Mana Games

[Lucian86]

I think it is kinda weak to ask Manu to pay for them. If you intended them to be free - then that is what they are.

I will provide them for free offline; you could use them as well for your ITST patch if you want (I hope everybody understood that). I already gave Manutoo a couple of good animations that are being used into the official game receiving in return an extra key for the game (which I didn't asked for yet but that's has nothing to do with it). I created a lot of animations which are available for free. I don't think at all that's a weak call from me...Weak it's when you do nothing...a lot of people are being called selfish just because they don't share with the others what they have created but somehow those who create nothing are not. That's my decision and I don't think you could blame me for that somehow. You can agree or disagree from a moral stand but my reasons and my choices have very good fundamentals. Hell I could have very well not shared at all my animations. I could have created everything for myself....it's my right, I have no responsibility towards anyone here. But I didn't

It looks to me you are a bit jealous of the fact that Manu can make a few extra sales because of these animations and you feel entitled to a share of these. Which is understandable, but if you want to be serious about it, you take them off the Forum right away. Then approach Manu and either sell them to him or ask for some sort of monetary arrangement. What you doing is making something "open source" then turn around and decide to charge for it.

Jealous is not the word...what I'm asking to Manutoo makes perfectly sense from a financial point of view. What Manutoo does is business; he's selling a product and everybody who contributed to its realization should be paid-off...plain and simple...here though I think we're heading to a more political or intellectual debate.
Whatever, the main point is that there's a difference between using the mods off the record and using them officialy and I'm sure you undertand this. Lots of mod have been created for videogames but I've never seen one used for the official game and most of all for free.

Sure Manu will benefit from having them in the game, but so what? He gave you the game and the platform to create these in the first place. He could have just made it impossible to Mod and that's that. ...if your intent was no to get paid for it, rather do it as a hobby and a "ego" polishing, then there is no issue. You got your fans/praises and your credits in every mod.

Yes but he didn't...the discussion ends here. There's a specific purpose for why he took this choice and that's one of the consequences.

It's not the money issue for me, could not care less for 5 euro or whatever...it's the fact that these are free now, and I am being asked to pay for them.

What you should do Lucian86 - is give an option to donate you online. I for once, would have sent you $20 a while ago already. Just to show my appreciation for your work. And I am sure many would do the same, you would end up with more than 200 euro.

Once again, they will be free offline...since you're playing with ITST mod online you coudn't just care less

About the donation stuff, I've never thought about it. Yeah, it could be a solution...my reasons and my choices though still make perfectly sense

[ComeonANDY!!]

I just said that IMO the new anims are capable of acquiring some new buyers

Yeah and so do the patches! So are we going to start to pay sam,dilima & ITST modders?
I wouldn't give you a penny, you come across as A 'clever dick' IMHO.

[SamModder]

I'm with Lucian on this one.

[djarvik]

Lucian,

Manu created the ability to Mod for the precise reason so that the community can contribute content and drive his sales higher. The initial intent was to have a form of free content for the game, I command him for that. If he wanted an Animator (or could afford one, no sure) he would have done so, and still can do so. You were contributing, then decided "hey, its not fair I spend all this time and he benefits" - and you are totally right. But this is the choice you made initially. Now you changing your mind. Totally acceptable. But in this case, as I suggested, work out a monetary arrangement's with Manu and leave the community out of it. This will be better for you. You will be turning your hobby into a part time job. But be prepared for Manu to "pass" on the offer.

I guess by "weak" I mean that most contributors here "drive sales" and all consider it a hobby. But maybe we all are simply stupid, don't know.

Jealous is not the word...what I'm asking to Manutoo makes perfectly sense from a financial point of view. What Manutoo does is business; he's selling a product and everybody who contributed to its realization should be paid-off...plain and simple...here though I think we're heading to a more political or intellectual debate.

You right, "Jealous" is the wrong word. Apologies.


Seriously? You want every modder here to be paid? What about ITST? We are a marketing arm and a VERY good one. What about the Hosts/Mods that are running the tour? ...surely they contribute to new sales. There is no end to it man.

At the end of the day, this is a Hobby and to me, once money gets involved - it loses its appeal. No hard feelings.

[Lucian86]

Lucian,

Manu created the ability to Mod for the precise reason so that the community can contribute content and drive his sales higher. The initial intent was to have a form of free content for the game, I command him for that. If he wanted an Animator (or could afford one, no sure) he would have done so, and still can do so. You were contributing, then decided "hey, its not fair I spend all this time and he benefits" - and you are totally right. But this is the choice you made initially. Now you changing your mind. Totally acceptable. But in this case, as I suggested, work out a monetary arrangement's with Manu and leave the community out of it. This will be better for you. You will be turning your hobby into a part time job. But be prepared for Manu to "pass" on the offer.

