Hi John,
To start with your obviously not familiar with big budget mainstream
games as games like Swamp and 3D Velocity still can't compare with a
big budget mainstream game. True, they are very good games, are more
on par with mainstream games than anything else, but are really not on
par with the big budget mainstream games. However, I feel if more
audio game developers could develop games equivalent to Swamp, 3D
Velocity, etc we'd be a lot closer to mainstream than we are now.
As for a number of developers banding together to develop a title that
is definitely what is required to develop anything close to
mainstream, and I personally don't see it happening. All the
developers would have to have similar skills, would need to be skilled
in the same languages and tools, use the same operating system, and of
course be willing to divide the work equally. Otherwise such a project
is not very likely to happen.
About the only way I could in vision anything like this ever happening
is if it was designed explicitly as an open source project. That way
everyone in the community can contribute as desired, people can work
on it in their spare time, and any sounds music etc that are
contributed would be done so through on a volunteer basis. Thus would
save on costs and could potentially create something fairly complex
without the bourdon of development and financial costs being placed on
a single individual.
As far as compromise goes that really would depend on the developers
in question, but in the main one or more people are going to have to
compromise because each developer likely has his or her preferences.
One developer might want to use BGT, another Purebasic, another C++,
someone else Visual Basic and those kind of differences just aren't
resolvable without someone deciding to relearn to program in a
different language. We are a pretty diverse community of developers
each with his or her own ideas of what works and doesn't and until
those kinds of differences are resolved the project is going nowhere.
Cheers!
On 6/13/15, john <jpcarnemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'll do my best to answer each of your points below:
Game comparison: I have no clue. I haven't played mainstream games, and
really pay them little attention, so have no idea how to compare.
However,
what I've seen leads me to say something like TDV is relatively close to
mainstream - its got story, its got multiplayer, and its got other stuff
to
do. I'd also put Swamp in that box, especially once you start involving
player-written campaigns in the equation. If there were more of those out
there, it'd probably be pretty close to mainstream titles.
For the rest of your points, I think its important to point out that
what's
being discussed here is a number of developers, not just two or three,
banding together with the intent of getting a product out the door. We're
not talking one loan dev doing everything - we're talking several, with
community support for every aspect of the job.
Finances: If we made a game a truly community project and then went ahead
and published a list of things we needed to make it work and their prices
for the community to contribute on, as well as pitching in ourselves, I
think we could probably raise more money than you think. $100 is a lot of
money, but there are probably a couple people out there who'd be willing
to
send in that much, as well as several others who'd be fine sending in $20
for the project. I'd also like to note that if you make it your intent to
make a project low budget, you can still come up with something high
quality
without spending $5000 on sounds and acting. I'm two years into my own
project, and while I certainly wouldn't call it mainstream quality, my
total
budget (including bgt because I'm being generous) has been... $40, total.
$10 for a sound library, and $30 for the bgt license. Of course I haven't
gotten everything done (not even close), but every step of the way I'm
trying to find ways to use existing or free resources, rather than
spending
hundreds of dollars on commercial libraries.
Time: two points here. 1: even large companies take years to make those
games, also. Its not as if they can crank them out in six months, at
least
not from what I've heard. 2: Yeah, you're right. Its going to take a long
time for us to make a really big and high quality game. We'll tell the
community that before we go ahead and take their money - something like
"please understand that this project is expected to take at least five
years
before anything is even remotely available for beta."
Compensation: this is a community-supported project, built and worked on
by
the community, every sep of the way. People have already contributed to
build the game, it'd be completely unethical to then turn around and tell
them you wanted more money for a project that they've been a part of
almost
as much as you. That said, developers would be spending a lot of time on
this - a donation button is perfectly appropriate.
You've also mentioned the subject of a common programming interface in
the
past - I think that would have to be something determined only once the
team
of developers was assembled. Compromises would have to be made, of
course -
its pointless to say "I want to write this game in language x" if only
two
developers in the community know that language at all. There's just no
way
to figure out what would work before those who were going to do the
writing
were all there and able to say how comfortable they were with a given
interface.
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