough keep to run the site at this point (unless our community was far larger and with people willing to buy games, as Hayo has said on average the users are young and students without employment), bandwidth is not an issue (there goes our the ideas to improve costs via PHP changeover) and there's no reason for people to PAY for VIP membership/services of TDC right now. And the more extreme ideas are the ones that require looking for a business permit, tax dealings, having authentication server for Steam-like pay to play..etc. Not really good ideas as there's no money to put forward for those things.
I never thought selling games would support TDC. (Even more so after Jon calculated the monthly cost)
But I still think it's a good idea. Or rather not a bad one. If games are already going to cost money, I think having the option to give a bit to TDC is a good idea, something that just kind of makes sense. Of course, having members just donate money themselves after sales works too, but I think having that little checkbox would put it in the forefront of people's minds more. Arguing over something optional seems silly to me. I'd rather the idea was just dropped or forcefully integrated rather than have so much stressful debate over it.
In any case, whether we accept that rather unimportant idea or not, we still need a solution that will support the site. We've discussed changing the ads, porting the site to PHP... What else is there? Waiting until someone's wealthy great uncle dies?
Do that with Klikcast and add the footage of you dancing as a bonus. But you should sell the games because as OMC said: "If games are already going to cost money, I think having the option to give a bit to TDC is a good idea, something that just kind of makes sense. Of course, having members just donate money themselves after sales works too, but I think having that little checkbox would put it in the forefront of people's minds more." The key thing is that these games are already publicized on TDC. So why not get a little bit for that?
Originally Posted by marky_2 Put all the GOTWs ever made on to a CD and sell that for $5 or something. Just don't tell anyone it was originally free.
Wouldn't you need permission from (and give a cut to) the original authors of the games? Plus, not all of the original GOTW's still have live links. In fact, quite a few of them have taken even that a step further by deleting the whole page for the game all together.
IT IS HARD TO SELL GAMES, SOME OF YOU GUYS WANT TO STEAL A BIT OF THEIR HARD EARNED MONEY. LET THAT SINK IN. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
If I had to donate a part of the profit of a game I sell, I would not put it on TDC, out of principle. There are plenty other places where you can put up a demo. For free. Doing it that way would not be a feature with double benefit, it would be something that scares some people away.
No. You are explaining a part of my own idea to me now.
Fact: We have a community site here, which now has too much traffic (which I am also starting to doubt). The traffic consists of people who are interested in the kind of games we make.
Fact: It is really hard to sell games on your own. Many people would like to have a try at it (and have games that are sellable) but don't have what it takes to actually get to the audience, which is enough coverage.
Chance: We could use the "too much traffic" to gain a little money for hosting AND to help people sell their games. People can sell their games on a "premium" or "commercial" section where quality is guaranteed (so it doesn't piss the audience off). This would be a win-win feature, no matter how much money is made with it.
Spoiled by: Massive ignorance, discussion derailment by "idiots" and that we might not really have a lot of traffic so we just donated because the site is bloated and coded crappily.
I don't get who you're mad at. I keep seeing places where you say it's the most frustrating topic ever and claiming nobody gets the idea, without specifying why?
Perhaps you weren't aiming your last post at me, but I see nobody else saying anything it would be applicable to. Perhaps I am an idiot and don't see it? I must have missed some posts because I only see contradiction. ("IT IS HARD TO SELL GAMES, SOME OF YOU GUYS WANT TO STEAL A BIT OF THEIR HARD EARNED MONEY. LET THAT SINK IN. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" ... "People can sell their games on a "premium" or "commercial" section where quality is guaranteed"" What the heck? Sarcasm?) The last thing I want is to further argument though so... you keep doing your thing.
I think an elongated KlickCast disk would be a good idea, maybe keep the online version down to a few minutes to give people a taste for what's on the disc (advertising). Of course to keep it fresh (and appealing to those involved too!) it would require more donation from members of this site. So to make donating videos and audios more appealing, why not open up the range of subjects people can talk about? For example, people could also talk about other game related things (opinions on commercial games or the market as a whole), or even non-game related stuff that people would find intersting or entertaining (for example comedy, maybe stand-up, film reviews or animations made). The whole disk could be purchased for around $10-15. Hell, to save costs you could make it a downloadable! For $10 you could break-even and keep the site running with 18 sales every 2 months. Realistic i think!
