What seperates your (or prospective) game from FREE toCommercial?

[Kyrie]

I've been here for awhile and I have seen quite of a bit of projects I thought not do so well, but turns out they did.

I have also seen some amazing projects go to waste.

So my question is this:

What do you think that your game has to offer, or needs to have for you to buy and/or sell it?

 

[Keniisu]

I think a game needs an interesting story, and unique gameplay for me to buy. Also not a very high price like $30 or $40 dollars.

 

[odinnightowl]

a free project i believe is allowed the freedom of having flaws far more then a commercial one. While both need to be polished the commercial one much more so. To refer to my games. one is a true rpg with a full story in development and a designed potential ending. the other is a tower crawler/dungeon crawl based rather loosely along the lines of Sword Art Online. They are both meant to be commercialized but will be a rather cheap game to buy (5-10$). As mentioned recently the engine might be getting online functionality soon, so the tower crawler will then also have dlc and an item mall of a sort further commercializing the game.

 

[Warpmind]

The game I'm working on is with intent to go commercial; if only for the exposure one gets by winding up on Steam.
Not aiming for a high price, though; it's not a game I'm making for the profits - and to be honest, any actual profits will constantly run the risk of throwing my tax situation into a rampant chaos. But that's a side issue, not particularly relevant to the vast majority of RM dabblers.

The commercial aspect means I'll have to run a bit harsher discipline in regards to complete and correct crediting on the first go - no slipping up and forgetting someone. It also means I'll have to be a little more of a perfectionist than I usually am, to make sure everything holds together as it's supposed to. If it were a free game, I'd likely allow myself a far more casual attitude to the project - and the game I'm working on has a bit more motivation behind it than can suffer a casual attitude.

 

[JAD94]

This is a great question and something I've been thinking about. I have two types of games in development right now. The first one which is in my signature is a short game, can be beaten in an hour or so, but it has multiple endings, a bonus level if the player gets a certain ending, and a unique strategy since every party member possesses very different traits and skills but nonetheless all go hand in hand. This one I think I'll sell for about $5-10, while my other project is about a 20-30 hour game. Two endings and interesting story. I guess this one would be $10-20 give or take. But yeah I guess it depends on the length, replay value, and uniqueness.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

The effort.

The fact that we started this game in 2011 and are now taking it more seriously... Spending time world building, custom scripts, custom graphics, concept art, custom music, meeting complete with a whiteboard, having a filing briefcase, etc.

I don't think we'd just hand it out for free honestly. XD

 

[Caitlin]

I want to help animals with my game, as I would love to donate 10% of my sales to an animal shelter or charity that reaches out to help hurt animals!  I want to create a small business that makes video games from rpg maker to other engines!  I want to make my dreams come true to become a story teller that I have always felt that I was.  It's my one obsession, I admit!

 

[phoenix_rossy]

There is no clear distinction between a commercial title, and a non-commercial. I've seen some amazing free games that would probably do quite well in the commercial market.

It basically comes down to one simple choice on the developer's part: do I want to make money off this or not?

For me, I want to be able to work full-time on my games, and to do that, I have to earn some coin. 

 

[Matseb2611]

I think the main difference is that with a free game there's a lot less pressure to have a certain standard. You're allowed to make mistakes and have flaws. With commercial games there's a sort of minimum standard that's needed in order for people to feel that your game is worth spending money on. And then this standard will get higher and higher as the price of the game increases.

Also I think amount of content is important too. The higher the price, the more content the game should have. Players will feel cheated if say a $10 game lasts only 1 hour and has no replay value. In fact, the way I personally see it, the first hour of the game should be given for free as a demo.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

Personally, I feel cheated if any game is less than 5 hours long regardless of pricing

 

[Kes]

I agree, I think 5 hours is the minimum for a commercial game.

On what separates a commercial from a free game, I think probably many people would say the same thing, but with slightly different words.  My way of describing it is to say that I think with a commercial game there should be an immense attention to detail.  Everything has to be of a good standard.  As matseb said, you're not allowed the same leeway for mistakes that you're given with free games.  And I've seen a number of games where the broad brush things are done well, but the small details that really draw you in to a game have been neglected.

I also think that with a commercial game there needs the question of replayability needs to have a higher profile than with a free game.  With a free game, if you get one good playthrough out of it, that's fine.  With a commercial game - even though in practice many players never replay a game - there is the hope/expectation that it will have a decent replayability value.  Players like to think that if they wanted to replay, then they could, and it would be (at least in some significant respect) a different experience.  This doesn't have to be about having different endings.  It could be that you have a very different party composition.  For example, in your first playthrough, you picked Fred to be in your team to do a side quest.  Because Fred was present, an optional character refused to join you.  On replay you know you have a choice - Fred or the other one.  Or the same party, but with such different skills among them, picking a different party will result in having to find a different strategy.  Maybe lots of secret rooms, side quests, other things to find, which the player probably won't all get in one playthrough.  Anything like that which extends the relative length/price ratio by effectively giving the player 1.5 or even 2.0 (or in rare cases, even more) games for the price of one.

 

[Matseb2611]

I'd third on the "5 hour rule". If people are going to pay any amount of cash for the game, they'd want it to last for a fair few hours at the very least.

 

[Dream3r]

Personally I feel it's just a matter of impact.  There are free games I've played that were so good I wouldn't have minded paying for them, there's also games I paid for I wish I hadn't (but everyone has those).  The argument that a game should give a certain amount of gameplay time isn't true for me at least.  If you can change my life in a ten minute game go right ahead.  It's not likely but point is I've played games like Final Fantasy X (50+ hours) and games like The Last of Us (12 hours+) and they'd both be worth $60 to me.  They were good games

As a developer though I want to make games for a living, not because I want money but because I want to bring the worlds in my head to life, but I need money to live and even more money to make bigger worlds something real for people to experience.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

As a developer though I want to make games for a living, not because I want money but because I want to bring the worlds in my head to life, but I need money to live and even more money to make bigger worlds something real for people to experience.

I see from your Indiegogo that you're WELL on the way to achieving that goal. Congrats!

EDIT: Oh wait, you're not the developer of Cross Code are you? Ooops!

 

[Dream3r]

I see from your Indiegogo that you're WELL on the way to achieving that goal. Congrats!

EDIT: Oh wait, you're not the developer of Cross Code are you? Ooops!

Lololol I wish, that game is fun to play. Maybe I should edit the siggy to show I'm just a supporter.  They shared those on the page and asked for supporters of the project to use them on forums and such to try and push towards the goal.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

Yeah, that's cool. I was tired (when are we not) when I saw and and jumped to conclusions. I wish I'd got 35k in pledges for a single project