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Rick

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Blog Comments posted by Rick

    xtreampb

    Posted

    I don't understand why anyone would wait? Why limit your games exposure for some artificial purpose? The only reason people do exclusive releases is because they get money to do so and "Linux" isn't going to give anyone money to do so. Linux, like any other OS, needs to be able to stand on it's own and not be promoted for no reason other than it's no Windows.

    Josh

    Posted

    I don't think a support contract would work. Josh would have to hire someone to do it and less people would get the support contract vs upgrading (someone would just start a community forum if this one was only available to support contracts) so he'd be making less money and now have to pay someone else (because he can't do support AND development on his own. Especially at the level of a real support contract would require vs just a forum).

     

     

    ITs the least capable, performant and productive engine I've at hand to use (compared to Shiva, UDK, Unity)

     

    It's also potentially the cheapest out of those listed. I say potentially because of UDK taking royalties, and free Unity makes you buy the full version after you make > $100,000 in a year from the game. You would have to buy the pro version on each platform. It is much cheaper than Unity Pro and all their mobile addons, and sounds like the full version of Shiva is $1500(?), so it's cheaper there also.

     

    The point being that LE is building towards being an amazing product (right now it's still good but you have to do some work arounds for some things to make it great and like you said development has to be focused on specific areas because it's just Josh doing it all) and paying $99 or so a year to get there will be cheaper in the long run than getting those other engines and upgrades they charge over the years and or paying royalties if one plans on trying to sell their game at some point.

     

    So then the question becomes can one make a product with LE and I think one can. The nice thing about Josh is that generally if you show your product is far along and you'll actually be releasing it, he's pretty good about helping you as much as he can. He can make certain bug fixes a priority over others to help your product. It's to his benefit to get games made with LE.

    • Upvote 1
    Josh

    Posted

    I'm just pointing out how some software companies seem to do business. They pick a price point for their product and they want to stay around that price point so the price doesn't just keep climbing, making it out of reach for new users eventually (this is a good thing for the consumer). This statement seems reasonable does it not? So the question becomes how do you do that then. I'm giving my opinions on who, what, when, where, why.

     

    If I'm fine with paying $99/yr for upgrades, and I'm OK with giving new users a little break to grow the community, then my experience with the software isn't hindered in any way. I'm hearing people say they are OK with $99/yr upgrades, but become not OK because of what new users are paying for? 1 year later those new users are in our same boat. I bet the new user was grateful the product price stayed the same when they first bought it, but then get angry when the new users get that price too?

     

    I'm open to hearing how others would tackle this. Dan wants to charge new users an extra $99 each year to the original price. I don't think that's a winning strategy to keep getting new users because at some point you take yourself out of the price range of too many people. How would you handle this?

    Josh

    Posted

    Are you saying the base priced should never go up? No matter how many features are added the base price should be the same? I do not understand this thinking. If I go buy a new car and add some options (features) the cars price will go up. So how can you expect the base price for LE to stay the same forever, no matter how many features are added. And the only people that absorb the cost and profits for creating that new feature are the return customers.

     

    Because like in cars what was once a feature today is a standard or not a feature (maybe trend goes away) tomorrow. Josh is charging us for the new features he codes not the old features he's coded, which seems clear given the same price between 3.0 and 3.1. If I recall correctly Unity is basically always $1500 between new versions. They pick a price point and stick to it no matter how many features they have. I mean we'd be paying like $1000 for Windows if we always pay for the features they coded in the past and are still in the product. They don't totally scrap the entirely old code. They reuse features/code from previous products in their upgrades yet the price point is always around the same (of course inflation and all that has to be included).

     

    It's all about a price point vs current effort.

     

    Old features don't hold their value, especially in the game industry where things move really fast. However, old features can again become popular which will raise their value again. This is what happened with low end renderer's when the mobile market became big. Suddenly the new high end renderer's everyone had won't work on these mobile devices so they had to go backwards and suddenly low end renderer's became popular again so people could make games on mobile devices! So then it becomes a feature (again) and you can charge more for it. That's slowly fading again though because of how insanely fast the mobile devices are increasing in power. So that value is dropping again.

    Josh

    Posted

    so my only problem is the new customer price.

     

    So you want them to pay more? How will this change your experience with the software? If anything this will hurt the community as we'll get fewer people. So new 3.1 users pay $299? Then 3.2 users pay $399?, etc to the point where no new users are coming because it's out of their price range. How does that cycle stop? That's the part that I'm not following you. Old features eventually die out. You paid for that feature at the time and the other person didn't. As much as people don't want to look at an older renderer as a feature it is/was. It allows us to hit more hardware than before which equates to more customers.

    Josh

    Posted

    I guess I read that in that he's just telling us when each platform order will be worked on and what order they will be available. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I read that.

     

    Promotional pricing isn't because the product is older. New products/services still get promotional pricing to get new customers to use it. I'll admit this is mostly on the services side though in other industries.

     

    When windows 9 comes out I will think you will able to "upgrade" to 9 from 8 cheaper than buying 9 outright. Right?

     

    Assuming mobile isn't included in all of this (pending clarification from Josh), we got the software for $199 and now pay $99 per upgrade. New people get the software for $199 and now pay $99 per upgrade going forward. The newest users will always get the deal. You were a new user at some point so at that point you got the deal. This cycle has to start at some point. He can't keep adding each upgrade cost to the new user price. It'll get way to high for a new user and we'll get no new users. The community won't grow and the product will die. He can't not charge for upgrades and only rely on new customers because he'll lose money and not be able to run his business. You always have to have repeat business.

