Say, where did the 20 million copies bit come from? According to wiki, if you exclude bundles with the consoles, the list of games to break 20 million across all platforms consists of the original Poke'mon and The Sims, that's it. The bundled ones only add four more. I'd aim for 1-2 million for expected sales from a high budget PC game.

This is really quite informative if you have a historical knowledge of the games in the lists.

Also, that's cursing, if I disappear, either I was banned or He smote me.

Q3 isn't anywhere near "perfectly good" for any modern FPS game. Torque is crap (I've see it, I own a license to it. It's crap). And those "thousands of open source" engines are ultimately weak.

An engine isn't just a library that manages your game; it's an asset pipeline with associated exporting, converting, and packaging tools. Most of those open-source engines don't have them (or they're crap), and thus, you have to spend a long time writing those tools yourself.

If you want to make something that can stand alongside Call of Duty 4, HL2, or other high-end games, you're going to need a real engine, not one of those open source things.



Wow, that's a remarkable fantasy world you live in.



Super Mario Bros 3 is probably the highest selling non-pack-in title for any platform ever. It only sold 18 million, and that was almost 20 years ago. GTA IV, for all its hype, will not crack 20 million. Halo 3, for all its hype, will not crack 20 million.

Games simply don't sell 20 million copies. A blockbuster games sells 2 million. Most game developers are happy with 500,000 in sales.

Q3 is fine enough for most games, Torgue is actually good, but it doesn't do everything (only the TES engine does, and you can get it cheap, but others have to buy it (Oblivion/Morrowind, I have seen total conversions)). Second, divide 20M by 500,000. That should mean that I pay no more than $42 for a 20M budget game. Not many games have a budget that big.

Second, are you saying that Tremulous and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, wouldn't be good in a commercial market? Both of them are based off of an engine that's open-source, or have a similar engine available.

Third, ever heard of "Mount&Blade"? The shareware game that was made by a couple, and got a major publisher deal? It's not too hard to make a good game if you have a good idea and the know how and determination.

Heck, you want something that'll run a game, develop the models, do pretty much anything for you? Use Blender. It's free, open source, commercial-quality, and has its own engine with physics. You cannot convince me it's impossible to make a commercial quality game for little or no money. It's been done.

Sorry Alfonse, but you fail. And after I provided a link to the list too, typing slow bites eh?

The Sims sold 50 million copies. The king of games that is, I'll never play it on principle alone, but it sold like rubbers.

Sorry Alfonse, but you fail. And after I provided a link to the list too, typing slow bites eh?

The Sims sold 50 million copies. The king of games that is, I'll never play it on principle alone, but it sold like rubbers.

Death to the double poster!

BS. It is functional for boxed-in FPS's and 3rd-person shooters. But it simply doesn't look good by today's standards and you can't do anything remotely approaching "outdoors" with it.

Oh, and the code is hard to use.



No, Torque (it's a "Q", not a "G") is not good. I'm a programmer, I've seen its code. It is crap.

Yes, you can make games with it. But nobody wants to; they do it because it would be very slightly easier than making their own from scratch.



Nonsense. The store has to get its cut for stocking it, the distributer has to get their cut for shipment costs, etc. At the end of the day, the developer may only see $10 per copy sold if that. The increase to $60 allows developers and publishers to double the rate of return per game sold.

Further, this assumes that you can't expect



ET:QWs is already on the commercial market. And the Doom3 Engine (which ET:QW is based on) is most certainly not Open Source. Also, if you have even a passing familiarity with ET:QW, you would know that they made major modifications to the Doom3 engine for the game.

And no, Tremulous would not be good in the commercial market. Not for $50. Probably not for $20. It can't hang with CoD4, TF2, or any modern multiplayer FPS.



It was started by a couple. They've expanded since then. Plus, they haven't actually released a game yet; it's still in beta.



You think Blender3D's pathetic game engine can be used to create a "commercial quality" game? You've got to be kidding, right?

