“I want to kindle the creative spirit in others,” Townsend told me over e-mail. “My games are open-source because I want people to learn from them, or use them to build their own things.”
Notice how open sourcing their product had no impact on their sales. I'll be so happy when defensive software licensing dies after people realize code isn't worth protecting.
(Some code is worth licensing. It was most of Id Software's revenue stream. I'm referring to all other code that isn't designed to be licensed, which people still insist on being paranoid about protecting.)
A port is a derivative work, yes, though the MPL has a kind of unique rule for derivative works. You can combine MPL-licensed source files with non-MPL-licensed source files, as long as all changes to the original MPL-licensed source files stay MPL.
I think what's really happening though is that they're not relying on the MPL at all for permission to do the iOS port, but on a direct license from Townsend. It sounds like there is even some kind of formal business relationship (the article is a bit vague on it, but it sounds like Townsend is involved in the port and getting a share of the profits).
Michael issued me a license, and he gets a 50% royalty. It would have been extremely sleezy of me if I profited from this without including Michael. Even if it were entirely legal.
Additionally, I didn't write the game in JavaScript. So none of the original source was used. I used a snapshot Michael gave me as a reference and rewrote the entire thing from scratch in RubyMotion.
My impression (based on the article alone) was that the author of the ios version is pretty much benefiting from the sales exclusively. Perhaps I missed something or there are sources that provide more information on the matter, but Townsend saying 'of course you can adapt it for the iPhone' almost sounds like he left money on the table.
If he isn't getting a share of the sales and didn't explicitly provide a license to release the ios app under different terms, then I feel it should be open source (at least the parts derived from the original).
> Of course Michael is benefitting from the sales and the work he put in.
Based on... what? You don't see it as possible that when granting permission for the iOS adaptation he just assumed it would be freely available, like the original? (at the time of my previous comment, there was no response from the author of the iOS port)
Thanks. I was merely arguing that based on the article, we don't really get clarification on whether Townsend was being compensated. When I replied to your previous post I didn't realize you were the author of the port.
By [Townsend's] estimate, making one game a year that performs like A Dark Room would make it possible for him to quit his day job, but he’s unsure whether this whole experience was just a fluke.
It's worded in a way that makes it ambiguous whether he means that as a pure hypothetical, or something like "I made about a year's worth of income from A Dark Room, and if that were repeatable I could quit my day job".
I'm surprised this game hasn't earned you enough to retire on. It's been #1 on the paid list for a long time, I figured you guys must be rolling in the dough, but in the article it says you would need to repeat the success of the game every year for you to quit your day job. That's unbelievable.
How can flappy birds be making $50k per day, and your #1 paid app only makes $2k per day?
We've had 630k downloads to date. 30% goes to Apple. Michael and I split the rest. From my half, the IRS gets 45%. So my net so far is $120k.
Now, given that we're no where near the #1 spot, we're averaging about $1,000 a day. But that figure is dropping too. ADR is a depreciating asset with a life span of two years I'd say (making this assumption based on what I've seen with other paid apps and their rank history).
Wow, I'm shocked at how less frequently paid apps are downloaded. Don't get me wrong, 630k downloads of a paid app is very impressive, but it's ridiculous that you only make ~$100k out of the deal.
Do you have any statistics on how far players have made it in your game? I, for one, downloaded the game just to see what it was about. This is not my type of game, so I quit after only playing about 10 minutes.
Reason I ask is that you could test this out as a freemium app. Free to download, but after a certain period, the user has to pay to continue.
Let's say 20% of people that download it are hooked. If you get 20x the download rate on free, that means you could have a 400% increase in revenue. It might be worth testing out.
We didn't want to break the immersion. ADR simply wants to be that game you pay for one time up front and enjoy (hopefully). No strings attached. We simply request that you gift the game to someone else if you like it :-)
We thought about it, but the moment you do that, the game is marked as "offers in-app purchases". At initial glance (if you don't take the time to actually look at what purchases are available), you're left thinking that it's "yet another game that'll present a pay wall when I'm about to finish it".
Everybody says that flappy birds was making $50k/day, but I highly doubt that the game would have been pulled from the appstore if it really had been making even 1/10th that much money a day.
