I'm still a little sore over the first HIB since World of Goo made like $1 million from that alone, which is about 0.001% of the money I made when I contracted for them on that gig

I'm not mad at 2D Boy, I'm just pissed that contractors get paid next to nothing and can't collect royalties.

obviously I have no idea about your personal arrangements, but in my experience most contractors do not WANT royalties and tend to be offended at being offered profit-share instead of up-front payment.

Things would be different if the contractors could tell ahead of time what was going to be a hit, but then, if the developers knew what would be a hit their businesses would work differently too!

I know at least a few devs put sales-target bonuses in the contracts too, so if the game does at least X well you get some extra money.

I expect I got into the mac side of things a little bit late. My mac sales have never been as great as some people's... but yes, my most recent release, the mac percentage has plummeted.

But other than the old free apple listings I've never made much effort to reach out to mac users, so my figures aren't the most meaningful.

From one side, paying for more that 200 cards for single indie game would be fiscally irresponsible
From the other, borrowing could cause critical hit from large game developers/designer/publishers

And IMHO it is the cause why there are no decent (famouse) indie CCG games, people don't play them if images are an artwork of a student

You have zero money and zero experience, right? Your game is not going to become an instant huge hit. Stop trying to plan to jump straight to the level of the entire MTG franchise. Even companies that HAD money and contacts and experience generally failed at that.

If you're making a computer card game, consider having the code to let players assign their OWN images to cards.

If you're making a physical card game, design a game that can work with a smaller number of cards first. Or release a free downloadable version with no art (or legally-free or cheap stock art, which does exist) and set up a kickstarter. Or all sorts of other plans based on the resources you actually have.

Planning around limitations can actually make your designs better and more creative.

Question: how long is it normal for contract artists/programmers/writers/etc. to go without responding to emails?

In my experience, if you're talking to someone who isn't doing this as their fulltime job, it's not that unusual for them to sometimes take a few days to respond. However, if you send a followup email (along the lines of 'Trying to verify that you got this') and they still don't answer within a day, you probably do want to look for someone else to work with.

Even if the first person eventually gets back to you with everything they promised, they're going to make your life hell all the way from chasing them with pitchforks trying to get anything out of them while they invent excuse after excuse. Throwing good money (and time) after bad!

I know it's a huge extra step, but I really think it might be work it

... that implies that there's an actual step that can be taken.

There's a lot of good games out there that are not on Steam. It usually isn't because they haven't asked to be.

(Standard disclaimer - I'm not talking about MY games, I mean games I've paid money for from other people!)

Out of curiosity, what sort of hoops?

The two payment problems that have blocked me from buying games I was interested in have been being hugely overcharged because of my IP location and having my payments blocked or delayed because of overly-zealous security checks. My 'fault' for regularly traveling between countries, of course...

Imagine: Fashion Designer (2007)

I've worked on this one!

By the way, those games are made by little companies that are not related and sometimes (like for this one) don't start as an Imagine game but get rebranded by the editor. This one isn't even called that in France...

And the one that I have played had nothing to do with Ubisoft originally. It's not part of their line in its country of origin, they just got the English license.

Last I looked into it, there was at least one specifically inhouse developer making some of the Imagine games (which as best as I could tell were some of the worst received) but others were coming from all over the place. Not that this was particularly easy for a user to figure out! Pretty much nobody reviews those games that I can see, making it hard to know which ones are acceptable for their intended purpose, and which ones should have been drowned at birth.

I do not doubt the assessment of how terrible the development process was for some of them.

I think that says more about your personal tastes than anything else.

You *almost* got the clue, but then dodged it slightly.

Someone who appreciates the sports games may say that those are quality games on the whole. A large number of gamers think they're complete crap being shoveled out with as little work on them as possible - largely because they're not interested in sports games and think the people who do buy them are stupid.

A large number of gamers will say the same thing about the 'Imagine' series for the DS - complete crap being shoveled on foolish unsuspecting buyers. But those games clearly have a big fanbase that's quite happy with them. That fanbase just doesn't get much of a voice in places like this.

Am I saying those games aren't crap? I can't, I haven't played them. (Well, except one, which wouldn't have been complete crap if Ubisoft hadn't intentionally made it worse when porting it from Japanese, but that's another story)

Quality isn't an objective measure.

In general the graphics bar for games made by big companies is set higher, that's something almost everyone can agree on.

All the RenPy games have Mac versions. That's mostly visual novels, of course, but there are some RPGs in there as well, like Planet Stronghold or Science Girls.

