The thing is... they won't turn back on the subs as are, because I guess
1. They would have to honour them for the 12 months. And would hence not get any GS-D income from that user. (goes against the new business model/ethos)
2. Lots of people with subs coming to an end would rush out and bag themselves an extra year of publishing freedom....and hence no GS-D income from those users.
The longer this drags on, the more inept they begin to look though. If I were part of the GameSalad investment team, I'd be starting to question what I had thrown my money at right about now (
And if I were part of the GS team involved in PR, I'd be hanging my head in shame right about now too.
I don't understand the business sense of announcing a new product that takes over from an existing one....without having the new product actually in place from day 1. The company is now in some kind of weird, "earning no money" whatsoever limbo. Not normal, I can assure you.
I've created two very (IMO of course) fun games in the past month from beginning to learn and use this software... I bought a Mac simply for this program... (well kinda a mac) and have been going at it on a 10 inch screen for a month and patiently been working on my projects and NOT wanting to buy a 99$ simply because I knew I would waste a month from my taking my time to learn... then I come back today... and the package is gone.. this makes me a very sad panda. and I was literally signing on today to pay 99$ and get to publishing!
Scet said: I've created two very (IMO of course) fun games in the past month from beginning to learn and use this software... I bought a Mac simply for this program... (well kinda a mac) and have been going at it on a 10 inch screen for a month and patiently been working on my projects and NOT wanting to buy a 99$ simply because I knew I would waste a month from my taking my time to learn... then I come back today... and the package is gone.. this makes me a very sad panda. and I was literally signing on today to pay 99$ and get to publishing!
But now I can't publish under my name and keep the 70% revenue percentage. Not to mention how long I will have to wait until I can even publish a game using whatever means.
To cover that $99 in royalties would mean a LOT of sales. Most games, even good ones, will only sell 50-200 dollars worth and then sit at a few bucks a week until sales die off completely. The royalties will really only hit your pocket hard if you have a runaway hit like Grisly Manor, or Bumps. Of course, you may well have that runaway hit!
POLYGAMe said: To cover that $99 in royalties would mean a LOT of sales. Most games, even good ones, will only sell 50-200 dollars worth and then sit at a few bucks a week until sales die off completely. The royalties will really only hit your pocket hard if you have a runaway hit like Grisly Manor, or Bumps. Of course, you may well have that runaway hit!
True but people are hardly going to start out making games with the thought that will make less than $99 total, many wouldn't bother at all if they knew that.
StusApps said: True but people are hardly going to start out making games with the thought that will make less than $99 total, many wouldn't bother at all if they knew that.
POLYGAMe said: Pretty harsh saying that you want them to fail, just because the new system doesn't suit you. AND we don't know for certain yet that there will be no self-publish system...
Not really.
From what has been said it is clear, I think, there was no alternative planned - that isn't to say that they wont come up with one, it's just to say that up until now they've been pushing that, and when people were asking about alternatives all we got was Frank reiterating the fact we don't need Apple accounts any more if we stay.
I think what is "harsh" is the fact that GS want to take away our direct connection to Apple and more than that, they want us to give up our names.
I understand that you're alright with losing your name, but I'm not - even if what I make is total garbage, it's MY garbage and I'll be damned if it doesn't have MY name on it.
I stated that I want them to fail if they go down this route, the route of ignoring their members, of terrible communication, poor customer service and FORCING indies to no longer, by definition, be indies by relying on a publisher, then adding insult to injury by forcing them to surrender their names to use the "service" - and I DO.
If they magically went back to just the poor communication and upped their fees, that would be a different matter - but of course I'd want this new system to fail. It's using the fear of so many when it comes to coding against them; it isn't "Here's an alternative for you! Everyone can make games!" it's a "You can't code so give us a fee to submit, ongoing revenue and also your name."
