Re: Hounds Of The Blade
well, we may also have to wonder if he actually makes the content himself, a lot of the models from Nanocrisis were on a pay to download and use model site... i come to wonder if anything is his... maybe he got a legal notice or threats of lawsuit?
His models come from Daz Studio. I actually had to read on that some time back for an ongoing project of my own, and in short, as long as you purchased the models and that you don't redistribute the models themselves, you can use them any way you like legally, including in commercial games. His game doesn't use the actual 3D models and animations, frame images and those dialog renders can all be used legally in his game IF he purchased them. Offhand, I'd estimate he has for about 200$ to 300$ worth of assets used in total.
So my suggestions to him would be:
A) Purchase all the assets he used (if he hasn't yet).
B) Plan on selling the game on DL site. The game's quality is high enough that he could sell the game in two parts: The first part would be the current game with a bit more added in, and the other part eventually with the rest of the story.
I don't doubt he'd easily get over 2000 sales with a high-quality game like that, even in it's current state. If we assume he gets 8$ per sale, we're talking 16000$ for part 1 at least. It's not millions of course, but it sure beats out the 0$ he's currently getting and the money invested in part A is absolutely negligeable comparatively.
What kills the interest for most developers is the "grunt work", the repetitive mindless stuff that needs to be done in order to have a polished, actual high-quality game. A decent payday can certainly be a good motivation in pushing through the boring parts of game making and help continuing a game past the fun initial phase.
(im not on windows 8)
