For me, s&box is about minimizing regret. Unity has been good to us, but I regret that we didn't always have our own engine being developed in the background. I regret that the Garry's Mod community mostly have to leave Garry's Mod if they want to make money from the things they create in it.
So in my mind, s&box is broken into 3 sections.
So in my mind, s&box is broken into 3 sections.
The Engine
The engine is the core of it. If nothing else works - we have the engine. I would like Facepunch to have an engine that we can use to create our own games. One that isn't Unity. One that we fully control.
It would be great if our work goes into improving our engine. I don't want to pay Unity $500k every year so I can then pay my own staff to optimize and fix their engine.
The long term goal is to be making all of our games on s&box, and to have expanded so the engine works on mobile/console/etc.
It would be great if our work goes into improving our engine. I don't want to pay Unity $500k every year so I can then pay my own staff to optimize and fix their engine.
The long term goal is to be making all of our games on s&box, and to have expanded so the engine works on mobile/console/etc.
The Platform
A Garry's Mod type platform, where there's a list of games and you can jump between them. But this time providing a way for the game developers to monetise.
Monetisation needs to be handled carefully. Everything you download on ios/android app store turns out to require a subscription. Every roblox game is pay to win. We need to do better than that. Let people make money, but don't let it get predatory.
For this to work we need games that get people sticking around. We're making games that will try to do that, and we'll be making an official sandbox mode too. We're also trying to encourage game creation by doing Game Jams.
Monetisation needs to be handled carefully. Everything you download on ios/android app store turns out to require a subscription. Every roblox game is pay to win. We need to do better than that. Let people make money, but don't let it get predatory.
For this to work we need games that get people sticking around. We're making games that will try to do that, and we'll be making an official sandbox mode too. We're also trying to encourage game creation by doing Game Jams.
Standalone
In Garry's Mod, if you made a popular game, the next step was to abandon the community and make a new version in Unity or Unreal. That fucking sucks.
We want to let you use the s&box engine to create games, export them, give them away for free or put them on Steam.
We don't want the burden of collecting royalties or license fees. The platform and our own games should make us money. That should be our incentive. We shouldn't be taxing your hard work, because having you use our engine is of benefit to us. I would also like to offer some assurance, legally, that we can't change the rules further down the line, when we get jealous about how much money everyone is making.
We obviously need officially Valve to say yes to this, but Valve are cool, they get it, I don't think they're gonna say no. They just need to know what they're saying yes to - so our aim is to put a demo together and see what we can do.
We want to let you use the s&box engine to create games, export them, give them away for free or put them on Steam.
We don't want the burden of collecting royalties or license fees. The platform and our own games should make us money. That should be our incentive. We shouldn't be taxing your hard work, because having you use our engine is of benefit to us. I would also like to offer some assurance, legally, that we can't change the rules further down the line, when we get jealous about how much money everyone is making.
We obviously need officially Valve to say yes to this, but Valve are cool, they get it, I don't think they're gonna say no. They just need to know what they're saying yes to - so our aim is to put a demo together and see what we can do.
