firemaplegames said: I for one, really appreciate all the hard work you guys put in to this product. GameSalad is still amazing, magical software to me. It has honestly changed my life.
It makes me so sad to think that I won't be able to use this tool anymore.
Apparently Corona has 15,000+ developers using their product. Their software costs $350. Now, I realize that most of their current users either got the software for free or with a discount, but come next year, most will be renewing their subscription at the full price.
15,000 x $350 is over 5 million dollars. I would love for GameSalad to be able to offer a similar pricing model - and be able to attract as many users.
The publishing model is great for new developers who need assistance with marketing, or navigating the business side of things. But isn't desirable at all for people who want to remain independent. Hopefully new options will become available that will allow people like me to continue to use GameSalad.
Here's to a bright future for both GameSalad, and the users who love creating fantastic games with it!
NOOOO! Say it isn't so, Joe! FMG helped me over some big huddles when I first started working on my game. He's also the one that made me realize how powerful GS could be with some creative thinking. I hope you hang around.
joemauke said: I will say, for $100 GS is fairly priced, when pro was $500, Pro was priced right, but $2000, not on your life.
Since you are relatively new here, lets clear up this misnomer. Express, which used to be called Indie, used to be $500 and Pro was always $1999. This pricing at the time was relatively competitive with other software, and although GameSalad had less features than others, it brought the ease and quickness of development that you could make 2-3 or even more number of games than using some other software. More games can mean more money. However, many were reluctant to dish out $500 right off the bat, so we dropped the price to $99. Those who had paid $500, we rewarded them with a free Pro upgrade.
CodeMonkey said: However, many were reluctant to dish out $500 right off the bat, so we dropped the price to $99. Those who had paid $500, we rewarded them with a free Pro upgrade.
Heh... so maybe there should be a three-tier system...
Direct (Free, but GameSalad gets a percentage) Pro $499 Elite $1999
On a side note .. "iDeveloper-Is-Leaving-GameSalad " why do you care that its not going into 1.0? To change your user name to that and still rant about versions numbers is a little crazy!
So just because I'm leaving the PRODUCT means I'm leaving the COMMUNITY? I'm probably staying with the COMMUNITY, just not with the PRODUCT.
iDeveloper-Is-Leaving-The-GameSalad-PRODUCT said: So just because I'm leaving the PRODUCT means I'm leaving the COMMUNITY? I'm probably staying with the COMMUNITY, just not with the PRODUCT.
In mu opinion, you've definitely over reacted, maybe not over reacted, over emphasised your reaction.
I'm glad they put in the closed captions / lyrics in this version of the video. I would have never been able to understand the words otherwise.
I don't care about version numbers either. Before I switched to a Mac, I had every release of Windows for a few years each and the bugs only got bigger.
jstrahan said: i wouldnt buy pro for 1000 not enough features
I agree. If they bring back Pro at a lower price, paying $1,000 per year for GameSalad just doesn't make sense when Unity is a $400 one time fee. Even Unity's Pro license is only a one time fee of $1500, not $2000 annually like GameSalad was. It's all about competitive pricing, and the old model sort of had it right with the express membership, but obviously all of that is out the window now.
(I don't know how long this post will last, because posts containing the word "Unity" on these forums have been known to spontaneously combust)
Basseman said: Hi, dunno if this has been coverd cause i have no time to read all of the posts.. Are the new features only going to be available for those using Game Salad direct ? Or are they going to be available for us who has express,pro contract that not expire yet ?
Very interesting quesiton, someten knwos he answer?
Yodapollo said: To be clear, current Express and Pro users will have the choice of publishing under the old or new system until their current accounts expire.
this is a good thing, I will wait and see what you guys come up with to decide what il do but in the mean time im happy to use my membership.
I just finally started to crank out some good games, games good enough to start building a brand on, and now I find out I only have 4 freaking months left to have my brand as my own?
I don't want to lose my brand, and I certainly don't want to become part of a hive mind, so to speak. Only way I would do that is if I was given a salary, and I know there is no way in hell Gendai will give me that.
Hell the entire reason I got GameSalad was so I wouldn't have to share my profits with anyone.
I'm nearing the end of my first App that will actually go to the App Store. It's not really mine, it's being done for a client, so although we'll get a mention in the credits, it's entirely branded for our client. It's done in Flash.
I've been busy enough with it that I hadn't dropped by here for a while, and so this thread was already at 42 pages worth by the time I got here. Which means I haven't read all of the message, but did see a few of them, including some of Joe's.
I think I have a different take on things. Amongst the worries in making an app, there's the $99 a year to Apple, including the years that you didn't quite get around to making something good enough to send in. There's the whole Distribution provisioning to have to get right. Also, and this may not worry many of you, but I've had concerns about what name to use for the publisher. I was going to use Fire Maple Games, but that's taken...
