Root of all evil

Submit your own resources!

David Montgomery-Blake   (Mar 18, 2008 at 15:19 GMT)

There is no defacto line; in fact, it is a personal line. It is like asking whether you should start an open-source project or a commercial one. The end-goal as well as the intermediary process are important to that consideration. If someone has spent a significant amount of time to make my life easier, will I give them money so that I don't have to spend that time? Sure. If I want to do it in a particular way, will I? Sure. If they want to give it to me for free, will I take it? Sure.

Jeff Faust   (Mar 18, 2008 at 15:47 GMT)

There is no line. The idea that helping the community and "profiting" from it are mutually exclusive endeavors is a false notion. Both can overlap considerably. I know in my case, the fact that I sell a product greatly increases my opportunity to contribute to the community. Also, if there's any profit to be made from indie development, it's from creating games, not content packs or middleware. Because the prices need to be very low, and the potential market is so narrow, it's extremely difficult to actually profit from creating indie content. I suspect most people who sell indie content are just trying to defer the cost of working as an indie developer in the first place. For many of us, making even a small return from the community keeps us from being sucked away to ordinary industry jobs that are more stable, pay better, and offer benefits, but contractually preclude or leave little time for indie development.

Ben Acord   (Mar 18, 2008 at 15:54 GMT)

There is a line and as David has said it's personal. I'd even go so far as to say that it's per product. Just because I choose free for this art/code doesn't mean I'll always take that same route for future products.

I am personally interested in the selling track for a current product -- but at a rate I feel comfortable that a college student could meet without breaking their bank.

Brian Carter   (Mar 18, 2008 at 16:08 GMT)

I agree, there is considerable overlap, and I'm not saying that selling content / middleware is a bad thing. My initial thoughts were to try and cover some of my game development costs (and keep my wife off my back). However, seeing so many people contribute so many amazing resources freely to the community just made me question my own position in relation to what I develop. I also agree that for most of us the profit is only made from the selling of the finished game.

I guess for me this is more orientated towards taking into consideration the plight of struggling developers; ones that don't have the resources or even the deep technical skills needed to fabricate complex systems / models, and as a result end up giving up on their dream to make a game. It's seems to be a fine line balancing the desire to recoup your own costs, and helping the entire community - and not just those that can afford to pay for the content.

I think my question of where should the line be drawn is really too vague, and it didn't convey what I was really asking (my fault). What I meant to ask was at what point would you consider your resource worthy of being sold, verses distributing it freely for the entire community. Also, does the community really benefit from selling a resource? Wouldn't the community as a whole thrive more with freely distributed resources?

One thought that crossed my mind was distributing content for free, but with the provision that if the final product is completed and makes it to commercial distribution that a lisence is required. Dunno, I have a lot of conflicted opinions on this right now - but thats my problem :) I would hate to see content providers leaving the community because they can no longer justify or afford to spend their time developing content for no return if they need that source of income.

Chris Calef   (Mar 18, 2008 at 17:21 GMT)

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Also, does the community really benefit from selling a resource? Wouldn't the community as a whole thrive more with freely distributed resources?

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Thanks for the discussion, Brian, this is a good thing to talk about every now and then. Just had to jump in on this last quote, to voice my opinion that, HECK YEAH the community benefits from selling resources. A lot of people can afford twenty or forty bucks, and having the content there to be bought is a massive advantage over not having it there at all. In fact, I'd venture to say that practically anyone who is really going to get through all the hurdles involved in getting a game to market is going to find some way to scrape together twenty or forty bucks for key content packs that will save them hundreds of hours of work.

Granted, the price keeps people from throwing everything out there into their game without even thinking about it, but that's not going to result in a well-designed game anyway. On the developer side of the equation, though, that token twenty bucks or whatever should not be overlooked as incentive. When I finally got the ragdoll pack to market, I was in a financial state best described as Poor As Dirt, and while it was minor, the income from it definitely raised my spirits. Most importantly, the goal of creating a final product worth paying for demanded the extra level of finishing the damn thing as opposed to releasing it as an unpolished resource, that could have been quite a bit more difficult to use.

That said, people who release usable resources for free ROCK, and we should all hug and kiss them whenever we see them at conferences!

Jeff Faust   (Mar 18, 2008 at 17:29 GMT)

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What I meant to ask was at what point would you consider your resource worthy of being sold, verses distributing it freely for the entire community.