     

    I'm not sure what you want to happen. Do you want new users to pay $299 so it's "fair" to the 3.0 users? Do you want 3.0 users to get a free upgrade to 3.1? That's basically free upgrades for life then which I don't think is a very smart business model in the video game engine business.

     

    Maybe state how you would want to see this happen instead of just saying what's currently happening is bogus?

    Josh

    Posted

    I may be missing something but where does he say that mobile is included with this 3.1 new customer price? He says there won't be an upgrade cost for mobile from 3.0 to 3.1 but my assumption there is that a person would have to buy the 3.0 mobile first to get that free 3.1 upgrade for mobile. Maybe I'm wrong, but it would seem that's the logical thing to do in the mobile case.

     

    If you look at the pre-order upgrade it doesn't mention mobile at all: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/?app=nexus&showbanner=0

     

    Businesses pretty regularly give new customers cheaper rates to try and get them using their service. Cable/dish/phone companies are a prime example of this. Josh is also giving beta testers a free upgrade, so he is rewarding who he deems the most loyal customers to Leadwerks.

     

    I think we figured out that it was $99 cheaper to be a new normal customer getting 3.1, which is the "new customer" deal one gets. However, if you always wait for the cheaper deal you'll never get anything and never make games that we all must seem to enjoy since we use it.

     

    Note, that on the next upgrade the 3.1 people will be complaining about the same thing, but we got 3.0 for $199. So when we were the new customers we didn't care (he was going to charge like a grand or something it was at first!) but when other new customers get the deal we care?

     

    http://www.ask.com/question/what-is-promotional-pricing

     

    I bought Windows 8 Pro for $35 when it first came out. If you buy it now it's like $199!

    Josh

    Posted

    I don't think the updates are overpriced at all. Look at Unity Pro. It's $1,500! If you look at the feature list between them it's fairly comparable and LE is way cheaper! If you purchased 3.0 and upgrade to 3.1 you'll have paid like $300? It would take 12 more years of $99 upgrades to finally hit Unity Pro's cost. I've been more productive with LE than I was with even the indie version of Unity (that's just my experience obviously).

     

    Personally, I just don't think $99/yr upgrades are overpriced when comparing it to some other popular engines.

    Josh

    Posted

    @gamecreator But then you wouldn't ever use the product because you'd always be waiting to save money. It's like cable or dish. They always give big savings to new customers to try and get them to convert. If you want the product/service, at some point you bite the bullet and make the purchase knowing that they may have bigger savings later for newer customers.

    Josh

    Posted

    +1 on the no mobile upgrade cost when it comes out!

     

    If we need to pay $99 for each of those features every year then this engine will get very expensive.

     

    We got 3 very nice features in this upgrade so I'd be shocked if each feature you listed itself will be an upgrade on it's own. As much as some people hate on 3.0 it was a good upgrade. We got pathfinding, csg, mobile support, run on wider range of hardware, and a more solid engine with the transition to C++ as it's core.

     

    Honestly even if we did pay $99 for each of those features, which I don't think we will, it'll still be cheaper than some other engines. $99 /yr is cheaper than most of my other hobbies, and those don't really offer me the chance to make any money from them :)

    • Upvote 1
    Rick

    Posted

    @BLaBZ I agree. Other usages I was thinking about was a game engine with your own editor. If you combine this with component design you can get some pretty flexible things made via an editor. You could add any properties to a game object without coding and do it via an editor.

    BLaBZ

    Posted

    @YouGroove The problem with that approach is that it assumes you can take anything and make it great. Some project ideas just aren't good. Making prototypes of many projects can help you find the ones that most interest you and are more fun to play which means it'll have a better chance of success.

    BLaBZ

    Posted

    I find the trade off between spending the time making unit tests (which seems to not really be about making the tests as much as it is taking the time to organize your code a certain way to aid in unit testing) vs "normal" testing and fixing issues when they come up, interesting.

     

    I almost feel like we're so used to bugs in software in general that users don't really value bugless code all that much. We seem to be able to put up with bugs if the software is good and works most of the time. Windows almost seems to be the prime example of this.

    Josh

    Posted

    What I think an end state could be for mobile gaming is not all that mobile. I would like my phone to be a console that could wirelessly link to any TV, projector, or monitor. I would also want to be able to play my game and do anything else at the same time on my phone. My phone wouldn't even need to show anything on it but have it running in the background and shown on my TV/monitor. Of course all this needs to be smooth and flow nicely where phone calls don't cause any slowdown or interruption. Then I can just use my wireless keyboard and mouse or controller to play the games. With internet enabled TV's you would think this could work.

    • Upvote 1
    Josh

    Posted

    I think the mobile market has a short attention span. Because of the limited interface mobile has, most games are probably played for a very short total time on average (there will be exceptions of course).

     

    Things that I have read is that it's a pure numbers game, which would make sense given the statement above. Your best bet to survive (if you aren't the lucky big hit game) is to turn out a new game every month or so. You track performance and ignore the bad selling ones and put your attention towards the ones that are selling, while still putting out new games and marketing.

     

    I think this goes against what a lot of game developers want to do, which would be to put time and energy into a game they really believe in, vs turning out a lot of smaller games. Different market, different strategies.

    • Upvote 5
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