Put Monkey on Steam
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Put Monkey on Steam
| ||
| http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=765§ion=software GameMaker is already on Steam. Construct 2 will likely get on Steam. Yeah, those are more clicky "program" heavy, but Monkey still would benefit from having a presence on Steam. Can sell keys and keep the latest version of Monkey updated on Steam - people can redeem the keys here or just use the latest versions published. >opinions for why it shouldn't be on Steam No. Monkey is the best tool for making 2d games. Better than what's already on Steam, better than anything else available. If those tools are on Steam then Monkey should be too. |
| ||
| I don't like steam. |
| ||
| Don't steam take a 30% minimum cut? |
| ||
| There are still only 706 registered users on this forum. I've purchase 6 of those licenses. Steam has several million users. It's not difficult to speculate that getting on Steam could dramatically increase the number of Monkey users, and that benefits everyone. Mark gets more money, and the community expands with more people contributing. Going from $120 to $99 was a loss of 17.5% profit. Shareit takes 4.9% + 1 USD/Euro. Is access to Steam's massive audience worth the extra 7%? We have one game on Steam already and I can tell you there is no reason why we would not put every new game we make on Steam. Extra thought isn't necessary. 30% is fair. There are others who take as much as 80%! People who complain about 30% don't know how good of a deal that is for what Steam offers. >I don't like steam. Why...? And you like BFG an assuredly anti-developer company? They have a download client with DRM too. And their rates are nowhere as good as Steam's? I hope Mark reads this and seriously considers. The other game dev tools Monkey competes with will have access to Steam's audience and will continue to grow from exposure to that audience. Getting on Steam now is a big opportunity. |
| ||
| I don't like steam because of their security issues. No need to have a trojan horse on my harddisk. ;) Beside that I think your idea is not that bad. ;) Actually I have steam on my harddisk because my son loves to play train simulator... But I don't see how this would help to increase the sales. Having something in steam doesn't mean people buy it. I agree that Mark should really do something with the marketing because Monkey deserves a much wider audience. |
| ||
| Good idea. Monkey definitely deserves a bigger userbase. We should be jn the thousands, not the hundreds, with software of this potential. If stem helps grow that number significantly, go for it, i say! |
| ||
| I was going to post this as well. i think it is a great idea. |
| ||
| @Soap - why do you have 6 licenses? |
| ||
| I buy one for each person who works with me. I will buy more in the future. |
| ||
| "Having something in steam doesn't mean people buy it." I really don't understand your logic here Xaron. Steam is the best shop window on PC/Mac bar none - of course people will buy something if it is a good product. Assuming Valve accept your game/app, then getting on Steam is the single easiest way grow your userbase (and make money). I guess it comes down to Mark's priorities/values. |
| ||
| @Soap How do you get a game on Steam? Do you have to go through Greenlight? |
| ||
| We got a game on Steam before Greenlight. Now Greenlight is required for new devs. |
| ||
| I hate steam!!! |
| ||
| not a massive steam fan either, but saying that I think not taking advantage of it is a really big mistake, lets not forget that the more copies mark sells the longer he can work on it. just throwing this out there but if it did go on steam and went stellar with insane sales, im sure it would trigger mark into high gear he would have the money to take on more paid staff which would mean more work done on the site and the language. Mark is a stunning programmer, but lets face it when you compare this site to others in the same field it's like something right out of the 80's, and thats no real fault of anyones, its simply a result of them not having the manpower at their disposal that other products have. more money for mark is good for everyone, so its stupid not to want him to make more money, and being on steam would enable him to reach more people. im all for it, even tho as I said im no fan of steam. |
| ||
| Why dont you guys like Steam, I love it?! And I think it has helped in saving the PC gaming market. The only thing I dont like about it is the regional pricing, but thats not Valve's/Steam's fault. |
| ||
| While i don't like the project green light, i do think Steam is great. And it has done well for the indie gaming too. |
| ||
| Because that's what we need, monkeys doing a conga around the edges of our posts! Seriously, the site is fine IMO. But sure, extra sales from any source are good news, *if* Mark feels Steam is the right place for a true programming language as distinct from a game-maker kit, which isn't entirely clear. |
| ||
| the thing is how will steam be integrated with monkey? will it need the internet on startup or when? |
| ||
