ADOM: Resurrection IndieGoGo campaign

[LostTemplar]

ADOM is not an opensource, so the funding was not a payment for some upcoming work, but mostly for the game brand.

On the other hand ADOM is not a proper commercial project where everyone, who put money into it have a right to demand something from maintainers.

[Derakon]

Here's my take on this kind of thing, speaking as a developer who briefly contemplated making small games for a living. I have a set amount of "programming time" each day. When I run out, I stop being able to generate positive work (i.e. the quality of my work drops precipitously, possibly becoming negative). Programming is my most marketable skill, so it's what I rely on to support myself, and if I had a family, it'd be what I'd be doing to support them too.

These game projects require a lot of programming time to develop. If I had to guess I'd estimate I've spent at least 80 hours on Pyrel already, and it doesn't even resemble a playable game yet. And similarly if you want to have good art or writing or the like, then that takes a lot of time too. Any time I spend on a project is time I'm not spending working to support myself. Now, fortunately my day job doesn't always require my entire allotment of programming time, so I have some to spare (especially on weekends). And I enjoy working on these projects, so it's not essential that they make money. But in the battle between a free, open-source project, and one that pays the bills, the bills will win, every time. Go Buffalo. </obscure>

Given a project that I enjoy working on, then, the natural thought is "Wouldn't it be great if I could make a living doing this?" Everyone wants to get paid to do work that they enjoy, after all. At which point, you basically have to decide between the "open source, supported by donations" method, or the "closed source, sell the product" method. Of course, the former model is wildly more popular among users, who get to pay what they want to support your efforts -- which amount is going to be $0 almost all of the time. Meanwhile the latter method makes it considerably easier to extract a small amount of cash from users, especially these days as it's feasible to charge $1 for a product, and people are oftentimes willing to pay it. That wasn't true even four years ago. Of course I'm simplifying here -- there are more reasons to go with one or the other model -- but from the fundamental "Can I make a living doing this" standpoint, everything boils down to money.

Looking at the market as it stands, I'm aware of precisely one game developer who is supported by community donations. That's Toady One, creator of Dwarf Fortress. And note that he started soliciting donations well after DF had taken off, after he'd already devoted several years of his life to more-or-less full-time development (effectively working two jobs, only one of which paid). It's great that he's able to support himself doing what he loves, but at the same time his life is not necessarily replicable by others. Anyone who wants to be able to live off of their work, doing what they love, is thus likely to think "The only way I can make this work is to sell what I make." And that's where the impetus to make their work closed-source is.

In short, I'm not going to bemoan the fact that ADOM is closed-source and trying to go commercial. More power to it! It's hard to make a game that people enjoy, and that kind of effort should be recognized and supported. In some ways Biskup is fortunate that he never took ADOM open-source, since if he had there's no way he'd now be able to get a reasonable number of people to pay for work on it.

On the flipside, I'd be very leery of accepting money for working on Pyrel right now, simply because money implies an obligation, and there's a massive gap between "I am receiving enough money to obligate me to spend time on Pyrel" and "I am receiving enough money to support myself working on Pyrel." Most of the space in that gap has me spending more time programming than I have to spend, so long as my primary job is also programming-related.

[LostTemplar]

At which point, you basically have to decide between the "open source, supported by donations" method, or the "closed source, sell the product" method.

Or it can be true open source, contributed by community. In this case reward for your work is the product you make.

[Derakon]

Or it can be true open source, contributed by community. In this case reward for your work is the product you make.

The specific context was "How can I support myself while doing what I love?" You cannot make a living producing work for free.

[getter77]

ADOM is not an opensource, so the funding was not a payment for some upcoming work, but mostly for the game brand.

On the other hand ADOM is not a proper commercial project where everyone, who put money into it have a right to demand something from maintainers.

Well, all the forthcoming original art and original music, at the very least, should certainly count as a payment for upcoming work as up until this point such things were no more a part of the ADOM brand than if somehow High end Voxels got involved in Angband or some such. Music in particular is a very tricky thing to do the way the composer is setting out to do as an independent operator especially, that being as symphonic as possible, what with samples, .VSTs, DAW wrangling, etc.

One key part of the campaign making essentially around the 50k mark is that now ADOM Deluxe is going to be a thing that is out there in various places---which will be proper commercial even if that means, in this case, not a tremendous difference from the free version so much as a way to measure ongoing support and popularity at $5-10 at a time notions as that's the likely price Biskup will charge for it as per his Facebook post recently on the subject----pretty in line with his plans for a similar Deluxe version coming up for ADOM II in the near'ish future.

So the expectations are essentially there, and he has to deliver to them else with this many eyes watching, and the reputation of the entire time on the line, it is just the thing to do.

[Magnate]

On the flipside, I'd be very leery of accepting money for working on Pyrel right now, simply because money implies an obligation, and there's a massive gap between "I am receiving enough money to obligate me to spend time on Pyrel" and "I am receiving enough money to support myself working on Pyrel." Most of the space in that gap has me spending more time programming than I have to spend, so long as my primary job is also programming-related.

This was my point. I didn't intend to criticise Biskup, since it is too early to judge what the donations will lead to. Closed source is still a valid business choice. IMO open-source is best supported by commissions rather than donations (e.g. I will pay X for a java port of Sangband, for a linux driver for my new GPU etc.), since it's then clearer what the obligation is.

[Starhawk]

Nice one, ADOM was my first roguelike.

Me too, wish I'd noticed this post before the project expired. I'd have tossed in a couple of bucks.

[getter77]

Well hey, the Deluxe version is coming eventually, so a few bucks there will send a message indeed to keep the development chugging on along even beyond the many improvements and additions the campaign ended up achieving when all was said and done.

Latest from Biskup is answering some questions folks had during the virtual party celebrating the end of the funding campaign....outlines a fair bit, though the real post-mortem entries meant to help other Roguelike folks thinking about taking a crack at the lot of it still has awhile yet to come:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/09/answering-atr-party-questions.html