Commercial Idea - Game - Partnership

Started by Matty, May 17, 2018, 05:04:55

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Matty

Hi peoples,

I have an idea - I don't know how it would work, but it's an idea and nothing more. Just putting out some thoughts out aloud and seeing what people think.

In 2015 I made a reasonably good looking game that plays well, looks excellent, is fully complete and mostly bug free.

I had next to no sales (10 - 7 of whom were family and friends).

I advertised it widely, on a variety of websites, platforms, ad networks, tshirts, - spent about $3000 dollars advertising it...for 3 sales to people other than friends.

What I'm thinking is this:

If I transferred partial ownership of the game to someone here and gave you full access to the code and media (minus the web content - passwords etc to my databases that it relies on)  and you turned it into something you liked - with a solid code base behind you for a 3d space battle game - for a fee (the game cost me about $7000 AUD to create - fee would be far lower) and took a commission (10%?) on revenue made from your sales figures from the game (be it in ads or actual paid sales) how would that sound?

It's just an idea...I'm not saying it's an offer or anything yet...just an idea.

In my view the game should have been far more successful than a mere '3' sales given the success rate of other 'similar' type games of the era.


Ignore the 2 1 star reviews - I've had next to 0 downloads for the past year and only two ratings for this despite in my opinion it being quite good:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lloydm.geosword1&hl=en_AU

iWasAdam

#1
I'm not sure on the legality with this. As you bought in assets, I would look to see about the licence for selling them on. I have a feeling you won't be able to sell them on to someone else.

That leaves you with the code itself. You might be better served by just opening up the code for free as there doesn't seem to be any value in source code for something that people didn't like (for what ever reason).

But I wish you well.

Derron

@ Adam
He does not _sell_ the assets (A sells to B and to C) but transfers ownership (A bought licence to use and transfers licence to use to B, A is no longer able to use licence then). Might still be forbidden in the original contract but it sounds as a more viable way.


@ price tag
Think Indian (or other companies) might sell stuff (read assets, code, ...) for less money - with a more "casual gamer / teenager"-approaching style.


bye
Ron

Matty

Yeah..it would be a complete transfer of ownership of all graphics and music and sound (with no rights held by me anymore - that woudl be free of charge and separate to the transaction).

In response to your earlier comment (which was removed) about the code being bought by me - I wrote over 30k lines of code in php, bb, java, shader code, xml to write this - so it was all mine with the exception of an opengl es2.0 library which is free (jpct-ae)

I would transfer all the code and source to both this project and all the projects I have that reference the media (since I used it in a few projects) for a price and then request an ongoing commission from sales or revenue from projects that earned money upon release.

But as you say...no one is interested so I'll forget it and keep it for myself.

iWasAdam

#4
In every measurable way the game was a failure. That doesn't mean the time and effort in programming, design, etc was wasted. But it does mean there is little value in the result.

(I had said the asset were bought in, not the code)

Learn from the result, attempt to diagnose the faults and try to make a better product next time around :)


Kryzon

Wow, how did you manage to make the server side stuff? How can I learn that, if I wanted to do the same?

In any case, it's a grand portfolio piece. It shows you're capable of bringing a project like this to reality. Maybe you'd make more money by selling your skills? (Working for someone else)

Matty

Hi Kryzon....start small.

If you can write an online high score table you can do this


First step is getting android to call a web page and return a text result.  Lots of source code examples of this online.

Second step is learning php or similar to accept parameters, clean or whitelist expected results, and pass to a database.

Database has to be setup with validation.

Because it uses http for a real time asynchronous game the trick is to inform the player in multiplayer of changes to the state of the world at the time they attempt to do something and act accordingly.

The year I wrote this game my job at work involved something very similar-writing online driven digital signage for televisions.  It was very similar.

Derron

Hard work is:

- securing communication ("cheats/hacks" - do not trust a client)
- asynchronous message handing and message revoking in client (read: command chain and "undo"-ability in your game logic)

All the other stuff is pretty "basic" once you know how it works (just think of passing params to a function and evaluating the results).


bye
Ron

Kryzon

Thanks for the info guys (and sorry for the off-topic).

MagosDomina

It looks like a fun game, its easy to see a lot of hard work and dedication was put into the project. Where it may miss its mark is in the game play department. I love a good strategy game but its a very niche market. In my opinion the assets would be a great start for a Colony Wars type space shooter.

ENAY

I read your post.

I think most importantly Matty you should stay focused on one thing at once. It seems like every week you're posting something new here, whether it's your creative writing, your drawing, what's going through your mind and this idea about Game partnership.

If you did set this partnership thing into motion, are you going be bored of it or already moved and focused on your next idea to have time for maintaining this one?

Not that I'm saying that your idea is good or bad, just that, well it's you. Over the years you've been doing all sorts and as far as I can deduce from your frequent posts how many of these ideas have you followed through to the end?

Matty

"how many have I followed through to the end" - almost all of them....

meems

#12
Matty I'd punt into onto a game sales company. The thing is now : even excellent new games from unknown devs can't get any sales unless up to date and sustained e-marketing techniques are applied long term.
Just getting hold of one of these companies is your 1st challenge : most of them are inundated with devs with games that look and play fine.

a reasonably good looking game that ... looks excellent
Thats very impressive. Can u make a reasonably good fun game that's extremely fun to play?

ENAY

The problem I see is that (it sounds like anyway) you're asking for a fee and 10% sales revenue up front, and your engine will become a SEUCK to so speak, and you're up against stable game engines like Unreal and Unity that are completely free to develop for.

Sure your game and game engine are finished, but if a serious develop is going to be developing a similiar game I can't help but feel that they are going to use an engine to build that.

What is stopping anyone downloading Unity and developing a game similiar to yours and for free.
Looking at this question here:-

https://support.unity3d.com/hc/en-us/articles/205253119-Can-I-make-a-commercial-game-with-Unity-Free-Personal-Edition-?mobile_site=true

As an example you could make a game in Unity in the free version, and even if you made a fair amount of money, as long as it doesn't fall over a certain amount.

I guess what I'm trying to say, it's kind of a hard sell, because there are lots of other alternatives that don't require any cash investment, just an investment of time.

Also, what iWasAdam said.


Borislav

That game doesn't look attractive, to be honest.
It for sure doesn't deserve just 10 downloads but it looks like a boring game...
It looks like it is continuous destroying ships and destroying.
There seems to be no story, no interesting places, but just destroying these ships nonstop.
The UI is really cool though.
It would've been more interesting if you could visit planets, for example, or maybe some characters with stories.
The game is done well as I can see but there is nothing very interesting about it.