Commercial Projects

[Rockthesmurf]

What options will there be available to commercial developers? For instance I am part of a small team that has released Kamicrazy ( www.kamicrazy.com ) and SoldierAnts ( www.isoldierants.com ) for the iPhone and wanted to find out the feasibility of releasing it on Pandora. I wouldn't expect either to fetch much money but wanted to find out what the general attitude of selling a complete game for a pound or two would be?

Obviously everyone would rather have everything for free but for it to work on Pandora I would need the art resolution improving which I couldn't do so would need to get done (getting it done for free via the community would have probelms too as in there are contracts in place with publishers/promoters/other team members - any art done for free for the project would have to be owned by my team and be available for commercial use on other platforms - none of these sound lime good options to me).

I think I would be tempted to give it a shot with the attitude 'if people don't want to pay for commercial stuff they don't have to' but I am still unsure what pricepoint I should go for and how I would actually go about selling it (unlock codes tied to SD card ID?)

Steve

 

[dflemstr]

I for one would be interested in something like this, at least if the price isn't too high (say, $5)...

Locking options, DRM and the like have been discussed endlessly before; the most common solutions that were considered, were SD ID locking, and some kind of online verification system (online games couldn't be played if you didn't have an unique serial online)

 

[Mithrildor]

But how high is the chance anyone actually decides to upload it for free and someone else is actually able to fidn it on usenet/torrent/filesharingwebsites?

And with this anti-piracy community the chance is low less copies will be sold than if the console had DRM. The last option of dflemstr is something good to include (when you buy a game you get a serial via email and you need to use the internet to verify your game (almost every future Pandora owner has Wifi, so why not (ok it requires lots of work and is eventually hackable (even steam is hacked))).

Btw I really like the looks of Kamicrazy.

 

[(naw)mcx]

I'd buy a game for a pound or 2, even if I don't like it! Just to support the Pandora developers!

If you work out a simple system where you pay and can download it straight away, many people won't even think twice, for that price!

(I use too much exclamation marks!)

 

[Mithrildor]

2 pounds? Indie games are worth 10 dollar.

 

[dflemstr]

2 pounds? Indie games are worth 10 dollar.

If it's something more advanced than Tetris and has all the traits of an indie game (aka it's not just a copy of every other game out there), then +1

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Absolutely yes, paying a few pounds for a game is very attractive, and what's the point of trying to hack the copy protection? It's not like it is £39 or anything.

Rockthesmurf, welcome to the community and please go ahead with your venture, your input I'm sure will be greatly received.

 

[Prometheus]

Both of those games look great to me. Myself, I don't subscribe to the "absolutely everything should be free to me" school of thought, and as far as downloadable titles go I'm happy to pay anything from £10 and under for a good one (actually, the one game I've had the most fun out of recently cost me £7, and was a downloadable ). (If a demo were available and both are my sort of thing (they very much appear to be), I would very likely buy both.)

I only have one concern - if the purchased software is tied to an SD Card ID, what happens if that card snuffs it? :mellow: (I know it's unlikely for a person to use up all of the writes on a card in a short space of time - I'm more thinking of the fact that sometimes cards can randomly fail. )

 

[danielliu88888]

both games look great. i'm sure most of us would prefer to have free games, but the community is glad to support developers. i'd definitely buy them if they were around 5$ or so.

 

[marshal]

I would definitely be interested in some commercial game for the Pandora. I don't mind paying $5 or so for a "small" game if it's interesting.
I just checked the link you provided. One seems like a Worms clone. There are some other open source clone of worms so I guess you game would have to be pretty well finished. The other game I am not too sure what kind of game it is but I look quite funny.

The number of Pandora owner will probably be quite low for some time so I wouldn't expect you to make some big money. Still if the Pandora sell pretty well the few commercial game available for it might do ok.

 

[gruso]

Sounds great to me. This has never been the type of community to pirate their own scene's commercial titles. Maybe check out some of the commercial GP2X titles like Payback, Vektar and Wind & Water Puzzle Battles to get a feel for how they did things. (For example, the Wind & Water guys actually made custom sprites for people who purchased their game - many of which now appear as avatars in this forum.)

[edit] oops, just saw your join date and realised I'm probably not telling you anything new. Anyway. Commercial games on Pandora, Gruso says yes.

 

[OrR]

I don't think DRM is important or useful for a 5$ game. In the end, it always means the paying customer is getting screwed in some way. There has always been a strong attitude against piracy in this community so I don't think it's necessary to protect your game.

