Clickteam seems very set in having this specific business model and they are sticking to it. If that works for them, then people should have peace with it including myself.
However, visitor count might be up, But the forums are dreadfully empty compared to other company/fan forums.
Even clickteams unofficial owned site "gamebuilder" run by fans, is running dry on activity and unfortunately that group of "active" members is very small. (I dont know if throwing a cash price for a compo at this might be the best way to go) But what do I know?
Someone else suggested to just create the "klik&play" for this generation with Flash support! (tgf2 repackaged with flash support) Get a big time publisher to publish it all over the place, with clickteam retaining the rights to sell its own high-end mmf2, you should be set. But it looks like that is not going to change. Or maybe such a deal might be impossible to get.
At any rate thumbs up for upcoming flash and extension support, but time will tell if that will be enough.
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Selling bulk licences to schools probably has a bigger and more immediate financial reward for Clickteam. At the same time as making sales, they're marketing the software to kids who will remember the name of the software if it snagged their interest. I think it's a great tactic, for a company producing software that's lagging behind the incredible pace that the industry has been moving in recently.
Like many others, I'd also like to see MMF2 sitting proudly on a shelf in my favourite game store, but it's probably never going to happen. Maybe their experience with IMSI made them reluctant to work with any other publishers in future. I know most of us here were introduced to MMF through seeing the obnoxiously large TGF box, or the Klik & Play sample disc, but the costs involved in mass producing and distributing the boxed software again would just not be worth it.
Just as an aside, I think Clickteam's marketing and public image could do with an overhaul. I've met Francois and Yves and can tell you that they're really great guys and very interested in what's going on in the community. The Clickteam website, however, doesn't reflect their enthusiasm and is very corporate looking. Take a look at YoYoGames' front page and you'll see a company that's obviously in touch with what their users are creating. Perhaps Clickteam rely on TDC to handle the fun community stuff for them.
Having said all that, I think Clickteam will do just fine. A little bit of marketing here and there wouldn't hurt to say the least, but they're obviously getting the sales they need to continue as a company. When the iPhone and Flash runtimes arrive, this community and their sales have the potential to explode, but if they just rely on word of mouth it's hard not to be pessimistic about what the results will be.
They need to push the abilities of the program and show conitinued support for extensions which have potential but are never really fully realized. For example, I'm interested in this raycaster extension, but I'm thinking it might be too basic. This would be fine for a first version, but I am worried that nothing will happen after the first release. I think the mode 7 extension had a lot of potential, but it basically came out and has stayed the same with no updates since.
I was looking at construct and there are a lot of ideas there that Clickteam could do a lot better. The multi-jointed characters for example or the 3D buildings. Full screen scaling and rotation would be good too.
I think we're seeing a 2D renaissance going on in the gaming industry right now, and Clickteam is positioned to cash in on that, but they have to be able to match the bells and whistles we're seeing in these new 2D games.
I know you can put them together with some coding, but construct had something like that built in. Is there an extension for it in mmf2 or do you just mean it's possible to code it in? Multiple action points/hotspots would be great. Unfortunately my demo of mm2 expired. . . and then my demo of mm2 developer expired so I really haven't played with it as much as I'd like, and neither demo supported extensions.
My thoughts are the usual;
CT should be selling in shops.
Seems like CT are spreading themselves thin.
I don't see the community going anywhere though. There will always be a core group, communities even survived with only 5-10 active posters (KU before the remodel, KF before the server went, TK before people just stopped visiting). It's just CT aren't alone in this market anymore and even have competition from Microsoft so people will see their products way before CT's and join their communities instead.
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