We made ADR free for two days back when it wasn't doing well. In that two day period we received ~15k downloads (and we weren't even a ranked game at the time).
There is an order of magnitude difference between the downloads rates for premium vs free apps (probably 2x). So it is entirely possible that a top ranked free app gets a ton of downloads a day relative to a top ranked paid app.
Lots of downloads, yes - but I don't know what kind of person could turn down $50,000/day, which is what a lot of people have claimed flappy birds was making when it was pulled off the AppStore.
Tough call. I get a small taste of what he went through. You start to question the value of the game when you get reviews like this (but 10x worse for a top free game):
>Garbage ★ by XxlCraiglxX - Version 1.6 - Jun 13, 2014
>It's so nice to have this hive-mind community full of hipsters and morons raving about the worst goddamn games. Same thing happened with Angry Birds and Flappy Birds. You people are disgusting. Horrible unwashed masses of brainless consumers. Hey morons, take a step back and really consider the piece of crap you rated 5 stars. No, really, just take a moment.
The entire experience has been a roller coaster. Every time ADR hits a top spot, I dream about a future where I don't have to work a 9-5. But then it drops, and those dreams are taken away. That being said, 50k a day would definitely bring me to that goal quickly (just not the case for me).
Regarding Reviews - you can always smile (giggle? :-) at those responses given that you have (thousands of?) people like me, who has played games on every platform for 15+ years, has a very generous budget and has a pretty good portion of the AAAs by my console, but found ADR (on the web) to be one of my top 10 games in the last couple years, probably behind Jelly Defense and Don't Starve, but definitely ahead of GTA V in terms of sheer visceral pleasure.
The Apple Bar Geniuses at the Store in Palo Alto all loved it as well.
I hope just one of our heartfelt loves can equal at least a thousand haters, who, as we all know, just gotta hate. :-)
All the nice reviews do indeed raise spirits. The most wonderful moments are when I get an email from a kid that is now inspired to get into programming and start building games. So yes, thank you for the kinds words! :fistbump:
It was definitely soul crushing the first 100 times. The UK is particularly critical. I've gotten used to seeing "dull, rubbish, pretentious, scam" from UK reviews. Still stings just a little bit though.
We wanted to add more to the game, but at some point you have to pull back on your urge to tack on more things. So from that standpoint ADR is done.
If your rank is low, release, and release often. Don't sweat the reviews (use them as a means to gain feedback from the people who've downloaded the game). You can also make your app free for a couple of days which will bring in new eyes (you lose your rank if you do that, so just be aware).
As for being a top ranked app (and in my case, a top ranked app that lives and dies by its reviews), I really can't release a new version unless I add something that significantly increases end user engagement.
For example: v1.5 of the game hit the number one spot, and dropped to #2 18 days later. The moment it dropped I released v1.6 of the game which added developer commentary from me and Michael. We went back to #1 for 2 days after a week long slump. That being said, I compared numbers after the fact and our review conversion rates only increased by ~0.2%.
Sudden increase in downloads started in UK. Any ideas at all as to age profile of the downloaders? I'm guessing 19-14 University students, although that is based on a hunch from the desire for verbal engagement and fiction reading preferences of the students I teach...
For the US, I think the age profile are kids in middle school and high school. Just from what I've heard from my friends, the game spread like wild fire through schools. This is my current working theory especially since the game dropped significantly in rank the moment summer started.
I was about to mention the holidays. Excellent, perhaps they will be back for more. A bit of reasoning and verbal gymnastics might actually help cognitive development!
this is totally unrelated but you know you have a "clone" on android? more broadly your game is very hard to clone because it is very heavily content based...unlike other hits which are easy to mimic because based on a simple game engine...what are your thoughts about this? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appslight....
Legally, they have every right to do this. This clone doesn't bother me because it's free and looks like it doesn't monetize on ads either (they just PhoneGap'ed the game and made it playable on touch devices). There is a serious gray area now with regards to ADR's trademark and brand (and developers taking advantage of the open source version/brand for personal gain).
It's fantastic to see this game finally get recognized. Amir is a great developer and it has been a lot of fun to watch the game progress over the past few months.
