Making a good map takes a lot of time and so far it has always been for fun. However it would be really awesome to get some pocket money (or more) out of this amount of work. That's why I'm creating a thread to find ways to monetize the maps.
Website Advertising
A way to get some money is to launch a website for your map and put Google Adsense on it. If it's quite successful you can win something like 100 dollars per month. But not only you are going to spend time working on the map, you will also spend a lot of time on the website.
Donations
On sc2mapster you can attach your paypal account to the project page and people will be able to give you some money if they liked the map. I didn't see much map makers doing it and I don't know if that's working.
Mapster revenue share
Curse.com is about the same as sc2mapster but for WoW Addons. Since the release of the Curse Premium we share a part of our revenues (20% if I recall correctly) with the addons makers. The top addons give about a thousand dollars per month to their authors.
I am thinking about doing the same thing for sc2mapster but there are problems about it. The main one is: "How to have a non-biased way to tell what maps should be given more than the others". Since people don't download the maps from sc2mapster to play them, the download count is not a viable way to do it.
Also, mapster is so far a lot smaller than Curse, so the revenues would be smaller :(
Other ...
If you have ideas about how to make money from maps, I'd be really glad to hear them!
@vjeux:
I have a few ideas.. I`ll update this post later to mention them all.
Edit : Deleting all useless posts. Please have discussions in the appropriate threads. Lets not derail it. This is to brainstorm idea and suggestions on how to make money off maps, only.
For mapster revenue sharing... though this is a tough one to tackle, I do think that there could be a way to add to mapster's worth. Presently mapster isn't much more than a forum and place to host our teams. Now, I'm not knocking that because I see growth every week and SC2 hasn't been out that long. :P What I'm getting at is that I think there could be a bit /more/ for the teams and individuals here. Once that 'bit more' is available, I would gladly become a premium member (again). So, perhaps include a more in-depth team management area (something along the lines of BaseCamp for project management).
As for how to 'give back' to the community for their map making... perhaps the focus should be on things that others use (akin to addons) like SWJ's circle hero selection mod. These are designed to help the entire community of mappers and not just the end-users. :D
For the mappers themselves creating some awesome maps... that /is/ a hard call to make. Since the popularity system is 100% fail, you could perhaps give back to them for including the SC2Mapster logo on their load screen and/or in game. I'd like to see an in game billboard ad personally. ;) In addition to this, there could be monthly (or weekly? but I think that is too often) community polls as to which maps are the best of the best from design, aesthetics, polish, etc. Something like Woot.com's derby for shirts. A little healthy competition never hurt anyone.
I'm tired and haven't slept... there is more rattling around upstairs but I haven't the attention to keep typing. soooo.... more later
I would be ready to sign up for anything. But its going to be tough to get good maps (or good unique maps) played until blizzard overhauls the "popularity" system.
I am all for the sc2mapster premium service though.
One of the things this community should do is really help our own on bnet. Having a released maps forum could help as well as a pool of trustworthy beta testers (so difficult to tell if someone is just testing to rip off your idea :( ). Possibly make it where you can lose your premium status if you blatantly steal from another Sc2Mapster member?
Also an SC2mapster official youtube channel where one of us reviews maps made by our community and previews them (not just the map creator). Possibly make it where you have to be part of premium service to be included. (I'd actually be willing to do the reviews and previews if yall wanted to do this).
Indeed it would be nice to make some money with the maps that are well done. Im not sure if the blizzard marketplace is going to be a total failure or not. My plan was to make Premium version of my map which would include 1-2 new heroes that doesnt come in normal version. And then after I add more heroes to Premium version, I could transfer some old ones to the normal version. Im not sure if anyone would be willing to support map makers like that tought....(not much difference in content). The price for premium would be something like 2dollars, which I would be happy to pay for good maps.
I dont think too many people would be interested in donating....but who knows? Definetly could use some money since im a student.
