making money with custom maps !?

[Warby]

most of you probably haven't noticed but i added a paypal donations button on my website http://www.warby.de right after the release of dm_granddiablo which took me roughly 6 month of spare time to finish. i was thinking that if i had spend that time doing commercial freelance work i would have probably made around 5-10k euro in that time frame ... assuming that there is actually jobs lined up. so i said "in theory" making a community all custom content map should rake you in a similar amount.

so the paypal button was added and i wrote on the official epic board where i pimped the map that i would appreciate it if everyone who downloads and likes the map would donate a couple of bucks. my target was getting 500 euros out of this ... than i would have considered that experiment a success.

the reactions from the players where divided.

-one third was deeply offended and instantly bashed me and said that my money making attempts are against everything the mod community stands for and is unethical and bla

-one third said they love the map and they would donate something ( but never did )

-one third completely ignored my paypal talk and just discussed the map ( i like these guys the best friendly and no bullshit )

so far i have received exactly 1 euro and it was from my friend x-tender i told him to do it in order to test if the button works and offered to reimburse him if it was successful. he declined and instead he said that i owe him a new map now so i discussed this with a bunch of other friends and they all agreed that i am not aggressive enough they suggested 2 things:

1) put the paypal window before every download on my website so only people that actually pay get to download it. i don't like this because i both don't know how to set this up and once on some server or uploaded to fps banana or file planet or god knows what site will make nobody download it from me.

2) i shoudl start making a map ... make one incredible screenshot and than basically hold the map hostage and say i will finish/release it once the paypal counter on my website hits a specified amount.

i like the second solution quite abit only concerns i have are that:

1) people will try to destroy my reputation for "selling out"

2) i know that everything you create with unrealed is epics property and i am sure its the same with valves tools and cryengine so i migth actually break some kind of law by doing this

3) the specified amount will never be reached and the whole thing will be a huge embarrassment

4) the experiment is a success and everyone starts doing it further fueling the downward spiral of the mod community

what are your thoughts on this ?

[Zacker]

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.

[Erratic]

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

[e-freak]

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.

[Minos]

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.

[Campaignjunkie]

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.

[Furyo]

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.

[Bic-B@ll]

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

[Chunks]

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.

[kleinluka]

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.

[Nysuatro]

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.

[Pampers]

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

[2d-chris]

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

[Steppenwolf]

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.

[FrieChamp]

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!