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JUST STATING THE OBVIOUS

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Hertzila:

--- Quote from: xkuehn on June 22, 2011, 09:43:14 pm ---*words*

--- End quote ---

The problem with trying this is that most of us do reside in first-world nations and that brings in shipping costs. I don't know how much it could cost to ship there but that could very well bring the costs up, assuming that the would-be seller can keep material costs low (may not be hard, IIRC a set of 10 CDs costs about 10 euros over here and letters don't cost even that).

On the other hand, should somebody over there (like, say, you) pursue this, it's more than likely that you could keep the postal costs very low, which would allow for selling them with a much lower price than from here (though I don't know how much the materials would cost there). When the last of the non-commercial licenses gets removed, you could also do this legally without worrying about angry artists.


Welcome to the forums!

jcjordan:
Well it doesn't matter to me one way or the other but if you do decide to go the commercial route might I suggest Matrix Games? I'm not employed/vested interest in them but I've got many games from them in the past.

Edi:
Another company to talk to if going commercial would be Shrapnel Games. Not that I expect commercialization to happen, but in the case it was considered.

xkuehn:

--- Quote from: Hertzila on June 22, 2011, 10:23:56 pm ---I don't know how much it could cost to ship there but that could very well bring the costs up, assuming that the would-be seller can keep material costs low (may not be hard, IIRC a set of 10 CDs costs about 10 euros over here and letters don't cost even that).

--- End quote ---

You have it the wrong way around. Material costs are lower here. (Are those CDs gold plated?) The postal system in South Africa, well... let's just say that every package would have to be insured. And remember that "here" is not one place. I don't know if mailing from South Africa to, say, India would be cheaper than from the USA or Europe. I doubt it.

Regarding


--- Quote from: jcjordan on June 23, 2011, 12:55:31 am ---Well it doesn't matter to me one way or the other but if you do decide to go the commercial route might I suggest Matrix Games?

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: Edi on June 23, 2011, 11:40:16 am ---Another company to talk to if going commercial would be Shrapnel Games.

--- End quote ---

I wouldn't go that route. Remember that the GPL forbids additional restrictions. So there's no way that one could give a GPLed program to a company and guarantee that they won't just sell it without giving anything back. Assuming it would be profitable for them to do so. Also, I googled the companies and their games are expensive. Remember the prices I talked about above? $40 ~= R270.

If one were to sell games such as UFO:AI, there'd be two ways to go about it.

1) Just burn disks at home. This is the only viable option if the demand is very low.
2) Have disks made by a company. This is cheaper if one were going to make a few hundred identical disks. The disks also look much better and don't degrade in 5-15 years like CD-Rs do.

In either case, marketing would be the big problem. A game like UFO:AI spreads largely by word of mouth. If you don't have anyone who can give you the game, you probably don't know about it. Unless you came across it on the internet and don't have a good enough connection to download it, which is why I said that the First World would not be the main target.

There is more. If you are going to sell UFO:AI, it would have to include a manual. Not a link to the wiki, but a manual that is current for the version sold. It might be printed or on the disk. It would have to be typeset and edited. You would also have to fix the most glaring mistakes and omissions in the game before publishing. For example, 2.3.1 is currently stable. But I get "<TODO>" for a lot of in-game text, and that's not funny if you paid for the game and can't look it up on the net. You're not going to sell a nightly build, are you? It's better to have features removed than to include partly-functioning features. You'd also have to include source code. (You'd be on shaky legal ground with the GPL if you specifically sold a game to people who can't download it and then told them they can get the source on the net.)

Of course, there might be vanity purchases from the First World. People might like the idea of a printed manual and a pretty CD, especially those who've been indoctrinated that sharing is stealing.

TallTroll:
>> You're wrong on this. The game is GPL which can be sold. Maybe there are one or two textures or other >> files that are "noncommercial" but we're replacing them anyway.

OK, for some reason I'd got it in my head that you were replacing textures etc to go to a purposely non-commercial basis

>> I don't know what people expect but I don't see (m)any updates for most of the commercial games.

Heh, LOTS of commercial games get post-release support... because they are released broken, and need a Day 1 patch just to run  ::)

Some companies *are* pretty good about supporting games, even long after release, but yeah, it's the exception, not the rule. Open source / collaborative is just a completely different model though, there's no pressure to deliver to a budget driven deadline, no investors demanding to see profits

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