Bay 12 Games Forum

1) The games industry is not the highest grossing entertainment industry, the movie industry easily beats it if you include DVD sales (which you should).

Sorry about that, didn't think that far, though it wasn't really a large part of my original point.

2) Game development is actually not that profitable

That actually depends on what you call "profitable". Take Grand theft auto 4 for example
(bad example,I know). Now that game weighed in at a whooping 100 million dollars in costs, making it one of the largest games ever produced(in terms of costs of course) and it got oooooooooh, about 400-500 million dollars income  after that. Now when you think about that for a while, you should come to terms with the fact that:
a) with a team of around 100 devs, that could give each one of them 3-4 million in wages during the entire development period.
And b) if you deem that to be "not profitable" then I literally don't know what to say.
There are other examples I'm sure, like halo making roughly enough to buy switzerland or something(not researched), but I can't be arsed to find out more.

3) Piracy is extremely wide-spread. Pirated copies usually greatly outnumber sold copies.

Not necessarily true, as from what I've seen the sales-piracy ratio is at most 80-20 %, easily tipping in favor of actual game sales.The only anomaly being the piracy of fallout 2,which was supposedly downloaded over half a billion times.(guess a lot of the cracks sucked, eh?)

This strikes hardest against smaller niche titles and small companies....The industry responds by making fewer, larger, safer games, and by smaller companies being bought up by large publishers.

No, just no. The recent years has seen a spike in indie development teams, as many more are investing in it. It's safer to put out a 100. 000 dollar budget for a small team to make a game for, say xbox live or psn than to gamble with a 50 million dollar, giant, triple A title.
Though many of the dev teams fail, it's still safer to bet on ten of those  than a single AAA title.
(some large companies even has small indie dev branches.)

It's already a small part of the gaming industry - Toady's not the only one working this way. It's not very common, though, and for good reason: it requires a large, very dedicated fan base. DF is unique enough that it has managed to acquire one - most games never will. Also, Toady is one man, working from home and from what I've gathered living rather humbly.

It is a small part of the gaming industry, but dwarf fortress is the most known game to have this " feature" if you could call it that. It doesn't necessarily need such a large fanbase, just enough of them to want to see the project live. Some people could pay part of their wages just to see some of the game come out.
And you're right, most indie games don't ever get a fanbase as large as this, but this is still not a "large" fanbase.
Toady does indeed live humbly from what I've gathered, and humbly doesn't need to mean" poorly" as I think he enjoys his work a lot more than most people on the same wage, or even some people with more wage.
He has the ability to create his ultimate game, and as a gamer that is pretty much anyone's dream.
Good for him, and I hope he lives long, and prosper(so he can make the game obviously...I have no compassion*cough* *dries away tears of subtle joy, and anticipation for the next version*)

A lot of my original intentions with the op  got smoldered under the never seizing pressure of having a sleeping disorder, so sorry for that, but I don't think editing it would do much good, so I'll leave it be.

Sorry if I sounded like a rude dick somewhere in that post(prolly because I am a rude dick IRL).
And thanks to you guys for really trying to discuss this, and not crush me under your internet wisdom or something  . Glad to hear your opinions.

I've had this thought lately, and I think it's pretty good.  Now most of you know that toady pretty much lives of our donations,and in return gives us quality entertainment.
   Now piracy has been a problem for many games companies, as it feeds of their money. It isn't stealing, but they just don't make money off the unsold ,pirated games.
It's for the moment actually not a really huge problem, as games is the most
money making media business in the world( I think).
In the future this might change, as piracy is made easier, and faster, and this might even ruin the business. I don't know. but it could happen.
   Now the "deal" we as gamers have with the almighty, one Toad has given a lot of benefits to both us, and him.
Think about it. His game is free to download, for everybody. Even those that has not paid a dime for his work.
However to make sure that the game keeps getting supported by Toady, he needs money. We give that to him.
This little donation deal gives him safety from piracy, as that won't really have an effect on the money he's making since it doesn't exist with this game,
and this at the same time prevents him from pulling any bullshit on us. (I'm not saying he would.)
   He has to create good content for us, so he can make money, and therefore we have a more unique, and a better quality game than most gamers that pay for the newest
" shoot Nazis and get powerups"- game.
   This could be a better part of the gaming industry, as this could benefit both the consumer and the producer.

