You forgot one important argument: BYOND doesn't charge you money for subscriptions.

In order for him to sell any game(s) that he makes using RPG Maker, he would first have to buy RPG Maker to begin with.

Furthermore, he can only buy RPG Maker XP, as it is the only one which has an official English version out there.

This will subsequently cost the lad $60 USD, which he would have to get back somehow with profits.

If he doesn't buy RPG Maker and uses an illegal version instead, it can be taken to court by Enterbrain if his game becomes any popular.

digitalmouse wrote:

they will enter his brain!!

So that's why they boldly refused to translate their work to English long after all their versions had been translated by others first...

Choka stumbled:

...I showed him the game "Midmarch" by Midmarch, that uses a 3-D client...

CaptFalcon33035 wrote:

Midmarch isn't programmed in DM.

i bet Choka feels silly now! :)

there is a lot that BYOND has to offer over RPG Maker and has been stated a number of times.

but it's always best to make sure of the facts *before* sticking foot in mouth.

Making money in BYOND isn't exactly a cake walk either, you know. It takes effort, effort beyond effort, and unless you're really, really creative. You'd be lucky to get more than pocket change.

First thing you have to do is build hype. So people are interested in your game.

Once you've managed to build hype, you have to live up to the players expectations (to make pocket change) or blow their expectations away (to make actual money).

Afterwards, you have to keep the game interesting. So you'll have to release constant non-intrusive updates (people wont like re-downloading the games RSC every second day. Especially if it's a large RSC).

You have to remember you're in competition with 3D MMORPG's as well. Many of people would prefer to pay $40.00 for World of Warcraft than $40.00 for your BYOND RPG. Which brings me to my next point.

Make the subscription prices accurate. Charging anything more than $10.00 is a waste of time, very few, it anyone will actually pay that price. After all, they can get a one month subscription to Runescape for half that price (at last check... over a year ago).

Remember the players who don't want subscriptions. Ignoring these people will see your downfall. Money should only ever be a sub-goal in BYOND Game Design. These are the people that will generate further interest in your game and attract more players who can pay for subscriptions.

Keep the balance of power. A subscriber should never have an advantage over a non-subscriber. Sure, this itself might persuade more non-subscribers to subscribe. But it'll also annoy the non-subscribers who don't want a subscription, so they're more likely to go to another game.

Make subscriptions worth the price. There's no point paying for a subscription if all you get is a mild stat upgrade and a new shop. Keep the balance of power, but include things players will want. Some extra character save slots, a few new dungeons to explore, borrow from Diablo 2 and give them the ability to name an item after themselves. People seem to like the idea of having their favourite sword named "[Their Key]'s [Name of the Sword]".

Encourage people to subscribe with subtle annoyances. You have control over the interface, put a small browser element above the map or to the side, somewhere noticeable, that you can stuff advertisements into. This can also mean other developers can pay you to advertise their game in yours. However, that strategy is a double-edged sword. Sure, you get advertisements from other developers, but there's a chance the player would rather subscribe to their game and not yours. If you're going to do that, a suggestion is to advertise different genre's of games. Advertise an Action game in your RPG. That way, the player is less likely to leave your game entirely. But they might play it less often. And as a reward for their subscription, advertisements are removed upon login of a subscribed user.

Treat your players with respect. Someone offers an idea or has a complaint, don't cuss at them. That only proves to your user-base that you're not worth dealing with. If you don't like the idea, simply inform them that said idea will take your game in a direction you personally don't want to go. Or on it's nature, inform them it'd require an extensive upgrade to the game, that is costly on time and money. Handle all complaints with care. Someone comes to you with a complaint, it's up to you how to handle it. But generally "stop whining" wont satisfy them, and they'll probably take off. Another potential subscription lost.

I'd like to point out one small thing. RPG Maker is much, much more widely known than BYOND. The number of people that know about and use RPG Maker is literally millions more than what know about or use BYOND.
By simply using RPG Maker you have gained access to a potentially massive group of people who may be willing to talk about, advertise or even buy your game.
You cannot say the same about BYOND.

Take a look at Aveyond. It is a RPG Maker XP game, and I am willing to bet it has made more money than all BYOND games combined (I don't know how much money the developer made, but she spent $4000 developing the game and has made all that money back and a lot more apparently).

Sure, you could make money off of a BYOND game, but by simply using a RPG Maker you already have a lot of advantages BYOND does not offer. You are much more likely to make a sizeable amount of money using RPG Maker due to these advantages.

Alathon wrote:

The Magic Man wrote:

I'd like to point out one small thing. RPG Maker is much, much more widely known than BYOND. The number of people that know about and use RPG Maker is literally millions more than what know about or use BYOND.
By simply using RPG Maker you have gained access to a potentially massive group of people who may be willing to talk about, advertise or even buy your game.
You cannot say the same about BYOND.

Oh great Magic Man, show me this community of millions of players who play RPG Maker games.

I never said there was one community that had million of members. Now you are putting words into my mouth.
I said there was millions of people who knew of RPG Maker. There is probably hundreds of RPG Maker communities out there, some as small as hundreds of people, some as large as tens of thousands of people.

You've just brought up one of the points that RPG Maker and BYOND share. Coincidentally, BYOND is probably more closeknit than the RPG Maker community - Making advertisement more centralized (and thus cheaper) and easy to come by.