I'm not trying to be a bitch about this but obviously I'm very upset and angry; like I said, I loved GS madly - in the same way I would love a good friend. After so many hours spent with it, how could I not? The fact I have to remove the logo from my desktop is going to be the low point of my week.
peachpellen said: It's using the fear of so many when it comes to coding against them
I don't know if it's fear. Personally, I can code. I looked at Lua and Corona. It doesn't look terribly difficult... just terribly tedious. I like the speed and precision of GameSalad. Once I got past the concept and design stages of Annoyed Tomatoes, I finished the game in about a week. With Corona, I'm thinking that the project would have taken about two months. With layering, particle effects, sound effects, lots of math functions, that's a lot of code to navigate. It would slow me down.
I have about four months left on my Express subscription. If GameSalad doesn't straighten this out before my subscription expires, then I'll have a strong incentive to try different software. I doubt it's going to take four months. I'm thinking this might drag on about another week or two.
So we are approaching the 2 week mark for the Death Salad doomsday announcement and what do we have to show for it? Oh yea nothing more than announcement day. Way to run a business GS.
We were having a conversation at Mitten Towers the other night.
And whilst we like the look of what some of the competing products can do over GS, we still decided that really, the GS software is kind of amazing (even with all the bugs, and missing features, and how much we all whinge about them)
Just little things like...having stages/levels handled for you, automatic memory management (...ish), a visual representation of what you are building AS you are building it, easy collision detection etc etc etc etc......it's great.
So technical guys, a big Mitten hug for you guys from us.
Thing is... if the business side can't match the amazing technical side of the business..........oh wait, it seems it can't. ( Come on suits, get your act together, and we can start to love you again too. ;o)
The longer you leave it....the more inept you appear to us....please show us that you are not inept.
Heh, sorry Photics - I didn't mean to imply everyone who was staying was afraid of coding; just most of them. To anyone who has never coded before, looking at something like a main.lua file is enough to feel like it's all hopeless.
I agree that GS is good for a lot of things; and I have a fair amount of time left on my membership too - but in the meantime I feel like learning another tool is better than just waiting to see what happens.
I hope GS pulls their act together, I really, really do. I would still use GS for some apps if they could go back to simply being terrible at communication and slow with updates; that's fine by me. The community gives the needed support and updates come and go - but there is no way in hell that I will ever put all my eggs in the GS basket (or bowl, in this case) again, whatever happens.
Coding might be tedious, but after remaking a basic app I used to learn GS with in Corona the speed difference is insane, the community is small and welcoming, updates are frequent and communication is outstanding; I emailed Carlos and got a response in minutes, polite, friendly and helpful.
People at least need options at this stage; we've been in panic mode since the announcement and we've had ZERO help with handling that, only a repetition of the exact same announcement worded differently that got us all so upset in the first place.
Having time left on your subscription is meaningless if there is no way you'll be able to continue it. Why make orphaned apps that cannot be maintained? No one has been able to answer my rather simple question: After the end of "GameSalad Non-Direct" will we still be able to use the buggy software as a proof of concept generator without paying for compiles, of using an unnecessary "publisher"?
Will GS Viewer still work? If so there is a silver lining to the black cloud of despair that is GS Direct. Can someone tell me if this will be the case? Or is every day spent dealing with GS idiosyncrasies another wasted effort? It's all programming, whether it is typing lines of code, or learning how to type the right values in crutch fields.
IntelligentDesigner said: Having time left on your subscription is meaningless if there is no way you'll be able to continue it. Why make orphaned apps that cannot be maintained? No one has been able to answer my rather simple question: After the end of "GameSalad Non-Direct" will we still be able to use the buggy software as a proof of concept generator without paying for compiles, of using an unnecessary "publisher"?
Will GS Viewer still work? If so there is a silver lining to the black cloud of despair that is GS Direct. Can someone tell me if this will be the case? Or is every day spent dealing with GS idiosyncrasies another wasted effort? It's all programming, whether it is typing lines of code, or learning how to type the right values in crutch fields.
Does anyone know?
You want a serious answer to "Can I use this software for free and never release a game with it, therefore never having to pay a cent to the company who makes it?" I'm sure they'd be rushing to answer this, over all the other, frankly more important, questions.
If it does then it'll save me the $99 yearly subscription that was wasted as it could not make the apps I wanted, anyway. So publishing of crippled apps was not usable for me.