Hmm, the "demos" on big fish games are easy to crack.
It involves the real exe being hidden, and a fake exe with a timer.
The timer data is stored in the registry.
Delete it and the game continues working.
Sorry to be so off-topic, I think someone was mentioning DRM, and I wanted to see how big fish games did it with mmf games. Pretty sloppily if you ask me.
I am not having an argument, I am just a grumpy old man who doesn't want to see another idea of his end up here as a piece of ugly shit. It would be the third time.
Some people suggested that clickers who already have commercial games out there could donate a part of their profit to pay for TDC hosting, which makes me (and some of my friends) pretty mad.
No sarcasm, no wth, if you want to sell games, you have to guarantee quality. Otherwise people who buy them get pissed off and will not return to the site, or even ask their money back. I also never called anyone an idiot and never said nobody gets the idea.
But this seems useless. If the admins don't believe in this idea why are we discussing it? Just recode the whole thing to PHP, switch to a linux server and force people to click ads.
Originally Posted by Hayo I concluded the average of this community is too young to get the idea, crying shame.
I must have misread some member names, because I thought you were the one that suggested optional donation to TDC if the developer wanted to. I apologize. I don't understand why that would make you mad though.
I said sarcasm and what the heck because I was confused. In one post you said you hated the idea of stealing money from developers, and then in another you said you wanted a section where professional games could be sold? I don't get that. You said, "People who want to have a try selling their quality games get help from the coverage TDC gives them, they help TDC with a part of the profit." That's why I asked if there was sarcasm. It seems contradictory.
And you never outright called anyone idiots, but by saying "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU" you kind of implied that you thought people were being silly.
You told me I was explaining part of your idea to you, the optional part. In your post where you said "If I had to donate a part of the profit of a game I sell, I would not put it on TDC, out of principle." it appeared to be a response to me, as though I were saying it was required that you had to give TDC a portion. That didn't make sense to me since I included "optional" in it.
I don't want to be a pain, I'm just severely confused and wanting to understand what exactly it is that you do and don't want, and why what I said was wrong, even though you... said it?
"I am not having an argument, I am just a grumpy old man who doesn't want to see another idea of his end up here as a piece of ugly shit. It would be the third time."
I think it depends on the perspective you take. If you thought of it as buying a $10 disc with some podcasts on it... I probably wouldn't even buy it. But if you say, "Donate at least $10 to help support TDC and get this free Klikcast DVD!" I think that would be more successful.
"I said sarcasm and what the heck because I was confused. In one post you said you hated the idea of stealing money from developers, and then in another you said you wanted a section where professional games could be sold? I don't get that. You said, "People who want to have a try selling their quality games get help from the coverage TDC gives them, they help TDC with a part of the profit." That's why I asked if there was sarcasm. It seems contradictory."
Right, first of all, the thing we are discussing here was my idea, an idea I had for a few months now. I suggested it in the news post, Rikus made a discussion thread about it saying "the idea that has been floating around". I don't want to take credit for this idea or anything, but I'd hate so see it go wrong.
In the first few pages I repeat the essence of my idea, people having the opportunity to sell their games tru TDC, giving them the needed coverage and platform, giving TDC some money to pay for hosting. Then some people suggest that klikkers who already have commercial games out there could just donate to TDC. That is what I was "mad" about. So the next few pages I try to explain how hard it is to sell a game by yourself, without a platform. Only to see some people making the same suggestion again. Which makes me a grumpy old man on the last few pages of this discussion.
Looking at the posts in this discussion, about 50% does not get the idea, do not realise you need a base to publish your games. Even after I explained it 5 times. I suggested this because I want to help this community, not because I want to sell my games.
I thought perhaps that was it, but I was going in logic circles so I wasn't sure. I think I read the parts about developers who already had games giving portions of the profit to TDC as meaning the developers who already have games could put those games into the new system, giving a portion of the sales AFTER that to TDC. If they wanted. I realize that that still isn't what you had in mind, but it's where I was confused.
I think that clears it up. I apologize if I irritated you.
Once again, I still think that selling games on The Daily Click could be a good idea. About having demos for people to download, UrbanMonk mentioned that deleting the timer file that tells the game when to stop was relatively easy way to get around the demo timer. A good way to avoid that would be to NOT make the demo the full game with a timer.
If the game has 7 levels, go into the frame editor and delete all but the first one. You could take out the ability to save and or remove weapons and power ups.
