knelson wrote:
Scott, originally I did briefly looked at the EULA. However, I still would like more information on the reasoning behind the decision.
I may be wrong, but I believe that the quality of the mission packs would be greatly increased by providing compensation.
I personally would not have a problem paying $5 or $10 for a new mission pack.
I love the game and think that it would be in the best interest of the game, creators and Handmark to compensate mission creators.
The majority of people are not even going to try to create their own mission. They will just look for new missions to download.
I believe that the people who really put in the time and effort to create a successful mission pack will get bored after a while and eventually lose interest in the glory.
Compensation is a great motivator, especially if you have built a name for yourself.
I don't know if the initial decision is set in stone, but I would like to hear some feedback from members and the mission level creators.
Keith
I, for one, couldn't disagree more. In the first place, this is a handheld game, not a desktop game. Bearing that in mind, many people (myself most assuredly NOT included) complained long and loudly about the price being too high. It's almost certain that none of these people will buy user-created missions, to say nothing of any who thought the price high, but justified. You'd really have to win most people over, especially considering that while five dollars in and of itself is not that steep, there are twenty missions in the core game; no matter how good you are at designing missions, the preconception among the vast majority of players is that the core missions (being professionally designed by the game's developers) would be superior to those created by other players. Therefore, at a perceived worth of at least five dollars per mission, the game should have at least cost one hundred dollars. Since this is a handheld game, and more than a few have complained about the price, you can be sure that they wouldn't suddenly feel that they've gotten an unusually good bargain on the game. In other words, a user-created mission with a five dollar plus price tag would only be seen as overpriced.
Look back through the forums and count how many times this game has been compared to Warcraft, Starcraft, etc. Now ask yourself how many of these desktop games charge for user created levels. None, so far as I know. As long as people insist on comparing this game to those games, and as long as those games offer user-created maps for free, don't look for your idea to go over very well in the handheld community of buyers.
The notion of shareware levels is not new, either. There are handheld games out there that charge per the level. Master Thief immediately comes to mind, and it offers the first level for free, while Handmark charges just under thirty dollars for its core missions. Does it work for Master Thief to charge per mission? I could be wrong, but the last time I checked it wasn't exactly burning up the market.
Your theory that paid levels would inspire a higher quality doesn't hold water, either. There are literally thousands of shareware games out there right now whose makers rightly felt that they were entitled some compensation for their titles. Some of them are quite good. The vast majority of them aren't worth spit. The shareware market is huge mainly because users weed through the crap and buy the good titles. They all to frequently judge a game by its screen shots before they even download a demo. Why is this important? All the screenshots of WI levels, if they existed at all, would appear to be of the same quality, to say nothing of the problems associated with creating demos for each mission or mission pack.
Lastly, and certainly most damaging to your proposal, is the fact that users will still be able to create and distribute missions for free. Even if interest in creating free missions wanes, it will be enough to kill the paid mission market, as almost NO ONE will pay for a level when they can get what would certainly appear to be its equivalent for free! By the time interest in making free missions for glory waned, those making missions for monetary compensation would have made so little that they too would have lost interest.
All this being said, if you want to pursue some sort of paid incentive for creating missions, knock yourself out. I'm just giving a few reasons why it won't work. After all, Handmark originally justified the price of its game by saying that it had endless replayability, and while that wasn't necessarily a guarantee that the replayability would be free, it was most certainly implied, whether intentionally or not. Charge for additional levels, and you'll quickly find those levels are routinely snubbed in favor of the free ones.
Just an opinion.
Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2004 5:31 pm Post subject: Commissions $$$ for level packs
then you saw where it mentions the licensing terms regarding authored missions. (If you want to read it again you can close M, go to the directory M is in and delete m.ini, then restart M - I will put a more graceful way to see the license agreement as a menu item).
I also know that with the fairly small group of beta testers we have seen a good number of decent levels. When it goes public, I expect it to explode. Yeah, some will be crap, and some will be great, and I'll probably play most of 'em. For free. 
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