I feel guilty for suddenly wanting to play a game that doesn't exist solely because of some bits of art. Well, more that it fuels my nostalgia like whoa and reminds me of all the Torment-like projects I once wanted to make.

I still want to make a go at a Great Big Indie RPG someday, but I'm merely an artist, the coding thing is so beyond me, my brain just rejects the understanding required

Reliable indie game artists can be hard to find; I suspect if you post up a few art bits pleadingly coders will try to lure you into working for them!

So for the past year I've been working on this Thing which is inspired by my love of TV Tropes and bizarre fanfiction. Wait, no, don't run away! I promise there's no MPREG! ... Yet.

So, you know. Go to magical school. Learn spells. Steal your roommates' underwear. Get thrown into a dungeon. Beg your professor to spank you. Solve puzzles in first-person-RPG style. Accidentally get married and lose your soul. That sort of Thing.

You can watch the trailer video here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/magical-diary/videos/magical-diary-trailer-1

Design your own character dollmaker style (No modding tools yet but we intend to add them later) and try to master magic. Female characters only in this game (sequel will be male) but you can date both genders. There are an awful lot of options (game text is about 150,000 words) and plenty of weird things to find.

Free demos for PC, Mac, and Linux at the main webpage: http://www.hanakogames.com/magical_diary.shtml

but it's a useless option because i can't vote if i've already voted (i voted for the >1 year option back when there were only a few options)

I'll tick it for you, since no option is going to exactly match me and that comes close enough I guess...

(What, you thought I was kidding about the harem? I'm married AND poly, thanks... I'll be multiply married as soon as I take over the world and rewrite the laws to allow it. Unfortunately that could take a while)

Where's the harem option?

Any girl who happen to read this post, please keep talking and participating instead of backsit on the fringe! We need more active participation, it's the only way I see we can attract. Us, poor nerdy male can't do much for that.

speaking only for myself and not female devs in general:

1. I'm busy. Making games.

2. I don't feel particularly welcome around here, either in terms of personality or in terms of game preference. Different forums have different cultures; my response to places being rude is generally to pack up and move somewhere else. If people like me are regularly mocked, and games like games that I make and play are regularly mocked, why would I hang around and give myself ulcers?

3. The above IS something that nerdy males could do something about if they actually wanted to, but I don't think the ones here do. That's not necessarily a bad thing, cultures differ. Just don't assume that your clubhouse is all of humanity or all of the internet!

Get paid up front. Accept no alternatives. Accept that no matter what happens you will never be paid again. It doesn't matter if your contract says you get royalties, you won't. Just take your advance and be happy. No advance, show them the door.

why is anyone taking the time to argue against that? Dumb and irrelevant arguments should not be given the time of day

... Wait, you're trying to tell people on an INTERNET FORUM to stop wasting their time?


(Demonstrating that yes, the power of google draws people in eventually once they're mentioned. I wonder whatever happened to Kibo?)

Also, I don't know about you, but I found the whole John-Arianna love story a little bit "lolJapan" worthy.
EDIT: Yes, I know, it's an American game.

It's definitely something I could only expect from there, since there aren't other countries that do those type of relationships in media aside from Japan.  

Watch more Lifetime movies.

Or, actually, don't.

(I suspect your point was 'that do those relationships in anything other than a 'YOU MONSTER' light.)

Edit: Got all endings, verified by checking the code. The only thing that changes is Rook and Ariana's relationship. Everything else is just color. I was looking for a way to Rook to be let in on the metagame Higurashi-style, but no such path exists, which is kind of disappointing, but wow, the first time through was a whopper.

IIRC your choices may also determine whether or not X and Y get back together, but I only played through once so I haven't seen the different ways that can play out.

it was obviously just an accident (the game ban, not the forum ban)

Considering that when it was first brought to a Bioware employee's attention, he said (paraphrase, not direct quote) "Yes. That's how it's supposed to work. Consider that an incentive." it's not so 'obviously' just an accident.

acutaly forget my respons lets just keep tal k about faceless coproroations!!!!1 yeah1! new gam journalism!!!1 rock on

It's 'new game journalism' to read a thread on the Bioware forum with an official statement by a Bioware employee on it and to suspect that this is, in fact, Bioware's position? What was the old journalism, divination by entrails?

Or is your argument that the employee in question is an idiot who talks out of his ass in an official capacity? We can argue that if you want, I've got my own bones to pick with him over other things.

it was obviously just an accident (the game ban, not the forum ban)

Considering that when it was first brought to a Bioware employee's attention, he said (paraphrase, not direct quote) "Yes. That's how it's supposed to work. Consider that an incentive." it's not so 'obviously' just an accident.