Also, has the site admin said anything more about this? Are they thinking of implementing it?
"Oh, my god! A lightning monster just ripped out this poor woman's eyes, and your mocking her shrubbery!" - The Spoony One
I think the thread is full of the same ideas repeated over and over with no one listening to any one. It's probably time for someone to make a decision and DO something.
It sounds like a good idea to me! Too bad I can't sell my project Motherworld though(Copyright laws) because I'm putting a lot of work into it I guess I could do donation ware though.
Good luck to everyone selling games!
Apparently there's a new general poll covering the issue at hand, with paying for TDC games. Yup. We ought to go over there and vote, it's easier to keep track that way. Then maybe we clarify over here if we feel that what we chose doesn't fully describe the feelings.
1. If TDC wants to sell games someone has to invest money before! Poeple either need to team up or one individual goes and signs up a company name and get a legal VAT number and such to start legal business. You have to be over 18 to do this and you would need a job and persmission from your company, otherwise you are startup and the costs are imense (plus you have to live from that money too! So not much profit for TDC in the first place).
2. Then you either create a pappal or BMTmicro or whatever you want to use account and someone has to code the asp site for the gamesto host and sell.
3. Then you need people who know both the casual market and the click market to rate games and see if they are good enough to be sold. Nobody cares for people who only ps3 or wii 24/7, you are out of the league right now. Casual / Indi Market is what you need, people need to know the trend and similar, also you need solid reviews for your games. No one wants to play games kids rate 5 stars and then a real customer plays it and it turns out it is just fanboyed crap.
4. Before selling someones needs to check for copyrights on gfx, sounds, music and fool proof read the text. Dev's need to make sure no copyrights are broken, by that time if I were that person I would get legal contracs with anyone I want to sell a game. I for myself would not trust anybody just by there word. No need to get a call a few days later to find out someone used commercial sound fx in his game and I was about to sell.
As you can see all this is very important and needs time and money invested before hands and the outcome is in question. I have not found a single game yet I would personally spend money here at TDC (excluding the commercial ones).
Well TDC has two options. Either sell games. Or Put a TON more ads on it.
Look at IGN....people still go there for some reason... I do. Ads make revenue and most people hardly notice them.
I can hear it now: "Ew no Ads, BOOO"... Well running out of options hmm? If you don't like ads then give them money.
thinking is like pong, it's easy, but you miss sometimes.
It depends. Most common ad services only pay you for each time that they get clicked. These would be the services like Google where they get paid (by the companies) to host ads, then you get paid by Google if the ads get clicked. If the site instead had a system where they got paid directly for the ads then it would be like IGN or other places that make large ad revenues. However, no company is going to buy ad space directly from us because we don't have a large enough userbase or wide-enough demographic to get the customers they want.
Something like that yeah, I don't know how many people would use it but I would if I were selling games.
Edit: the daily spotlight would be a pretty good spot for it as it hardly has any use like this anyway (as in it is a really naughty and unfair spotlight). You could pick one new project and one new game each day (so it is actually daily and fair instead of junk that pushes the frontpage news down) and have one commercial game there for a week that the author paid/donated for.
Originally Posted by Jon Lambert One other thing, suppose people pay for exclusive advertising? Like, if James wanted to he could buy an ad spot on a top banner or something for Lunnye Devitsy, and his ad and other purchased ads would cycle in and out.
Originally Posted by jthongbai I think the thread is full of the same ideas repeated over and over with no one listening to any one. It's probably time for someone to make a decision and DO something.
Again
A lot of good ideas have been put forth, I think we need to hear it from Rikus/Flava/Club or someone who is willing to really put some plans in motion.
Oh yeah, one more idea. Seeing as the arcade is speculated to bring more new users, it's dawned upon me that we'll have two communities: those who play games, and those who make/play them. Seeing as the charge is ~$80 a month, we can establish some sort of $1 subscription/buy DC points system for those who won't be getting DC points by submitting content, and then make DC points worth something, such as subscription arcade games, unlockable/purchasable arcade games or "Insert DC point(s) to play."
Jon Lambert see, once the arcade appears there will be two audiences: those who make games and those who play them without making them
those who make them will have the DC points to afford certain things because they can contribute. Those who just play them will need to buy DC points or something.
I like the advertising spot idea, but if the price was right. As in very cheap.
