So who the heck is IAC?

#21 Well, I hate to be a pessimist, but this sounds like bad news to me. IAC bought technology and smart people. Josh's blog says that control remains with the same people at GG, but I have serious doubts about how true that is (I'm not implying he's lying, btw).

#22

Quote:
Well, I hate to be a pessimist, but this sounds like bad news to me. IAC bought technology and smart people. Josh's blog says that control remains with the same people at GG, but I have serious doubts about how true that is (I'm not implying he's lying, btw).

I want to turn that completely around--re-read Josh's blog, and my comments above, and you'll see that all financial hyperbole aside, IAC didn't "buy" stuff, GG selected a partner with the resources and a shared vision to empower us to meet our core founding goals:

--provide powerful game engine technology to everyone
--provide a publishing path for indys beyond anything that exists in the industry
--leverage our own technology to make great games

As I mentioned above, we've pushed more point releases in more products in the last 6 months than in the history of the company (goal #1).

We are poised to provide one of the two the "holy grails" of independent game developers directly to indies: browser based gaming (InstantAction.com, goal 2). We also now have the resources to actually fund indy developers ourselves, therefore allowing talented indy developers to avoid the pitfalls of the more abusive publishing deals provided by other publishers. (goal 2)

We can now afford to both staff our continued engine and tools development, as well as documentation, quality assurance, and a lot more, and develop our own games as well. We've always believed in "eating our own dog food" to make sure our engine technology was useful, and now we can do that without impacting the development of those technologies.

#23 Curt Hopkins said :Our relationship with IAC is like an indie record company, say SubPop, getting a distribution contract with Universal. Universal's not making the decisions,

Now Wait a sec, I just got done reading this.....
"IAC Acquires Majority Share of GarageGames"

Something to think about, magority share holders ALWAYS have the "say so".

On top of all the above being said; Is this something people REALLY need? Is not this type of technology already being developed and tested by multiple OTHER companys? I was truly hoping to hear GarageGames hired a few more employees so they could FINALLY debugging all of the GarageGames products...

Oh GarageGames, you never cease to amaze me, and not in a good way..... But im always ready and willing to be wrong about my assumptions...

#24 Please re-read Josh's blog--I'm not sure we can be very much more clear about who makes decisions :)

#25 Man, i just got DONE re-reading it, then i followed the 2 links at the top... THEN i did some Google searching and reading...

This is NOT as nice and great as you GarageGames employees like to think it is.. This IS GarageGames selling out! I cant find any proof otherwise. As soon as this silly web browser based game playing thing do NOT pan out, the person with the most GarageGames stock is going to sell it out before it do not have value.

Think about it logically, who is willing to pay more then a few $ to play games in the web browser versus paying a few MORE $ and owning the game to play anytime they wish internet connection or not?

Im having a hard time seeing how this is truly a good thing... Im hoping im overlooking something simple.

#26 There's a common mistake among non-investors, the belief that ownership of something implies or encourages active management of it. Smart investors often buy companies, but don't get too involved in the daily operations because they realize they might actually be out of their element. If the GarageGames guys decided to sell part of their company, that's their right to do so. They clearly felt it would be in their best interest and seem quite insistent that it will help the community as well.

It would be reasonable and fair to give them the benefit of the doubt in this situation. Most of the criticism I'm reading in this thread is just unfounded.

#27 Congrats guys.

This is a very good thing.

#28

Quote:
My question to GG is, what are you going to do when this "New online gaming site" doesn't make this big corp the money they promised their share holders, and the share holders tell them to shut it down? Torque will sit on a shelf. I really think this was a Very bad idea for GG.

I can't say anymore until IGC...but we are taking steps to make sure that Torque will *never* be left on a shelf.

#29 So in the end what do this mean to the current GarageGames SDK owners?

Is there any change in the way the INDIE License will work?

What about COMMERCIAL License?

I ask because i picked TGE for its License system. If GarageGames is now owned by someone else (i dont care if they are calling the shots right NOW...) what happens to the License system?

#30 I personally think this is great news for GG, which in turn will hopefully allow them to provide even more opportunities for Indies in the future. Thus I think this should also be taken as great news for the community as a whole.

#31 Our licenses for our current products will not change.

Moving forward we are hoping to give even better licensing options to indies, hobbyists, and aspiring developers.

#32 I should, perhaps, clarify what I mean by "this sounds like bad news to me". I mean it sounds like bad news for me.

Without seeing the actual agreements it is impossible for me to know for sure what has happened. From the articles it looks like IAC wanted to get into games and it was their idea for InstantAction.com, therefore they bought a majority share of a company with the technology and people to do that. I could be wrong, but I doubt IAC is merely making an investment in GG. What I see is that IAC bought the technology and people they wanted and as a bonus they get a profitable company. What happens if GG isn't profitable enough? I don't know.

I don't feel like GG sold out, or anything of the sort. It's just business and they are doing what they think is right. I just think it might not work out like they think.

#33 Congrats to everyone there! From the sound of it, it could be the kind of deal that allows you guys to really achieve the goals you've been aiming for.

I hope that TGE continues to be a primary focus of GG. With the recent expansions into the console world and now the online world, there is always a lingering concern that TGE will become something of an afterthought. It sounds like that may not be the case, and I'm looking forward to hearing more at IGC.

But since my personal game project doesn't really fit with what sounds like your increasing focus for production, funding, or distribution (console or web-based, multiplayer, social networking-type of games), I may just have to settle for being excited for you, rather than with you.