| It would be sold and distributed by Steam. The Steam client would open the IDE packaged with Monkey, and Mark can publish multiple of the latest versions in the directory. He could also implement Steamworks in the ide if he wanted for achievements lol. :V Steam DRM is optional and obviously not something which should be implemented so as long as it's not implemented no Internet connection would be required. >the site is fine IMO. For programmers. It's functional, but does not do a good job at marketing compared to other sites. I've talked about what's wrong with the site and what can be done in other threads. The site could be made better to sell more copies. Would it be worth it to be improved to sell more copies or should it stay "fine" forever? I have tried to send a lot of traffic to this site. If the site does not do a good job with converting that traffic then the traffic is wasted, but even then I do not stop because it's in my interest for Mark to sell more copies if that means Monkey can be made better. If people get a bad impression because the design is bad then that's bad - face it, people are shallow. And this isn't a situation where it would be ok to say "well, we don't want shallow people anyway" this is about making more money so that Monkey can be made better. Do we want more features? More targets? More support? More documentation? More community? |
| ||
| I agree to a programmer the site is exactly that functional, but only JUST barely functional in my opinion. Compare this site to say GameMaker , and the failings in the monkey design are clear, failings perhaps the wrong word, but its clear that the site is not being done by a designer but rather a programmer hell i bet done using notepad. the site needs a major 2.0 face lift and mark really needs to dump some money into it, the more they spend on making the site amazing for the normal net user the more sales they will get. |
| ||
| GameMaker? With the annoying menus? And the garish third-party ads everywhere? |
| ||
| Overall their sites are better at selling the products being sold. What's funny is that Monkey is a better tool than all of the other products available for cross platform 2d games, but because its marketing is so bad Mark thought to reduce the price... I don't see that being a magic pill to solve the sales problems based on number of forum users. But if you look at the other companies they are raising their prices because their marketing is much better. Compare the Monkey site with these: http://unity3d.com/ $6,000 to do what Monkey does https://www.scirra.com/ $416 to do what Monkey does http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio $499 to do what Monkey does |
| ||
| Don't forget these guy's increase in sales when they overhaul their site (for the first time in 10 years) : http://www.clickteam.com/website/world/ |
| ||
| I certainly think the $120 price point was fine as it was, and maybe $180 would have been better. As for whether they do what Monkey does, they all do different things and have different marketing models. I bought Monkey and I didn't buy any of the above, and I'm pretty sure more flashing icons wouldn't have tipped the balance. If I were a big 3D maven I would have to look at Unity, but I'm not. Now I agree Monkey needs more publicity and being on Steam wouldn't hurt it at all. There is surely some issue among potential customers with Mark being just one guy, which doesn't bother those of us who have been around since Blitz Basic. For one data point, I know my brother thinks that way. Not sure how easily that is fixed. Maybe with a flashier site he would look like ten guys, I dunno. But Monkey is targeted at more analytic, programmer types than Construct or GameMaker. Will it really impress the target audience? |
| ||
| Gerry I think you just glanced over but at the same time hit the nail on the head. I would be willing to bet that most monkey owners right now , in fact I would not be surprised if 80%+ of the users here have that past experience with either Blitz3D or Max, they are returning customers and the quality of the site is nothing new to them. I bet that the small number of people who now own monkey but never got any of marks other products have done so via word of mouth or knowing others who already use it, the small numbers support this. if I want to make a game and go looking for an easy to get into game making suit or language simply based on the website I would not have gotten monkey, I would have gone with game maker or unity, thankfully i have been a loyal brl supporter since blitz and the fancy websites didnt sway me, but hundreds of others in that situation will go with the site that looks the most professional. no offence but the monkey site looks as I said like something that was made in notepad and written or designed in the late 80's, it needs a total facelift and redesign, it needs dragged kicking and screaming into 2012-2013 and it needs to leave its plane jane does just enough to get by design back in the past. |
| ||