 

[iprice]

QUOTE
There has always been a strong attitude against piracy in this community

Which is why every other post is about emulation

It would be great if there was some type of "app store" for Pandora, however it would be a real shame if everyone went the commercial route only (which is unlikely to happen, but possible). However, I'd certainly be willing to contribute a couple (or more) quid to developers for software that I find useful/fun/interesting

 

[skeezix]

I did a bit of noodling but not sure we can get a unique-ID out of the pandora hardware, but I've not had a lot of time to investigate that. But even if no easy to grab unique-ID is available, selling software to individuals has been gong on for a million years and is feasible.. just make the unlock-code include personal information, and people will be more hesitant to ship it around (Some companies og so far as to use someones credit card number as the unlock code, but that is not cool. Others use the customers name and a long hash at the end, so changing the name breaks the code, so everyone can see who gthe code was made for if they ship it around.) Also, banning obvious names from registration or auditing them can help, depending on your time investment

Anyway, why not?

jeff

 

[OrR]

Well. I have never seen anyone trying to link to roms around here, and people who ask for it are also very rare. Also, there is a very big difference between games that are not commercially available anymore and have made their money investment back years ago and fresh new indie titles.

I agree with skeezix that an unlock code linked to the person is a good idea. It discourages simply sharing the game with everyone but it does not come with any restrictions for the buyer if his SD card or Pandora breaks.

 

[skeezix]

And FWIW, emulation never eve has been illegal. I have many rants about it, here and elsewhere. ITs ROM swapping, as OrR points out, that _can_ be illegal.

jeff

 

[iprice]

QUOTE
emulation never eve has been illegal

Whenever emulation is mentioned people always say "Emulation is legal" this is actually rarely the case. Many emulators require an original BIOS or actual code from the original machines to run (unless they've been reverse engineered and coded from the ground up), which isn't easy or readily available to dump. Therefore many emulators are still using software and IP belonging to the hardware manufacters which is illegal and a breach of copyright. Here's a god article - http://curmudgeongamer.com/article.php?sto...050126125510986

QUOTE
Also, there is a very big difference between games that are not commercially available anymore and have made their money investment back years ago and fresh new indie titles.


Not true. There is no definition of this under law. Every piece of software, is classified the same - unauthorised duplication and distribution is copyright theft. Unless the original IP holders state that the software is freely available, it isn't. However the copyright, even for public domain and free software still remains with the IP holder.

However, I'm as much to blame as anyone else - I'm happy to use emus and ROMs on my various systems, I just don't pretend it's a "grey area" and not at all dodgy.

 

[skeezix]

iprice -- it is a highly complicated issue, and no great paintbrushes can be used; most emus do not require BIOSes (depending on the era; talk 2600 etc.) Some require a bootable OS (Atari ST), but then look at FreeTOS (an open source OS replacement for TOS, a part of the OS.) Further, look at the Java VM, which is simply an emulator of a machien that doesn't physically exist. Emulation as a whole has been around for decades and is certainly not illegal in any way, EVER. Distributing the OS/ BIOS etc coudl well but, but it depends on you jurisdiction (the world is not the US, say.) But even then, there are often options... buy a commercial emu and rip out the BIOS from that.

I have got at great lenghts in the past into details, and shoudl formalize an essay but I like to parade out once in awhile in these threads and just make the point, since n00bies about. (But I guess by definition, noobies are noobs, so they will always be new when they discover this stuff.) Clearly you have some handle on it, but you are not the target of my comment

There is also the coprorate idea.. Big N does not like emulation, but that does not make it illegal; information is often distorted by what the companies project, but that is self serving and not legally accurate, etc.

Anyway..

jeff

 

[iprice]

Indeed, like you state, it does also depends on where in the world you live. However to say that emulation is legal is also paintbrushing everything. It's definitely not as cut and dry as you make it sound. Some companies certainly do allow their systems and softwares to be emulated - Amstrad especially is a company to be proud of in this area - allowing full access to their range of computers (including the Spectrum). And yes there are numerous opensource BIOS/kernals for machines, but running any software on them still make emulation illegal in most countries if you read the statues.

But as you say, anyway.

And as I say, Bring it on!

 

[jlepley]

Basically, I think anti-piracy means most of us aren't going to be stealing any games. For example, I plan to find a way to rip all of my own ROMs myself, rather than just downloading them off of the internet.