The Future of TT from GG!

[Reagent X]

I did e-mail the Garage Games CEO yesterday with the proposition to purchase the game outright. A bold move to be sure, but I believe a last chance to grow this gem into something much greater. I have spoken with many folks here and am very confident we could raise substantial funding. Not because it makes business sense, necessarily, but because of the pool of talent, passion, dedication and commeraderie that we have assembled here is I believe a very unique thing.

[*Stiffler]

got my check book ready

[joemaruschak]

Hey guys,

I am going to try to explain this all so it makes some sense. I am not trying to convince anyone here to do anything they don't want to do, just going to outline what we are doing.

We made ThinkTanks as a small company a long time ago. It did ok for a small title.. enough to keep 3 guys alive for a year or two. Enough for us to work on some other games (dRacer, BoomBall) inbetween contract jobs and ports of the game (xBox). We started BoomBall and dRacer to solve a problem. The problem was that the business model of making a living making games is based around the idea of selling more 'units'. Supporting a community helps, but only so far as it drives retention enough to keep the community alive and keep the game going to create a compelling value proposition to the new user (the money stream).. we did not like this model. We wanted to come up with a model that would allow us to make a living supporting existing games. We attempted to undertake development of this with BoomBall with a back end infrastructure we called the 'BoomBall backbone'.. it included stats tracking and team affiliation, mod support built in out of the box, and a whole list of cool 'community' stuff that is essentially geared toward supporting you extending the game. We designed the system around the idea that if we could do 3 games (TT, BB, and dRacer) we could spread the cost of the development of the system across many games.

even at the smallest scope, it was a big job. Mid way through implementing it, we got purchased by GarageGames.. which was a relief to Clark and I, as we got back to making games (instead of running a business). We got purchased and work on some stuff to bring in some buck (MBO for XBLA, Torque X, etc...) and then we started building something very similar to what we had been working toward all along.. a system similar to the BoomBall backbone, but now with the resources to do it 'right'.

that system is Instant Action. It is not done yet, and it won't be overnight. We have a lot to build out, both in terms of features and infrastructure to support it. In terms of the 'who'.. you have me, the designer of TT, leading up the game studio with Clark heading up the engine tech development... heading up the design team on the web side is Mark McCoy (56K Lagman) and recently I finally convinced Dan MacDonald (for those who remember him) to come on board.

You may not like what we are doing.. and ThinkTanks may not be as good yet as it is standalone, but it will get there.

Dedicated server on on the road map.. they will get done.. right now, after they are working well for Legions and then RokkitBall (which was BoomBall).. 3rd in the list to get it.. this is purely based on the player base and the retention rates. ThinkTanks is running 3rd.. there fore it get resources 3rd.. it will hopefully get all the stuff it needs and have all deficiencies fixed..

Eventually, a system for people to publish mods.. we WANT the modding.. but the system to make it manageable for us is not in place, and won't be for a while.

In the meantime, ThinkTanks on IA.com will either do well, stay the same, or flatline and we will not assign resources to it.. I would like to, but I am not going to go against what is plainly obvious by looking at the numbers as to what a good business call is.

as for all the changes in the new version.. physics are the same.. you can argue they are not, but they are.. there are graphics updates, and the tank setting are somewhere between the old settings and the xbox ones.. if we want the 'exact' settings, we can do that to, but we are not going to put those in if you guys are not going to go over there to play.. the new settings are better for the new user to get into the game.. a lot easier for the n00b.. these things I am not going to argue with you about. Come over and be the community on ia.. or not.. we will support a community if it grows on ia.com.. if it does not, we won't.

you can try to convince me about all the business angles you want.. what we are doing is the solution to the problem we have been trying to solve for years. You don't have to be a part of it.

I am not saying we will 'never' do a stand alone version of TT.. I am saying that in the short term (this next year?) it is not on the radar.. the short term we will be focused on ia.com, and if you want a say in how it develops, go there and support it. If not, no biggie..

honestly, all of the 'stuff' you guys say you want is what we are building. It will not be built in a day.

again, you don't have to go to instant action. You have the stand alone version. We built it, you bought it, you had fun. This makes me glad. I would like to see y'all come over to ia.com so we can use what we are building to support you. If you don't like it, that is fine.. raging about it and raging about how I am stupid is not going to change that. This is not a debate or an argument.. I am here to say, hey guys, short term (and possibly long term) future of TT is over there.. if you want a say in it, it is there, go there, and make your voice heard.. or.. don't.. I mean, honestly, I am managing the production of a lot of games and have ideas for new ones.. I like TT, but it is not going to make me sad if it drops to the bottom of the stack on ia.com.

as clear as I can put it..

the game is on instant action and will be there for the short term exclusively. if you want to have a say in how it pans out, that is where dev will happen. If you want to have a say on what gets resources for things like dedicated servers first.. vote with your play time..

again, you don't have to go there and I am not twisting arms.. We are not hurting.. if you want TT to go before RokkitBall in terms of dev time, all you have to do is play on ia.com and show that the game has legs. if not, we will get to it.

so, that is that..

on the purchase/open source thing.. make an offer. How much were you guys thinking?