Blizzard's premium map store is not going to sell your map. They've said it's essentially for TCs and other projects with entirely new art and sound assets. Think of it like Steam: you can make a new game using the Source engine and Valve will let you sell it on Steam, but you aren't going to get away with selling new levels for TF2.
Vjeux to add to your list, if you have a unique character or logo you could sell t-shirts and other merch. I think Element TD does this, though I don't know if they actually make any money.
In other words, you cannot sell a map on Blizzards store that uses Blizzard assets. All 3d models have to be done by the author.
Which means, only large teams or people already in the development industry (ie. working for a game company) will be able to sell their maps as the majority of us don't have 10 to 12 character modelers or animators "on staff". In fact there are about 0 modelers I know of in this community that are doing custom models (ie not just porting WoW models with changes). I know 1 animator that is doing custom rigs.
Nobody in this community as it stands now will benefit from selling maps on blizzards store (I might be wrong as I am not familiar with all the teams though).
Not that I disagree with their idea as its the only way to "legally" sell maps for an engine.
No business, especially not money grubbing blizzard, is going to allow somebody else to make any amount of money off of things they spent money on to create. Period. Not to mention the legal ramifications should something be used improperly while monetary transactions take place.
How would you feel if you created a game and somebody else took every asset you used and made a similar game and charged a price for it. You payed 30 million dollars for your game. They payed $60.
Going back on topic: I think that assets would be a good way to make money. For instance, if someone needs an easy to use leaderboard or quest log, they can use mine. I could then charge for a use, ask for a donation etc. something where i get money from people using it. An entire map would be a lot harder to make money from due to there being no 'map store' yet, and how we don't know for sure how it will work.
Although donations are a good idea, most map players won't want to donate some money for a map that they already have and can play for free. Sure if it's an immense 14 player map with tons of custom assets, library's and galaxy scripting, then you could get a lot of money from it, but i believe that although you could get some money from mapping, it won't be as much as you could get from something like learning C or using UE3.5 as someone mentioned. However, it's more fun, and thats what matters ^^
For mapster revenue sharing... though this is a tough one to tackle, I do think that there could be a way to add to mapster's worth. Presently mapster isn't much more than a forum and place to host our teams.
Ouch. What about the Wiki (which has received a lot f work just recently) and the Maps DB? Each user can upload a map, include the link in their loading screen to their project page, and get easy feedback from anyone that plays their map.
@EternalWraith: Go
Also an SC2mapster official youtube channel where one of us reviews maps made by our community and previews them (not just the map creator). Possibly make it where you have to be part of premium service to be included. (I'd actually be willing to do the reviews and previews if yall wanted to do this).
That couldn't hurt. As for now, we have the Map Review forum, feel free to do some stuff there, :p.
Ads on the website is a tried and true method. But, I wouldn't consider $100 a month quite successful. I'm sitting at a little below that now and WC3 is a dead medium.
Products! If you can get a deal with a company, great. Otherwise you'll need to invest capital yourself. Here is an example of how it's done; http://store.eletd.com.
Donations really don't work. If you're banking on making money with them, then I pity you.
Vjeux to add to your list, if you have a unique character or logo you could sell t-shirts and other merch. I think Element TD does this, though I don't know if they actually make any money.
Considering how late in the WC3 life cycle these came out, I'd say they have done quite well. SC2 should prove to be a lot more exciting.
If yall are serious about products my brother is a manager at a monograming place here in Texas that can do all types of screen printing. No clue what kind of deal could be done.
Blizzard saying DotA would not qualify is a joke imo...
DotA is a very well polished Hero Arena/Line Wars Defense map. Very well-balanced, keeps being patched, supported and updated. It is even being featured as regional WCG official game. DotA basically triples the sales of WC3 and yet Blizz keeps insisting Dota would not qualify?
Look if the criteria of Premium map = custom texture, asset, model, etc. Then it is not premium map. It is Premium artwork. Custom Map/Games requires more than just artwork. Some people has a great creativity in game mechanic design but cannot draw or cannot use Maya or 3Dx. This Premium map criteria basically makes people like Dustin Browder, Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen USELESS! F*ING USELESS cos they cannot draw and all they can offer is game design, game mechanic and storyline. Only Samwise Didier qualify for premium maps then.
