Omicron wrote:How many of you will be here in three years?
I'm here until the site folds or I get what I'm after in my signature.
Would also spend money on a Myth-y game if ever again given the opportunity, but I can't see it happening. The closest I can even imagine happening would be someone's 're-imagining'. Even if that turned out to be basically a clone with all of the names changed, I'd still be into it.
Okay I got the models but now I'm too dumb to do anything with 'em
Here's my thought to setup a win-win, attainable scenario for PM & T2I. What if we can convince T2I to license (not sell) the rights, so PM can make a FULL digital M2 game (copy the CD files, & use PM's installers/updaters) that is sold through some site, or Steam, or GOG.com, or on thetain using Paypal, or whatever? Could PM achieve that, technically-speaking? T2I might insist on some DRM. Or maybe we'd sell physical CDs, to discourage casual, non-technical pirates (the only ones who would buy anyway).
We'd ask for the license to be free (or nominal), and in return T2I gets a free stream of profits from the sales that are made.
The terms of the licensing we could negotiate. What % of the profits go to PM (to cover costs, at least, and hopefully to pay PM for their time)? Are those profits annually capped? The license would have to allow us to publicize/advertise (unless T2I wants to do it instead).
We'd like the license to not preclude us making an offer to buy the rights, in case we ever get someone who can afford to actually buy the rights.
To convince T2I to grant the license for free/cheap, one approach might be to try to get a short-term license (2 years?), with bad terms for PM (maybe T2I gets 75% of gross sales, and PM's share is capped at $10K annually?). After 2 years, if it's making T2I money, maybe that's leverage we could use for better terms. And if it's doing little business...well, with the framework already in place, hopefully T2I would have no problem just renewing it as-is.
Or maybe a graduated payment scheme (either short-term or long-term)...like T2I gets 75% of gross of the first $100K (over all time, not just 1 yr), but if it ever goes over that (hah!), they get 50% of the next 100K, and 25% for anything beyond that. PM might like a 10 yr license like that.
So we offer T2I a lot to convince them to license for cheap, so they feel like they've got a chance to get the lion's share of anything that comes in initially, but eventually the terms become more fair (since we're doing all the work now, we've made the high-res textures, etc).
I'd like to see more life for Myth. IMO, it's one of the 3 greatest real-time action-oriented games ever made (which are, Myth, Robotron: 2084, and Warhawk for PS3).
Don't forget the expense/time involved in supporting a commercial game. Magma and a few individuals in the community do a stellar job supporting a game that is no longer available - but the game not being available means the pool of users is very near static so their support is mostly limited to answering questions when a new version/patch/feature is released or when someone has some kind of hardware/configuration question because they bought a new computer. Making the game available to the general public could overwhelm the existing informal support 'infrastructure' - even if the number of people who purchase the game is tiny by normal game sales standards.
People seem to feel entitled to support/fixes/features even when they get something for free, expectations are even higher when they pay for something.
Not putting a wet blanket on the idea, just raising an issue which would need to be considered/worked-out in any arrangement - my guess is that TakeTwo isn't going to offer to support Myth 2.
vinylrake wrote:People seem to feel entitled to support/fixes/features even when they get something for free, expectations are even higher when they pay for something.
Debate is welcome People can expect what they like, doesn't mean PM has to deliver it. If I, personally, make an indie shareware game, and it's buggy and I offer terrible support, well, what's the fall-out? People don't buy my game. Heck, I've used products and websites from organizations larger than PM (like Yahoo & Google), some even paid products (Yahoo Mail), where there is no way to contact the company for support (other than for billing errors). You're just directed to forums where it's claimed that employees also visit.
I doubt anyone is going to start a class-action lawsuit to recover their $2-10 charge. I can always make sure my license agreement with the end user (you know, like the terms & conditions you agree to when you use iTunes, MS Word, etc) says I warranty nothing, and you are entitled, at most, to a refund. Heck, maybe I price it low ($2) and say we do our best, but all sales are final, it's too much work to process refunds.
jason_ac wrote:...so PM can make a FULL digital M2 game (copy the CD files, & use PM's installers/updaters) that is sold through some site, or Steam, or GOG.com, or on thetain using Paypal, or whatever? Could PM achieve that, technically-speaking?
The technical aspect of that the devs could easily achieve. It's the Take2 part that is out of everyone's hands. At one point some time back, magma tried proposing something like this where they could sell digital copies of the game. All the work done by Magma and profits to Take2. But to get the legal stuff sorted would require a bunch of money to begin with so that died pretty quickly.
Pyro wrote:But to get the legal stuff sorted would require a bunch of money to begin with so that died pretty quickly.
Was the "bunch of money" the "six figures" amount I've heard, or was that 6 figures for actually buying the rights? Because if the money required for legal stuff was like $10-20K, who knows, maybe that's an amount that could be raised. I know, even $10K is a tall order...but it's way more feasible seeming than 6 figures. If 200 people gave $20, we'd be almost halfway there. And for fund-raising, we'd have something very concrete we could show people...say "play the demo...you're helping fund the full version release".
Alternatively, if this is all too hard...maybe we could change the way we promote the current copy of the game. Like, a simplified version of the Myth Starter Guide (heck, maybe I'll make it!), and publicize that as much as we can. And if a few people volunteer to be preservationists, we could even buy-up the really cheap copies of the CD (to re-sell), before they're lost/destroyed. Heck, even a non-working CD could be valuable...it legitimately "secures a license", and it could be re-sold with a burned copy of the necessary files.
the myth is an old game, only we (the mythers) liked it. and to make a new myth, (free of T2) and launch the media trying to bring in new players I find it very difficult to succeed. the players today like playability fast, excellent graphics, and unfortunately our myth can not do.
new players wanted games with playability as diablo 3 and graphics as tombraider 2013 ...
juliocpaes wrote:the myth is an old game, only we (the mythers) liked it. and to make a new myth, (free of T2) and launch the media trying to bring in new players I find it very difficult to succeed. the players today like playability fast, excellent graphics, and unfortunately our myth can not do.
new players wanted games with playability as diablo 3 and graphics as tombraider 2013 ...
jason_ac wrote:Was the "bunch of money" the "six figures" amount I've heard, or was that 6 figures for actually buying the rights? Because if the money required for legal stuff was like $10-20K, who knows, maybe that's an amount that could be raised. I know, even $10K is a tall order...but it's way more feasible seeming than 6 figures.
The six figures was to propose to buy the rights, who knows if they would have actually accepted any 6 figure amount. As for the legal stuff, it was probably 10k or at least for starters it would be.
People can expect what they like, doesn't mean PM has to deliver it. If I, personally, make an indie shareware game, and it's buggy and I offer terrible support, well, what's the fall-out? People don't buy my game. Heck, I've used products and websites from organizations larger than PM (like Yahoo & Google), some even paid products (Yahoo Mail), where there is no way to contact the company for support (other than for billing errors). You're just directed to forums where it's claimed that employees also visit.
