Reviewing the Situation on Gendai and GameSalad
NexusGameStudio
Member Posts: 265
Since the initial reaction is over (or at least should be over for you guys), I think reviewing everything in a calm and mature manner is needed right now. Keep in mind, I'm not taking sides but trying to shine light onto both aspects of the situation.
As a serious developer, GameSalad is a handy toolset for me to use, I could of easily taken one of my programmers and tasked him with using the one of many game engines available out there, myself not on the programming side, I decided to make my game in GameSalad as a side project without the need to take away any other team members from their work at hand, they already have enough on their plate.
Gendai is a business, plain and simple. Clearly the old business model was not efficient enough to continue business for them in a profitable manner, things needed to change in order to turn positive. As we know, recently Gendai received that million dollar investment, that money came from 3 investor groups (to public knowledge). That money I assumed was used to expand the company as first step in their new direction. So now they have investors to keep happy, Gendai now has to make money back so investors are not at their throats, hence the new business model.
The new model is a standard structure in the game industry, anyone who knows how publishers or professional engine developers work understands there is a percentage taken off sales. Now Gendai has some differences in their new idea that isnt the norm, but I'll get back to that in a minute. This is how toolset developers make money, its how publishers make money, they earn profit off you based on the money made on the game.
Now we get to the differences and frankly the only issue that I'm pissed about is forced to use Gendai as a publisher. We are well aware of the games made using GameSalad, we have some marvelous developers here (I can have a huge list of all the quality developers we have in this community) but on the flip side, we also have people who take advantage of this system and make extremely lack luster titles, or blatant rip-offs. If Gendai is the publisher and titles like this gets approved, would I want my game that I've spent months on, polished to the bone, on the shelf next to that? Absolutely not. However, if Gendai can offer a quality control system, where they approve apps based on how well they are, the only safe way for them to earn a reputation, then perhaps it isnt so bad. If the system worked that way and I knew my game would be beside the likes of some of the communities best, then I'd be happy to, but I would refuse if I was beside the 10th fart app, or a template clone.
I am also against paying per a title uploaded, I wouldn't mind if perhaps Gendai took a percentage lower than 20% from us and a $20 upload fee, anything higher is ridiculous. I can understand this system, it also plays part into a quality control system, means people will not way to pay to upload crap.
One last subject I would like to touch on is the lack of communication to the community regarding the GameSalad Direct announcement, in some regards they should have more details for us, but keep this in mind: it goes back to being a business, a business with investors watching. Gendai cannot simply jump out and say what they want. It has to be worded carefully. If an investor is not happy, they pull out, if they pull out, means no money, no money is no business. All statements are revised by PR, I bet you 100% any of the community guys like CodeMoney or Yoda would LOVE to tell us everything because I'm sure they hate whats going on right now, it's not what they want. Keep in mind that they are not a huge company like EA or Activision, they are still small, they are working their asses off working on this new update for us, they've even stated the sleepless nights working overtime in the office, as well as a light joke that you all took the wrong way in another thread.
Again, I am not taking sides but reflecting on what I see as the situation on Gendai's side of things by playing the devils advocate. I'm not 100% satisfied with the news either, trust me, but we do need clarification and that is left in Gendai's hands. We just need to calm down and see how things play out before jumping boat.
As a serious developer, GameSalad is a handy toolset for me to use, I could of easily taken one of my programmers and tasked him with using the one of many game engines available out there, myself not on the programming side, I decided to make my game in GameSalad as a side project without the need to take away any other team members from their work at hand, they already have enough on their plate.
Gendai is a business, plain and simple. Clearly the old business model was not efficient enough to continue business for them in a profitable manner, things needed to change in order to turn positive. As we know, recently Gendai received that million dollar investment, that money came from 3 investor groups (to public knowledge). That money I assumed was used to expand the company as first step in their new direction. So now they have investors to keep happy, Gendai now has to make money back so investors are not at their throats, hence the new business model.
The new model is a standard structure in the game industry, anyone who knows how publishers or professional engine developers work understands there is a percentage taken off sales. Now Gendai has some differences in their new idea that isnt the norm, but I'll get back to that in a minute. This is how toolset developers make money, its how publishers make money, they earn profit off you based on the money made on the game.
Now we get to the differences and frankly the only issue that I'm pissed about is forced to use Gendai as a publisher. We are well aware of the games made using GameSalad, we have some marvelous developers here (I can have a huge list of all the quality developers we have in this community) but on the flip side, we also have people who take advantage of this system and make extremely lack luster titles, or blatant rip-offs. If Gendai is the publisher and titles like this gets approved, would I want my game that I've spent months on, polished to the bone, on the shelf next to that? Absolutely not. However, if Gendai can offer a quality control system, where they approve apps based on how well they are, the only safe way for them to earn a reputation, then perhaps it isnt so bad. If the system worked that way and I knew my game would be beside the likes of some of the communities best, then I'd be happy to, but I would refuse if I was beside the 10th fart app, or a template clone.
I am also against paying per a title uploaded, I wouldn't mind if perhaps Gendai took a percentage lower than 20% from us and a $20 upload fee, anything higher is ridiculous. I can understand this system, it also plays part into a quality control system, means people will not way to pay to upload crap.
One last subject I would like to touch on is the lack of communication to the community regarding the GameSalad Direct announcement, in some regards they should have more details for us, but keep this in mind: it goes back to being a business, a business with investors watching. Gendai cannot simply jump out and say what they want. It has to be worded carefully. If an investor is not happy, they pull out, if they pull out, means no money, no money is no business. All statements are revised by PR, I bet you 100% any of the community guys like CodeMoney or Yoda would LOVE to tell us everything because I'm sure they hate whats going on right now, it's not what they want. Keep in mind that they are not a huge company like EA or Activision, they are still small, they are working their asses off working on this new update for us, they've even stated the sleepless nights working overtime in the office, as well as a light joke that you all took the wrong way in another thread.
Again, I am not taking sides but reflecting on what I see as the situation on Gendai's side of things by playing the devils advocate. I'm not 100% satisfied with the news either, trust me, but we do need clarification and that is left in Gendai's hands. We just need to calm down and see how things play out before jumping boat.
Comments
If Gordon Ramsay came to my failing restaurant and offered to clean things up, make a new business plan with new recipes and all he wants is to air it to the world to make his cut of the money, in turn doesn't my restaurant get seen by the world, in turn don't I make more money.
Now if I cant get the best ingredients(version1.0 and beyond) in my kitchen then what would happen next would be an instant fail and things would go right back to the way they were,
crAPP but now with a Gordon Ramsay seal of approval on it, and I would think that that would not sit right with him. I feel that GS should have the same pride in what they are doing, I know so many of us will do them proud if they give us the new tools we need to make the best games we can.
Until we get our hands on the new update we can't say if it's worth sticking around for.
Asher Scott