WOULD THIS WORK? URGENT

Guys, do any of you know/remember the game WonderKing? It was a 2D side-scroller, and it was incredibly popular while it lasted. Unfortunately the guys who made the content sued the publishing company for whatever reason, which stopped the content from coming out. nDoors (the publishers) sold to Ignited Games, but the issue remained. Eventually, the game started costing more than it produced, so they shut it down.

I've got a contact who can talk to Ryu&Soft (the devs), and depending on how much the game is worth, I could buy it*, and we could own it here. Hawk as the developer/coder would work on it, Kenichi would get something productive done with his concept art, and best of all we'd being 1000's of old Wonderking players to the site. This would generate traffic in our other areas too, boosting things. We may also find some more coders from the people who join, thus producing the other games faster.

Have a good think. There's a really good chance that the game is too expensive anyway... But if it isn't, would you guys like that?

*I'd expect some money back from sales in the Premium shop, to compensate for the purchase, but once it's paid back it's even. It's not urgent either, I don't mind if it takes a long time to pay back.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT THOUGH, AMIRIGHT?

I think if we decided how much we could actually work on it, that would be great. We would need to know some other stuff first, such as what language it was coded in. Then you have to remember, there is the cost of maintaining servers... Like you said, thousands of players. That's too many to just have maybe two servers hosted by us off and on on our computers. We would need, most likely, SEVERAL dedicated servers. And those cost money.

So, upside is we would...

#1 be able to give this game back to people.

#2 have an already made game we just need to add our own content to.

#3 be able to draw people's attention to CS.

#4 get maybe some cash towards CS funding.

Problems are...

#1 we would need to make a TON of our own content. If they already have a scripting engine and quest engine and map engine built it would be not as hard... And it is likely.

#2 it wouldn't really be OUR game. Yeah, we bought it, but no matter how much we either try to make it just like it was, or make it into something new, people will complain they liked it better before. Guaranteed.

#3 The previous owners said it cost them more to run than they were getting. That will probably apply to us as well.

It's fairly risky... Depending on how much we (meaning Kanga I really feel bad whenever you offer to contribute money...) are willing to risk, it might pay off big time in the way of attracting newcomers and possibly cash... Or it might get our names out there as n00bish amateurs, and we will get tons of people mad at us for ruining an awesome game.

I for one... I think I would support this. Since you made the purchase, you would probably have to take a lot of the responsibility for the project. AKA you would be in charge of it. That is very generous of you to call it even at the point you got back all your money spent, BTW.

All right, I'm for it! *probably gonna regret this*

Yeah, it would be a risky investment!

There's a place near where I live that sells server stuff, so possibly I could run the game on one of those. They're pretty expensive, but it's a possibility.

I'll ask them what language they code in, and report back. That's another thing that could stop us in our tracks.

Sounds good! Maybe we should get a few testers to see how it compares and fix/add the things they like.

^That's a decent idea but it would take far too long to test, evaluate, and complete changes before hosting. If time =/= money, then I'd agree to it. Unfortunately though, time DOES = money, and after spending that much there's no way I'm wasting anything.

*rests point* last thing i'll say. If it was a good game, we might be able to get a few players from it for no up-front cost.

Kanga, I don't just mean that it would cost a lot for the hardware… There is also the insanely fast internet you would need. I think the best value would be to rent servers. One question I have, is who would make the content? We don't have a sprite artist… We would at least need to hire one of those. I mean, sure some of us have made some okay pixel art, but not like the players of this will be used to.

Its very risky and it might not even be possible for us to work on that game.As cyberkyd said we don't have sprite artists that are good enough.This game is probably out of our league if we can even afford it, which i doubt.

I have seen a game being bought after failing only to fail again and that was with professional game developers.Its too high of a risk, if there was another game that we could buy, that was more suitable for us id say yes but this one has a 90% chance of us failing miserably, and a 9% chance of just failing.

So no this would not work, if you are going to buy a game, buy one we CAN work with.

I think it would be far easier to make a new game... without pixel art. I know a few pixel artists, but they are all working on their own stuff.

Cyberkyd_30 wrote:

Kanga, I don't just mean that it would cost a lot for the hardware… There is also the insanely fast internet you would need. I think the best value would be to rent servers. One question I have, is who would make the content? We don't have a sprite artist… We would at least need to hire one of those. I mean, sure some of us have made some okay pixel art, but not like the players of this will be used to.

WELL, there's our answer. That idea is now officially down the hole I get 150kbs, so there's no way that's happening... I don't think fast internets are actually available where I live. =/

SO, that being said, perhaps like Samulis said we should make something similar. I mean, we've got PLENTY to work on now, that's that's a distant project perhaps.