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Last edited by Angryfly on Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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n0rtygames
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Re: 3D Sci-Fi City Building for Game Design
Quality - good.
Price point - too high for the package for a zero-low budget indie developer to consider.
I suggest you look at dexsoft-games to see his offerings and his price point. What you're offering here is a fraction of the amount needed to create a single segment for a level. He generally offers enough to craft a full level for a game for as little as £20.
You're only offering these models in .max format - that's a turn off. I'd need FBX as a minimum and preferably OBJs. Max would require me to own a licensed copy of 3ds max. We use Blender, because it's free.
That said, on the quality of your assets - if you were instead asking about working on a % basis on a shooter - I'd snatch you right up and I'm sure many others would too. The quality of the ships you posted before is pretty nice, your buildings are slick - I just feel that if you're selling these at too high a price point to be considered by most startup developers.
This is a common problem that genuinely prevents good quality games from being made. Artists want to be paid up front - coders get no pay until their game actually turns a profit and covers the expense. If your prices were lower, or you were prepared to enter in to a mutual risk agreement with a Dev who actually finishes games - I think you'd do pretty well.
Price point - too high for the package for a zero-low budget indie developer to consider.
I suggest you look at dexsoft-games to see his offerings and his price point. What you're offering here is a fraction of the amount needed to create a single segment for a level. He generally offers enough to craft a full level for a game for as little as £20.
You're only offering these models in .max format - that's a turn off. I'd need FBX as a minimum and preferably OBJs. Max would require me to own a licensed copy of 3ds max. We use Blender, because it's free.
That said, on the quality of your assets - if you were instead asking about working on a % basis on a shooter - I'd snatch you right up and I'm sure many others would too. The quality of the ships you posted before is pretty nice, your buildings are slick - I just feel that if you're selling these at too high a price point to be considered by most startup developers.
This is a common problem that genuinely prevents good quality games from being made. Artists want to be paid up front - coders get no pay until their game actually turns a profit and covers the expense. If your prices were lower, or you were prepared to enter in to a mutual risk agreement with a Dev who actually finishes games - I think you'd do pretty well.
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Re: 3D Sci-Fi City Building for Game Design
Definitely agree with norty here about the format. People who can afford max license, most probably won't need your stuff.
One thing I would like to point out that you should probably use more polygons. Stage 1 in Saviors has nearly half a million triangles and still any device that doesn't reach full frames per second, is limited by pixel fill rate and has nothing to do with the polygon counts. Having 350 polygons and 2M textures and max format only kinda makes me wonder as to exactly where did you think people would use those models? The only place I could think of using those models is very far background in 3D indie mobile games (Android/iOS/wp) after downsizing texture sizes to 512x512, but again, people developing games there won't have a lot of money to spend... Especially for backgrounds that won't play a large part anyway.
Sure they look nice, but a bit aimless in my honest opinion.
One thing I would like to point out that you should probably use more polygons. Stage 1 in Saviors has nearly half a million triangles and still any device that doesn't reach full frames per second, is limited by pixel fill rate and has nothing to do with the polygon counts. Having 350 polygons and 2M textures and max format only kinda makes me wonder as to exactly where did you think people would use those models? The only place I could think of using those models is very far background in 3D indie mobile games (Android/iOS/wp) after downsizing texture sizes to 512x512, but again, people developing games there won't have a lot of money to spend... Especially for backgrounds that won't play a large part anyway.
Sure they look nice, but a bit aimless in my honest opinion.
Saviors, a modern vertical shoot 'em up.
Please delete post. The links are broken, and information is
Please delete post.
The links are broken, and information is outdated.
The links are broken, and information is outdated.
Last edited by Angryfly on Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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n0rtygames
- Posts: 1001
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Re: 3D Sci-Fi City Building for Game Design
Most XBLIG shmups in this day and age are lucky if they sell 300 copies at 80MSP.