As I said, I'm into this community but I have no responsibility towards it; didn't signed anything and I have no rules to follow. The fact of selling some animations as a member of this community or not it's totally irrelevant. You're putting it in a sort of moral code of something...I don't think it's the case and point of our discussion.

Seriously? You want every modder here to be paid? What about ITST? We are a marketing arm and a VERY good one. What about the Hosts/Mods that are running the tour? ...surely they contribute to new sales. There is no end to it man.

I'm a little surprised that you come as well with this example...it's not the same thing Djarvik; just think a little....yeah, you surely help increasing Manutoo's sales (like the rest of the guys) but he's not selling your stuff. He's selling his game with his code, shirts, players, menus, ecc....your things are extra private stuff whereas in my case, he's going to "sell" my animations (not sell them separately but the game with my anims incorporated).

Manutoo understands this...that's why he offered us in the first place a free key when we provided him our first animations...He understands it but according to him my anims don't worth how much I'm asking for (115 euro); that's why he won't buy them.

Whatever, I'm not expecting you all agree with me; call me selfish, greedy, whatever your want...I'm expecting you to understand my choice and especially this thing of why my anims are different from the rest of mods; not because they're better or more important but because we're talking about the possibility of putting them into the official game, not into the modded game

[RogerF]

Lucian could you upload these demos on youtube please ? it would just be easier for everyone to see them

[MarianoEG]

Im with Lucian...

[manutoo]

A few things :
- .dmo doesn't contain anim info, so people playing them without the modded anims will see nothing but desync
- I don't feel like I'm selling Lucian86's anim, coz :

. Demo users can't see them (except if playing online against a registered users who use them), can't use them, and can't know they are in the game

. I don't do marketing around them ; for example, I don't list the Modded anims in "In the full version you will receive:" of the order page here https://www.managames.com/tennis/order_en.html

. for me, it only saves bit of time to people who already bought the game, allowing to not Mod the game if they want to avoid the hassle, and allow registered users to use them online ; in both cases, it doesn't bring me money, except by a possible rising of the "word of mouth" effect ; this effect is totally immeasurable

- the community is brought into this partly from my impulse, as Lucian86 told me it'd bring me sales, I wanted to actually try to measure that
- of the 5 people who voted they could pay an extra, only 1 actually sent me an email to confirm his vote... (that was Raz )
- I'd likely pay for anims for TE2014/15 for players which are still not inside the game & who have different styles from the ones already in the game (but not now, as I won't be working on next TE edition before a while)
- right now, at the end of the day, I don't care much if Lucian86's anims are bundled in the game or not ; if they can be, it's surely better as explained above, but if not, I won't have 2nd thoughts about that (I actually didn't really have much 1st thoughts either ) ; hopefully, people will still be able to download them in the Forum, and (almost) everybody will be happy

[NOLE.LUCKY]

I came up with a solution sometime ago, but no one gave a fuck.
The anims should be available for sale separately and manu and lucian can share the revenue. This solves bot manu's problem of not being sure whether lucian's anims really do any good to the sales and lucian's desire to make money of these anims.

[E=mc2]

I came up with a solution sometime ago, but no one gave a fuck.
The anims should be available for sale separately and manu and lucian can share the revenue. This solves bot manu's problem of not being sure whether lucian's anims really do any good to the sales and lucian's desire to make money of these anims.

grow up and stop wasting manutoo's time

[Fede Albanello]

manutoo.. wise words

[Lucian86]

A few things :
- .dmo doesn't contain anim info, so people playing them without the modded anims will see nothing but desync
- I don't feel like I'm selling Lucian86's anim, coz :

. Demo users can't see them (except if playing online against a registered users who use them), can't use them, and can't know they are in the game

. I don't do marketing around them ; for example, I don't list the Modded anims in "In the full version you will receive:" of the order page here https://www.managames.com/tennis/order_en.html

Then make sure to do all that ! It's not like I'm not allowing you to

. for me, it only saves bit of time to people who already bought the game, allowing to not Mod the game if they want to avoid the hassle, and allow registered users to use them online ; in both cases, it doesn't bring me money, except by a possible rising of the "word of mouth" effect ; this effect is totally immeasurable

- the community is brought into this partly from my impulse, as Lucian86 told me it'd bring me sales, I wanted to actually try to measure that
- of the 5 people who voted they could pay an extra, only 1 actually sent me an email to confirm his vote... (that was Raz )
- I'd likely pay for anims for TE2014/15 for players which are still not inside the game & who have different styles from the ones already in the game (but not now, as I won't be working on next TE edition before a while)
- right now, at the end of the day, I don't care much if Lucian86's anims are bundled in the game or not ; if they can be, it's surely better as explained above, but if not, I won't have 2nd thoughts about that (I actually didn't really have much 1st thoughts either ) ; hopefully, people will still be able to download them in the Forum, and (almost) everybody will be happy

Sure it's not easy to quantify the marginal effect of my animations on your sales...we're talking though about 9 copies...only I did convinced 5 people to buy the game in the past...remember that I told you that I'll promote the animations through good quality videos...just typing federer serve, forehand, backhand, ecc wil bring a lot of viewers and among those somebody I'm pretty sure will buy the game.