Hmm... no editing...

Well, allow me to finish this sentence, "Further, this assumes that...":

Further, this assumes that the developer/publisher doesn't want to make a profit. You know, profit? That thing that companies like to make? And by "like to", I mean "exist for no purpose other than to".

Rate of return per game sold is dependent on the number of games sold. Supply and demand fluctuate with price, rising to $60 will net them a loss in numbers to go with their increase in per unit revenue, possibly leading to an increase in overall revenue to offset the development costs, possibly leading to less revenue.

Also, stores don't ignore price when factoring their percentage of the proceeds. If they upped the price to $60, the stores would expect more as well.

The problem with pc gaming is piracy. Look at the sales of cross platform games sometime. Good pc versions tend to sell 1/4 of the copys or less, even though there are way more pcs in the market capable of playing that game vs. xboxes or ps3s. Hell if I know the answer to this problem though. I am conficted, because I belive totally in freedom of speach, but I am still glad when the commies at torrentspy or others get shut down.

It was started by a couple. They've expanded since then. Plus, they haven't actually released a game yet; it's still in beta.

    It's purchasable and polished enough.

You think Blender3D's pathetic game engine can be used to create a "commercial quality" game? You've got to be kidding, right?

    Yes, it can. Macromedia Flash can be used to make a commercial quality game, it's just not as much done with Blender.

ET:QWs is already on the commercial market. And the Doom3 Engine (which ET:QW is based on) is most certainly not Open Source. Also, if you have even a passing familiarity with ET:QW, you would know that they made major modifications to the Doom3 engine for the game.

    Ah, but Wolfenstein:ET is open-source, and has similar gameplay. Plus, id releases most of the engines into the open-source community (Doom, Quake, ET) in a few years.

The problem with pc gaming is piracy. Look at the sales of cross platform games sometime. Good pc versions tend to sell 1/4 of the copys or less, even though there are way more pcs in the market capable of playing that game vs. xboxes or ps3s.

    Actually, there aren't as many gaming PC's built for gaming as there are Xboxe 360's and PS3's. There are torrents for every game, sure, but I've seen ROMs and downloadable discs for console games also, it's not impossible to pirate for consoles, most of their users are just too dunderheaded to try.

    Not to mention that consoles can't get mods or community support as easily as PC games.

Erathoniel, I think you just have really low standards in what to look for in a game.

But in this whole thread the part about not being willing to pay $60 for a piece of rare art was the best.

Do you know what kind of 'art' you can get for sixty buckaroos? CRAP. You can't even get a poorly-made, painfully obvious reproduction in a frame for less than a couple hundred.

An actual piece of 'rare' art, from a master, would cost you AT LEAST six figures. Usually seven. Sometimes eight.

And that's the way it's SUPPOSED to be.

The Doom 3 engine is leaps and bounds above any Q3A variant, including the ones used for the most recent titles like Jedi Academy. There should be absolutely zero comparisons between the two.



You can make a commercial quality game with QBASIC. Dwarf Fortress is a game that could have been commercial but is made up of ASCII tiles. Technically, you're right in that you can make a commercial quality game with Blender, but you're wrong in that your chances are extremely slim and on par with patenting an invention by using Widget Workshop.

Are you saying that ASCII is bad?

Graphics are nothing for a good game. In a good game you can do anything with the graphics and it will still feel right. Are you saying that Mario is a bad game because its graphics were eight bit? ASCII is one of the best ways to portray a game because it allows the players to use their imagination.

Also, you forget that the Q3 open-source engine has been upgraded to look much nicer (Nexuis being an example, though I've never played it [stupid crashing, I'm above the min-specs]).

That's exactly the opposite of what I said. If you read it in context, I was saying that despite primitive graphics _anything_ can go commercial. I'm also saying that while there are a ton of stand-out games using old or primitive graphics that could go commercial, the vast majority do not, and the average chances get worse. Using a game engine that subsists on physically dropping in logic gates and Python scripts is not going to help your chances. It's an "easy way in" to learning game development but it's no more than that.