80MSP = $0.70 to the developer.
The symptom is the same on iOS or Android - where games sell at $0.99 or £1. Again, Apple take 30% - leaving the developer with about $0.70
Most of the developers on this specific sub forum are not making enough money to cover that sort of expense.
For a single one of your asset packs at $60 - a developer would be required to sell 85 copies. This is already 33% of his revenue if we assume 300 copies sold. This is 28%. In a AAA company - your yearly salary would equate to less than 2% of the games gross income - those guys make *millions*. (I have worked in AAA environments)
You are also only providing your files in .max format - meaning the developer has to have a copy of 3DS Max. Not only does this imply that the developer purchasing your goods already has a legitimate and legal copy of 3DS Max - but you are expecting the developer to take care of the export process from 3DS Max to their format of choice. A 3DS Max license costs $3500 for a single seat commercial license. Anyone with the budget and willingness to spend $3500 on 3d modelling software is not going to be looking on turbosquid for assets. They already have a dedicated art guy
Check this out:
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/levels/space-le ... -shots.htm
That guy also provides other formats on request. He provides 3ds, if you wish to go down the FBX route. OBJ if you want to import in to Blender and .X if you want to import straight in to something like XNA.
$141 for his level kits - which are highly detailed modular animated repeatable backdrops
($60/$141 * 100) == 42%
For 42% of his price - you are basically offering 5 low poly buildings - of which any shmup developer would need about 10 times that amount to create a full level. If that's your rate, you're looking at $600 per level minimum. Across 5 levels, assuming the developer wants their levels to look different - you're now talking $3000 (the cost of 3ds max) - versus this guys rate of $70 per level.
In addition - by offering your artwork up for sale to everybody who visits turbosquid - the developer is not getting unique assets that are tailored to his game. He could very well fire up a game the next week and see all the assets used in his game in another title. This is basically really shit for shmups, because they are reliant on having their own distinct feel since mechanically the large majority of them are very similar (Dodge bullets, shoot bad guys.. Rinse.. Repeat)
There is *no* way to tell how many sales your game is going to get. This isn't even certain in the AAA world. I've seen games from companies flop massively selling only 17k units in their first month after 4 years of development from a team of 20 people - resulting in that branch of the studio being completely shut down.
This is not a case of developers looking to spend as little as possible - this is a case of your charging what can be seen as a particularly high price for a very small number of assets that are not going to speed up development a huge deal. You are better off providing free non commercial samples and then approaching developers directly to strike a written and contracted profit share deal - if you intend to target small independent developers.
What if the game DOESNT make that amount? A developer ends up paying you $300-$400 for all your asset packs and makes a loss of $250 because his iOS game only sold about 200 copies before it disappeared in to obscurity and is now at a loss while you're sitting quite happily? Is this developer likely to make more games in the future? This does not strike me as fair and is a symptom I've seen in a LOT of artists whos feet have yet to actually connect with the ground.
I think you're labouring under the misapprehension that Doujin developers live the same lifestyle as the fine gentleman you can find in "Indie Game: The Movie" -- we don't. We're actually fighting to keep our genre alive.
I know this is a lot of information to digest and I don't mean to sound mean - I'm really trying to keep you grounded. Compare your quality and rates to other peoples work to give you an idea of what is expected.
Regarding Turbosquid - I think you're putting too much value in Turbosquid. It's actually the place we go for situations where we basically need a really cheap placeholder to fill a gap in production. "Damn, I need a table for this room and my artist is busy with other stuff. Oh, this one only costs £2. Oh, it's royalty free too? So it may not need remodelling? Sweet." - It's generally not a place we go looking for our entire games assets - which is basically what you're looking to provide.
80MSP = $0.70 to the developer.
The symptom is the same on iOS or Android - where games sell at $0.99 or £1. Again, Apple take 30% - leaving the developer with about $0.70
Most of the developers on this specific sub forum are not making enough money to cover that sort of expense.
