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Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

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Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#101

Post by stevehawk »

talmand wrote: post #99
pertinhower wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. In the 2000s the Unreal Engine had a price tag of half a million dollars up-front plus royalties (I don't remember the percentage) on the back end. That these companies are giving their engines—even their source code—away essentially for free indicates either that (1) engine sales was never a very lucrative line of business or that (2) the promise of establishing your technology as a defacto game engine s…

Engine sales used to be lucrative, quite a few companies have been based solely on that business model for years. But just like most things, the market changed over the years. High quality alternatives started to appear, big publishers started making or buying their own tech, and easier entry to market are among some of the reasons. In my mind, the biggest contributor is simply competition.

This is a very good point. In all honesty, id Software really moved from 'making games' to 'making tech demos' with Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena. The same is pretty much true for Epic and the Unreal Tournament games.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#102

Post by freehunter »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #23
anandaverma wrote: post #22

Awesome. After long time something interesting from valve

Ouch. Steam box stuff and VR not that interesting? Though I'd really love for them to FINALLY announce a Half Life sequel.

Steam Box and VR is interesting, but only if it actually happens. So far we've seen next to nothing from the Steam Box idea except a ton of companies releasing small form-factor PCs that were originally slated to run Steam OS but then switched to Windows when Valve decided to back out.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#103

Post by kmfrk »

leoc wrote: post #82
kmfrk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a bit of the Photoshop Effect going on, where companies are mostly interested in having their tool become the dominant one - and the dominant skill - in the industry over piracy litigation. We're in a perfect storm of access to development tools and interest in indie development thanks in large part to Steam and Kickstarter. In the case of Valve, I think what butters their bread isn't Steam anyway, b…

Asset-store revenues are a big part of that as well.

I keep forgetting that exists. Everyone's talking about hats, and I have no idea what's going on.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#104

Post by benologist »

mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

I think non-game development is accustomed to taking tools and giving nothing back, particularly with open source. GPG provided a sharp wakeup call around this recently.

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryptio...

Game development does this but I think less as game architecture can require significantly fewer tools. Rovio were once called out at a GDC convention for giving nothing back to (the port of) the physics engine they use, stuff like that can form the majority of third party code in a game:

http://www.geek.com/games/box2d-creator-asks-rovio-for-angry...

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#105

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

SoMuchToGrok wrote: post #86
mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

I agree that 5% to the engine developer is a wonderful deal - however, having a working game engine in no way means 90% of the work is done. That's when the really difficult work begins. Video games need to trigger an emotional response in order to be successful. From visual design, to audio design, game rules/logic, controls, testing, marketing...this list goes on. It's far more than raw tech resources; psychology i…

Yes and no.

Consider that an engine are all the resources that go into cutting down trees, gathering materials, making pigments, etc. that all go into the resources of painting a masterpiece on an easel. You could certainly do all those things, but you don't need to if you want to create a new masterpiece.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#106

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

I think this is the difference between big shops with big budgets and small indie developers. Lets say you make a game that sells $100,000 on steam. That's pretty impressive. What's your take home then?

Steam takes 30%, taxes take 20%, engine takes 5%, marketing costs take 10%, etc. Now you have $35,000 left. Even in the best case scenario of a solitary indie developer that's a piss poor wage for someone who can make a game in a year that sells six figures on steam. Every little bit helps.

Now compare that to a game that sells $20,000,000. That's what, 7 million take home? That's 200x the take home pay, yet it doesn't take 200x the staff or 200x the time or 200x the cost to make it. The system is geared for big shops. Smaller shops just seem to get a rougher deal.

Guys like Notch are a rare exception. For most smaller devs saving 5% is significant savings.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#107

Post by Zenst »

pertinhower wrote: post #92
mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

Absolutely. In the 2000s the Unreal Engine had a price tag of half a million dollars up-front plus royalties (I don't remember the percentage) on the back end. That these companies are giving their engines—even their source code—away essentially for free indicates either that (1) engine sales was never a very lucrative line of business or that (2) the promise of establishing your technology as a defacto game engine s…

I suppose once you've done all the big sells then not that many come along and gradually scaling the price down to increase base of users comes naturally one way or another in whatever market. This and competition gradually edge each down.

Still, it takes one company of note to make that big move and the rest end up following in the same direction.

But today it is not all about having great tools, it is about users knowing how to use those tools that drive demand and establish standards.

As for Steam, well, most games will also be sold upon there store, so win win.

Either way, maybe schools can now expose students in tools that are not just for games but have users and functionality that transcend many fields from modeling, CAD like mock up's and a level of detail and control a bit more than the popular Minecraft, which is in many ways a much simpler form of what these game-engines are today.

So demand is there and opportunity as well. Be interesting how this pans out for game prices long term. As with anything, when supply at a comparable quality hits a level then the only way to stand out is price and lower running costs to get started and investment. Impact upon established studio's could be interesting, if anything it makes what they do more competitive and beyond franchise work, which your cheap startup is not going to be grabbing, then not much will make them stand-out if they stay as is. I see many opportunities for consultancy work and also a increase in the talent pool. Solely due to increased numbers of people able to learn the tools and sue them.

As for which one becomes a standard, well, once we settle down upon one operating system for everything is when such matters are close, but far from today on so many levels that there will always be competition for a long time to come.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#108

Post by connerbryan »

From a purely gamedev perspective, examining the Source engine taught me a lot about engine development, so it's exciting to hear about the next version.

Valve's articles on how they implemented networking in Source are particularly useful and interesting[0].

[0] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_...

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#109

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #106
mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

I think this is the difference between big shops with big budgets and small indie developers. Lets say you make a game that sells $100,000 on steam. That's pretty impressive. What's your take home then? Steam takes 30%, taxes take 20%, engine takes 5%, marketing costs take 10%, etc. Now you have $35,000 left. Even in the best case scenario of a solitary indie developer that's a piss poor wage for someone who can make…

Based on your own hypothetical, that means you would spend $5,000 (or about 15% of your overall budget) for all of the mechanics that an engine provides.

There are certainly games (e.g. visual novels) in which this wouldn't be very cost effective, but in most cases I believe that represents a huge value.

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