Please find below the answers to some of the frequently asked questions.
What is YoYo Games?
YoYo games is a small UK-based company, formed by some former and current game industry execs. Sandy Duncan is CEO of YoYo Games. Creating the new Game Maker social network is their main goal. The Game Maker Company is one of the owners of YoYo Games and Mark Overmars is one of the directors.
Will registration costs be increased, or will there be any more pricings?
No. Game Maker 7 will come in two versions. The Lite edition can be used for free by everybody. The Pro edition will contain more features and cost the same as registration costs now.
Do we have to pay to get version 7?
If you are an official registered user of Game Maker 6 or 5 you will be able to upgrade to the Pro edition for free.
How will YoYo Games affect the Game Maker Community?
YoYo Games will provide a extensive social network for Game Maker game developers. As part of this the current GMC will be integrated in the new website. We will try to make this migration as smooth as possible. We will make sure people will be able to keep their current identities (for the whole YoYo Games site) but some re-registration will be required. Also we will start the forum from scratch but keep the old forum around in read-only mode to have access to older topics.
What else will the YoYo Games site offer?
First of all it will offer a place where you can publish your games and make them available for everybody to play. It will provide a mechanism to rank games, tag them, comment on them and write reviews. It will also contain extensive mechanisms to find certain games. Also we will offer better mechanisms to help each other, e.g. in the form of a Wiki. And we will provide a mechanism for resource sharing. More will come in the near future. The emphasis is on the developers but we will create a site to make their work more accesible to the players.
Can I still publish my games elsewhere?
Yes, you can continue to freely distribute the games you create with the new version 7 of Game Maker royalty free any way you like, and also sell them. Of course we hope that the service we will provide will result in people using YoYo Games as their prime distribution platform. (Also because it will support the community further.)
How will YoYo Games change Game Maker?
YoYo Games will put considerable resources into the further development of Game Maker but we will not change its global purpose.Game Maker is directed to beginner game developers and will remain to be so. The further development of Game Maker should only make it easier to use Game Maker, not harder. We will put in more functionality for advanced users, but not by sacrificing ease of use. And compatibility is something we will obvioulsy continue to strive for.
What's this about porting Game Maker to C/C++?
We will carefully consider how to further develop Game Maker. One of the options is implementing it in C++. But this is not even close to being decided. Such a move takes a lot of time and effort and we will have to see what improvemens it brings. We will balance that against other improvements we could make. And please realize that this would not affect the working of Game Maker. I would not change the GML language for example.
Who is this new administrator James Geary?
James Geary is employed by DubIt, the company that is creating the YoYo Games site. He just got the administrator status such that he could check out all aspects of the current forum, which will help in making the move to YoYo Games as smooth as possible. He won't do any of the other administration tasks.
Is there any connection to Xbox of Microsoft?
No. Sandy Duncan was the former head of XBox Europe but he is not related to Microsoft anymore. He does though bring in a lot of experience.
Mark