Pro costs $1999 a year (including the years that you didn't quite get around to making something). Suppose that GS take 30% of 70%, that leaves you with close to 50 cents for each one of a 99 cent game that is sold. So, you made 21 cents less that you could have. Round that up a bit, and say that you lose $1 for every four games that are bought. Hands up every one who has sold more that 8,000 copies of one game in a year (not you Joe, you're too talented). If you did sell enough games to end up paying GS the same amount as a Pro license, then you may well have made $4000 dollars for yourself too.
It's not that long ago since I paid for Pro, so I have the option for a while to publish either way. Can you get Pro now, or is Direct already in place? If you can still buy Pro, you could do so now, and have a year of living dangerously, before you have to go with the new deal, or changing tools.
Speaking of which, you ought to use the best tool for a given app. Everything you can possibly do as an app is not necessarily suited to GameSalad, so regardless of the new deal, it's probably a good idea to learn those other tools anyway.
Thanks Gendai for fucking it up again. You guys have to be retarded just cutting the tree under yourself, while sitting on it.
I am absolutely for publishing games instead of letting everybody in to the appstore, but what you are doing is just not working.
Having a fucked up, half functioning software in beta version without updates and essential functions is not enough being the new Gameloft or Chillingo.
I don't know, what you guys are thinking, but it won't work. Really.
What about if you put yourself together, make an effort and publish a fucking functioning software in the version 1.0 first, and then make some thoughts about what you really want, make a road plan and keep it.
Don't get me wrong, I am also an impulsive person and often make decisions out of my belly, but in your case it just looks retarded and unprofessional.
The problem is, now you will see, that your action will take you to doom and you probably will take it all back, which will let you look even more retarded.
What about asking the community before you make announcements in public on some game shows?
What about not going to game shows, but working on a fucking working software and on its updates?
Going to game shows and making stupid announcements doesn't make you look more professional, when you really are a bunch of programming students without any business experience.
If you already managed to get some idiots investing into your company, then at least hire a PR guy and a CEO, who have at least some clues on PR and Business.
Publishing is about marketing. What do you offer me, if I publish it with you? Do you advertise my game? Do you finance my game? Do you manage my game?
I assume not. You just think "hey, I gave you a software". No. That's not enough.
I don't believe, you will be able to support thousands of customers (assuming, your plans go right) on a personal level and I don't believe either, that you intend to, but if you want to be a publisher, you need to manage your developers on a personal level, if you want them to work with you (advertising, promo codes, price changes, taxes etc).
It is not enough marketing to put games on your website and leave them alone. Also not enough to put them on appstore and leave them alone. You don't have time to maintain your own fucking software in a reasonable manner, how do you want to manage publishing for hundreds of developers?
If I can't assume that my game will make a difference in the crowd, why would I want to work with you? Just for your software? Forget it!
There are a bunch of other softwares for free, which may need some learning, but they at least work.
Now get back to work, make some updates for your existing software and keep everything as it is, and you will be good to go. Everything else ist just a new nail into xour coffin.
Question....how would this affect us testing our apps? In the current GameSalad, we have to publish the game if we want to test it, and to do that we need to get the right provisioning profiles from Apple.
So, would this GameSalad Direct make it really freaking hard, or next to impossible to test games on actual devices?
If so, that is a huge step backwards and would be what drives me away from GameSalad. Without testing on actual devices, I won't know if the game properly runs, and if I don't know that, I don't want to put it on the App Store.
Koda89 said: Question....how would this affect us testing our apps? In the current GameSalad, we have to publish the game if we want to test it, and to do that we need to get the right provisioning profiles from Apple.
So, would this GameSalad Direct make it really freaking hard, or next to impossible to test games on actual devices?
If so, that is a huge step backwards and would be what drives me away from GameSalad. Without testing on actual devices, I won't know if the game properly runs, and if I don't know that, I don't want to put it on the App Store.
Good question. I thought about that myself... I really hope it is still easy to test on devices! I'm sure they'll let us know when they release full specs on GS Direct ;-)
I want to publish through my Apple Dev account.. That is Democracy.. Forcing us to publish trough a secondary publishing portal is not only Dictating how we publish it's preventing full exposure to the iOS purchasing public!!
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Express, which used to be called Indie, used to be $500 and Pro was always $1999. This pricing at the time was relatively competitive with other software, and although GameSalad had less features than others, it brought the ease and quickness of development that you could make 2-3 or even more number of games than using some other software. More games can mean more money.
However, many were reluctant to dish out $500 right off the bat, so we dropped the price to $99. Those who had paid $500, we rewarded them with a free Pro upgrade.
GS bring PRO back!