Okay, so I read about and watched videos of that game on YouTube. Its quality reminds me of Jedi Knight 2 or worse - whether that's poor map design, poor modeling, or what have you isn't clear, but what I can tell you is I've been mapping for the Q3A engine for four years or so and know quite a bit about it, and while it can be made to look good it's pretty obsolete by today's standards.

LOL erathoniel, I'll say it again, you are cheap.



Aye, but they still affect sells. Hype a game because of its graphics, and even if its a crap game, it will sell a bit.

It is not "open-source". Enemy Territory is freeware. And how "similar" it's gameplay is to ET:QW is up for debate.



No, they release them when they're done making money off them, when they're so obsolete for high-end games that nobody would use them for such.



OK, go ahead and try to sell a text adventure, then. We'll see how far that goes.

Any genre that relies on plain-text descriptions is not commercially viable. It's as simple as that.

And there you have the business model for the draconian DRM publishers in a nutshell:
Enough media blitz and graphical shinies and you don't need content or debugging.

Oh, and as for the idea that harsh drm works: its exactly as succesful at stopping piracy as prohibtion was for alchohol and current repression measures for drugs. Yes, they are fighting something bad. No it doesn't work. "If using force doesn't work, use more force" is not an effective strategy.

If brute force doesn't solve the problem, you are not using enough.

@ Alfonse: What the heck are you saying. ASCII is different from "text-adventure". Example:

ASCII:

######
#...@..#
#.......#
#...k...#
##### 

Text Adventure:

You see a kobold. What do you do?
Hit kobold.
You hit the kobold, he dies.

ASCII games are used in a roguelike as a visual component of a text adventure, but they are visual, have strategy, and gameplay, unlike traditional "Text-Adventures". 

Text adventures have far more gameplay than any Rogue-game I've ever played. Gameplay is not the same as the "gamble-play" that Rogue games favor.

Gameplay != killing stuff and looting rooms.

And no, ASCII art of that kind is not commercially viable either.

Graphics matter, just like looks matter when it comes to dating. Contrary to what the PC types will tell you real beauty isn't on the inside it's on the outside, and it matters. The same goes for graphics and games. Don't get me wrong lots of other things matter too, gameplay, UI, etc., but saying graphic don't matter to games is simply false.

I think a more accurate thing to say is that a game without cutting edge graphics can still be very good. Sins is a great game because it has excellent gameplay, but it's important that is had decent, although not stellar, graphics. If Sins had crappy graphics it wouldn't be a great game. Essentially to be great a game has to excel in some areas and at least be decent in all the rest. Games like Crysis excel in graphics but have only decent gameplay. I think Crysis is as good a game as Sins but for completely different reasons.

The demise of PC gaming... Stuff comes up about this every 18 months or so and has done for the last decade. Usually coincides with something big releases on the consoles. (Or the consoles themselves.)

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

They aren't called starving artists for nothing. If Van Gogh could have made a hundred thousand copies of each painting and sold them for a couple bucks a piece, he would have. Being relegated to a consumer base of rich morons is why so many of them died poor. Master or not, it's goo spread over cloth. Rarity does not make something valuable, paintings, even by masters, have negligible real value. They are something to look at, less impressive than a tree, various rocks, your toilet when you flush it. It's all hype, much like the graphic intensive doom clones.

Dying? No. A paradigm shift? Definitely. I think that there has been a "visual revolution" where games look prettier. However, there has been lacking (in my opinion) an element of fun and creativity. Many new games are simply better looking rehashes of previous ideas. But I think we have yet to see PC gaming hit its peak. PC gaming can only grow as much as the market will bear. I think there has to eventually be a leveling off in requirements. (At least I hope so).

I think that the PC is still a far better platform than the consoles, which tend to bore me.