Yes, I think so, too. I was willing to pay for a tool that could be used to make iPhone apps, and I never got anything but a buggy featureless beta... Yet still I was willing to pay for the ability to use it for its prototyping abilities which were pretty good.
If it is free now after "Direct", so much the better!
I don't know if it has been asked before, but, with GameSalad Direct...what happens to the lingering funds we have in our Apple accounts? For example, I have $13.64 owed to me by Apple for my sales in October(month has been a cruel mistress to me, despite my most aggressive marketing campaign ever and me releasing my best game ever bar none, it was one of my worst selling games), and since I'm most likely not going to release a new game for the rest of the year(going to spend the rest of the year perfecting my first Xbox 360 game made with XNA), it looks like I'm going to have that amount owed me for quite a while, so, if I switch over to GameSalad Direct, since I'll be making money through GameSalad's Apple account, what happens to the $13.64 in my Apple account? Does it just sit there for the rest of eternity?
If so, I'm kinda glad it is just that scant amount. If it was over $50, I'd be mighty pissed off.
Koda89 said: I don't know if it has been asked before, but, with GameSalad Direct...what happens to the lingering funds we have in our Apple accounts? For example, I have $13.64 owed to me by Apple for my sales in October(month has been a cruel mistress to me, despite my most aggressive marketing campaign ever and me releasing my best game ever bar none, it was one of my worst selling games), and since I'm most likely not going to release a new game for the rest of the year(going to spend the rest of the year perfecting my first Xbox 360 game made with XNA), it looks like I'm going to have that amount owed me for quite a while, so, if I switch over to GameSalad Direct, since I'll be making money through GameSalad's Apple account, what happens to the $13.64 in my Apple account? Does it just sit there for the rest of eternity?
If so, I'm kinda glad it is just that scant amount. If it was over $50, I'd be mighty pissed off.
I believe Apple settles up at the end of each year. I have $40 owing...
POLYGAMe said: I believe Apple settles up at the end of each year. I have $40 owing...
Really? Well that's a sweet move by them, if true.
At least it solves my last personal problem.
I'll use GS Direct, but only as a secondary means, IE, to put "ports" of my 360/PC games onto the iDevices(I put ports in quotation marks as they more than likely won't be 100% faithful adaptations).
download a new ver of gs? or only make a different choose of publishing on old ver? and who will have the intellectual property rights of the whole game which i made? if the direct gs can be used right now? what is the revenue share model like，What is the proportion of that?
Guys... I was thinking.... what if GS released the new update on their aniversary of iPhone games? (more or less a year ago GS released the huge update which made iPhone publishing possible)
Does anyone remember what day it was made available? (tshirtbooth?)
giacomopoppi said: Guys... I was thinking.... what if GS released the new update on their aniversary of iPhone games? (more or less a year ago GS released the huge update which made iPhone publishing possible)
Does anyone remember what day it was made available? (tshirtbooth?)
Comments
1. They would have to honour them for the 12 months. And would hence not get any GS-D income from that user. (goes against the new business model/ethos)
2. Lots of people with subs coming to an end would rush out and bag themselves an extra year of publishing freedom....and hence no GS-D income from those users.
The longer this drags on, the more inept they begin to look though.
If I were part of the GameSalad investment team, I'd be starting to question what I had thrown my money at right about now
And if I were part of the GS team involved in PR, I'd be hanging my head in shame right about now too.
I don't understand the business sense of announcing a new product that takes over from an existing one....without having the new product actually in place from day 1. The company is now in some kind of weird, "earning no money" whatsoever limbo.
Not normal, I can assure you.
Bad move GS. Bad move.
C what I did ther?
From what has been said it is clear, I think, there was no alternative planned - that isn't to say that they wont come up with one, it's just to say that up until now they've been pushing that, and when people were asking about alternatives all we got was Frank reiterating the fact we don't need Apple accounts any more if we stay.
I think what is "harsh" is the fact that GS want to take away our direct connection to Apple and more than that, they want us to give up our names.
I understand that you're alright with losing your name, but I'm not - even if what I make is total garbage, it's MY garbage and I'll be damned if it doesn't have MY name on it.
