Go on, ask me anything.

[gimbal]

The general gist of it is described here on the Puppyblog.

Man that blog post has given me a lot to think about. What it basically boils down to is: if you want to sell stuff, better not act like a douche. I like that whole "we trust you to do the right thing" attitude, even when you know that people are going to take your basic tutorial on how to get your stuff for free and actually do it.

Why care? You're not going to stop it anyhow. Better to focus on keeping a good name, which is to not appear like a money-grabbing corporation.

[princec]

Our DRM isn't really so much about DRM as just making it easy for me to deploy games It's a pain maintaining a demo and full version build separately. A big pain.

Cas

[gimbal]

Our DRM isn't really so much about DRM as just making it easy for me to deploy games It's a pain maintaining a demo and full version build separately. A big pain.

Cas

Regardless of the motivation, the solution works

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[DruLeeParsec]

The general gist of it is described here on the Puppyblog. The technical part is a simple use of some straightforward Java APIS:

That is an interesting solution.  I think you've found a great middle ground which both protects your property and allows easy access to your game for the player.

Once again, thank you for sharing so much of what you've learned.

[CaptainJester]

Not sure if this was asked yet. To get on Steam do you have to have an established reputation already or some sample games for them to look at or what? I figure you have to have at least a game that you are looking to put there, but is there anything else they look at?

[sproingie]

You just have to have the game you're distributing, they'll look at that and make the call.

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php

[princec]

The system they have is this: if one of the Valve employees has seen your game, and thinks it's cool, they'll have a little chat amongst themselves about it and the more of them that like it the more likely they'll say "yes" for whatever reason. It's really just as random as that.

Cas

[avm1979]

We don't deal with Desura any more because they weren't making us any money.

If you don't mind answering - how did the Desura sales compare with direct sales from your website? And how much effort was it to keep your stuff up to date and available on Desura?

[princec]

Less than a tenth; which made it more effort to support than it was worth, for us. We've found this to be the case for every "publisher" except Steam.

Cas

[avm1979]

Thank you.

That's unexpectedly terrible, damn.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[princec]

When you get to know the ins and outs of publishing games you'll eventually realise it is not at all surprising. We didn't even want to offer it on Desura in the first place because we already knew it was going to be a waste of our time, but we humoured them.

I still want to make it clear though - maybe when they're 10x bigger, it's going to be worth it. But right now, they are not.

Cas

[65K]

Cas, how did you balance your games ?
Excel sheets with magic formulas, hundreds of voluntary freaks play testing for food, or just yourself playing until you got nightmares from your own games ?
To me, it still seems like the hardest part of all

[avm1979]

When you get to know the ins and outs of publishing games you'll eventually realise it is not at all surprising. We didn't even want to offer it on Desura in the first place because we already knew it was going to be a waste of our time, but we humoured them.

I still want to make it clear though - maybe when they're 10x bigger, it's going to be worth it. But right now, they are not.

Cas

The reason it was surprising to me is they seem fairly popular, at least as far as getting press. But I guess the (alleged) 30% of the market Steam doesn't have gets split many, many ways. I mean, I didn't expect it to huge, but less than a tenth of direct sales is just... ow.

[delt0r]

You know Cas, if everyone waits till they are 10x bigger they will never be bigger. It like waiting till g+ is 1/2 the size of facebook before they are worth it. It will not happen when everyone does that.

However everyone *will* do that. That is why it is called "barrier to entry".

[princec]

Cas, how did you balance your games ?
Excel sheets with magic formulas, hundreds of voluntary freaks play testing for food, or just yourself playing until you got nightmares from your own games ?
To me, it still seems like the hardest part of all

I play them until my hands, ears, eyes and brain bleed, and then I play them some more. I hate every single one of my own games now.

Cas

[princec]

You know Cas, if everyone waits till they are 10x bigger they will never be bigger. It like waiting till g+ is 1/2 the size of facebook before they are worth it. It will not happen when everyone does that.

However everyone *will* do that. That is why it is called "barrier to entry".

It is just as much their own fault. It is a classic engineer's fallacy - "build it and they will come". No they won't. You have to sell, sell, sell. Market the crap out of your thing. They're very slowly working on it (for example the Indie Royale bundles). They need to actually put some effort into the marketing and promotion of the titles they carry instead of expecting us to do it for them.

Cas

[delt0r]

What they really need is a hook. To get the ball rolling... like say a game as popular has half life that is more or less exclusive

Sometimes I think people forget that was how steam got rolling.

[princec]

That is exactly what they need. I speculated (privately) a while back that Mojang should really have bought them out but they didn't, and now the opportunity has likely passed them by (Mojang are simply not going anywhere after Minecraft, I think).