By the way, hasn't Unity had their engine working in browsers for some time now?

#34 So far, I looked at instantaction.com... first thoughts:
1) It looks like an email address harvester. One of the posts said you spend months waiting and developing, the site should at least indicate something about what it is or does.
2) Then I type in my email address, and ... there's no content! It really *is* just an email address harvester. Hm.

I had a whole bunch of ranting typed up about how I don't think GG really is true to its roots and hasn't been for a while, but it was mostly ranting so I took it out. The general gist of it was that back in the day, I thought GG was intending to put cool technology in the hands of hobbiests and indies. Nowadays, most of GG's products are just not friendly to hobbiests, or people using desktop platforms other than windows. So whether GG is being true to its roots by being bought by a large conglomerate like IAC is had to decide, now. I shall wait and see.

Gary (-;

PS I downloaded the docs, they look exactly the same as the Doxygen ones that I've been able to build from TGE itself for a long long time, now?

#35 Caylo: Desktop Tower Defense ( http://www.handdrawngames.com/ ) -- a cheapo little Flash game was making close to $100k/yr just on Google AdSense revenue (a source of revenue which is not terribly meaningful to most content providers despite Google's hype to the contrary). No idea how they're doing now with MochiAds, but I'd bet it's only gone up. RuneScape ( http://www.runescape.com/ ) makes around $60mm/yr in subscription revenues for a browser-based (Java) MMORPG (1mm subscribers @ $5/mo -- might be a bit more revenue if they have a lot of people paying by SMS ($7/mo)).

Lots of people will pay either directly, or indirectly (ads) for web based games. Until now there hasn't been much willingness to experiment with building a marketplace around more premium, high-value content than cheapo Flash games because of the higher system requirements. This is a bold move on GarageGames' part, and could easily put them way ahead of the competition.

Now, this next bit may sound inflammatory but keep in mind that it comes from having spent 6 years in the field of online marketing, and having just brought my first game to market within the last couple days:

Getting a game *built* is only a very small part of the problem; once it's built you need to get it in peoples' hands and get them to pay for it. Distribution. This is the hardest problem that you will face as an indie game developer and anything GarageGames can do to provide opportunities on this front is a HUGE HUGE win for you.

This is absolutely a huge win for GarageGames, and for all of us indie developers. Yes, it's possible that the deal could ultimately go south and the investors could decide to interfere but having met Josh William recently I don't think that's likely to happen.

#36 I just think it might not work out like they think. Yes, it always look like a good idea when someone is waving cash in your face, and telling you sweet little stories.

After investigating this from every angle i can reach from home, this might not be a bad thing. But comparing this to so many OTHER situation exactly like it= it IS a bad thing. Either way it will not pan out and show its true colors for many months yet, and in the mean time it IS a good thing for the GarageGames people...

PS I downloaded the docs.... I think i would be more impressed with a working Constructor, or finally some good art content exporters; is not this what the people really want?

#37 I do want to point out two more things:

--this is the first press release in a series, focusing on the business/financial aspect. There is much more coming down the pike.

--IGC is 3 weeks away, and either look at Josh's post, or look at the history of IGC--we have a lot more to talk about in the coming weeks.

@Gary: The IA portion of the press release is an announcement of plans, not an announcement of "ready to go this second". If you want to have the possibility of participating in the beta, feel free to leave your email address--if you don't, that's fine too, but I personally feel you'll be missing out!

#38 Gary,

One of the things that sold me on this deal (I was also skeptical at first about what it meant) was that it actually enables us to get back to the three original goals of GarageGames: provide proffessional grade tools at affordable prices, provide a place where indies can publish and not have to sell their souls (and we learned along the way that indies usually need a little help/money to even finish their game), and to create our own games.

We can't talk a lot about how this deal has helped us to move on all of those things just yet but we *have* been moving on all of them a lot faster than we were before.

As far as the docs goes...yes, those are basically the same as what you can generate out of dOxygen with the nice table of contents and searchablility of our DocFramework brought over from TGB. I did do some minor cleanup on them as well. But, the significant thing here isn't the content...it is the fact that we are now finally in the position to start giving away full reference docs for free to everyone. Before, we had to keep those docs as "premium" content for SDK owners in order to encourage people to buy the SDK (especially pirates) because we had to make sure we got every single dollar and dime we could to stay in business. Now, we have a bit more breathing room and can start to be more generous to the little guys. This was jsut a tiny little first step (and one the community has been clamoring for for *years*).

There is more news coming at IGC!

#39 Speaking of pirates, will GG now have a an increased legal capacity to pursue them when capable?

#40 @Stephen: I left my email address, but that's all there was to the site. Currently it looks, and behaves, like an email address harvester. It may or may not have other purposes, but to an outsider, that's all I see. It doesn't even say you're signing up for a beta, just that you fill in the address to "get started", then tells you that you'll be sent updates when they're available. This is basically defining spam email address harvesters.

I'm sure that since GG is hocking it, there's more to it, but then since IAC is the defining force behind it, that may be the end of it [I don't have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of IAC itself].


In the end, once TGB and TGE support Linux again, TGEA supports Linux&OSX at all, Torque for the Wii is actually accessible to hobbiests or even low budget indies... then I'll believe that the changes at GG are for the better, for me. Until then, I'll sit here and watch :-)

Gary (-;