And to close my rant, I am sure DotA is harder to create than stupid Doodle Jump App on iPhone and Android that sells for 99c and have sold over 5Million digital copies to date. That over 3M revenue for a game that probably cost less than 100 hours to create.
Additional thought: IMO, premium or not, let the mappers decide. If the mappers put 99c tag on the map then so be it. In the end the community/player will decide. If they love the game and think the game is worth 99c then they will pay, if not they won't, which in turns will make the mapper to reduce the price to 49c or even FREE.
The map could advertise mapster (How much is up for debate). In return, mapster could pay based on how popular the map is. For instance, if the map gets 5000 plays an hour, 24 hours a day that's 120,000 games where mapster is advertised. Then mapster could pay (How much is also up for debate) based on that number.
A good base would be $0.20 per 1000 games. In this case, that would be $24.00 in a day. Pretty cheap advertising. I'd actually suggest a different rate for multiplayer games for a couple reasons:
For most games there are more than 1 player, so there are more than 120,000 views in this case. Anywhere from 120,000-1,200,000.
The market is perfect. Unlike banner ads that show to everybody, this advertising only hits people who enjoy playing custom SC2 maps.
For those reasons I'd actually suggest something like $0.10 per 1000 games, per average player for multiplayer maps. So if a game takes an average of 6, or is a strict 3v3 map, or etc your 120,000 game plays would actually be 720,000 views, or $72 per day.
For 1-2 player maps, I'd suggest sticking with $0.20/1000 per player because single player games take just as much, if not more work than multiplayer games and the lower return may discourage their creation.
Those are just my suggested rates though, feel free to do whatever you want rate-wise. Just don't go too cheap-o, remember how much you have to pay for advertising elsewhere, which isn't doesn't have as perfect of a target audience.
This is an interesting subject. Has anyone considered looking for map sponsers? Can we organize portfolios and ask Coke if they want to choose maps to have their logo in it? Vjeux, Sixen what kind of contacts do you have?
I'm thinking of putting coca cola in my map description and then make it good enough for page 1.... then approach coke and give them impressive numbers and then reap the benefits.
Hello,
Making a good map takes a lot of time and so far it has always been for fun. However it would be really awesome to get some pocket money (or more) out of this amount of work. That's why I'm creating a thread to find ways to monetize the maps.
Website Advertising
A way to get some money is to launch a website for your map and put Google Adsense on it. If it's quite successful you can win something like 100 dollars per month. But not only you are going to spend time working on the map, you will also spend a lot of time on the website.
Donations
On sc2mapster you can attach your paypal account to the project page and people will be able to give you some money if they liked the map. I didn't see much map makers doing it and I don't know if that's working.
Mapster revenue share
Curse.com is about the same as sc2mapster but for WoW Addons. Since the release of the Curse Premium we share a part of our revenues (20% if I recall correctly) with the addons makers. The top addons give about a thousand dollars per month to their authors.
I am thinking about doing the same thing for sc2mapster but there are problems about it. The main one is: "How to have a non-biased way to tell what maps should be given more than the others". Since people don't download the maps from sc2mapster to play them, the download count is not a viable way to do it.
Also, mapster is so far a lot smaller than Curse, so the revenues would be smaller :(
Other ...
If you have ideas about how to make money from maps, I'd be really glad to hear them!
For mapster revenue sharing... though this is a tough one to tackle, I do think that there could be a way to add to mapster's worth. Presently mapster isn't much more than a forum and place to host our teams. Now, I'm not knocking that because I see growth every week and SC2 hasn't been out that long. :P What I'm getting at is that I think there could be a bit /more/ for the teams and individuals here. Once that 'bit more' is available, I would gladly become a premium member (again). So, perhaps include a more in-depth team management area (something along the lines of BaseCamp for project management).
