Hi Michael and all, To be honest it is comments like yours that makes good honest working developers think twice about developing products and services for the blind. Saying that Justin or anyone else should develop a few good games for free is beyond unrealistic. Its obvious you have no understanding of what is involved in running a small business let alone developing games and other software for a minority market like the blind. So here is a few things to consider the next time you open your mouth asking for a free handout.
Sounds and music, especially high quality sounds and music, are really really expensive. On average a basic collection of royalty free sounds from Sound Ideas on CD will cost anywhere from $400 to $600 and can cost into the thousands for an extensive collection. Royalty free music equally costs hundreds and even thousands for a large library. If a developer gives his games away where do you expect all that money to come from? Since developers in this community use the internet for selling products and services they need to purchase a domain which costs about $15 per year, at least a gig of drive space which can cost around $500 per year, and of course pay bandwidth costs which costs another $6 to $10 per month depending on how much bandwidth is needed for that month. So figure on paying about $500 to $600 on just keeping the internet presents on the web to host all these great products. So I ask if a developer is giving his games away where is he going to get that money? Now, I personally do my own web pages, but do you know if I were developing a web site for a company I would charge on average $10 per web page. That's pretty standard for web developers, and if I had to hire someone to do it for me 30 pages for $10 each is roughly $300 just to build the site. That's in addition to the $500 or so I am spending per year just to rent the server space and bandwidth costs etc. Here is another expense you probably haven't considered and that is the cost of software and tools. I know you and others have suggested that we port our games to Mac OS and iOS. Fine that is going to cost me at least $1200 for a Macbook running Mac OS 10.7 or whatever the latest release is, and perhaps $500 for an Apple iPad for testing. Oh, round figures we are looking at just over $1700 in hardware and software for me to port my games to iOS and MacOS considering I don't have the hardware and software to do it to begin with. Even if I don't port my games to Mac and iOS I may choose to purchase Windows 8 for $150 and upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 Pro for about $600 in order to make sure my games use the latest compilers, libraries, and tools for Windows 8. That of course costs money as well. If that is not enough to flip your lid how about the time I spend each day or each week on writing said games. Is my time and effort expected to be given away for free? Do you think so little of our audio game developers that they are to be considered little more than slaves? Do you think if someone asked you to put a few hundred hours into a game project you would do it for free? Sorry, if I sound a little harsh here, but I think it is high time that someone speak up and set this community straight on a few basic facts of life which it seems some people haven't considered or thought too much about. A few days ago Cara asked the question if the community would support our developers, make it worth our time to continue developing products for this community, and the costs listed above is a prime reason why. Developing high quality games costs lots of money. Far more money than the average blind American collects from SSI checks each month. A game developer will spend many hours developing and testing the software and that time and effort shouldn't be considered free either. So its not unreasonable for a person to charge a fee of $25 to $30 from each customer to pay for decent sounds, music, to pay for web space, or anything he or she needs as well as a bit extra for taking the time to do it in the first place. Remember we owe you absolutely nothing at all. We do it because we like writing games, but we also want some financial compensation for the time and money spent on creating them. If you are not willing to financially support the audio game developers you have, insist on them releasing free games, then they won't be around very long. There are other markets out there for a blind developer to sell products to. For example, if I wrote a day by day planner similar to the one from Blindsoftware.com and sold it to the general public I probably would make more off that one product then any audio game just because I'd be selling it to college students, small businesses, and average house holds. The point being if I were interested in making money I could do it by simply investing my time and my efforts into products for the general public and not waste the time or effort on audio games. I consider writing these games as a hobby, a side business, but if people like Michael here are going to suggest or demand that developers give away good games for free then those people have another thing coming to them. Not everyone can give away games like Jim Kitchen does because there are costs of doing business of which you guys obviously haven't considered. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "michael barnes" <c...@samobile.net> > To: <gamers@audyssey.org> > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 11:48 PM > Subject: Re: [Audyssey] An Announcement Regarding BSC Games > > >> The only way that Bavisoft and Justin could get back in our good graces is >> >> to make the next few games free and really good. >> Two show their apology by making their old titles freeware, and to get on >> >> the list so we could talk with them. >> >> --- >> Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org >> If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to >> gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. >> You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at >> http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. >> All messages are archived and can be searched and read at >> http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. >> If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the >> list, >> please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
