making money with custom maps !?

[Jetsetlemming]

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.

[DelaZ]

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://users.telenet.be/desert/duaz/prices/index.htm

[Warby]

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

that was what i was thinking and yet fileplanet and many other sites weasel themselves out of this by charging for the "bandwidth" !

[-HP-]

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

[Warby]

i kind of have given up already ! the blood from a stone comment really nails it

but that basically also means no more time spending on custom maps because they wont pay for a house and food !

i do think its an interesting topic none the less though and would like to hear even more opinions

[Ginger Lord]

We had a similar situation albeit with a different product, being poor people creating Ham and Jam and having spent months looking for someone to lend us a SVN server we were out of luck and rapidly running out of space on the graciously donated server by cvsdude.com

They said they'd happily give us the next level of service/server package but we'd have to pay for it. We were also due to renew our vBulletin licence as well as domain names. We spent a while trying to think of ways to pay for all this (probably about £150+) from splitting it between the team (£20 each or so) which we knew would be hard to sell, to having adverts which would be hard to stomach and then we just decided to have a donate button just to see if it worked. We expected nothing from it.

By pure chance/luck it turned out the devoted forum members we had were really devoted and we raised that money in about a week, we paid the bills and we've almost got enough for next years ones too. We also said come the time when there's nothing to spend it on, we'd donate it to WW2 Veterans charities too.

[Psy]

I guess a single map is too small a thing to actually donate money for. For something like a map pack full of all sorts of custom goodies there's a higher change that people would donate some cash for all the effort gone into it.

The only place where donations work really well are community-based websites like Interlopers.

[robert.briscoe]

I feel your pain warby. I've been wondering about making some kind of returns from my mapping also for a while. An idea i had was to create and sell custom content for mods - i.e. textures, models, sounds etc available ready to use for a number of different engines (people are always looking for props to use in garry's mod, machima etc).

Whenever i release a new map, the amount of people I get emailing me and asking me if they can rip all my assets to use in their mods is huge and im thinkin there may be something in it. It would all be microtransaction stuff really, low prices for individual items but I kinda get put off by the fact people will probably just share the stuff around once one person has downloaded it though but that seems the nature of things in this day of age.

[dux]

I feel your pain warby. I've been wondering about making some kind of returns from my mapping also for a while. An idea i had was to create and sell custom content for mods - i.e. textures, models, sounds etc available ready to use for a number of different engines (people are always looking for props to use in garry's mod, machima etc).

Whenever i release a new map, the amount of people I get emailing me and asking me if they can rip all my assets to use in their mods is huge and im thinkin there may be something in it. It would all be microtransaction stuff really, low prices for individual items but I kinda get put off by the fact people will probably just share the stuff around once one person has downloaded it though but that seems the nature of things in this day of age.

Don't you work at DICE, though? What does a bit of money for a custom map matter now?

[2d-chris]

Exactly dux, allot of the people posting here work for good developers ...

I suggest finding something else other than level design to do in your free time. Theres obviously no harm in making custom maps for fun, but it's not the only thing you can do start playing a musical instrument and within a few years you can be gigging after work and make yourself a healthy little on the side

[Warby]

I feel your pain warby. I've been wondering about making some kind of returns from my mapping also for a while. An idea i had was to create and sell custom content for mods - i.e. textures, models, sounds etc available ready to use for a number of different engines (people are always looking for props to use in garry's mod, machima etc).

Whenever i release a new map, the amount of people I get emailing me and asking me if they can rip all my assets to use in their mods is huge and im thinkin there may be something in it. It would all be microtransaction stuff really, low prices for individual items but I kinda get put off by the fact people will probably just share the stuff around once one person has downloaded it though but that seems the nature of things in this day of age.

Don't you work at DICE, though? What does a bit of money for a custom map matter now?

well employment is slavery i don't want to be employed for the rest of my life i want to have a steady independent income that i don't need to get up for at 8 in the morning ... you know something that is online 24/7 and keeps on generating money for me to live from.

[dux]

Sounds a bit like a couch potato's dream to me. Why not just do what everyone else does and retire on a pension? Besides you're a good Level Designer and at a good game company. I'd happily get up at 8 to do what you do but instead, and I'm sure KoKo can relate to this - am constantly being rejected by every company I apply to or seeing my position getting handed out to people with less talent or experience purely because they got lucky. Bit of a rant, sorry but it just annoys me to hear that when you're in a good position earning some good money (I think?) when guys like me and KoKo can't even get our foot in the door and are really struggling for money and a position in the games industry no matter where we apply.

[Warby]

absolutely my personal couch potato dream

edios just sacked 30 people at crytal dynamic who knows how safe my job at ioi is. i would really like to have a reliable selfmade financial safety net.

but to some degree i am also sick of making other peoples dream games. i want to create what i want and when i want ! at all times !

and i just enjoy making custom maps that much more than being employed as a leveldesigner. before this negatively reflects at io i must say that the working conditions at io are "fantastic".

i am very willing to work really hard around the clock but only if its my dream project but people who employee me just usually don't provide that. i also feel the urge to mention here that i don't intend to retire ever. i want to die creating what ever that might be we are creating in 50 years

i talked with koko about this very issue in icq a couple of weeks ago and i think i kind of shocked him by implying that i sort of envy him. because the time between jobs were always the best times of my life

however that you guys don't get job offers thrown at i don't understand at all :monocle:

[robert.briscoe]

To be honest if you think landing a game industry job is the end to all your money and life's problems then I think you'll be sorely dissapointed. Dont get me wrong I love what i do with a passion, it one of the reasons I continue to do it even as a hobby even with a full-time job, but I think Warby is just looking for some kind of financial and creative independance as do many people, Games industry or otherwise.

Personally I worked for a year freelancing before I came to sweden and even though Dice is great, nothing beats being your own boss and having control of your own work. That being said it's a tough world going out on your own, and one of the reasons I left it behind was for some stability finacially and most importantly getting some valuable industry experience as well as doing some travelling while im young(ish)

[Ginger Lord]

If you want to make money on the side, then steer clear of the games industry surely? If you're complaining that you don't get as much as you want from being a paid employee of a large studio, then surely doing it for fun on the side will never touch the salary.

Fix computers for £30-50 a pop, there's always dumb people downloading stuff and breaking their computers. Undercut the nearest store such as PC World here in the UK by a bit to make it tempting.