I first learned of A Dark Room when Amir presented it to the local Dallas Ruby group. His presentation on development in RubyMotion is worth a read as well: http://amirrajan.net/12k-lines-of-RM/
Reading his developer blog, I was completely caught off guard when he said (weeks in) that he had only then realized that there was a second phase of the game. Good for him for not just saying, "Oh, wow, never mind!" at that point! (But also, it's interesting that he found the first phase alone worth recreating. It's engaging, but most of the game's depth of story comes later.)
The New Yorker is a wonderful print magazine which posts some (all I think if you have a subscription) of its articles online, primarily for convenience. I think for many of its audience, the smattering of links that could accompany an article like this might truly take away from the intended atmosphere if you will the article and publication intends to provide.
Certainly for me I find it refreshing and I try to read their magazine as much as I can. I've learned plenty and can choose what I'd like to follow up on myself as opposed to through the guidance of the editor, author, or web designer who is creating the online edition. And the flow is never disrupted by text which indicates a link whether in the traditional blue with underline or otherwise.
We can all google, but to enjoy an article is a pleasure in its own right.
It's not just about following up, it is about separating fact from fraud and building a culture of honesty and accuracy, especially in the modern era where fake information is so easy to create and spread.
Amir was here in OKC this past Tuesday giving a talk on RubyMotion. It was pretty interesting hearing him talk about the process and how the game sat on tens of downloads a day for 3 months before seemingly randomly shooting to the top of the App Store and now to 600k+ downloads.
Bought this game right before a flight. (Come to think of it, the only time I've bought games on the App Store was prior to a flight.) Was intrigued by all the feedback left in the App Store. The hours of entertainment were well worth the $0.99.
An intriguing idea... the text content enabling relevant ads. The problem is it would break immersion (even text ads, because they bring in the outside world).
I wonder if there is a way to incorporate ads, so that it does not break immersion? e.g. non-trading aliens visiting earth, being puzzled by the ads. Perhaps some way of mocking them. Or, a game based on ads - finding similarities between them; or links (similar to wikipedia-based games). Unfortunately, I would guess that reacting to ads might breach Adwords' terms of service.
It could be done in a positive way, like TV shows about advertisement (The Gruen Transfer; those best-of compilations). This is kind of crazy, but: given text content, rating ads, for best targeting, worst targeting, controversial targeting, etc.
Anyone who played the web version (as I did) knew it was special. Now not all special games become hits on mobile, but it's not actually all that surprising.
Wow, because random apps have never shot to the top of the listings! Gee whillikers, that sure was an unpredictable black swan, totally outside previous reference classes!
I see what he's saying. Maybe not "black swan", but it's pretty crazy. A Dark Room reminds me of a BBS door game from the late 80's. It blows my mind that this became the #1 app.
Now, if it was Cookie Clicker (basically the same formula) I wouldn't be surprised - that actually has nice graphics, a broad appeal, lots of dark humor.
This is a great game (the web version, at least) but not at all something I'd expect to go mainstream.
Taleb talks about books/movies/etc becoming successes with little to no predictability. Games fall into this category. Hard to tell which games will become runaway successes, especially from small studios. But you know, it's cool, you can just be a dick about it instead.
> Taleb talks about books/movies/etc becoming successes with little to no predictability
No, Taleb loves to sophistically equivocate between meanings of 'black swan' to neutralize any criticism. Did a perfectly ordinary phenomenon in network dynamics and winner-take-all scenarios happen? Taleb takes this as an example. Does someone point out that this is consistent with all past experience and non-power-law distributions like log-normals? Oh, suddenly, he means black swans are totally unpredictable things like 9/11!
Well, he actually calls things relating to those areas mentioned (arts, etc) as grey swans because they do happen, but you can't really predict which of the multitude of things coming out will become the next runaway success. Either way, seems to be a sore spot for you. Chill out.
Notice how open sourcing their product had no impact on their sales. I'll be so happy when defensive software licensing dies after people realize code isn't worth protecting.
(Some code is worth licensing. It was most of Id Software's revenue stream. I'm referring to all other code that isn't designed to be licensed, which people still insist on being paranoid about protecting.)