Direct (Free, but GameSalad gets a percentage)
Pro $499
Elite $1999
not enough features
I don't care about version numbers either. Before I switched to a Mac, I had every release of Windows for a few years each and the bugs only got bigger.
(I don't know how long this post will last, because posts containing the word "Unity" on these forums have been known to spontaneously combust)
Here's a vid on that topic (hope we can embed Youtube vids here):
What exactly are we left with for our $99 subscription?
What's this about charging to compile? (can we get our XCode back instead, so we can fix it?)
This is an alarming development, that portends a mass exodus of the serious developers here leaving a pool of inexperienced "codophobes".
GameSalad has been fairly good for a buggy proof of concept, will it at least remain that way?
I just finally started to crank out some good games, games good enough to start building a brand on, and now I find out I only have 4 freaking months left to have my brand as my own?
I don't want to lose my brand, and I certainly don't want to become part of a hive mind, so to speak. Only way I would do that is if I was given a salary, and I know there is no way in hell Gendai will give me that.
Hell the entire reason I got GameSalad was so I wouldn't have to share my profits with anyone.
I've been busy enough with it that I hadn't dropped by here for a while, and so this thread was already at 42 pages worth by the time I got here. Which means I haven't read all of the message, but did see a few of them, including some of Joe's.
I think I have a different take on things. Amongst the worries in making an app, there's the $99 a year to Apple, including the years that you didn't quite get around to making something good enough to send in. There's the whole Distribution provisioning to have to get right. Also, and this may not worry many of you, but I've had concerns about what name to use for the publisher. I was going to use Fire Maple Games, but that's taken...
Pro costs $1999 a year (including the years that you didn't quite get around to making something). Suppose that GS take 30% of 70%, that leaves you with close to 50 cents for each one of a 99 cent game that is sold. So, you made 21 cents less that you could have. Round that up a bit, and say that you lose $1 for every four games that are bought. Hands up every one who has sold more that 8,000 copies of one game in a year (not you Joe, you're too talented). If you did sell enough games to end up paying GS the same amount as a Pro license, then you may well have made $4000 dollars for yourself too.
It's not that long ago since I paid for Pro, so I have the option for a while to publish either way. Can you get Pro now, or is Direct already in place? If you can still buy Pro, you could do so now, and have a year of living dangerously, before you have to go with the new deal, or changing tools.
Speaking of which, you ought to use the best tool for a given app. Everything you can possibly do as an app is not necessarily suited to GameSalad, so regardless of the new deal, it's probably a good idea to learn those other tools anyway.
You guys have to be retarded just cutting the tree under yourself, while sitting on it.
I am absolutely for publishing games instead of letting everybody in to the appstore, but what you are doing is just not working.
Having a fucked up, half functioning software in beta version without updates and essential functions is not enough being the new Gameloft or Chillingo.
I don't know, what you guys are thinking, but it won't work. Really.
What about if you put yourself together, make an effort and publish a fucking functioning software in the version 1.0 first, and then make some thoughts about what you really want, make a road plan and keep it.
Don't get me wrong, I am also an impulsive person and often make decisions out of my belly, but in your case it just looks retarded and unprofessional.
The problem is, now you will see, that your action will take you to doom and you probably will take it all back, which will let you look even more retarded.
What about asking the community before you make announcements in public on some game shows?
What about not going to game shows, but working on a fucking working software and on its updates?
Going to game shows and making stupid announcements doesn't make you look more professional, when you really are a bunch of programming students without any business experience.
If you already managed to get some idiots investing into your company, then at least hire a PR guy and a CEO, who have at least some clues on PR and Business.
Publishing is about marketing.
What do you offer me, if I publish it with you? Do you advertise my game? Do you finance my game? Do you manage my game?
I assume not. You just think "hey, I gave you a software". No. That's not enough.
I don't believe, you will be able to support thousands of customers (assuming, your plans go right) on a personal level and I don't believe either, that you intend to, but if you want to be a publisher, you need to manage your developers on a personal level, if you want them to work with you (advertising, promo codes, price changes, taxes etc).
It is not enough marketing to put games on your website and leave them alone. Also not enough to put them on appstore and leave them alone. You don't have time to maintain your own fucking software in a reasonable manner, how do you want to manage publishing for hundreds of developers?
If I can't assume that my game will make a difference in the crowd, why would I want to work with you? Just for your software? Forget it!
There are a bunch of other softwares for free, which may need some learning, but they at least work.
Now get back to work, make some updates for your existing software and keep everything as it is, and you will be good to go. Everything else ist just a new nail into xour coffin.
Cheers!
So, would this GameSalad Direct make it really freaking hard, or next to impossible to test games on actual devices?
If so, that is a huge step backwards and would be what drives me away from GameSalad. Without testing on actual devices, I won't know if the game properly runs, and if I don't know that, I don't want to put it on the App Store.
Alcamie