Cas

[Cero]

Mojang are simply not going anywhere after Minecraft, I think.

Well, personally I never got into minecraft, but I'm obviously in the minority.
With a fanbase that huge, I doubt they will utterly fail.

[sproingie]

The fanbase is what they have now.  They have no guarantees of growing it or of coming up with another game that will achieve the same following.  Minecraft made Notch and friends enough to luxuriously retire on, but to run a company that develops new titles?  Don't think so.

[ra4king]

The fanbase is what they have now.  They have no guarantees of growing it or of coming up with another game that will achieve the same following.  Minecraft made Notch and friends enough to luxuriously retire on, but to run a company that develops new titles?  Don't think so.

[princec]

Personally I didn't like Minecraft either, but that's another story. I thought it was a remarkably clever product though - the way it sold itself. I got addicted to it for about a week when I was trying to avoid doing work. It does use a bunch of reasonably well understood tricks to get people hooked and to buy it, which I will have no qualms about using one day There's a perfect balance of tedious grind, random reward intervals, and the feeling that "something interesting might happen when I buy the full version". This is on top of its generally unique feel which is what endeared it to people in the first place.

Cas

[avm1979]

Hmm. I always thought it was more of a "3DS Max for everyone", and people want to share their creations, and so it spreads.

Reminds me of this silly marketing question - is it better to have people say your company is awesome, or that your product is awesome? The answer (of course) is that it's a trick question, and it's better to have people say they are awesome. Minecraft nailed that.

[gimbal]

Reminds me of this silly marketing question - is it better to have people say your company is awesome, or that your product is awesome? The answer (of course) is that it's a trick question, and it's better to have people say they are awesome. Minecraft nailed that.

I see that as a part of the Minecraft charm - its more a sandbox than a game. The main attraction to me from a game development perspective is its design - in stead of following the trend of most games, to make things possible, Minecraft turns it around - it simply doesn't make things impossible. That opens up a whole world of freedom in which people can do things which makes them feel and appear awesome.

[65K]

Minecraft as being the probably most successful Indie game ever is the revenge for all Java bashing in the past

[gouessej]

Minecraft as being the probably most successful Indie game ever is the revenge for all Java bashing in the past

I agree with you but there are still a lot of people asking Markus why he didn't use a "real" language

[princec]

IMHO the real genuis of Minecraft was not the actual ability to create great works of daring enterprise for ordinary people; it was selling the idea that anyone could do it.

The reality is more like this: play demo for a while. Wonder what the fuss is about. Bash a few trees, start digging about. Get addicted to grubbing in the dirt for coal. Tolerance slowly increases along with dependency. Addiction grows to iron ore, then gold, then diamonds, then redstone, though you don't know why. See video on internets of some incredible dwarven palace being constructed by 50 people in timelapse. Go, "oooh! I can do that!". Buy Minecraft. Build shitty hut out of mud and gravel. Realise that you don't have the time or patience, nor 50 people to help. Continue playing until you realise redstone is the last thing you can dig up and it's of no use whatsoever because you need to be more than just a bit patient and geeky to actually use it. Stop playing.

Markus has your money.

Cas

[sproingie]

I suspect the modding community is quite happy that Notch didn't use a "real" language like C++

As for the actual gameplay of minecraft, I just couldn't find much beyond virtual legos with the most primitive interactive features.  It's got basically the opposite ethos of Dwarf Fortress, where you know your intricately constructed fortress will eventually end in rage, blood, and fire, and the challenge is to see how long you can go before this happens.  In Minecraft, once you've got basic survival down, you're pretty much set, and there's nothing more to do.

[matheus23]

I suspect the modding community is quite happy that Notch didn't use a "real" language like C++

As for the actual gameplay of minecraft, I just couldn't find much beyond virtual legos with the most primitive interactive features.  It's got basically the opposite ethos of Dwarf Fortress, where you know your intricately constructed fortress will eventually end in rage, blood, and fire, and the challenge is to see how long you can go before this happens.  In Minecraft, once you've got basic survival down, you're pretty much set, and there's nothing more to do.

I think, Minecraft's Survival is not the main thing about that game. That part is really importent, otherwise it would never take as long to build something really cool. I think the problem with you guys is, that that game is not made for adults. It's a game made for creative dreamers, a.k.a. the kids

[PaulReeves]

Minecraft didn't really pull me in either. I suppose as a programmer when I get the urge to create I code. If that creative outlet was not available perhaps I would find Minecraft a nice conduit for my creative desires. Plus if I didn't program I would have lots of free time to kill.