| I agree with Taiphoz. Majority of sales are likely: Returning customers. Word of mouth customers. >I bought Monkey and I didn't buy any of the above And like Taiphoz pointed out, you are a past customer. There are finite past customers, and I bet the majority of those who would buy Monkey already had within the first year of release. >But Monkey is targeted at more analytic, programmer This mindset is bad. This is the reason why those other tools refuse to support power users, and why I refuse to support Clickteam even by linking to them. Basically you are saying that right now Monkey is only friendly to coders, only coders buy it, only coders use it, so why should Monkey try to appeal to non-coders? (Why should Monkey try to get more sales because it seems futile to do so?) If I were in charge of Monkey's marketing I would put a lot of energy into explaining to potential customers the dangers of relying on closed source software for development. The dangers of using tools which are "point and click" because of various reasons. Trust me - a lot can be done to make Monkey sell more copies. All sales boil down to is selling a dream. Ideally the Monkey site would sell the story of an idea: making games. I see none of that on this site. It's very bare bones and mostly just feature lists. Lists of things. Not story telling. This is a marketing disaster. And even then. People are shallow. Just because a person is mostly a coder doesn't mean they are not. If someone thinks something looks terrible they will not try to dig deeper. An argument I get with some people who are coders is that they would rather do everything from scratch so the way they see it everything should be written in C++ and they would never dream of using Monkey even if it takes 10x longer to write everything in C++ and so on - these people can be targeted with marketing pages meeting their concerns and making it easier for them to rationalize a purchase. |
| ||
| no offence but the monkey site looks as I said like something that was made in notepad and written or designed in the late 80's, it needs a total facelift and redesign, it needs dragged kicking and screaming into 2012-2013 and it needs to leave its plane jane does just enough to get by design back in the past. Well, that's your subjective opinion. I certainly don't agree. Glitz for the sake of glitz gets in the way of information presentation - the primary objective of any website. It's important to strike a balance of aesthetics vs information presentation, and in my subjective opinion, this website succeeds in that, though could do with a few minor adjustments perhaps. As for increased marketing equalling more sales, that may indeed happen. But have you ever stopped to consider that for BRL (ie Mark), the status quo is just fine. 'Bigger' is not necessarily better. More customers won't necessarily deliver a better product, and could in fact have the opposite effect. Being 'bigger' complicates things. BRL has been in business for *years*, and by adhering to the current business model. It's obviously enough for Mark to make a comfortable living, or he'd try a different approach or do something else. |
| ||
| Soap what is your story then? If it wasn't the slick marketing dream sold to you by this sites sleek designs why did you hand over your money for monkey? |
| ||
| I won't talk much about my story, but I am not a normal user at all. Marketing works. If you think it does not then you are wrong. Mark could increase his sales just by doing basic split tests as time goes by using something like http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ That would be enough to dramatically increase conversion, but still more could be done. Please no more fear of success talk. Getting Monkey on Steam is a big opportunity and if it does happen Mark WILL make more money, we will have more users here, more people will contribute, maybe Mark will hire more people to develop more targets, or improve documentation, or work on marketing. More money is not bad. |
| ||
| Yeah I agree more money is never a bad thing, and although I dont think I mentioned it I will echo it as soap said, more sales means more users here on the forums, more users means more code more community and more help. funny thing is that most of whats been said here was said back during Blitz3D and I am sure said again during Max and he didnt do much if anything during their product life times so I doubt anything new will change here, its a shame really. |
| ||
| Soap said: "I refuse to support Clickteam even by linking to them." I don't know about their dev software, but their installer and patcher for Windows are fine. (Though currently I like CreateInstallFree.) |
| ||
| I am actually coming from Clickteam communauty. Was pissed about the event editor, i prefered pure coding.. PLUS they charge for each exporter.. however its not a bad software it target a specific kind of user. |
| ||
| http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1315309682989989529 >In addition, we hope to announce Greenlight’s first graduating class of Software titles, with at least five Software titles targeted for inclusion in this group. I'll bet money that Construct 2 is one of those five. So two of the bigger competitors to Monkey will have access to Steam's many million large audience. There are very few software applications competing for attention even still, but this will change: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=765§ion=software |