As for how to 'give back' to the community for their map making... perhaps the focus should be on things that others use (akin to addons) like SWJ's circle hero selection mod. These are designed to help the entire community of mappers and not just the end-users. :D
For the mappers themselves creating some awesome maps... that /is/ a hard call to make. Since the popularity system is 100% fail, you could perhaps give back to them for including the SC2Mapster logo on their load screen and/or in game. I'd like to see an in game billboard ad personally. ;) In addition to this, there could be monthly (or weekly? but I think that is too often) community polls as to which maps are the best of the best from design, aesthetics, polish, etc. Something like Woot.com's derby for shirts. A little healthy competition never hurt anyone.
I'm tired and haven't slept... there is more rattling around upstairs but I haven't the attention to keep typing. soooo.... more later
@EternalWraith: Go
I would be ready to sign up for anything. But its going to be tough to get good maps (or good unique maps) played until blizzard overhauls the "popularity" system.
I am all for the sc2mapster premium service though.
One of the things this community should do is really help our own on bnet. Having a released maps forum could help as well as a pool of trustworthy beta testers (so difficult to tell if someone is just testing to rip off your idea :( ). Possibly make it where you can lose your premium status if you blatantly steal from another Sc2Mapster member?
Also an SC2mapster official youtube channel where one of us reviews maps made by our community and previews them (not just the map creator). Possibly make it where you have to be part of premium service to be included. (I'd actually be willing to do the reviews and previews if yall wanted to do this).
Indeed it would be nice to make some money with the maps that are well done. Im not sure if the blizzard marketplace is going to be a total failure or not. My plan was to make Premium version of my map which would include 1-2 new heroes that doesnt come in normal version. And then after I add more heroes to Premium version, I could transfer some old ones to the normal version. Im not sure if anyone would be willing to support map makers like that tought....(not much difference in content). The price for premium would be something like 2dollars, which I would be happy to pay for good maps.
I dont think too many people would be interested in donating....but who knows? Definetly could use some money since im a student.
Blizzard's premium map store is not going to sell your map. They've said it's essentially for TCs and other projects with entirely new art and sound assets. Think of it like Steam: you can make a new game using the Source engine and Valve will let you sell it on Steam, but you aren't going to get away with selling new levels for TF2.
Vjeux to add to your list, if you have a unique character or logo you could sell t-shirts and other merch. I think Element TD does this, though I don't know if they actually make any money.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
In other words, you cannot sell a map on Blizzards store that uses Blizzard assets. All 3d models have to be done by the author.
Which means, only large teams or people already in the development industry (ie. working for a game company) will be able to sell their maps as the majority of us don't have 10 to 12 character modelers or animators "on staff". In fact there are about 0 modelers I know of in this community that are doing custom models (ie not just porting WoW models with changes). I know 1 animator that is doing custom rigs.
Nobody in this community as it stands now will benefit from selling maps on blizzards store (I might be wrong as I am not familiar with all the teams though).
Not that I disagree with their idea as its the only way to "legally" sell maps for an engine.
If someone could link the source where they said that premium maps have to be fully custom material, that'd be swell :3
@zenx1: Go
You don't need a link. Its common sense.
No business, especially not money grubbing blizzard, is going to allow somebody else to make any amount of money off of things they spent money on to create. Period. Not to mention the legal ramifications should something be used improperly while monetary transactions take place.
How would you feel if you created a game and somebody else took every asset you used and made a similar game and charged a price for it. You payed 30 million dollars for your game. They payed $60.
@EternalWraith: Go
Well, I added my ways to help make money :). Sorry for any derailment.
Going back on topic: I think that assets would be a good way to make money. For instance, if someone needs an easy to use leaderboard or quest log, they can use mine. I could then charge for a use, ask for a donation etc. something where i get money from people using it. An entire map would be a lot harder to make money from due to there being no 'map store' yet, and how we don't know for sure how it will work.
