Heya fellow RMers from Germany. My name’s Kan/Reives. I’ve been making games in RPG Maker XP for 5 years, and To the Moon is my first commercial game.
I read that the commercial aspect of it seems to bug some of you, which is completely understandable – It’s funny, because a couple of years ago, I felt the exact same way when I saw Aveyond and all the other commercial RM games. I’m actually pretty surprised at how mature the German RM community’s responses seem to be – even those who are really outspoken against it like schmoggi are doing it in a respectful and civilized manner. Not sure if it’s an age thing, but it’s pretty cool to see. And of course, many thanks to those who support the project -- I can't tell you folks how much I appreciate it.
That being said, I’m not here to argue. I’m just going to drop by my personal perspective on the matter, and I hope you could keep an open mind and try to see it from my perspective as well.
First of all, I consider myself more of a story writer (though not necessarily that good :p) than a game developer. If anyone is familiar with my “games”, they’d know that they really aren’t about the gameplay or the classic RPG mechanics that RPG Maker provides -- they pretty much depend on the story and execution of the scenes.
In fact, I think the gameplay in my games seriously sucks for the most part, hahah. I actually discovered RPG Maker all those years ago because I was looking for a way to turn a little wannabe novel I was writing into a visual & audio experience, and not actually wanting to make a RPG; even now, I don’t touch half of RM’s functions.
Now, if someone writes a story and sells it as a novel, that’s okay. But if that person writes the same story, then go through the additional work of programming every scene, write music for it, and tweak a bunch of graphics along with making original ones. . .
. . . Why does all that extra work suddenly make it not okay to be sold? Especially when Enterbrain explicitly states that being able to sell products made with RMXP/VX is a part of the rights that you get when you buy their game engine?
Like RM games, free stories and novels exist en mass around the net (some of them being actually really, really good), and continue to be made every year even aside from events like NaNoWriMo -- yet that doesn’t stop the market for commercial novels. It’s not about whether something’s “better than others to be able to go commercial”, it’s just a choice of path – it’s one thing to make RM games at leisure as a carefree hobby with no pressure, but to try to actually make a living out of it and depend your next meal on it brings in a whole ton of (business and other) things to worry about.
That being said, I’d also like to note that over the past 4-5 years, I’ve spent countless hours working on and releasing my previous games for free. Seriously, I had like, no life, hahah – it was like an obsession. I was offered donations on multiple occasions, but I never took them. I think as far as contribution to the free games goes, I’ve paid my fair share of dues as well. (And I’m still going to finish my long-running project, Quintessence, of course.)
I think most people would agree that a game’s entertainment value doesn’t have to be defined by how it’s programmed or what the binary code underneath looks like. I also think that most people would agree that a game can be defined as more than its graphics. So why does the logic of those two suddenly become skewed when combined?
Though there’s one thing to note: I’ve never actually intended to market To the Moon to the RPG Maker communities. I think there’s a valid reason why many developers who use RM wouldn’t find it as enjoyable -- the reason is that to us developers who use RM, we’re so used to the RTP style (even with some original graphics in the same style) that it actually breaks the immersion. That makes sense; I feel the same way.
But to many non RM-developer players, they mind it much less than you’d think – I was surprised to learn this from watching the playerbase of other commercial RM titles, who are perfectly aware of the free RM communities as well as all the RM games with RTP-based graphics, yet they enjoyed the style immensely nonetheless.
RPG Maker is one of those tools with an easy entry – as with any tool of similar property, it results in many trying it out as a toy and pump out crap that ruins its reputation as something that can produce awesome things – a quick glance around these communities shows me that there’re some real gems here. But because of the convoluted RM game market, outsiders often stereotype RM games as low quality things that are all the same. I think over time, it actually began to shape our own confidence in ourselves and what we can do here, and we began to take ourselves less seriously than what we have potential for.
If you believe that any game created with RM is unworthy to be sold, and To the Moon ends up succeeding, shouldn’t it be a good thing that it was able to succeed despite the limitations of the engine?
Why say “you can’t”? Why not say instead, “I doubt it, but I hope you can”? I mean, if I succeed in breaking that “RM game can’t succeed commercially” barrier (though it’s already been done), doesn’t that further prove that objectively, you all can as well? And that what you are doing is worth more than you thought? (And trust me, it's not going to destroy the free RM games culture; the same sequence of events has already happened more than once in English RM communities.)
Personally, for what I envision, RM has all the tools I need to make exactly what I want to make, to deliver the exact experience I want to deliver. And if I were to move to another engine only to make the exact same product with more hassle, just to earn the “respect” of a few, wouldn’t that be just pretentious?
Although, none the less, I’m a little sad to say that I’ll likely be leaving the RPG Maker scene soon to move to another engine. Not because RM lacks any functionality, but because it cannot port to Mac and Linux – something that has become necessary for future endeavours. [Fortunately, while To the Moon uses some edits of RTP for generic tiles like trees and road, it’s a modern/sci-fi setting so the key graphics such as all the characters’ sprites and the signature locations are all original/custom, so they’re transferrable.]
None the less, I’ll still be mentioning RPG Maker in the credits, and refer people who would like to get a taste of making games to the RM Communities. The RPG Makers scene is where I started my journey, and I think it’s a truly wonderful collection of communities with amazing things happening. I’m sad to see that it has become less active over the years, and I hope that To the Moon’s potential success will be able to bring a bit more attention back to it.
Anyhow, that’s my perspective. I don’t expect to change your beliefs, especially since for some people, it’s almost become an ingrained “tradition” to not try selling RM games. But I just hope it makes it even just a bit easier to accept. There could probably be a lot of arguments made against it, and I could probably argue back, and then get more counter-arguments, and repeat – but that’s not what I’m here for, and it would be a waste of everyone’s time.
I’ve said what I wanted to say, so now I shall go back to slaving myself away to work on the game and all the business-related complications that have arisen because of the commercialization decision. Have been working freakin’ 10 hours a day including weekends almost every day for the past month now; $@#%, I thought working at home was supposed to be relaxing. . .
. . . But hey, at least I get to “go to work” in my underpants.
http://freebirdgames.com/forum/Smile...Reiv_Smile.gif
Cheers folks, and here’s to hoping the RPG Maker scene stays thriving for years to come.
Kan/Reives (kan@ freebirdgames.com)
