Tom's Recent Forum Activity

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    How dedicated is Scirra in supporting construct2?

    As we've said, we're going to continue updates into the future as we have been for the last year or so.

    How can you entice construct2 users to upgrade to construct 3, when the majority of them don't agree with the rent license model?

    1) We've got the upgrade deal - 50% off your first year

    2) Signals from these forum threads might indicate to you that the majority don't agree with it. We have ~50,000 monthly active users of Construct 2 (mix of free and paid). Forums are a small representation.

    Discouraging people from buying construct2 would be bad for business, however having it's better licensing model offering is obviously going to make it dificult to make construct 3 license sales.

    Yes, it's a difficult transition we're being careful about.

    Scirra has painted itself in a very tricky corner with this

    I don't think so at all. All our decisions have been thought out carefully over a period of many months. New product launches for small businesses are always risky and difficult. Yes it's risky, but no we don't think we're painted in a corner at all.

    It's very easy to criticise from a distance, but when you're in the trenches on a daily basis there's an abundance of information and decision making going on that you're not aware of.

    As to the credit card - you could have lowered the initial fee to use the scirra store 5$, instead of 50$

    I mean yeah, we could also charge $1. Also it's not $50, it's $25.

    When I want to start selling items on a brand new store - I am not sure if my product will even make 50$

    It's $25. And if you don't have the confidence you will make $25 in sales then don't pay it. It's entirely your choice.

    so if it was more in the impulse buy range price - that would have given me more incentive in trying to make and sell products for c2

    We're not interested in impulse buys for store fees. We're interested in people who want to stick around and sell for the long term.

    You seem completely set on not using Construct 3 which is fine, it's your prerogative. My questions to you are:

    • Why don't you move on and stop worrying about something so much you have no interest in? If it's not for you, that's fine - that's your prerogative
    • If you're worried about Construct 2 support, what reassurances are you after specifically that would satisfy you?
    • I believe you've mentioned that you don't think we're listening or engaging with the community well enough - what else do you think we could be doing better with regards to communications?
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    Can I just mention that Scirra has never offered an indie humble bundle deal?

    We were offered inclusion into a Humble Bundle but turned it down for a variety of reasons which we thought quite long and hard about.

    • Often in our opinion is a market signal for product end of life
    • We'd get a tiny amount of money from each sale (even big sales numbers transpire to fairly mediocre final amounts for a business employing several people)
    • It opens up secondary markets which threatens your revenue streams indefinitely (eg resellers)
    • Construct 2 sales were and continue to be strong - strong market value

    For us, not a good business decision because we're still confident in the value of Construct 2 going forwards. This is evidence based as sales from Construct 2 have shown no signs of slowing down even since the Construct 3 announcement.

    Also scirra has an upfront fee if you want to sell items on the scirra store

    Again, a business decision for a couple of reasons:

    • Having a credit card fee to open a seller account gives traceable accountability when someone breaks the law and tries to sell illegal goods
    • It serves as a good barrier of entry preventing lower quality goods

    The revenue from the sellers fee is not simply just to get more money.

  • Sorry Kiwi's Adventure was made specifically for Construct 3 and is not licensed for use in Construct 2.

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    We have a steady flow of new customers every day. As you've identified, the difficult part will be one day switching over that traffic into buying Construct 3 instead of Construct 2. As long as it happens reasonably smoothly and at similar levels then we won't have any problems.

    RE subscription companies losing money that's mainly if you're aggressively look to acquire customers, EG spending $150 to acquire a customer you know on average will subscribe for 3x years at $100 p/y. You'll not see a return on that customer until their 2nd years payment. Without investment or reserves, you'll have big cashflow problems. This is an option to explore perhaps in the future, and if we do we're well funded enough to do it if we wanted.

    Launching a new product is always a high risk pursuit for a company (don't underestimate this). Switching to a new payment model also adds more volatility but we're not worried as we're confident in our direction, well funded enough to not have to worry financially and highly confident in the product itself which is the main thing!

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    It was worth trying to convince you how you may hit more customers by letting us continue to work on our projects (at least!) on the standalone version, even when the license has ran out.

    Emphasis on "may". It may work out, it may not. We'll find out soon enough.

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    tunepunk

    Old versions are served from a unique URL so they can be run independently of each other.

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    > I don't understand why Tom keeps inviting all this dialog when Ashley is just going to shut him down. I grow tired of the mixed messages. It doesn't give me a lot of confidence.

    >

    Eh? What mixed messages? Please be specific and quote me and Ashley where we contradicted each other.

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    Right so your assumption is subscription = no impulse buyers. Or re-reading your posts, are you saying monthly option = impulse buyers but yearly = no impulse buyers? I really don't follow.

    RE impulse buyers and C3, we just wont know until we try. Also not sure why this is a concern when this is a business concern and not something that would directly affect anyone else.

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    >

    > We were surprised when we looked at our data at how many impulse purchases we see for Construct 2 (people who seem to buy and only use for a short period of time).

    >

    No, the real way to finish that sentence is: ...and we'd love to find an infailable method of stamping out this suprisingly large proportion of our customers; subscription was the answer.

    What do you mean? I don't understand.

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    I'm even more concerned now, based on your response- because I now feel like Scirra is focusing on other things outside the scope of developing a game making tool. It makes me feel less confident in where you are heading.

    We have 3 full time engineers working on C3. Don't be concerned there is no work going into the tool itself.

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    Are you saying the stand alone version will use and be reliant on the current Chrome version rather than be a self contained package?

    No sorry, I mispoke. It could be in a self contained package.

    [quote:2tkjawlq]That's one of the reasons I was advocating the option to suspend your subscription, so you could put your subscription on hold for several months if you know you're not going to use it, with this option limited to a few times per subscription so it's not abused.

    That is an interesting idea I will raise with everyone when we next discuss options.

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    But you said these are to help with retention- how does all this help with retention? How do these make people feel more inclined to subscribe?

    Retention is for currently subscribed people. Not sure why you don't get why all those things wouldn't help with retention.

    The other languages might introduce it to more people, but that doesn't address retention.

    Yes it would, people native in other languages with be better supported and engaged.

    I don't think a lack of game jams is a reason why people stopped using C2. In fact, when there were any, there was a lot of criticism the community had over it.

    Why are you taking each thing I said as an absolute? It's all part of a bigger picture.

    People may have loved the 3 games you included, but how does that help retention?

    New games/assets being given for free would help with retention. If you don't see that, then it's probably simply because it's not what you're interested in.

    If you ask a person whether they want custom assets for their game that fit specifically for their use or a copy of assets everyone else is using, people will choose the custom ones because they suit their game more closely.

    Good observation I guess, not sure how it's at all relevant. We obviously can't create custom assets for everyone. Or am I misunderstanding your point?

    Let me ask you a a question now, how would you improve retention of users?

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Tom

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