It's not something I'd use though. After working in that industry I've grown to really dislike it . The products should speak for themselves .
And they have to have those old continue screens where you have to insert another DC point to keep playing, but your score goes to 0. I was actually thinking of something like that to put on my website. I guess great minds have the same ideas.
MaVado, that is a very negative attitude you have there. Firstly, everyone who wont's to sell a game don't have to start a business. My Mum makes arts and crafts as a hobby and sells them at the markets sometimes. You think she has an ABN? No, it's a hobby and she dose not need one. I don't think many clickers will be earning enough money to need to starting a business.
Secondly, I think the admin around here should be able to tell what is a high quality game and what is not. And lastly, it's usually pretty clear when some one has ripped graphics from another game, but even if the user has ripped them well you can make them agree to a disclaimer saying that the creator of the game is responsible for the content they submit. The Daily Click should make an effort to screen the games but the ultimate responsibility lies with the creator.
...now where is this poll?
"Oh, my god! A lightning monster just ripped out this poor woman's eyes, and your mocking her shrubbery!" - The Spoony One
Disthron is right. TDC doesn't have to take care about the business side of things, it just should give the creators the coverage, the audience. When a clicker makes so much money with his game he actually has to pay taxes over it he is just damn lucky. And should pay the tax but that is all up to him.
Also, I can't stress the importance of quality control too much. If sub-standard games, or games containing lib/ripped graphics, sounds and music are sold, TDC will lose credit as a place to buy games at. It would be like a fashion store selling cheap copies.
Art does not fall under the same rules as software. You can sell as much Art as you want without paying any taxes.
I don't think admins could properly rate most of the commercial games. No offence but that is another league and You would need professional reviewers for this.
Yes the responsibility lies at the creator but still this is a very delecate task you surely don't want to take lightly and as you said ruin your reputation. Plus TDC and ultimately the developer will get charged for distributing copyrighted material.
It may sound negative for you but I work in the gaming industry and I also know the rules in business. I see hardly 5-10 games a year at TDC that could make profit.
However I do not discourage anyone! Feel free to get a paypal account and add a buy button to your game at the download page. After a month let us know how well you did
I don't think most of the admins want to rate games. It's tough enough even recommending them when they're free, when there's money at stake, I'd bet TDC members would be gunning down admins
I have plenty of reasons to say why this will not work, but that solves nothing. I can't see anything wrong with it. It doesn't eat bandwidth or require more time than other features. It'll take a while to implement, and even if it fails, nothing lost. At the very worst, it should end up something like the "Sponsored Links" that Google does.
So, I'd say that this idea deserves a green, or at least a yellow light.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
maVado, now that I think about it the laws around the world probably differ. I only have real experience within my own country. Over here, anything you do in your spare time is considered a hobby and your hobby can be anything. You can make money from your hobby up to a point. There is a threshold where after that you have to start a business. If you are a hobbyist you don't have to declare earnings from your hobby however you also can't claim any expenses. At least that's how it works over here. Are some activities precluded form being classed as hobbies where you are?
I think from memory the threshold is around $10,000 I don't know about anyone else but I don't expect to get anywhere near that much.
"Oh, my god! A lightning monster just ripped out this poor woman's eyes, and your mocking her shrubbery!" - The Spoony One
As far as quality control goes, can't we, the members, judge that? If a person wants to sell his game here he has to get the thumbs up from the members.
It's easy to tell when a game was made with love and passion and had a lot of work involved and when it was a rushed minigame made in a few days just to make a quick buck. I think as long as the game has a professional presentation, doesn't have ripped assets and has enough content it should be accepted, I don't think the admins have that much to worry about. For example, personally I don't like space shooters, but if I find a good one I can easily tell it was well made and I wouldn't be surprised if it sold well, even though I personally don't like the game.
Originally Posted by Devernath Wait, but doesnt the Klik program itself have some kinda legal crap with selling games, minus the MMF2 Dev?
As said earlier, all that is required to sell a klik game if you do not have the developer version of MMF2/whichever Clickteam program licence, you need to acknowledge Clickteam and display their logo in your game somewhere. I guess easiest would be intro screen, like every Gameboy/Nintendo game has Nintendo's logo regardless of who actually developed the game.
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) we could set up a test system that does what was said and then bump those games over to a special separate page. If it works out well we could start egging people into making good games to sell. 
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