Although donations are a good idea, most map players won't want to donate some money for a map that they already have and can play for free. Sure if it's an immense 14 player map with tons of custom assets, library's and galaxy scripting, then you could get a lot of money from it, but i believe that although you could get some money from mapping, it won't be as much as you could get from something like learning C or using UE3.5 as someone mentioned. However, it's more fun, and thats what matters ^^
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ModeratorsOuch. What about the Wiki (which has received a lot f work just recently) and the Maps DB? Each user can upload a map, include the link in their loading screen to their project page, and get easy feedback from anyone that plays their map.
That couldn't hurt. As for now, we have the Map Review forum, feel free to do some stuff there, :p.
@vjeux: Go
Ads on the website is a tried and true method. But, I wouldn't consider $100 a month quite successful. I'm sitting at a little below that now and WC3 is a dead medium.
Products! If you can get a deal with a company, great. Otherwise you'll need to invest capital yourself. Here is an example of how it's done; http://store.eletd.com.
Donations really don't work. If you're banking on making money with them, then I pity you.
Considering how late in the WC3 life cycle these came out, I'd say they have done quite well. SC2 should prove to be a lot more exciting.
Not fully, but a significant amount. Things we do know:
If yall are serious about products my brother is a manager at a monograming place here in Texas that can do all types of screen printing. No clue what kind of deal could be done.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
Blizzard saying DotA would not qualify is a joke imo...
DotA is a very well polished Hero Arena/Line Wars Defense map. Very well-balanced, keeps being patched, supported and updated. It is even being featured as regional WCG official game. DotA basically triples the sales of WC3 and yet Blizz keeps insisting Dota would not qualify?
Look if the criteria of Premium map = custom texture, asset, model, etc. Then it is not premium map. It is Premium artwork. Custom Map/Games requires more than just artwork. Some people has a great creativity in game mechanic design but cannot draw or cannot use Maya or 3Dx. This Premium map criteria basically makes people like Dustin Browder, Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen USELESS! F*ING USELESS cos they cannot draw and all they can offer is game design, game mechanic and storyline. Only Samwise Didier qualify for premium maps then.
And to close my rant, I am sure DotA is harder to create than stupid Doodle Jump App on iPhone and Android that sells for 99c and have sold over 5Million digital copies to date. That over 3M revenue for a game that probably cost less than 100 hours to create.
Additional thought: IMO, premium or not, let the mappers decide. If the mappers put 99c tag on the map then so be it. In the end the community/player will decide. If they love the game and think the game is worth 99c then they will pay, if not they won't, which in turns will make the mapper to reduce the price to 49c or even FREE.
The map could advertise mapster (How much is up for debate). In return, mapster could pay based on how popular the map is. For instance, if the map gets 5000 plays an hour, 24 hours a day that's 120,000 games where mapster is advertised. Then mapster could pay (How much is also up for debate) based on that number.
A good base would be $0.20 per 1000 games. In this case, that would be $24.00 in a day. Pretty cheap advertising. I'd actually suggest a different rate for multiplayer games for a couple reasons:
For those reasons I'd actually suggest something like $0.10 per 1000 games, per average player for multiplayer maps. So if a game takes an average of 6, or is a strict 3v3 map, or etc your 120,000 game plays would actually be 720,000 views, or $72 per day.
For 1-2 player maps, I'd suggest sticking with $0.20/1000 per player because single player games take just as much, if not more work than multiplayer games and the lower return may discourage their creation.
Those are just my suggested rates though, feel free to do whatever you want rate-wise. Just don't go too cheap-o, remember how much you have to pay for advertising elsewhere, which isn't doesn't have as perfect of a target audience.
This is an interesting subject. Has anyone considered looking for map sponsers? Can we organize portfolios and ask Coke if they want to choose maps to have their logo in it? Vjeux, Sixen what kind of contacts do you have?
I'm thinking of putting coca cola in my map description and then make it good enough for page 1.... then approach coke and give them impressive numbers and then reap the benefits.
My plan is flawless.
@dimfish: Go
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Am I getting it right: Is Greenpeace forbidden and coke allowed?