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Hello, friends,

I apologize for the English, I hope I can be understood. But I have to write to you now. I hope you won't reproach me.

TGC has great products, I have been using them for many years and have bought almost all of them. But the marketing is a bit strange.

Every now and then there are different prices, discounts, promotions. Products are duplicated all over the place and the old ones are no longer supported. Recently a friend wrote to me that he doesn't understand what the difference is between AppGameKit, AppGameKit Community E, AGK2, AppGameKit Classic and AppGameKit Studio. I have not been able to explain it to him. It's a mess. GameGuru - GameGuruMax - why two products again?

Isn't it better to have ONE product of one kind and perfect it?

So far AppGameKit doesn't even have a proper logo. Why??? How can such a good product not have a logo????
The name of the language. I'm quite comfortable with the AppGameKit language. But explaining to someone that I use AppGameKit Basic Script is really strange, nobody knows it, nobody understands it. Why couldn't you have left, say, DarkBasic AppGameKit? Or something understandable? Something appealing?

E.g. DarkBasic - best product, best name (smacks of something "Dark", something like Darkweb etc.), nice logo. And suddenly it's on the OpenSource scrapheap with no further development. Why???

I'm making an app for work. And my boss asks me, "What's AppGameKit?" And I say, "It's AppGameKit." And he says, "Is that something with games? I can't buy something that has 'game' in the name, I can't get away with that."

Maybe you don't fully realize it, but it's even harder for a foreigner to figure out.
Again, a friend writes to me:
"I have Steam, but I figured it's better to have free AppGameKit on PC, only again there's the risk of what happened with DarkBasic. You buy something as an original and it doesn't work because the registration site doesn't exist."
That's just a small sample of how people in our country understand this - and that's an intelligent person.

Honestly, when I show someone AppGameKit and its capabilities, they get excited. Then when he wants to buy it, looks at the site and sees the marketing chaos, he's put off.

Don't get mad at me for saying that. It's been my experience over the years and I'm more sorry than I want to criticize.

Finally, I don't even know what category to post this in on the forum? Isn't there anything here in general about TGC products?

AGK2 (classic) doesn't have Vulkan support or the visual editor, but AppGameKit Studio does+other functionalities that AGK2 doesn't have
Gameguru MAX uses the Wicked Engine for the 3D support , shaders etc and is a totally new entity. GG CLassic uses directx 11 and does not support many 3d model formats but MAX supports many such as OBJ, GLTF etc, classic doesn't.
To survive as a company, separate applications have been written, to bring in more revenue, theres no other way to put it..

@zx, agree with you on everything you said

@Bored, "To survive as a company, separate applications have been written, to bring in more revenue, theres no other way to put it.."

That has nothing at all to do with the weird and all over the place way they have named, positioned, and marketed their products, which is what zx is discussing.

TGC names the next iteration "Professional" or whatever, then renames the previous version as "Classic" which is rather odd, since - in the rest of the software industry - "Pro" is often the same version as standard, but with more features. It is unique (aka "WEIRD") to use Pro as the name for the next evolution of a product.

Take GameGuru and GameGuru MAX as a perfect example. They used the detergent approach to marketing, which is great for detergent but SUCKS for software. Last month you bought Supa-Sudsy for your wash but now this month, they came out with Supa-Sudsy MAX! Totally more betterer! The purpose of it is to get you to STOP buying the previous version and buy the new one. Great for detergents since you're about to throw out Supa-Sudsy "Classic" anyway, but not a smart move for development software. Why? Because you need to know that the AppMakerProgram is going to be there tomorrow since you are planning to create your company's game with it. The devs just made it clear that AppMakerProgram MAX will be there tomorrow because it is everything awesome, unlike the crap that you bought that they may or may not give a hoot about tomorrow.


The manner in which they do sales is also odd, as it conditions people to NOT buy because there might be another sale or better sale next month. Add to that, when they do sales, they exacerbate the pattern of made up words and terms (Why 'appgamekit'? Why??). For example, right now "AppGameKit Bumper Pack is on special promotion!" WTF is a Bumper Pack? Seriously, google "bumper pack".

Their marketing decisions are off the rails and have been so for decades. I'm not saying they need to hire a marketing team, but they need to at least run this stuff by someone that has a clue about the task.


IMO...

- AGK Studio should be positioned as AGK v3. Not renamed, just positioned as that. This way when they have their next great major overhaul, they can sell it as AppGameKit 4, continuing the x-years of rapid-development, easy-to-use, multi-platform AppGameKit awesomness that y thousands of indie developers and gamemakers have come to rely on to make their dreams come true.