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A resource is worthy of being sold if people find that what it does is worth paying the price. If you have good business intuition (mine is not very good) you may be able to make a good guess at what works, but sometimes you have to just try selling something to find out. It is not uncommon in this community for someone to offer some content at a price and then later follow-up by drastically reducing the price or giving it away free upon learning the hard way that no one will buy it. It's tempting to say that any resource is worth giving away, but this is not always true. A resource that requires an ongoing effort to keep it useful, say regular adaptation to engine changes, may do better for the community in the long run sold rather than given away.

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Also, does the community really benefit from selling a resource? Wouldn't the community as a whole thrive more with freely distributed resources?

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(Echoing Chris...) The community benefits from a resource that is sold if not selling the resource prevents it from existing in the first place. The more complicated the resource, the less likely it will be created for free.

Brian Carter   (Mar 18, 2008 at 17:44 GMT)

@ Jeff & Chris, thank you for your insights.

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A resource is worthy of being sold if people find that what it does is worth paying the price. ... A resource that requires an ongoing effort to keep it useful, say regular adaptation to engine changes, may do better for the community in the long run sold rather than given away.

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@ Jeff, I think maybe that for me really defines "the line". If it's a piece of work that's going to require on going support and modification then I would most likely consider selling it to compensate for the time that I will have to invest periodically in maintaining it as an available resource. However, if its something that is rough around the edges, could use improvement, or is specific to a sitaution as opposed to being generically useful then I would probably verge towards opening it up for free to see what the community could do with it.

It really looks like it boils down to basic economics 101, in regards to supply and demand. If there is no demand for the resource, or if the time/cost benefit doesnt gain you anything then it wont sell (i.e you value your time at $40/hour, and the resource costing $55 would take you 30 mins to code yourself, then then there is negative gain; however, paying $55 for something that is beyond your ability to produce, or would take 6-7 hours to do provides a positive gain by purchasing it).

It could be that I don't feel that my code is worthy of being purchased - I'm surrounded by so many talented people it feels egotistical to waltz in and say my code is good enough for you to throw your hard earned money at me for it :) I don't think I'm cut-throat enough to be an entrepreneur :) !!

Rex   (Mar 18, 2008 at 17:49 GMT)

Freely distributing Resources is great...if you are on the 'receiving' end without reciprocating with an equal amount of time and effort. Putting out multiple pieces of work over and over without compensation...well, I don't need to go further...nobody does everything for free for very long. That equation just does not hold up, all output/ no input.

"Quid pro quo": this for that...a few lines of TS to 'howto' something...no need to ask for funding[if so, good luck getting 'buyers']. Take a week or more to 'produce' something of 'value'...that needs a larger form of 'this' for 'that', period. Nothing wrong with that.

Ted Southard   (Mar 18, 2008 at 17:54 GMT)

Just to add my own two cents into the mix, I can understand where people feel conflicted sometimes about selling content or packs, but you cannot underestimate your own time spent on that content. I'll release free stuff now and then, especially when it's sitting around and isn't going to do me any good, then it would certainly help someone else.

But again, there are some projects that have taken months of time to complete, and like Chris, some of those projects had been sold at times when I was working as a greeter in a restaurant (during the IT Dustbowl of 2002-2004), and the money really did help me out. It's times like that that really do keep people going as much as the altruistic motive of wanting to just help people.

Jeff Faust   (Mar 18, 2008 at 18:09 GMT)

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I don't think I'm cut-throat enough to be an entrepreneur :) !!

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Being a good entrepreneur does not necessarily require being cut-throat. I have enormous respect for the great entrepreneurs that figure out a system by which they can give away a product to end-users, while still earning ongoing fuel for the project through secondary income sources like sponsorship, advertising, and strategic partnerships without tainting the project. I've never come close to figuring this out.

Scott Burns   (Mar 18, 2008 at 18:12 GMT)

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(Echoing Chris...) The community benefits from a resource that is sold if not selling the resource prevents it from existing in the first place. The more complicated the resource, the less likely it will be created for free.

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Seconded, well thirded I guess. I remember when I first came here four (or is it five now?) years ago, while there were many resources being made there were quite a few that were not. The reason was for it was due to their complexity that their author's just weren't comfortable with giving out for free, especially if it was a key feature to the game they were working on. This was back when the only content packs were those from Bravetree, Tim Aste's may have been out then as well not quite sure when his came out. The RTS kit was just talk back then.

Now look what we have access to. A multitude of starter kits, MMO architectures that were born out of resources themselves, vehicle packs, weapon packs, character packs. I think the key thing here is that, as Indies, we're willing to support each other, whether it be through freebies or by rewarding someone's efforts by purchasing their pack to get a leg up on our own projects.