Because of this, Toady has steady pay, and we have a steady supply of great game.
Thank you, One Toad, for bringing us awesomeness in large doses.

tl;dr:  read it.

I'm not sure how this turned out as I haven't slept in over 36 hours, but I hope I didn't repeat myself too much.
And the obligatory: What do you guys think of this? Like seriously. Is this a good idea or a bad idea for at least a part of the industry?

Does the joke have to do with the japanese writing?

Not really, as I use that as a sort of signature. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it by accident on a random site. It's just kanji for the dish called "tofu" which, if people haven't noticed is my name ; P

The joke is(very poor I know,not even a real joke) that toady has yet to implement doctors in the game(next release, I'm pretty sure), and since the character in the drawing ended up looking kind of sick, I just wrote that there and...well I'm sure you get the rest.
I have awfully,painful humor...I think it runs in the family.

Usefull comment.

Well that sucks. I have looked far and wide and not even heard of the SETA. I have now plowed every single place I could think of and it sits there, right in the controls window.
I heard of seta and didn't really know what it was, so I searched for it. On google, the x-universe forums, and the official forums. It yielded no results. so I just thought it was some obscure story thing.
It is weird when I thing of it, since it's such an important thing(it seems) , then shouldn't a search yield at least ONE result in the forums? I might have messed up, or it's the damn net at my place messing things up again, as I has done countless times before.(including forums searches before, so I should have known..I think)
Sorry then, I'll be going, actually enjoying the game. Thanks a bunch.

(although I find it annoying that there is no tutorials, except for the combat ones. And a tutorial could explain this.)

Quote from: Tofu on January 04, 2010, 04:33:00 pm

Shit! I'm sitting here, freezing my arse off, late at night, with 6 hours left till i have to go to school....and I'm waiting for the next one....which I KNOW ain't gonna come in time xD
Fuuuuuck.
Good luck on the adventuring though ; P

I actually just started uploading it a few minutes after you posted this =)  Hang in there and ... grab a rope reed snuggie or something. 

Thank. Frickin'. God.....or you.
The difference in time at your place and mine confuses me! : (
*puts on a !!cat leather cap!! to keep toasty*

Didn't see this in my search so...

So I just dealt with a two-wave ambush, three snatchers, and two thieves while escorting a caravan in.  It's the second round of ambushes for this fort.

Not including the items I sent to the smelter, the loot went to the Caravan to the tune of 120,000 dwarfbucks.  At this point my fort has only created 200k, itself.

So let me get this straight... a scraggly band of goblin raiders has, on hand, enough material wealth to buy half of a 3-year old dwarven fortress?!?!!

Ignoring the sheer agony involved in disposing of all that gear, there's just a simple balance issue here.  I mean, yeah the human caravan was real happy to have it in trade, but the sheer amount of masterwork GCS clothing boggles the mind.

Whatever happened to goblins' "quantity over quality" slogan?  Perhaps looted gear should spawn in various states of being worn-out, and perhaps the hyper-expensive luxury items should be left out of loot tables altogether.  There's just no challenge in the game once the gobbos show up.

Yes, while someone has actually suggested that they should drop less loot(at the expense of realism), this is much better. Having their cloth's value drop to the floor would be better. And of course there should be better ways of disposing of the waste

Quote from: Tofu on December 03, 2009, 04:28:11 pm

Well as the orks as a race is pretty much growing fungi, then you could upgrade your size with levels or something couldn't you ? eventually becoming a warboss or something?
And as for the Imperium; you could start out as an imperial guard and eventually become a space marine. Would work well enough (then you wouldn't see noobs running around acting dumb as a space marine, and everyone with the rank of space marine in any way actually deserves the title)

Space marines are chosen from an extremely young age, so there would be no "up-grading to a space marine" option.

Shit, I forgot that.........Disregard that then.

Well as the orks as a race is pretty much growing fungi, then you could upgrade your size with levels or something couldn't you ? eventually becoming a warboss or something?
And as for the Imperium; you could start out as an imperial guard and eventually become a space marine. Would work well enough (then you wouldn't see noobs running around acting dumb as a space marine, and everyone with the rank of space marine in any way actually deserves the title)

As far as I know this is supposed to be a kind of third person shooter rpg thing hybrid right? That would work out really well considering all the different factions.
In an rpg you would have a hard time switching between enemies to target, but with third person shooter mechanics this would actually be easy as pie.
Well I could obviously be wrong though.....