For a single one of your asset packs at $60 - a developer would be required to sell 85 copies. This is already 33% of his revenue if we assume 300 copies sold. This is 28%. In a AAA company - your yearly salary would equate to less than 2% of the games gross income - those guys make *millions*. (I have worked in AAA environments)
You are also only providing your files in .max format - meaning the developer has to have a copy of 3DS Max. Not only does this imply that the developer purchasing your goods already has a legitimate and legal copy of 3DS Max - but you are expecting the developer to take care of the export process from 3DS Max to their format of choice. A 3DS Max license costs $3500 for a single seat commercial license. Anyone with the budget and willingness to spend $3500 on 3d modelling software is not going to be looking on turbosquid for assets. They already have a dedicated art guy
Check this out:
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/levels/space-le ... -shots.htm
That guy also provides other formats on request. He provides 3ds, if you wish to go down the FBX route. OBJ if you want to import in to Blender and .X if you want to import straight in to something like XNA.
$141 for his level kits - which are highly detailed modular animated repeatable backdrops
($60/$141 * 100) == 42%
For 42% of his price - you are basically offering 5 low poly buildings - of which any shmup developer would need about 10 times that amount to create a full level. If that's your rate, you're looking at $600 per level minimum. Across 5 levels, assuming the developer wants their levels to look different - you're now talking $3000 (the cost of 3ds max) - versus this guys rate of $70 per level.
In addition - by offering your artwork up for sale to everybody who visits turbosquid - the developer is not getting unique assets that are tailored to his game. He could very well fire up a game the next week and see all the assets used in his game in another title. This is basically really shit for shmups, because they are reliant on having their own distinct feel since mechanically the large majority of them are very similar (Dodge bullets, shoot bad guys.. Rinse.. Repeat)
There is *no* way to tell how many sales your game is going to get. This isn't even certain in the AAA world. I've seen games from companies flop massively selling only 17k units in their first month after 4 years of development from a team of 20 people - resulting in that branch of the studio being completely shut down.
This is not a case of developers looking to spend as little as possible - this is a case of your charging what can be seen as a particularly high price for a very small number of assets that are not going to speed up development a huge deal. You are better off providing free non commercial samples and then approaching developers directly to strike a written and contracted profit share deal - if you intend to target small independent developers.
The balanced situation is usually a 60/40 split between Developer/Artist of profits and that's being particularly generous - since 40% of $1000 gets you $400 gross if the game makes that amount. This is a better deal for you than $60 for your individual assets - which nobody is really going to pay. You can be as confident as you like in your product, but it won't guarantee sales.Angryfly wrote:Yes, it is true that all game developers looking to spend as less money as possible, but there have to be a balanced situation for both parties
What if the game DOESNT make that amount? A developer ends up paying you $300-$400 for all your asset packs and makes a loss of $250 because his iOS game only sold about 200 copies before it disappeared in to obscurity and is now at a loss while you're sitting quite happily? Is this developer likely to make more games in the future? This does not strike me as fair and is a symptom I've seen in a LOT of artists whos feet have yet to actually connect with the ground.
I think you're labouring under the misapprehension that Doujin developers live the same lifestyle as the fine gentleman you can find in "Indie Game: The Movie" -- we don't. We're actually fighting to keep our genre alive.
I know this is a lot of information to digest and I don't mean to sound mean - I'm really trying to keep you grounded. Compare your quality and rates to other peoples work to give you an idea of what is expected.
Regarding Turbosquid - I think you're putting too much value in Turbosquid. It's actually the place we go for situations where we basically need a really cheap placeholder to fill a gap in production. "Damn, I need a table for this room and my artist is busy with other stuff. Oh, this one only costs £2. Oh, it's royalty free too? So it may not need remodelling? Sweet." - It's generally not a place we go looking for our entire games assets - which is basically what you're looking to provide.
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