Topic: AGS & JRPG GAMES PUBLISHING COMPANY

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

First of all, I dont know if I´m in the right part of the forum.

OK, now to the point. Me and a friend of mine discussed of Indie Games,
of both AGS, RPG Maker and similar Game Maker programs. That many was
charming in many ways, unlike the BIG BOY´S, as they most often are small
companies, and the games most often only come on STEAM Sites. And if it
come out in a gameshop´s, like Gamestop, it´s ALLWAYS, a LIMITED EDITION.

Me and my friend are very Anti STEAM, mostly because we want a Hardcopy of
the game in our hand, it has nothing to do with the price. So the idea was
actually that Indie Game Developers, doing a big thing, going together, and
forming an Alliance, a game press, a distributor and is a BIG Publisher of
Adventure and JRPG Indie Games, making Hardcopies of the game.

I come up with the idea of using alternative methods of designing game boxes,
and how to selling them. Here some of my ideas. Hope you find it interesting.

a.)

I had gone to art school, so we used paper press, for creating books and cards
of paper, and plastic paper. Similar techniques may be used, to creating boxes,
for the game itself.

b.)

The cardboard box, might be plasted, depending on the feeling´s you might evoke,
then place a thin plastfoil, or is it called a plastfilm?

c.)

The Manual might be plastfoiled, or plastfilmed, on both sides, then cutted by a
cutting machine, a kind of board, used to create the perfect cutted papers.

d.)

Now to the thing I don´t know what they are called, It´s a kind of big sticker on
products. This sticker should be the name, and picture of the game. I don´t know
if it´s called a BRAND. The backside of the gamebox, should have a big sticker of
the game screens.

Of cause there is many more things to do. The idea was that to create the game to
the lowest possible price. So every time a person wants a Hardcopy, they contacting
you (the publisher), and you creating a new handmade copy of the game, but this
will cost about 30 dollars, or pounds, extra, over the game price. If you instead
would use Steam, but now you instead have a nice Hardcopy. Double game pack could
also be a nice touch to this idea.

You also need a specific folder in the AGS game, for extras, and plugins, if there
is some errors to be fixed. These should be free to download. Just download, place
it in the folder, and it will autoload, when the game is started.

In order to make this idea concrete reality, i reccomend members of AGS, RPG Maker,
etc, to ask persons to sponsor this idea, by auto transaction every month. This is
just an idea, and I hope some persons like the idea. Take it, it your´s It´s a gift
to the Indie Game world.

PS: Think of an Indie Game console for commersial AGS, RPG Maker games, or Harvest
Moon games. Only Indie games. Indie game producers should protect each other from
the BIG BOY´S, not fight each other. The Indie Game Companies are to small to fight
and become rivals. The rival is the BIG BOY´S. Hope it will help you in all ways of
adventuring and roleplaying. Make spiritual sucsessors of famous games, think SEGA
8-bit games, Alex Kid, Wonder Boy and Golvellius.

[Retro Wolf]

30 quid over the game price for a box? I don't think anyone's going to pay that!

If I made a commercial game and wanted to make box art available, I'd offer an image to download so people could print it off themselves.
Something like this:



You could probably upload the image to some printing company website and they'd physically mail you it professionally printed on card for a reasonable price.

Indie gaming is saturated, the small amount of people that download your game, what percentage of those people really want a physical box in this day and age?

[Mandle]

As a promotion Chronicles Of Innsmouth produced a limited run of boxed editions, with feelies and a printed manual. 100 in all I think.

And they did all sell, or were gifted to some big names at conventions, but I don't think any real profit was made off them.

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

Smart idea with the picture.

The basic point of my idea is that, you can buy a Hardcopy of the game itself, with manual,
etc, on a DVD. With is NOT a Limited Edition. Instead, Then you contact the Game press, or
what it is called? Then the print an ex of the game, and sending it to your local game shop.

But what I understood printing small amounts of games is more expensive, than printing a big
amount. If this is true, it´s a pity the printer company of the game, is not owned by AGS, or
many small game companies, so they can print an ex of the game.

I myself missed some games, because Limited Edition, and wanted to figure out some ways, one
could by original Indie games on DVD. All ideas are wellcome.

[cat]

Do I understand you correctly that you are talking about something like book-on-demand but for game boxes?

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

Do I understand you correctly that you are talking about something like book-on-demand but for game boxes?

Yes, that´s correct! The point is pretty much a physical Hardcopy, in a DVD package, or a box. However the
idea was that many small Indie Game Makers, together creating a bigger publisher. They acts as many things,
as, creating packages (like Playstation boxes), or classic 90´s game boxes, they burning DVDS, selling, and
owning their own advertising company, with make the advertising much cheaper in some cases. like publishing
big posters of the game.

The point is to make Indie Games more popular to people who doesn´t heard of the titles. Because of the BIG
BOYS steal´s the scene. If this collective Indie Game Publisher, get monthly auto money transaction from all
whish to help the company, so they maybe could have enough money, to other, more expensive advertisings.

Sorry for my English, as it is not my native language.

[Danvzare]

Yes, that´s correct! The point is pretty much a physical Hardcopy, in a DVD package, or a box. However the
idea was that many small Indie Game Makers, together creating a bigger publisher. They acts as many things,
as, creating packages (like Playstation boxes), or classic 90´s game boxes, they burning DVDS, selling, and
owning their own advertising company, with make the advertising much cheaper in some cases. like publishing
big posters of the game.