Anyway, I respect your decision..at least you do understand why I'm asking you money


Whatever...I'll release offline the 3 packs in the next days as I promised...after that I think I'm going to retire...it's not a retaliation but more like a lack of motivation given the circumstances (or maybe a little bit of both)

[MarianoEG]

Whatever...I'll release offline the 3 packs in the next days as I promised...after that I think I'm going to retire...it's not a retaliation but more like a lack of motivation given the circumstances (or maybe a little bit of both)

WTF!!

[MarianoEG]

i hope this solved in a better way... i know that could be done this without take this kind of decision.

[kartman]

Manutoo, how many percent of TE2011 copies are you selling to users outside this forum? I think this poll will only reach the TE2011 fans who have been playing the game for a long time and who either already spent money on the game, or who are unwilling/unable to spend money the game anyhow (the demo users). I think the attractiveness of the new animations is that they may attract new buyers from outside this community. I think in the long-term it could be much more than you would expect or than you could calculate with a poll like this.

I can understand both points of view though:
In favour of Manutoo, I agree that simply adding the animations to a minor update ("Tennis Elbow v1.0f build 95", for example) probably won't do much to the short-term TE2011 sales, if no extra marketing is done, since it's not a very visible change.
I can also see Manutoo's point that Lucian's pack is rather some type of fine-tuning of existing animations than a pack of new animations. Personally, I'd also have preferred it if Lucian spent all his valuable time and talent on new high-quality animations of players who are important in the TE2011 game but who don't have good animations yet, for example Agassi, Sampras, Safin, Hewitt, Muster, Ivanisevic, Rafter, Courier, etc. However, Lucian has a personal preference for perfection above quantity (and apparently mainly for current era players), which is very defendable too, and which undoubtedly leads to better animations and possibly also to better results in the long term.
Also, if Manutoo pays for this pack, and in the future he has to pay again for similar packs from Lucian and other modders it would cost him more money, which may be harder to get back from sales.
So I understand Manutoo's hesitation to pay for this, and I don't think it's caused by greed.

However, in favor of Lucian:
I think Manutoo has to look further than only the short-term sales of this "built 95". Think about the websites and magazines who are going to review the game when a TE2013 or TE2014 is released. A difference in animation quality could have a big impact on a review and could cause a lot of extra sales. Even though these animations already exist in the game, I think the added value of having high-quality normal and accelerated versions of these strokes, is quite big and could really make a difference when someone writes a review. Remember that it's very likely that a reviewer spends most of his time playing with Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. And even without a TE2013/TE2014 release: out of all the million internet visitors there have to be some tennis fans like me who would stumble upon the game and who are impressed primarily because of the animations, and who would buy the game because of that. Add to that the word-of-mouth effect which may start slowly, but which accumulates over time, with still years to come. I find it hard to imagine that in the long term the sales don't increase by more than 9 copies.
Maybe it would be an option to pay Lucian now but to make an arrangement that the animations could be used in the current as well as in future versions of TE. And then maybe Manutoo could do the full advertising when TE2013/TE2014 are released. Or maybe Manutoo adds part of the animations, and saves some for inclusion with TE2013/2014?
And to prevent difficult discussions about future packs from Lucian (like: how much does Manutoo have to pay per every 3 new player animations in the future?), maybe it could be arranged that this is going to be a one-time payment that should be considered a general payment and acknowledgement to Lucian's efforts (where future developments will be handled in a reasonable way), rather than a fixed price per pack?

Anyhow, just trying to give some ideas. I think the most important thing is that Lucian still gets the most respect for all his work, as for sure he has put in much more hours of voluntary work than a normal person would do for this small amount of money. Myself I have worked as a volunteer for a gaming website for a long time, and I know what it feels like when people criticize you personally for something small. Even if it's only 1 or 2 people who do that, or even if they have valid points, it just slams all the motivation out of you to continue the thing you actually love to do.

So, I wish to say thanks to Lucian again for all the great work he's done, and I really hope there can be a happier solution to this...