While the the tank simulator game Howitzer Skirmish is 300 USD (222 EUR) away from being GPLed, jClassicRPG's developer is getting a donation-funded 42 USD ATi card to fix some ATi-specific problems.
I made a pretty graphic of the donations sum for Howitzer Skirmish over time.
The diagram definitely contains wrong data because of the following two reasons:
- Some modern websites have the fetish of using "5 months ago" dates (only some elite sites provide exact dates additionally or simply stick with normal date format where appropriate, it seems)
- microPledge is not able to accept two donations from the same person at different points in time. If you donate twice, the first donation will get the sum added to it
Here's the link to the pd-licensed diagram source.
In jClassicRPG's case, it took five hours to reach 130% of the wanted ammount. Timong stated on his blog that the fundraising was an experiment, to show that donation-driven development is possible.
Well, it is. Though maybe not enough to cover the expenses of a non-minimalistic lifestyle.
I hope Howitzer Skrimish will get the 300 USD. And that the possible troubles of microPledge won't destroy the donation progress so far. Now give me money, that's what I want! *sings*
PS: In case you think that Howitzer Skirmish looks like a tech demo and less like a game or in case you weren't content with Stormbaan Coureur; Bram made following statement on the comment section of this post:
once I release my source code, and the community considers it to be a tech demo and not a game, then there will be no pay out. Everybody keeps their money, and Howitzer Skirmish and its data will be GPL.
PPS: What would you pay for? Kiba brought that interesting question up in our forums and I'd love to get more replies to that.
11 comments:
I don't agree with donating to these pump and dump projects. Pump as in we donate, then dump as we are left with a tech demo while the developer leaves it up to the community to finish making the game.
It's great that he has made something cool but I disagree with the way he's charging for it, especially when there does not seem to be much of a difference between this and his first project, Stormbaan.
I wish Bram would actually break down his development into stages, $300 for the first stage, $300 for the next development stage to add more features. I doubt we're going to get that though, like I said at the beginning we are left with a tech demo.
I'm a big fan of donating money to develop open source games, I bought the Apricot DVD, but I don't like the way Bram does it because it's left unfinished.
andrew: I don't think anyone has so far asked bram about what he plans to deliver exactly, so I'm wonderhing how you can be so sure of what you assume.
Is Bram still alive and active?
I am not dead.
Just trying to become a Permanent Resident in Canada, and getting SOCOM:Confrontation out of the door and onto your PS/3.
Also, once I release my source code, and the community considers it to be a tech demo and not a game, then there will be no pay out. Everybody keeps their money, and Howitzer Skirmish and its data will be GPL.
I did add network code to the game, but I am still looking for a nice virtual world to have the fights in. It's very hard to model a battleground.
Stormbaan Coureur is a game. You would be amazed how adictive it is for some. There are people on the leaderboard that play it non-stop.
qubodup: I'm actually quite disappointed that in a post about DONATING to free game projects has a title which instantly makes people think they're being scammed. Not to mention the number of other (smaller) projects out there which actually need the promotion to help support development with donations. There's plenty of talk about this stuff on the FreeGameDev forums.
So what's the deal? Give more money to projects already covered before? I feel like I'm becoming the big ol' mean developer who has to go around nudging people in the right direction. If that's the case, everyone around here is going to get sick of me pretty quickly because I don't sit around letting things "just happen" - I speak out and do stuff about it, which makes me come off as confrontational.
I somehow also feel that this post could have had a bit more information about the necessities of donating to projects, how it benefits them, and other ways (non-monetary) people can help them.
Bram: I know I always say this to people, but Cube Engine 2 not only has great networking, but also has an awesome editor built in which lets you edit the octree in realtime (and cooperatively with others).
http://www.cubeengine.com/
http://sauerbraten.org/
We from the Iris2 project had a big donation from the german tv station for our tv-show last month.
It's difficult to get donations from private people, because they expecting faster development or better graphics aso.
Money can't do that because it's only hobby, not commercial and far away from enough money to go commercial.
It's far better to get donations from Ads on the website (or maybe ingame ?!) and or from companies.
Bram: Good to hear the news. If there have been made additions to the game on the scale of multiplayer support, then you defintely should show them off in a video. :)
quin: I assumed most readers would get the drift, as "free as in freedom" has been mentioned often. Do you think it is necessary to put a (not gratis) after the free?
This post was supposed to illustrate the donation history (in numbers) of two open source game 'fundraising campagins' that had a specific aim (exact cash ammount) :)
At the same time, my wish is to push Howitzer Skrimish. I am very intereted in this 'experiment' as I like to see it.
Since you think there's a need for mor coverage, I'll give it a try. Though I must admit that I don't remember many projects that were discribed on the forum to have donation needs (Only bloodfrontier comes to my mind).
I guess while not obvious, there's been alot of talk without specific names being mentioned. I'd say alot of open source projects have donation ability, and I am not even really speaking of Blood Frontier here - I'm yet to do anything formally there. Suppose I'm just trying to say that you guys are open source advocates or even maybe "representatives" for all of us who develop games for the good of the community at large.
But yes, it is something which could use a third party to promote. Thanks for explaining what you were trying to do, it does need a bit better wording like "Show support free games with money" or something along those lines.
I'm really sorry if I am a pain in the butt.
quin: You're no pain. I appreciate your contributions.
I changed the title to a descriptive one. I decided against "open source donations" because this article is very shallow for such a global title.
I'll contact you via IRC or email about the topic. :)
Hmmm... micropledge has halted operations :-(
I guess that I need to come up with a new publishing model.
Pff.... crippleware?
Does there exist such a thing as open source crippleware?
I have an on line store based on Street Performer Protocol. Please take a look at digributor.com.
It is slightly different from classical SPP in several aspects, but the main difference is that only those who contributed will be able to download the product.
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