Brian Carter   (Mar 18, 2008 at 18:16 GMT)

I wonder how a donation orientated system would be recieved. Maybe this is a "middle of the road" avenue that's worth potentially exploring. You could release the content to everybody and place a link for a donation via Paypal or some such mechanism for those that appreciate the work and feel that it's worth a few bucks. Kinda just thinking aloud to myself at this point. Sure there would be some that take it and run, but I would hate to be so cynical in thinking the whole community is like that. Maybe this is something I will explore myself more as a social experiement :)
Edited on Mar 18, 2008 18:18 GMT

Derek Bronson   (Mar 18, 2008 at 19:36 GMT)

As the 3rd Party Manager who handles all the content packs and dev kits on the site I feel as though I should weigh in on this topic. A lot has already been said but I will just highlight a few things that I feel are key points:

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Also, does the community really benefit from selling a resource? Wouldn't the community as a whole thrive more with freely distributed resources?

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My personal opinion is that the community as a whole thrives more with sold resources. By providing some income to people for the packs that they create you are keeping them more invested in this community and motivating them to keep things up-to-date, supported and hopefully creating new resources. Like it was said earlier it also provides a revenue stream for people that could be holding them up so they don't have to find a full time job to support themselves. By providing a revenue stream to content packs cooler stuff comes out faster, thus feeding game development for the community as a whole.

It takes a lot of time to commercialize a piece of code and make it accessible to a wide market. Providing a revenue stream in return for that work helps everyone in the end.

Providing a commercial path for developers for something other than games inspires people to come out of their shell a little and flesh out their projects into something that is much more useful to the community. It is hard to justify working on a content pack, as opposed to a game project, if there was no return on the end. Without the GG store we probably would never see stuff with the quality of the AFX pack or Ragdoll pack in the free resource section, and we certainly wouldn't have Jeff and Chris spending hours upon hours answering peoples questions and helping people move their games along.

I feel like I'm ranting a little so I'll just stop now, but thats how I justify the work that I am doing and how I inspire developers to polish their content packs into a more complete and usable product.

Ramen-sama   (Mar 18, 2008 at 21:32 GMT)

I've already released free A* pathfinding code, as have others... so i don't see a point in trying to make money when there's already other resources for torque and TGB out there. I even wrote one with torque script and found it to take like 30 MS to calculate, the one i have now has to be measured in Nanoseconds.
Edited on Mar 18, 2008 21:33 GMT

Brian Carter   (Mar 18, 2008 at 23:13 GMT)

@Ramen, I not didn't write this specifically in regards to selling my A* module, but for content/modules in general. I was using the A* pathing module as an example, because thats what sparked it all off.

Ramen-sama   (Mar 19, 2008 at 01:16 GMT)

I see new content packs popup all the time, but i rarely see one that interests me. Personally, i'm more intereted in code packs of some sort. I spent countless hours on my code cause i'm not good at it. Script driven packs could be useful for those who don't own a license to the engine, however, be aware you're not legally allowed to sell script/code based stuff without a commercial license.

Jeramy79   (Mar 19, 2008 at 09:55 GMT)

Everyone can say what they want about selling does help the indie community. If thats really true then why are tools like BLENDER free? This 3d program is on the lines of greatness with 3d Stuido Max and Maya, yet it's free. Even Microsoft has released it's Visual Stuido tools for free.

Jeff Faust   (Mar 19, 2008 at 12:40 GMT)

@ William -- Just because you can point to successful free products doesn't change anything. Just looking at whether a product is free or not is grossly simplistic. The interesting question to ask is, "How are these free products fueled?". If you look more closely at Blender you'll see that they do sell things: books, training DVDs, merchandise, etc. They are also a Dutch "non-profit public benefit corporation" and probably receive government incentives. One of their stated goals is "To establish funding or revenue mechanisms that serve the foundations goals and cover the foundations expenses." In some ways, the free product is a "loss-leader" that drives the sale of other things. As I stated above, it's great when developers figure out how to give something away and get their funding elsewhere, but it's difficult to do and does not work for every type of product.

Microsoft gives away the simplest version of Visual Studio and they didn't always do that. Microsoft can afford to do things like that and I'm certain there are solid strategic business reasons for releasing it free. I would guess it's partially a loss-leader to establish a foothold with developers who will later drive sales of the more expensive versions, or perhaps it's simply a response to the fact that xcode is included with the Mac OS.

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