| ||
| I still don't understand where this is coming from. |
| ||
| While it'd be great for Monkey to get Steam exposure I'm not seeing a big similarity between it and what the "software" grouping seems to be about. All their candidates are utilities/applications. Programming language isn't listed as a category. There's a big gap between what Construct 2 gives to the user and what Monkey gives. They're really very different products. The competition between them seems to be similar to the competition between a season bus pass and buying a bike. One is more approachable but limiting, the other is more work but potentially more flexible. |
| ||
| Muddy I dont see that as a reason not to do it, but rather as a greater reason why it should be done. the long and short of it is the more people that look at it, see it, or hear about it, the more people that will eventually buy it, and I think thats what this is all about, growing the community, growing marks sales and growing awareness of the product. |
| ||
| I'm not saying don't do anything. I'm saying that Steam appears to using "software" to mean something that doesn't fit Monkey very well (or any other programming language) but does fit the likes of Construct 2 or GameMaker. "Hey, look. Construct 2 is up there, so Monkey can/should be too." just doesn't hold up as an argument. I'd be very interested to what would happen with Monkey applying to Greenlight. It seems to me they'd have to create a new category for it and you'd then see its more direct competitors for dev attention join. |
| ||
| listen thats all mute really, before those tools it was only games, some one has to be first, and when that first comes along others follow. just because there is not a label for monkey to sit under is no reason not to go for it, just means they would be the first to try, and for the love of god, not trying or even asking steam just because no one else like them is there is just so dumb on so many levels. as for greenlight, Im not sure I like that whole system at all, its far to easy for hype and no substance to push its way through while quality games that may not look or sound the best are being shoved aside, I dont think it will be long before an indie game gets shunned by green light only to later go super sonic on the other gaming portals, greenlight and steam is one of those things that sounds like a good idea but I fear will turn out to be a turd. |
| ||
| just because there is not a label for monkey to sit under is no reason not to go for it, just means they would be the first to try, and for the love of god, not trying or even asking steam just because no one else like them is there is just so dumb on so many levels. Again, I'm not saying anything of the sort. |
| ||
| Monkey still has the IDE - that's the "software" part as you relate it to the other tools. I did mention in the OP that the others are more wholly software, but in my opinion that is irrelevant given they all are meant for the same thing and Monkey is the best option. Monkey is in the same category as all of those other tools and languages. Mark! Please submit to Greenlight. Even if you never mean to actually have Monkey be published on Steam, you will still gain sales from having the exposure on Greenlight. Please do not ignore this opportunity. |
| ||
| Construct 2 was accepted onto Steam today. http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1281535715093415350 |
| ||
| http://store.steampowered.com/app/227240/ And now Construct 2 is on Steam. 5,788,057 users on Steam. There are now 797 registered users here. |
| ||
| Ah, but can I use Construct 2 to create roguelike games featuring procedurally generated levels? The following marketing points suggest I can: * Make the games you've always dreamed of * Design any genre of 2D game We shall see! ;) Getting back to your point: 5,788,057 users on Steam. There is no doubt that if Monkey was available on Steam it would attract more customers - I'm sure Mark knows that. |
| ||
| For the record, I think Monkey is the best tool for making cross platform 2D games. I mention the other tools because there is urgency for Mark to act. If he misses the opportunity to get on Steam relatively early we will all miss out on the potential. More users, more developers, more community projects, and more money for Mark to buy fancy cars... or hire more coders to add more useful features. Just being on Greenlight could potentially massively increase Monkey's audience. Mark doesn't have to accept releasing it on Steam even. |
| ||
| This was my thinking too Greenlight Monkey X |
| ||
