Gameplan and Project Development Issues:

Imported Comments regarding "Monetize the spiritual successor in the distant future?"

Jim Reed Feb 9 at 2:36 PM
As soon as money is dripping somewhere someone is bound to get greedy, one way or another. I have nothing against monetization but I think that the financial side should be made transparent and public, the code should be public but with a licence that doesn't allow some random a-hole to steal all the hard work and make money off it. If you set up some guy or girl to handle the cash sooner or later he'll hand the keys to someone else and sooner or later somebody is gonna mess with it. Best to make it completely transparent, the game should make enough money to pay for the servers and advertising, and if there is enough revenue it should be reserved for publicly voted goals, like new gfx/sfx, ports to other systems and so on.

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AtTheEdge Feb 3 at 12:22 PM
@smash_the_hamster This is also were relatively safe monetization potential comes from: Cosmetics.
I agree with pirtz that we should use money from that exclusively for the project itself, e.g. advertising, server costs, etc.

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Chris Feb 3 at 11:23 AM
@deathsadvocate @pirtz1

Actually, one way we can be open source AND make it harder to copy the game is to have the game art copyrighted. I've seen lots of open source projects do stuff like this in the past.

I'm okay with this as an idea.

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Pirtz Feb 3 at 10:54 AM
@deathsadvocate I think this should be a project where we purposefully shoot ourselves in the foot in terms of monetization, the only acceptable variant to receive money would in my opinion linking a Patreon and the money from there should exclusively be used as capital to cover our costs. If you add monetization in-game you have to add an orb system or a cosmetic purchase system, and I personally don't think that this is a good idea.
Or make the website where you download the game from to have a pay what you want system.

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DeathsAdvocate Feb 3 at 10:37 AM
@smash_the_hamster @pirtz1 Why would we commit to open source? Its fine for now, but once we have our own assets why would we stick with it?

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Chris Feb 3 at 10:08 AM
@pirtz1 Pirtz echo's my own thoughts on this.

I'd also like to add that as an open source game it would be possible for another team to copy the repo, remove our money makers (e.g cosmetics) and release. Making a superior game to our own in the process.

If we try to hold code back to stop such "blatant" copying then we are not truly open source.

So, to reiterate; our commitment to open source greatly limits what we can achieve via monetisation. Our best hope is for donations (and to that end we may wish to add to the client a page about our costs and where/how they can help)

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DeathsAdvocate Feb 2 at 8:13 PM
Even if it is down the line, we need to make sure we have the framework to make monetization possible. So lets make sure we do not shoot our selves in the foot here.

For profit would be nice, but I do not want it at the cost of quality or playerbase, and considering the niche nature of the market and the many failed clones it is certainly not going to be a get rich thing.
If it happens great, if not that is fine. Just want to make sure we leave the possibility open, more so for the covering cost department.

I am both fine with and would prefer just being completly open source and free while we are in the testing phase where we are using their assets. I hope to move away from it a little once we largely have our own assets, but not so much to put barriers on entry or alienate anyone of course.

Focus will be on covering cost. It is unlikely to reach for profit, and if it does it can be discussed than. At which point we would likely just try to split things evenly. Costs>Devs>Everyone else.

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Dio Bunado Feb 2 at 8:10 PM
Whether it is through donations, a patreon, or micro transactions such as skins I would like it if we at least made enough money to cover servers and other things we pay for in order to run this project and bring it to the attention of long time duelyst fans. I don't want one 1 or 2 people to be the ones paying out of pocket every month for this project. Any excess money we make can go towards future expenses.

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Pirtz Feb 2 at 8:06 PM
I think this should be avoided, first because Duelyst wasn't profitable in the first place which is why Bandai Namco got rid of it and second because it's going to be a mess to share the money in an equitable fashion. Monetization requires changes in game design which make it feel bad for people that don't intend to pay, if they're used to a more generous in-game economy.