Commercial games

[simulacra]

Some sort of miracle has happened: a publisher is actually interested in releasing my game. However, I am curious to know... has any other AGS games been published or commercially distributed? I know Dave Gilbert has mentioned a (completed) remake of the excellent game Bestowers of Eternity.

(I do not know if "commercial" is the right term for it in my case really, since the hourly wage in this business equals something like â,¬1 an hour. Ah, well. It was fun.)

[BerserkerTails]

Well, the first, and I think to this day, only commercial AGS game would be Adventures of Fatman. It sold surprisingly well, from what I've heard.

Bestowers of Eternity will be commercial when completed, but it's far from being done yet, hehe.

[Afflict]

Congrats on the offer!

Off topic has anyone else found the fatman bug where you get points all the time for asking the donut shop guy
where you can get donuts?

[scotch]

Yes, I found that.
Fatman just about covered expenses, personally I don't think any AGS game is going to be making much of a profit, ever.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Why not? AGS has the capabilities. Sam and Max, DoTT, Indy, all these games and many more could have been made with AGS. They just need the right people in tow. AGDInteractive might be such people, too.

[veryweirdguy]

Yes, but how much profit do you think Sam & Max, DoTT, Indy etc make these days, in a world of GTAs & such? Even if they get the coverage in magazines & whatnot, I'd bet they don't make much money. And even if the quality was just as good, a lot less people are gonna buy an AGS made game, sadly, so I agree with scotch on this one.

[scotch]

Exactly, if we lived 10 years ago it'd be a different story.  Now I'm not saying it's technically impossible to make a modern commercial success in AGS, Runaway could (ignoring a couple of graphical features) have been an AGS game, and that sold well fairly recently, but it took a professional studio to make.
I know at least one highly reputable person in this community is trying to make a quality, high res commercial game, and is having real problems getting enough talented people to work on it, I'm not sure it can be done without pay up front (Something Chapter 11 are resorting to, I hear, and they aren't even going commercial).
Tierra are probably the most committed in the amateur adventure making scene and it takes them a year to make a low res remake, that's just a taste of the work that would go into a successful and original high res commercial length game.  I really can't see their Himalaya Studios game selling much outside their current fanbase, hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

[simulacra]

I am not counting on making ends meet in this case. I usually work in the art field, where payment is scarce at best and consider this project to be just the same. I am hoping that the game will get interest because it is very different from games I have seen so far.

The gameplay is not about solving problems in order to progress in the story; rather there is just progression and exploration of the story. This will probably not appeal to hardcore adventure game fans that like "use ball on duck" storytelling, but rather to people who like dreamy and gloomy science-fiction in the tradition of Tarkovskij, Strugastskij and Lem.

This sort of thing can never compete with big commercial projects, but on the other hand: big commercial projects can never compete with the Zone either.