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[aeiowu]

For the entirety of our project, we've rejected most business common-sense and focused on making the game we wanted to make and play. It probably would have killed our company.

I tried to sum up our thought process about making the kind of decision that would perhaps sacrifice some of the purity of our game to make money: http://www.intuitiongames.com/2009/01/swallowing-our-pride-and-selling-our-soul-a-how-to-guide.html

Anyone else have stories like this? What broke you? Or am I a total douchebag? I'll take all comers.

[Cray]

Doesn't sound to me like you're a douchebag when the original idea wasn't working. Why didn't you change plans 6 months ago?

[ShawnF]

The game won't load for me, but just a few thoughts based on what I read:

- You're not a douchebag.  Well, maybe you are a douchebag, I don't know you, but this wasn't a douchey thing to do.  Doing something for money doesn't mean you can't make a great end product (just ask Shakesspeare or Michelangelo!), and I don't think the decision you made will destroy competitive play.  It'll just put a price tag on getting to that level, which isn't all that uncommon (thinking of games like M:tG and W40k tabletop here).

- Uh, just to clarify, these are just items you can buy via microtransaction, sorta like in Gunbound, right?  If so... I'm confused by what they were doing in the game in the first place if they had no effect on play.  I can't imagine wanting to buy them if the effect was purely cosmetic.  Maybe you could keep the gameplay you want and just try a different revenue mechanism that offers players more value for their money, but doesn't affect competition?  For instance, sticking with my Gunbound example since that sounds like the closest thing to your game, maybe the demo version would offer only 2 of the playable characters, and you had to buy the rest?  Then you wouldn't be offering players more powerful options, just more gameplay breadth.

- If you just get the items by leveling up, I also wouldn't worry about it ruining competitive play.  Anyone that's going to be good enough to care about that kind of thing will very quickly put in the hours to max our their level anyway. 

- Finally:  your game is still in beta, you shouldn't be so surprised that it's not making money.  There's a chance that it'd do much better if you had a real release and advertised it a bit.  Probably very few people even know it exists, and the beta status might make people who DO know more reluctant to put up money.

[Paul Eres]

My position is that a game won't be fun unless it's the type of game its author likes to play. Of course you should also do things in your game to make it appeal to people with different play styles: for instance many people are not as good at games as we are, so having an easy difficulty level is a good idea. Similarly, not everyone likes reading through lengthy story bits as much as I do, so allowing them to skip the story is fine by me. But it should still be at core a game you like to play, or else nobody else will like to play it either: the degree of precision required to make a game fun can't be had unless you are finding the game fun.

In our case, we created a pretty niche game in a genre I liked (tower defense), gave it a complex story that we felt was meaningful, made it interesting to look at for us, gave it music we liked to listen to, and so on -- we had no idea if anyone else would like the game as much as we did, but it turned out that some people did (even though the weird looks of it did scare many people off).

[David Pittman]

I think you automatically "sell out" the minute game development (or any form of art, for that matter) becomes your livelihood. I also don't think that's a bad thing, which is why I put "selling out" in "air" "quotes". Whether your goal is actually to make money or just to make great games (or both, because I don't believe they have to be mutually exclusive), you still have to be able to pay the bills. It's all a matter of perspective: you're not compromising the "purity" of your project, you're making a small sacrifice on your own terms in order to continue making your project.

[TheBlackMask]

I think the biggest problem is spending that long on a flash game.  There just aren't a whole lot of monetization options for flash games that take more than a few weeks to make.  Ad revenue from flash ads is so low nowadays, it's ridiculous.

I don't think it's selling out at all, your game has more depth to it than most other flash games, so why not make some money from it?

[Bezzy]

- You're not a douchebag.  Well, maybe you are a douchebag, I don't know you, but this wasn't a douchey thing to do.  Doing something for money doesn't mean you can't make a great end product (just ask Shakesspeare or Michelangelo!), and I don't think the decision you made will destroy competitive play.  It'll just put a price tag on getting to that level, which isn't all that uncommon (thinking of games like M:tG and W40k tabletop here).

Buh, both those artists were commissioned by rich patrons. They made selling out work somehow. Smarter 'n me.

[William Broom]

Buh, both those artists were commissioned by rich patrons. They made selling out work somehow. Smarter 'n me.

Isn't this what Jason Rohrer did with EA?

[TheBlackMask]

He's "consulting" for EA.  And I really don't think you can compare EA to the Medici family.  The Medici's sponsored art & science in an era where there wasn't a lot of that going on...EA just releases shitty, broken games and convinces us we want to buy them.

[KennEH!]

Gotta pay the bills somehow. I think your fine.

[Craig Stern]

That's life. If you're hoping to live off your games, they have to make you money, right?

It's not like you're doing something truly despicable to earn money, like (for example) setting up an elaborate Ponzi scheme behind the facade of an ostensibly respectable institution (like, say, the stock market) so you can profit off of the ignorance of your customers, then run away before the economy collapses like a house of cards. All you're doing is giving players the option of buying some items that give them a little boost in the game you made. Not a big deal, IMHO.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Sounds like a sound move. You should do as much as you can to make money from your game. There are ways you can ease you feelings, such as making all paid content available if the player manages some incredible achievements in the game. This can work well for younger players whom would never spend anything, but would love the opportunity to have the items that have some value like that.

I have to admit, I've never heard of anything spending so long on a flash game before, especially without funding in place, either from their day jobs or a publisher relationship.  I hope you can build off this game with more titles or do something some great marketing to make the title take off. Facebook integration, pyramid scheme neopets techniques, and weird things could make all the difference to your profits.

[sillytuna]

If you're making games for fun and have a day job, then just make a game you want to play.

If you want to make a living then you have to make an artistic choice; the game you want to play may not be a game lots of people will pay for. The question is, as always, do you take the risk or do you make a different game?

Doing something in order to make a living is not (usually) selling out. The people who say that sort of thing generally don't have kids and a mortgage and a pet goldfish to look after.

In the end, you have to do what makes you happy; it is not for others to tell you.

[tylerjhutchison]

I would say making your game something that you can make money off of is NOT SELLING OUT!

I would strongly encourage you to release your game, and continually release updates instead of letting your game sit in beta.  It is going to be much much harder to sell your game if it is in beta.

I think with a game like this a micro-payment store would be ideal. You should consider a store model similar to Gunbound.  Players can earn coins to spend on new items by playing the game and by being good at the game, but lazy players can just pay you real money and buy a bunch of coins.

Basically do what it takes to put food on the table.  I would not worry about being a sell out unless you are seriously considering making Miley Cyrus a playable character... and quite frankly if Miley Cyrus offers you a bunch of money to maker her a character in your game, I would take it and use that money to fund even more indie games.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I for one would be quite interested in Miley Cyrus' DinoWars.