| I Get Clickteam Fusion in the Humble bundle Sale I make some small MMF2.0 project that really impressed me So I upgrade Clickteam Fusion to 2.5 Developer for only $360 I make a little bigger learning project and it ended with I can't do this and I can't do that I ended my learning project with thinking Maybe Clickfusion is NOT made for Windows application so I decided to make a mapeditor to my webgame. the Clickfusion work flow is like this: I can't do this and I can't do that, oooh this object get corrupted and all the code to the object become broken, start revert to a older version AJ the broken object was in this OLD project save too I need a older save. oooh the animation stop working I can't fix it I delete the object and create new one every time I use it. OK it's working but now I can only reload the mapfile 1, 2 or 3 time and then it stop the tile to be reCreated, time to cheat a new solution I save the filename in a .ini and restart the application and reload last used file. (This is how I now load the mapfiles) This is how it feels for me to be "clicking" with Clickteam Fusion now. OK my mapeditor that now become a Windows game in 3 month is still little impressive but I can't do this and I can't do that and I am afraid more thing is corrupted in my project file that I can't see and that maybe can become a problem to Finnish it someday. ANYHOW Humble Bundle make me test and start with Clickteam Fusion and 4 months later I Love/Hate Clickteam Fusion mostly hate but my project is still impressive. Apply Monkey X to Greenlight. Monkey X is going to get a Steam community that can be what Monkey X really need. I am here looking for an alternative to Clickteam Fusion. Fusion don't have code, it can't share code. I CAN make templates but I want to feel the code under my finger again! When I save the project I save all the resources with the code to 1 project file and my backup is now 527MB*2 just to backup the project for 3 month. I was thinking Clickteam Fusion was like Visual Studio the visual part with an event handler. I never image they could sell a product so expensive that was so badly executed. Clickteam Fusion is still fast when it's actually working, My project maybe take 2 year to create with C# (there: I still CAN say something positive about Clickteam Fusion) Apply to Greenlight and make every one we know, to vote Monkey X on Greenlight, and may someone please convert me! Sorry I can't write in any verbal language, so NO offense please |
| ||
| I read about you guys comment now. I still in decision mode I want to have real code, NOT to complicate, so finding solution take more time that the actually coding. I don't want a sluggish IDE, dream would be if FlashDevelop or IntelliJ IDEA would work with Monkey X Jungle Ide still feel's little simple compare to FlashDevelop or IntelliJ IDEA but if I chose Monkey X I probably buy the Jungle Ide What probably going to make me decide is the documentation from the installation I copy the .\docs\html\. to my phone so now I can read about Monkey functionality on the toilet and in the bed. My wife is already little annoyed that I take too long time.. I can read offline For me the one with the best referent information for the functionality going to win my heart. I am really impressed with the reference guide that come with Moneky X For the Record: I think Steam is the coolest thing that happen to the PC ever BTW: the Steam collection card people get by using the program that people is selling: some of that money go back to the developer So the developer get money for selling the program and they get more money when the user use their program (that is So Clever) |
| ||
| @MOBii I come directly from Multimedia Fusion 2 community a few years back. When trying to make my own map editor, the unresolvable memory corruption issues in the actual engine implementation that utilized the maps cost me a project and some people a lot of money. Therefore, we switched to Monkey and never looked back. Steam could definitely benefit from MonkeyX being available there, and vice versa. The only things I truly miss from MMF are being able to whip up a prototype in minutes, and the dirt-easy shader support. I would love to see Monkey support shaders in a similar way it does blending (on a texture blit level), but also with the option to arbitrarily apply a shader to any portion of the screen whether it be a scissor rectangle, stencil mask or whatever. I hope that one day, Monkey will support this. |
| ||
| old thread but I agree. get it on steam greenlight, or just get it on steam period. |
| ||
| Steam or not, there are even more opportunities out there. You could also put it into Mac AppStore and Windows 8 Store (Non-"Metro"-Apps currently get included as URL to product website, in the Windows AppStore). Some hundreds of millions of people could see it, when browsing and searching the AppStores. Just requires the right keywords within the App description ("Monkey-X" "Cross-Platform" "Programming" "Language" "Basic" "Android" "iOS" "HTML" "Flash" "write Apps and Games" "translate and compile to" "C++" "C#" "Java" "JavaScript" etc.) At least with Mac OS X AppStore, it would provide the possibility of automatic updates for the customer. 20% to 30% goes to the AppStore provider for the management (Distribution and hosting etc), similar in price to the "BRL Affiliate Program - Earn 20%!". They also could write to many computer magazines and developer portals around the world, so the news get spread (for example when Monkey-X goes 3D, which would be big news). Enough said, I bet BRL already knows all this. If they don't do it, there may be reasons for not doing it... |
| ||
| If I greenlight it and stick it on steam do I get 20% of all sales? (Joking! :D) |
   |