Paying customers => Customer Support.
At that point I lose interest.
I think thatās probably the wrong attitude to take to both freeware and commercial software. If you donāt bother to support freeware, you devalue the software even more. Itās just something you have to do, and be good at.
Support is more than just āit doesnāt workā and stacktraces. I usually have to answer an email every day from people asking me strange random stuff about games design or whatever. I also get loads of fan mail saying how amazing we are. It makes getting up in the morning enjoyable. So donāt be too quick to disparage customer support!
Cas 
Good answer.
Just out of curiousity, how much of your time percentage-wise would you estimate you spend on business stuff (customer support, marketing, etc.) as opposed to development?
I have not tried to leave my job, I have accepted to do something less interesting than developping games to pay the bills and I go on āworkingā on my game on my spare time. I have to admit that, when I work a lot both at work and on my spare time, Iām very tired and it will have some consequences on my personal life. I try to have a rest more frequently. It is quite difficult to find some time especially when Iām not single and I donāt plan to sacrifice my sentimental life for my game.
I have still some problems when I use very big textures on some graphics cards. I would like to find an elegant workaround to force Ardor3D to use smaller textures than the maximum texture size indicated by the hardware.
Depends on when thereās a new release. Humble Bundle = 1000 emails in a month. Normally, only 100. On average they take about 5 minutes each to sort out.
Cas
The number of weekly users of TUER from the Chrome Web Store has been multiplied by 4 in only a few weeks ;D Iām very happy and I thank once more Markus BorbĆ©ly for the rocket launcher that will be added very soon. The icon with the hammer and the sickle is quite explicit
[quote]I think there is a huge difference between:
- Here, have a lump of money, now implement this game I have decided!
- Wow, what a cool game you have made, have some of my money.
[/quote]
Huge difference of course, but I donāt think this difference is really all that relevant to the discussion.
Seemingly itās just a matter if you feel getting money from your efforts gets the satisfaction youāre looking for. I guess it depends on the nature of the efforts.
For example, if Iām creating a game that I feel people can enjoy, I think itās highly rewarding getting some money out of it, while on the other hand I wouldnāt even consider making money off helping others on a forum (being able to ask questions myself there is the reward here). A forum is a community, so perhaps Iām selectively communist there, then
Actually for me the satisfaction has nothing to do with money, I get all the satisfaction from the praise and glowing emails and such. But the hard measurement of just how much something is worth to other people is comes with the conversion rate and the money coming in.
Cas
I see your point, but if it would have nothing to do with money, you wouldnāt ask money for your games, would you?
Maybe āsatisfactionā is not the right word here, maybe ārewardā is better. I mean, praise and glory is all very satisfying, but how satisfying is it to be ultimately able to make a living out of the work where obviously your heart is? Isnāt that your goal at the end of the day? I know things arenāt this B&W but if you had to choose, would you prefer just receiving glowing emails, or a nice cheque from puppygames every month?
Honestly, if I didnāt have to make the money to live, Iād be writing really weird games just for the hell of it. As it is though I donāt have the choice so I think of the money like a hiscore table
Cas
You didnāt answer my question, though
If I didnāt have to make money to live, Iād be traveling the world and make really badly made movies out of it, just to get bored afterwards and create a band that makes music that nobody wants to hear, interleaved with useless game creation sessions ;D
Realistically, I do have to make money, so the question is: Do you strive for making that living off something you love, or doing it for The Man and do something you love for praise and glory only?
Itās actually a question that I find difficult to answer for myself, but I do know that every step towards the former is hugely satisfying. Glowing emails at my day job notwithstanding
Well, at the end of the day the bottom lineās the most important bit. Iām trying to find that magical intersection of the 3 Venn diagram areas: games that sell, games I like to make, games I am able to make.
Cas
Then I miss one part of the diagram lol.
Hi !
Speaking of your free time and sentimental life, i saw you in a tv show last year if i remember well
did it help you to find a girl, or youāre single ?
Regards / Franck
Hi Franck!
It did not help, it frightened interesting women and it attracted superficial women. Now people are going to forget this silly reality TV show, Iām still single but ā¦ I spend some time with a pretty Meetic girl once a week ;D
I realized that I broke something on my machine when trying to install several Doom clones written in C/C++. I tried to remove Mesa because JOGL was using it instead of the Xorg driver for my ATI Radeon 9250 Pro but I broke KDE. The development of TUER will be a bit slow this week and the next one until I switch from Mandriva Linux 2010 to Debian Linux. I will buy another graphics card, an Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT supporting OpenGL 2.0 and I will go on testing TUER on another crappy machine with a Matrox Millenium G200 or with an ATI Radeon 9250 Pro. Iām glad to see that JOGL works really fine with Mesa ;D
Hi!
My screen was broken and my graphics card has some problems. I will get a new screen Sunday and another graphics card tomorrow. Then the development of TUER will resume.
Hi!
I have now a decent graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce 7600 GT. I still use my half broken 15 inch screen. I was ill yesterday, I hope the development of TUER will resume soon.
Decent? Itās a five year old midrange card. Itās better than what you had before though.
yeh, its a bit dated now.
The 9600GT is also pretty good low end card these days (can be found for like Ā£20).
Still a good choice though, as Nvidia drivers are much better then ATI on linux.