Dungeon Master Forum

I don't see where the problem is. I don't agree with that anyone should have to pay for playing a dungeon. But beeing able to donate is quiet diffrent. If anyone creates a dungeon that are 5x5 tiles large with a screamer in the middle and that the person playing it feels like he wants to donate something for his gameingexperience I don't see why he shouldn't be able to.
And why should there be any guarantee that there shouldn't be any dead ends etc.
Make a note at the donationlink that the one who donates should play the dungeon first before donating. I would never donate anything before completing the dungeon or simular, it is at thier own risk if they donate anything before playing the dungeon. And how would they know how much they should donate if not completing it first..

Other authors obviously feel differently because
I see that some ask for donations.

I don't care if I get a donation or not for DMT, but I don't feel like I have the authority to speak for every dungeondesigner and engine creator here at the forum. Therefore, why should my opinion stop anyone else to get a donation if they want to?

No-one is saying that donations are bad. The problem is that the person donating can often think that they are then entitled to something else in return:

"Hey, dungeon designer, can you add feature X and Y, and fix bug Z?"
"Sorry, I'm not working on that anymore."
"But I donated money to you!"

Regarding designing custom dungeons, I agree with Paul Stevens that a detailed, thoughtful review would satisfy me much more than a donation of 10$. Yeah, it's nice to have some money, but the amounts that could be generated in this community are negligible. Knowing that someone played my creation, had a lot of fun with it, thinks that I should have done something differently however would make me feel happy, proud, and mentally challenged - something that a monetary donation can never do.

I know, that could be a problem. But I would also be abit annoyed at the person taking this for granted..

No one's stopping anyone from getting donations. Anyone can donate to anyone else right now. Anyone can ask. I don't think that was the point. Jgame's original post that sparked all this off was saying that if there was some form of regimented donation ethos, etc, to get more creativity going. That's what people are reacting to.

Anyone can do what they like. The moment it becomes 'the community must support a donation system' it all goes a little weird. You then need a consensus at least, and official infrastructure at worst.

Edit: Wow, three more replies.

Okey, I don't know that much about the effects a donationsystem would create, but I will take your word for it Beo.
I just want to add that I agree with that a detailed review is much more important for me to than money, but as long as one person are intersted in getting some donations for their work and I don't see any problem with it. I will agree with him, even if I couldn't accept any money myself..

Like I said, it's the regimented 'system' that is the problemLook at all the different viewpoints already. What's the consensus of the community that is goign to be acted on? And as soon as money is involved, what infrastructure will people be donating under, and who will be managing it? Who arbitrates if a donation was supposed to allow greater access to a dungeon, and there is a payment dispute? What about donations ahead of a released product?


Poeple have paypal accounts. People can put up projects at kickstarter, etc. There's whole infrastructures in place that can have nothing to do with the community as a whole. The community a sa whole can have discussions if a particular project should be supported, or if a particular project is contentious. Otherwise, everyone else should probably be encouraged to step away from individual creator/enjoyer relationships, not encouraged to stand in between making life difficult.

just a side comment/thought for a kick off:

I do not know this in detail, but we - as some form of conglomerate -could use youtube-
set a "channel" there, (all dm - dungeon videos go over this point/all vids from single "user:dm forum")
hopefully get views, which in turn generate money if enough.
If this works this way, though. I have no idea.
if only single videos count,
in effect so there is no way to count the masses of videos (and their clicks), then this would not be worthwhile.
Videos which the forum as a group could post are these among others:
how to use the editors,
reviews, walkthroughs(in parts),
speedruns and funny stuff(screamer disguise, halloween stuff, this is not funny)

oh well.. we don´t have many videos! It is maybe really not worth it.

But you could receive 1000 donations of 10$

And pigs could fly!

And pigs could fly!

hehehe

If an individual wants to set up a donation system for their own custom dungeons, then go right ahead: all power to you.

But don't expect a forum wide system that's sanctioned and administered by the forum staff. That's just not going to happen.

I may have sounded a bit harsh in opposing
any sort of donations. That is not my attempt at
all. For example, George asked for donations
and I sent him $50. No problem except that I
never discovered whether he got it. If an
author asks for donations and I find that I have
made good use of his work, then I feel a donation
is quite reasonable.

But------for my work -- you cannot make me any
happier by sending me money. Money is NOT what I
need or want. Especially what I consider to be trifling
amounts of it. I want FEEDBACK. Right now I am
a very happy person because of Conflux. What a
marvelous tribute to the product of my labors.
There are other designs using CSBuild/CSBwin that
I hear are very good but, because I don't play any
custom dungeons, I am not as familiar with them as
I am with Conflux and all the requests Zyx has made
of me.

Seeing that this is not a rejected evil proposition, I tried to sketch up a model for the dugeon info page, where one can see custom dungeons, download and donate if he wishes.
Something in the spirit of steam would be exellent.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

From what I can see, everyone did just reject an official donation infrastructure supported by the community. The closest was zyx suggesting a new co-operative model. That would be managed by whoever was in the co-operative.

Who is doign this steam like website you are suddenly asking for? Who is runnign the donation links? Who is responsible if a donation didn't go through? Is Christophe supposed to add this to the encyclopaedia? He hasn't actually weighed in on the discussion yet.

