Re: Loki...

["Adam D. Moss" <adam@gimp.org>]

Steve Baker wrote:
> > > the same thing.  It's tough to go into an OpenSource development that's
> > > going to suck up all your free time for a year or more knowing that there
> > > is only a 3% chance that it will be loved.
> >
> > 3% seems to be an exaggeration but I get your point.
> 
> It's not an exaggeration for commercial games.  Only 1 in 35 is
> ever profitable, thats ~3%.

Well, 'profitable' and 'loved' are rather different things!
I have a soft spot for many games which were never profitable,
and of course vice-versa.

There are two ways to get profitable -- one is to spend a
lot of money on development and also strike lucky (we'll
call it luck, since very few companies seem to have found
to secret of consistant success, and they're keeping it
that -- a secret [I was going to cite RARE as an example,
but then -- Conker's Bad Fur Day]) to the extent that
sales royalties exceed development cost.

The other is just to keep your development costs (and
publishing margins) damn low in the first place, so it's
clearly a much easier (== less risky) proposition to break
even.  Of course, that can easily impact quality and hence
sales, and if you still can't get a publisher then you're
left with $0 minus (*relatively* low) development costs.
There's a sweet spot there somewhere.  Depends what you're
happy with I suppose -- the zaibatsus like Sony set very
aggressive targets, and can afford to absorb the losses.

Free games might well be loved, but of course they're unlikely
to be profitable.

> Yes - I'm certainly convinced of that.  I have been working with my son on
> a 'quick hack' game to present to his math class at school - it's multiplayer
> (you may recollect the grief I had with the keyboard problem!) and allows
> each player to control a Wizard who can conjure up spells to splat the other
> guy or defend himself using sequences of button pushes...kind of like a
> beat-em-up - but non-contact.

Hey!  "Chaos"!  Wicked.

-- 
Adam D. Moss    . ,,^^    adam@gimp.org    http://www.foxbox.org/   co:3

But not us (no never) no not us (no never)
We are far too young and clever