[Baba]

I hear ya, trying not to be a whiner or close minded about this.
After all I do love this creation of yours.
So when will mac players be able to get in IA (for TT)?

[joemaruschak]

on the master server stuff..

conspiracy theories aside, there is no scheme to shut y'all down. The master server is a small app that just connects games. It literally just gets a message from each client and server and points to them so they can see each other. It runs, and sometimes it goes down.. this happens if we power down a server, power outage, server crash, etc..

I will ask around to find out where it is.. I am not sure who oversees it now. Even back at BraveTree, we 'cheated' by piggybacking on the GG master server (which was up to support dev on the torque game engine).. I will try to find where it is at, find out how portable it is, and try to see if I can get a solution figured out so I am not getting emails from you guys when it goes down..

also, if anyone is interested in submitting levels and/or mods/ and or game types for TT on ia.com, send me an email.. it might be a few days until I get back to you.

[joemaruschak]

mac beta is underway.. check the forums on instant action.. I am not up on how open the mac beta is or the state of it. I know we have a mac build and a mac version of the site, and that it is not ready for full release yet. I do know that we have had a mac build of TT done for a while and have had a version of the site on a mac for a while, but the web and marketing and QA team know the state of it..

so, soon?

[joemaruschak]

thats a big fat no for me. i dont know about business models but this one seems to be failing miserably.

and that speaks for itself. You don't know about business, and things are often not what they seem. We are not failing miserably.. far from it. you can try to convince me I am stupid about business all you want. I have not seen anything that compels me to think I am being a foolish businessman.. if anyone wants to have a serious discussion about business models, I am up for it. If you impress me, I might even ask for a resume.

[joemaruschak]

Joe, How many original units of TT did you sell?

this is a very hard question to answer. We sold a lot.. nothing that would make anyone here go 'wow'.. but enough to make people take notice. It was hard to track because we did a LOT of distributions.. Real Arcade, Reflexive, ShockWave, russian and german ports, xbox, etc.. I stopped counting units at 10K, and that was early on and a LONG time ago, and after the sale of BT to GG, I stopped tracking it altogether (mostly because I was sick of looking at spreadsheets). We did well, don't want to throw out numbers, mostly because I can't by way of contractual obligations.. so to ball park it.. enough to cover the purchase price of a house.

[joemaruschak]

I did e-mail the Garage Games CEO yesterday with the proposition to purchase the game outright. A bold move to be sure, but I believe a last chance to grow this gem into something much greater. I have spoken with many folks here and am very confident we could raise substantial funding. Not because it makes business sense, necessarily, but because of the pool of talent, passion, dedication and commeraderie that we have assembled here is I believe a very unique thing.

read the email and will talk to Josh about it. Let me know what you guys are thinking in terms of an offer. We are pretty busy, and this would be a weird 'one off' deal that will cost us legal fees, so be sure it is worth the while to entertain it. Open source is probably not an option, as it is based on Torque and torque is not open source and open sourcing TT would be akin to open sourcing the whole engine. A license to the code base could be done, but it would have to be controlled somehow.. so, if you guys want it, make a serious offer.. if you want to take over dev of it, there is a possibility that we would do it.. but a compelling pitch would be a ballpark offer and a view of the possible dev team and plans for it..

[joemaruschak]

doh.. missed some stuff:

Why can't we cut to the chase and you tell us what the lump sum is for GG - I assume they'd have you and one other programmer - to work on the updates we want for the original TT? Or does GG not do contract work? Are we not allowed to hire you out and put money in everyone's pocket? Or is that just too much heat? I'm really curious on this one because many of us are grown men here - some with deeper pockets than others - but we all love TT, know it needs to be fixed and revamped, and would like to see it happen sometime this decade. And, we're not afraid to pay for it. How much to hire GG to fix TT? Better yet, how much to buy the game straight out from GG? Everything has a price and more than few of us would like to know just exactly what that price is.

GG is not opposed to contract work, but right now, it probably would not be possible. It is not so much the cost, but the opportunity cost.. we are building something that we hope creates value. Doing contract work is like working in a service organization. How much would it cost? not sure.. I would not be working on it. I am actually overseeing and managing internal and external game development, and my efforts are needed there for the business. I don't think I would be let 'off the hook' for the stuff I need to get done, or if I was, it would probably be a pretty high number. To but it straight out? you mean own the IP and the code? the code base we probably would license, but not sell.. it is the Torque Game Engine afterall, which is a portion of GG business.. if we sell it, and the intent is to open source it, we would need to cover loss of revenue from engine sales (if it were to impact that part of the business, and there is reason to believe it would).. so, hard to stick a number on it.. it would be into the six figures I am imaging to even consider it.