- GameGuru MAX should be positioned as GameGuru 2, if not renamed such. As GG MAX, the expectation is that they are two different products, so the expectation remains that the prev is supported otherwise it will be considered abandoned. Renaming and repositioning GG MAX as GG 2 creates a set of more desirable expectations - that this is the next evolution of the software and that (since this is v2.0) the old version will no longer be supported.




tl;dr - TGC makes really good products that move forward with technology, but they need help with support, sales, and PR.

that's your opinion, that's fine. I'll stick with mine.

Was there any need to say that?

Ok guys, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but please keep it polite.

Hi there,

an advice for marketing, what about loking around and compare TGC products with others tool? Sometimes it's like marketing section has theyr heads boxed in a wood crates and walking for theys own direction, looking only thru a small hole between eyes. I've purchased AppGameKit in january 2021, and after years of DBPRO and DBC, after making some games as Ermesdesign, i found myself unable to write nothing with AppGameKit (very crappy tool, it left me SAD) and left the idea to develop games for android devices. But i started one week ago (even wanting to, as a joke) with Gdevelop5, and ATM i'm writing my own game!!!!, Gdevelop5 has tons of tutorial on youtube, games are easy to publish on steam, and Gdevelop5 is FREE, damned Gdevelop5.
Tools like Gdevelop5 or Construct3 are easy, it's true can make only small 2d games (also with newton phy for hangry birds game-like), but this is perfect for android!!!!!! nobody want to play civilization 6 on a phone, isn't it?
Maybe letting go AppGameKit and starting an app developing tool like the old S.E.U.C.K. of C64 (i wrote about 50 games with SEUCK... good times) could be a good marketing strategy for phone games. Another long-time problem, tutorials. Gdevelop has really tons of tutorial, and forgive me, we can't say the same things for TGC products. In conclusion, i'm not here to support other products, but unfortunatly they have a better marketing focus.

This it's my opinion, it will be nice to have a clean conversation about this.

thanks, Ermes.

P.S. i'm from Italy, it's was nice to win at Wembley.

Dear friends, thank you all for your reactions and feedback! Thank you!!

I think the authors are hurting themselves the most. You'll never be successful if you don't hear the fans and communicate with them.

In my opinion, maybe AppGameKit should start focusing more on apps. Creating a simple light-weight app, where there is a menu, some scroll-box, options, in short what every better mobile app has today, is almost impossible in AGK. Everything is too game-oriented rather than app-oriented.

On the other hand, I don't personally know of a better IDE for games and a better language in general

@zxretrosoft and Loktofeit

I total a gree with both of you on everything. Since DBP went open source I have been afraid to buy into much because of if I do what I buy might eventually be unsupported/updated anymore and maybe even go open source. I too think TGC needs to think about changing the way they do things. Eventually they could even run out of product ideas because every product they come out with has a better version of the original and the original becomes unsupported and obsolete. Even the better version eventually becomes old and obsolete and unsupported.

Example
I frown on Microsoft for a new version of Windows coming out about every 2 years. Every version is full of glitches and issues that need to be fixed constantly. Why do they keep making new version every to years? My opinion is Money. It is all about the almighty dollar. They don't seem to want to stick with a product and just make it better over time with upgrading it.

I commend Apple for usually coming out with new version of OS about every 7 years ( Correct me if I'm wrong), but the point is they stick with what they have longer. I think they make a version of OS from the old version so they are making the old version better and add a number like OS 10, yes they also put a name with it like Lion or whatever, but they don't seem to have the massive glitches and issues with the Mac operating system as Microsoft does because they stick with the old version longer before they come out with new version I believe is made from the old version source code. (Correct me if I'm wrong about any of this). I'm a Windows user, but commend Mac for what they do.

TGC needs to keep products named the same and just add as Loktofeit said a number and make the old version better. I agree things are all over the place. I love their products, but it is a mess

lol sure, they don't stick it to you with OS updates, but they sure do love thier yearly hardware releases and are one of the worst overall for making users buy the same just slightly newer thing over and over again

I made many things with SEUCK back in the day. I've considered a few times developing a modern version.



Because it's outdated and it's reliance on DX prevents them from reaching markets outside of just Windows. Plus, some of the things AppGameKit brings to the table I imagine would require major rewrites of DBP's core, which would then beg the question why not just make something new? Look at DB classic. Sure it was fun and easy to use back in the 90s but let's face it, it was terrible. DBP was a whole new compiler design from what I understand. But a lot of code was still compatible so why not make Pro a major version update to DBC? I don't know.

What bugged me was when AppGameKit 2 came out and was an entirely new purchase. I still feel that should have just been an upgrade. And now we have Studio, which I haven't purchased and see no need to.