making money with custom maps !?

I consider it as really interesting that you have put both thoughts and experiments into how one can make money out of making custom maps!

The one third that was deeply offended really annoys me. What is wrong about asking people to donate, if they want to? It's not like that you are taking anyones money or forcing anyone to do anything. I don't believe it to be against the mod community in any way as it's totally fair imo that people want some monetary reward for the work they do.

I don't believe that anyone will ever get anywhere near a decent pay for making custom maps. You could probably go really agressive with your donation strategy but I don't really believe that it will ever hit 500£ or any decent amount.

Pretty much goes against what makes the mod community interesting, the free flowing of work from one to another.

As for donations. They're donations, they're optional, and aren't anything new.

Also, you gotta be pretty full of shit to hold your work back until people pay you off

change engines and produce Second Life content. Basically you can't fail there because enough hockey moms are paying shitful of moneys for a painted extruded cube.

custom content will never get you anything, sadly. best chances would be working on a good map for one of the valve games and hope they buy it sooner or later but I don't know how much they pay for a decent map.

You huge capitalist pig

I'd be surprised if you get more than 5 bucks out of this. It's just a horrible idea imo - once your map gets added to a server everyone will automatically download it anyway...

Asking for donations is alright and fair but charging people to download your map is just plain wrong. If you really want to make some money out of it get a few advertisers.

No offense to you (you do great work, you're awesome, etc.) but yeah, this is a terrible idea. (a) People have been getting free custom maps from hobbyists for years so there's no guilt about downloading a map off FPS Banana and not even knowing the designer's name much less paying him/her, (b) As you already said, people are going to circumvent a Paypal download gate anyway.

I think the only model that even remotely works is the Sven Co-Op model, where donors get extra bonus features.

... So I guess all you have to do is make an awesome mod that everyone will want to play, and then draft a set of premium features that are enticing enough but don't alienate the non-paying players (after all, the donors have to feel better than somebody, right?) - piece of cake.

I am one of very few examples I know of people who have actually made money making custom maps. However I never went about it the way you are, which I think is totally counterproductive, and results in you shooting yourself in the foot on the long run.

The first time I made some money was for making a map for someone /a group. I had absolute freedom over the entire map, didn't even have to have their name somewhere in there. The whole thing was just because they wanted more custom maps for DoDS (in its infancy then) and were ready to pay some mappers to make them some. It was 50 bucks, so you'll understand this was entirely symbolic. 4 other mappers were given the same amount, I was the only one to finish the work, everyone else took the money and ran.

The two other times I did make some money were from contests. The first one organized by this very same group, which netted me another 100 bucks. The third and final time I did was by winning a contest with one of my maps, which got me 3,000 bucks and a G15 logitech keyboard I'm typing this message with. That contest was organized by a sister site of TurboSquid, so it clearly had more financial means, and the jury were industry types.

All of this to say, custom maps players will never get you anything, they live by the standards set by so many mappers out there, that is that everyone does it for free, either for fun or to get noticed (or both). That's a strong feeling about custom maps that I really don't think any attempt on your part would overcome. Just look at how many people in an online group are willing to donate money to play on the server they rent. They're all too happy to live off the donations of another member.

There is a strong bias in the gaming culture that erects the purchase of a game and the machine to run it on as the ONLY barrier to entry players face. That dates back to Pong and the start of gaming, and multiplayer gaming hasn't been around enough for that to change. That's for the Westernized countries we all live in. The state of the Asian industry is much different, and in countries where buying for every single addon is the norm (you buy the empty shell and micro transactions do the rest) you would have a lot more success. Only problem is the types of games we generally make maps for are close to non existent over there.

So, to conclude this, simply enough: To make money off custom maps, they need to be bought by the game makers or win contests made by pro sites. In both examples, the money you get represents what is believed to be a fair representation of the value of the work you produced, seen by industry folks. The main difference with the general public is they have an entirely different view on that, and often don't realize the amount of work that goes into it.

Either way, luck played a huge role in these occasions. I answered a forum post for the first two times, and was sent an email by that company once they had entered my map without asking me....So I might have never even known about the contest had they not done that.

obviously its a lot of work and lost opportunity cost (gogo economics class), but i think its sort of foolish to expect anything back. it's a mod community (ie 99.999% free and full of people who probable warezed the game in the first place). you gave the map away anyway, you need to look at donations in the same way as buying. if people had to pay a dollar for your map they simply wouldn't play it. why would they give you a dollar if they already have the map?

deserved? yes

expected? no

I would receive more enjoyment from a ton of people enjoying something I created. I can't ever see making enough money from donations to make it worthwile from a purely monetary standpoint.

Quote from Minotauro

Asking for donations is alright and fair but charging people to download your map is just plain wrong. If you really want to make some money out of it get a few advertisers.

exactly. its ok to put a donation button on your site as long as its optional which is what the term "donation" defines...it being optional.

but once you FORCE people to pay you before downloading your map it's not a donation anymore. It's a fee. And this does go against what the custom community stands for and I think you might be better off turning to commercial freelancing, I highly doubt anyone will pay you for a custom map download. Certainly not the 5k-10k you would be making working freelance.

And I don't think it is legal that you ask money for something where you dont have a licence for. A donation is ok, but having a price for a download of your map ..

You must also think that a lot of the gamers are students. And they always have a moneyproblem. So I don't think there is a lot to earn.

there are many clans that would shell out good money for their own custom map, so if you want to make the dough thats the way to go

Interesting but one simple conclusion .... money sucks. As pampers said you can make enough for beer vouchers with clan maps. In the past I was paid a little for doing a map for a well known CS league.

The day making maps becomes about money for me is the day I find a new profession, at least when you do it for a living

I would never pay money for a custom map. This is not what the community is all about. But if you want to make money with custom content then you can try it somewhere else. My father for example plays this train simulator/builder (EEP 5) that is heavily based on custom content. A lot of this stuff is for free but there are also a lot of websites that provide custom content for money.

This community is quite different from the fps one because these train sims are mostly played by old dudes with money. And they really really appreciate high quality models of trains and train stations because a) they are obsessed with realism and details and b) there are not so many talented 3D artists among them who can actualy provide them with that.

Have you considered to put ads on your website? If you create something spectacular (which you usually do ) and hype the map, you could make some money from hits on the site. Or you could look for companies who are interested in putting content right into the level. I don't know how far you "would" like to go down that in game advertisement road though, if you are worried about "selling out"...

Good thread!

You're trying to get blood from a stone, sorry dude. People just don't view custom content as something to pay for, players or producers of the content. It's something you do for fun, what you get out of it is purely the enjoyment of creation, with a little resume work on the side The mapper/player relationship is not one of salesman and customer. It's one of two different fans both doing something they enjoy purely as a recreational hobby.

On top of that, if your map is worth playing at all 99% of the people who encounter it will do so from downloading it automatically from a server running the map in its playlist.

Trying to charge for downloads is also against pretty much every mod/custom content EULA I know of. Certainly for Source.

Some years ago a friend and I (dude and DelaZ or "DUAZ") really made some money with custom maps (around 2K € each). But the amount of work/price paid was totally unbalanced. We made some maps for some big EU clans, we weren't paid much but it was fun while it lasted. I just found the old prices back... kinda funny .

You can find them here :

http://%7boption%7d

just forget it Warby... you're doing it wrong.