Castle Paradox

[Spoon Weaver]

I've been thinking about how to do this for a while, as I'm sure lots of people here have. We have lots of great games here on this site, some being much better then games that are, as we speak, making people money. So I feel it's time to bridge the gap from hobby to business.
Here are my ideas of how to do this:

1) Flash games

2) cell phone apps/games

3) xbox live arcade

I'm currently seeking people to team up with to create one or more of these type of games. Work would not be scheduled, so you wouldn't have to think of it as a job. Pay would not happen unless the game in fact makes money. (This could potentially change, I might end up paying people just to work on a certain game if it becomes promising enough.)

Take your time thinking it over, I plan on continuing this option for as long as these things remain popular.

P.S. I noticed that there was work being done on both, flash game and cell phone game versions of the OHR. I'd be glad to provide any help I could give to these projects.

[Baconlabs]

I'm still going nonprofit, but I felt like mentioning that WiiWare may be a possibility. I've noticed that Cave Story, though still freeware, is making an upgraded version (graphics and music wise) for WiiWare and XBox Live Arcade. Plus Nintendo is sorely lacking decent RPG titles right now.

Though, it would probably take a lot more networking than any other path.

[Camdog]

WiiWare development means shelling out hundreds of dollars (maybe more) for a dev kit, does it not? Also, doesn't Nintendo have a policy of requiring developers to show that they're a legit studio before they can develop for their platform?

Spoonweaver: What kind of game were you thinking of? Also, who's working on a flash version of the OHR? I know about the cell phone version in the works, but I haven't heard of any work being done in flash...

[Spoon Weaver]

[Bob the Hamster]

Here is the current work regarding OHR porting

OHRRPGCE-FMF is the Java port. It is pretty far along, but hasn't gotten any recent updates. It is mainly intended for mobile phones that run Java, but it also runs in the browser.

TMC is working on fb2cpp which is a code translator that converts FreeBasic code into C++ code, which will allow it to be compiled on other operating systems besides Windows and Linux-x86. That includes Mac OS X, and maybe eventually iPhone.

In the don't get your hopes up to high just yet department, thewre is an experimental C++ to ActionScript converter that can theoretically convert c++ programs to flash, but since we already have one phase of language conversion to worry about, I think it is to early to think about that.

[Camdog]

What about Adobe Alchemy?

[Bob the Hamster]

[Rinku]

there's also no reason you can't just sell ohrrpgce games as shareware -- fat frog did it, and apparently made some sales. i am also selling the game maker (another engine) game immortal defense and it still gets sales every week after two years of release. so you don't necessarily have to look further than the ohrrpgce if you want to make money making games
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Tower Defense Game

[TMC]

I haven't done anything on fb2cpp in two weeks, but I just got back from my last exam, so it's time for a coding sprint!

[Rya.Reisender]

Games on XBLIG (XBox Live Indie Games) would be cool (though that would require them to actually be finished). But they need to be written in C# for that.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[TMC]

Now you've tempted me into looking at FB to C# translation. A large amount of the FB runtime library could be replaced with C# functions...

But you can't distribute games for free on the XBox, can you? And don't you have to actually pay to put games on it?
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[Rya.Reisender]

If you put games on XBLIG you have to set a price between 80 and 400 MS points (here 1€ equals 80 points). People can download a demo of your game for free but they can only play it for 8 minutes, then they need to decide whether they buy it or not. If a game gets sold you get 70% of the money and Microsoft gets 30%.

Also to actually being able to put the games on XBLIG a certain amount of people most have previewed them and said they are okay to be released (if the game doesn't have a critical bug and is playable it will usually be approved eventually). And then there is a conversion rate which is calculated by gamesbought/demosdownloaded. If that goes below 0.2% the game might get removed by Microsoft (but they didn't remove any yet).
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Moogle1]

Here $1 also equals 80 points, which makes no sense at all. Presumably they're trying to obfuscate the real cost of their stuff.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Rya.Reisender]

Aren't MS point costs the same for all countries? That also means the games are more expensive in Europe (which is not really a surprise). Which makes me wonder how they calculate the 30% / 70%. Do I get less money if an American buys my game?
_________________
Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[FyreWulff]

Microsoft Points equal different amounts of Real Money(tm) in each country. Pretty sure you get paid out in direct conversion of points->realbux instead of them converting from msbux->ameribux->yourbux.

Also you only get a check every quarter I think, so remember that