But what is the point of trying to advertise something to the same small group of people anyway?
Besides, most RPG Maker communities are in someway linked to other RPG Maker communities, which in turn are linked to other RPG Maker communities, and so on. It is not uncommon to see one game advertised in one community which ends up being advertised in many communities. That is something that doesn't happen in BYOND... Because there are no other BYOND communities than the BYOND website.

You sound like you're talking bullcrap again to be honest. This is the second time you're bringing up RPG Maker vs. BYOND with make-believe facts unsupported by links, and once again overlooking obvious benefits of BYOND. $4000? I can count at least 3 games who have tipped on the positive side of $2500 earned from players, and they didn't come close to the amount of advertisement and player gain they could have had.

http://www.aveyond.com :]
It made the developer enough profit that it was considered worthwhile to make a second AND third game.
I can't safely say and prove that $4000 is how much went into the development of the first game. But it is something the developer of the game said in a forum post shortly after releasing the game.
But provided she hired 4 artists and professional composers and musicians it is safe to say that a fair amount of money was spent on developing the game.
Now take into account the number of people hired to work on the second game. 14 people, not including the ones who were not paid, plus the same composers and musicians. It is safe to say for her to hire this many people and invest this much money into the game that the first one made more than a small amount of money.

No, you really aren't. You're more likely to make money off of a game if:

* You advertise it a lot
* You make a game people want to pay for
* You advertise it a lot
* You make a game that retais players
* You advertise it a lot

RPG Maker games tend to advertise themselves a lot better than BYOND games do.
A Blurred Line and The Way are good examples of this. Neither had great advertising nor did the developers spend money on them. You ask anyone who has used RPG Maker about either of these games, nearly all of them will know of them, most will have played them, and a lot of them would paid money to play them.
Now take the top BYOND RPGs in comparison. Which are currently Dungeon Master, The Elemental Stone and Seika. The only people who even know about these games are the ones in the BYOND community. Again, I haven't seen any of these games try to advertise themselves in any sort of way.

If you don't believe me, I will go to one of the largest amateur game development sites around, and make a topic. Asking who has heard of all the games listed above.
And I bet you $100 that more people (a lot more) will have heard about and played A Blurred Line and The Way that any BYOND game.

There is one defining element that makes the above: The developer.

You're not at some magical disadvantage if you use something other than RPG Maker, nor are you in some huge money-making advantage by using RPG Maker. RPG Maker games are a dime a dozen about 100x the amount that BYOND games are, which makes it harder to gather those players as well. See what happened to MUDs if you want to study the results of oversaturizing a community with the exact same game, or BYOND Anime 'pre purge'.

I never said you were at some magical disadvantage because you were using BYOND. I simply said that by using RPG Maker you have access to a large number of communities with potential players/customers/advertisement, which is something you don't get with BYOND.
Also, RPG Maker games may be a dime a dozen, but lets face it, so are BYOND games. I'd say the ratio of good to bad games for both RPG Maker and BYOND is about the same, but it is rare to see a truely excellent game made with BYOND (or at least I never have). Where as The Way (as mentioned above) quiet easily surpasses the quality of a lot of commerical RPGs, and as far as storyline goes it pretty much blows every other RPG I have played (commercial or not) out of the water. Though, games like this are not common in RPG Maker either (since there is only 6 of them, which are all The Way).

Alathon wrote:

You're pulling numbers out of nowhere and trying to say that advertising to a hugely de-centralized, large community of players where the market is already taken by commercial-quality games that have paid developers is somehow easier than advertising to a market that has never had game breakthroughs of similar fashion and is completely centralized and easy to pitch to.

Thats way off at best. You still don't get it: BYOND is far from the only avenue to advertise a game, the same goes for RPG maker communities. The intensity of which the developer advertises along with the initial experience of entering thhe game have almost everything to say about player retention.

Barkleys Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.

It was advertised on one of these RPG Maker communities and nothing else. There was no money invested in it, no hype generated, it was not particularly well advertised.

Despite that it has become massively popular.
It's videos on Youtube have hundreds of thousands of views.
It is mentioned in Wikipedia.
Has it's own Gamefaqs page.
It has been mentioned on a lot of websites.
Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/21/ barkley-brings-the-jam-in-homebrew-rpg-demo/
Destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/ the-internet-presents-barkley-shut-up-and-jam-gaiden-29444.p html
Eurogamer http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93941
Gamespot http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/barkleyshutupandjamgaiden/ index.html
Mobygames http://www.mobygames.com/game/ barkley-shut-up-and-jam-gaiden-chapter-1-of-the-hoopz-barkle y-sa
There is also a ton more out there.
It has been reviews on TV.
Included with various PC/video game magazines on a "top freeware game" disk or something similar.
The developers of the game have even been interviewed in several video game magazines.
http://comipress.com/files/images/articles/2008/03/piq1.jpg
http://www.gamingw.net/pubaccess/29206/barkley-001.jpg

I could go on and on. This game is more popular than every BYOND game combined, and infact BYOND it's self. And the only advertising the developers of the game did was make a single post on some forums.

Obviously there is an advantage to advertising on hugely de-centralized communities. A very big advantage provided you make a game people will like.
I believe it is called viral marketing. By advertising your game to an already existing community they will (hopefully) advertise it to others (without meaning to) and those people will further advertise it and so on. When done properly the results are obviously better than anything you could have ever hoped for. Ever.