I stated that I want them to fail if they go down this route, the route of ignoring their members, of terrible communication, poor customer service and FORCING indies to no longer, by definition, be indies by relying on a publisher, then adding insult to injury by forcing them to surrender their names to use the "service" - and I DO.
If they magically went back to just the poor communication and upped their fees, that would be a different matter - but of course I'd want this new system to fail. It's using the fear of so many when it comes to coding against them; it isn't "Here's an alternative for you! Everyone can make games!" it's a "You can't code so give us a fee to submit, ongoing revenue and also your name."
I'm not trying to be a bitch about this but obviously I'm very upset and angry; like I said, I loved GS madly - in the same way I would love a good friend. After so many hours spent with it, how could I not? The fact I have to remove the logo from my desktop is going to be the low point of my week.
On a side note I have some suggestions if you are serious about wanting this to go to print
1) The dollar signs should be bigger and more prominent - also there should be more of them.
2) The people in the cogs have too much identity, namely, you can tell the males from the females. This must be rectified.
3) The people should appear much smaller to the GS logo, which should appear able to crush them at it's leisure.
:P
Seriously though, I like it. Thanks for the pick-me-up
I have about four months left on my Express subscription. If GameSalad doesn't straighten this out before my subscription expires, then I'll have a strong incentive to try different software. I doubt it's going to take four months. I'm thinking this might drag on about another week or two.
And whilst we like the look of what some of the competing products can do over GS, we still decided that really, the GS software is kind of amazing (even with all the bugs, and missing features, and how much we all whinge about them)
Just little things like...having stages/levels handled for you, automatic memory management (...ish), a visual representation of what you are building AS you are building it, easy collision detection etc etc etc etc......it's great.
So technical guys, a big Mitten hug for you guys from us.
Thing is... if the business side can't match the amazing technical side of the business..........oh wait, it seems it can't.
Come on suits, get your act together, and we can start to love you again too.
;o)
The longer you leave it....the more inept you appear to us....please show us that you are not inept.
x
--
http://www.flamingmitten.co.uk
I agree that GS is good for a lot of things; and I have a fair amount of time left on my membership too - but in the meantime I feel like learning another tool is better than just waiting to see what happens.
I hope GS pulls their act together, I really, really do. I would still use GS for some apps if they could go back to simply being terrible at communication and slow with updates; that's fine by me. The community gives the needed support and updates come and go - but there is no way in hell that I will ever put all my eggs in the GS basket (or bowl, in this case) again, whatever happens.
Coding might be tedious, but after remaking a basic app I used to learn GS with in Corona the speed difference is insane, the community is small and welcoming, updates are frequent and communication is outstanding; I emailed Carlos and got a response in minutes, polite, friendly and helpful.
People at least need options at this stage; we've been in panic mode since the announcement and we've had ZERO help with handling that, only a repetition of the exact same announcement worded differently that got us all so upset in the first place.
/endrant
Will GS Viewer still work? If so there is a silver lining to the black cloud of despair that is GS Direct. Can someone tell me if this will be the case? Or is every day spent dealing with GS idiosyncrasies another wasted effort? It's all programming, whether it is typing lines of code, or learning how to type the right values in crutch fields.
Does anyone know?
in "theory", you should still be able to use the tool as is to do prototyping etc...stuff that doesn't require any building.
I'm only guessing though, as we don't actually have any details from the people in the know.....still......
That would be a big plus, and kudos to GS!
If it is free now after "Direct", so much the better!
Whoo-hooo!!!
If so, I'm kinda glad it is just that scant amount. If it was over $50, I'd be mighty pissed off.
At least it solves my last personal problem.
I'll use GS Direct, but only as a secondary means, IE, to put "ports" of my 360/PC games onto the iDevices(I put ports in quotation marks as they more than likely won't be 100% faithful adaptations).
oh how i hate the silent treatment!
-Josh
and who will have the intellectual property rights of the whole game which i made?
if the direct gs can be used right now?
what is the revenue share model like，What is the proportion of that?
(more or less a year ago GS released the huge update which made iPhone publishing possible)
Does anyone remember what day it was made available? (tshirtbooth?)