Why is the above page any different from what the custom dungeon thread is now at the encyclopaedia?


http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=view/CustomDungeons
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=view/CustomDungeonsReviews

It is a very cold welcome to see such a page if looking for a dungeon. I somehow do not like it .at all.
I much much more like the way it is now: the creators make a thread, and introduce their work: TA DAAA! Maybe it takes more time to find a dungeon searching this forum, but whatever. I think it is fun..
Why all this bullshit with money anyway? Better make some flash game to go rich instead of good old dm.

zoom wrote:Why all this bullshit with money

if you re-read the original post----

This way, we all could have quality DM games

It seems the idea was that if money were involved that
there would be more and better-quality games available.
So far I have not heard from a single author that the
promise of money would provide additional incentive to
work harder or longer.

So my conclusion is that money will not accomplish the
stated purpose and that we should abandon the idea
until someone says that he/she would like to receive
money. Let us not force money on anyone who does
not want it.

Though let us not discourage anyone who feels, individually, that their work has value and wishes to request donations!

But yes, the original idea was incentive (and perhaps providing resources to put into audio and graphics?). Although we seem to have drifted into providing infrastructure for it too, and also artists providing secondary documentation...

@Jgames: I think you should give up on this. I know you're trying to help the community, but as we've already noted, it's simply not going to happen the way you envision. If an individual feels that strongly about getting donations for their dungeon, they can set up their own page for it and ask there. I can tell you right now that a system that integrates with the existing DM wesbites is just not going to work; it's too much setup and admin for virtually no gain, and no-one here is going to invest their time in such a thing.

Gambit37 wrote:no-one here is going to invest their time in such a thing.

At least, not without getting a donation...

... ok, sorry. I'm kidding. Please don't throw things.

Gambit37 wrote:I know you're trying to help the community

Yes, because, i think, there are still a lot of players that want to play games like DM, EOB, and Lands of lore.

Gambit37 wrote:If an individual feels that strongly about getting donations for their dungeon, they can set up their own page for it and ask there.

If they setup their own page, it won't be succesfull, i think having them centralized, is the better choice, (something like itune or steam)
I just read that paying downloads for pc games are hot these days (more than 60 % of pc game sales are downloads)

Gambit37 wrote: it's too much setup and admin for virtually no gain, and no-one here is going to invest their time in such a thing.

I suspect that it might work, and people really will donate. But as you said, setting up something like that is too much work.
I might help with what i can (search, programming etc..., i can do this homework if people want to back it up).
Just think about how many grap games are sold for money.
Anyway, great custom dungeons, and to everybody in the DM community, i say a big thx.

You "suspect that it might work" and you "think there are still a lot of players that want to play games like DM" but that's simply not good enough. You need to be certain about your marketplace to do something like this.

I don't think you realise that people simply will not pay for custom dungeons for obsolete games that are 20+ years old. There is no captive audience; you need a viable marketplace of thousands of paying customers; we have a regular audience here of about 40 people, and at best a hardcore of around 20. That's far too small to setup a marketplace for.

You are more than welcome to do your own thing independently, but it's not something that anyone here can help you with, sorry.

Who is doign this steam like website you are suddenly asking for? Who is runnign the donation links? Who is responsible if a donation didn't go through? Is Christophe supposed to add this to the encyclopaedia?

Don't count on it!

As said by others, if someone expects donations for his project, fine, he can build his own page for that purpose.
But hoping to motivate custom dungeon development with donations is simply naive. The amount of work required on any serious project absolutely not comparable with the very little amount of donated money one can expect from our quite small community. This means the project can only be achieved with motivations other than money. Anyone expecting money from his creations should look to other more lucrative activities than building custom dungeons for a 20+ years old game that only a handful of people may be interested in.

Christophe is right...

Just for fun I costed my Custom Dungeon (Angel's Egg) against the rate the British taxpayer pays for my services. The figure I came up with was £28,000. I estimate about 20 people have played the dungoen, if each donated £5 that would nibble £100 off the cost. Basically I don't think there are enough custom dungeon consumers to make charging worthwhile. Labour of love it is

This is sort of OT (stop me if I am going to far). But as we were talking about it in the beginning that the dungeoncreators will be more motivated if.. money.. donation.. etc.

I estimate about 20 people have played the dungeon

Des can't know how many people it is that have tried out his dungeon, and he will get more motivated in creating more dungeons if he knew that it was about 200 people that have tried it instead.. I know that about 20 people downloads DMT before one comments about it, and this keeps me motivated Is it possible for Christophe to insert a download counter on his webpage per dungeon?

Just a suggestion

Then again, not everyone who downloads the game may get round to playing it .

Very true, but not everyone playing it comments about it either

And out of those remaining, how many would donate? Probably very few. This is why the whole idea is just silly.

Just for fun, I worked out that my work-in-progress Maze of Zagor, which doesn't even have one complete level yet, has probably had at least 2000 hours development already (a conservative estimate), because it builds off all the tinkering I've done with RTC over the last 7 years*. On my hourly rate which I charge for web design, that's well over £70,000 right there. And I'm reusing assets from other games! Imagine if I'd also drawn everything from scratch -- add on a few hundred more hours!

You should make custom dungeons because you love to, not to make money. If you want to make money by making games, you need to build something that you can sell commercially, or join a game development company. Anything else is just naive fantasy and wishful thinking.



* Maze of Zagor has only had around 100-150 hours development on it that's exclusive to Moz, but I couldn't have got to that point without all the other work/research/experimentation I've been doing with RTC and computer graphics over the years.

I am not talking about money.. That's why I wrote that I afraid of going OT
I was just talking about the motivation the dungeon creator accually gets by knowing that more people are trying out their dungeon than only those who comments about it..

Wow, just looking back at that £70,000 figure really has given me a shock! That really is a crazy amount of spare time invested in this old game. I should really have found some way of monetizing that....

Yeah, I don't even want to try to add up and put a "billable" figure on the amount of time I've spent hacking around with DSB.