The point is to make Indie Games more popular to people who doesn´t heard of the titles. Because of the BIG
BOYS steal´s the scene. If this collective Indie Game Publisher, get monthly auto money transaction from all
whish to help the company, so they maybe could have enough money, to other, more expensive advertisings.

That... actually sounds like a viable business plan.
There's already a company doing something similar (I can't remember their name from the top of my head, but you probably know what I'm talking about), but they only seem to do popular indie games, and for a limited amount of time. This sounds like it could work.
The hardest part will be about keeping everything cheap while still maintaining a profit. But I think you could do it.

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

That... actually sounds like a viable business plan.
There's already a company doing something similar (I can't remember their name from the top of my head, but you probably know what I'm talking about), but they only seem to do popular indie games, and for a limited amount of time. This sounds like it could work.
The hardest part will be about keeping everything cheap while still maintaining a profit. But I think you could do it.
[/quote]

Thanks for encouragement

I got an idea that actually may might create a lot of money over time. So I started questioning the simple question.
How many times do one buying the same game. The simple answer is of cause 1, except if the game is damaged, you
might sold the game and want to re:buy it, or you buying it to a friend or a family member.

A game often cost about 50 dollars, or more. So I asked myself, what if I pay 2 dollars a month, by auto transaction,
this mean 2 dollars x 12 month. In a year this is 24 dollar, in two years, 48 dollars, almost 50 dollars. If one
easy can pay each month by auto transaction, or buy a special sponsor card for the game, in Gamestop. They could
also be buyed online when you buying games.

The first card is about 2.5 dollars, the second card is 5 dollars, the third is 10 dollars. This does mean that
one sponsoring a specific game in a game company, helping them creating more games. For every sponsor card sold,
the game company shall show how much money they got, and what they wishing to get from the sponsorers, similar
to Kickstarter.

I don´t think Pirates would have anything against sponsoring a good Indie game for 2.5 dollars. They might, one
month buy a 2.5 dollar sponsor card, another 10 dollar sponsor card. In two years, they might sponsored money
for let´s say, what about 100 dollar? Two times the what a game costing.

[cat]

A game often cost about 50 dollars, or more.

This is not realistic. No indie game costs that much. Unavowed and Lamplight City, for example, cost 15€.

[Pomperipossas_Godishus]

A game often cost about 50 dollars, or more.

This is not realistic. No indie game costs that much. Unavowed and Lamplight City, for example, cost 15€.

What I meant was, that Non-Indie Games, often cost about 50 dollars. And if any person wishes to sponsor any
Indie game (already finished game, an ongoing production, or planned project), some persons may want to help
sponsoring the game project, by smaller ammount of money (similar to Kickstarter).

If you look on the amount of money made by auto transaction over 2-3 years on a game. One might actually have
sponsored 50-100 dollars (2-5 dollars a month), one could say, that one payed a 50 dollar game twice. Have in
mind that I´m not to good writing English, as it´s not my Native language.

[Dave Gilbert]

We used to do physical editions for all our games, including a really fancy box for Resonance.

They all turned out great.

We lost money on every single one of them.

After Blackwell Deception, we finally decided not to do them anymore for several key reasons:

- They are expensive to make
- They are expensive to ship
- They are expensive to store
- The demand for them is really low
- Most manufacturers will insist on a 1000 unit minimum

So we were forced to pay for a thousand physical units to be made, and only a few hundred people actually bought them. That alone lost us money, but since most of the orders came from Europe (and we are located in the US) the shipping costs were astronomical. Not only that, but we always underestimated the cost of shipping. Either the shipping costs would go up, or the physical items were a bit heavier than anticipated which moved it into a higher price range. 

On top of THAT, we had a whole bunch of unsold items to deal with. For awhile, we paid the warehouse to store them. But after about a year of sitting on them, I just asked the warehouse to get rid of them.

To be fair, we're not a logistics company and there's a lot we could have done differently. But the sad fact is that only a vocal minority of people actually WANTS a physical edition these days. So it's not really worth it.

[Lewis]

Short-run / individual unit production is hella expensive, and you're unlikely to find a large and dedicated enough market to pay 30 bucks for a copy of a game that's usually $10.

Sadly I also don't think you have a viable marketing plan. You've found yourself in a catch-22 situation: if loads of players pay money in, then that money can be spent on expensive advertising to make the games more popular! Which, yes, of course, when you make a lot of money you can reinvest it in advertising and make even more money. But that's precisely why the "big boys" have a monopoly over the scene, and why indies struggle to cut through the noise. There are so many indie games, and it's so hard for them to get that initial attention when major publishers dominate the media landscape. Why would this venture be any different?

I think you would need to have some decent start-up capital and do some very in-depth market research to give this one a shot. It's a lovely idea, I'm just not sure it quite works.

[Blondbraid]

Like what the others have already said, I fail to see how this could be profitable.
While some old school gamers still prefer physical copies, I don't think I'm alone in the
sentiment that digital distribution is simply more convenient for developer and costumer alike,
and more environmentally friendly as it eliminates the need for plastic and paper packages and
the emissions created by transporting them.

Personally, I barely even buy physical games anymore since whenever I want to play a game, it's just som much
easier to play it directly on one's pc than digging through the shelves looking for a disc, and most game stores
don't even have most games I want available, just the top ten AAA games that's trendy just now.

And even if you really, really want a physical package with the game, wouldn't it just be so much easier to
offer a printout and let players print the package out on paper, transfer the game to a blank disc at home,
and then put together their own package?