When did western devs start monetising RPG Maker games?

[Jaike]

I was curious about this part of history that's pretty relevant to this forum, and I guess many of the "old people" here saw it happen. When did western devs begin to monetise their RPG Maker games with sales, subscriptions, and all? The release history suggests it was after 2000.

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isn't very helpful, the oldest western game on it is from 2005 about a school massacre, but it was freeware with requests for small donations. The oldest Japanese commercial game on it was from the 90s. And when did it become a model for adult RPG Maker games?

And expanding this a little, do you remember this development yourself? Do you have any memories about it that are especially fond?

 

[Ass prefer]

You are a very old girl....

 

[Duke Greene]

I think the very first western dev to do so was Amaranth with the Aveyond series, specifically Rhen's Quest in 2005 or 2006. I was mostly a lurker in the RM communities at the time but I remember the game being often mocked for being generic and using a lot of edited RTP resources. Back then the "meta" was using SNES rips or spend years doing your own pixel art (and ultimately falling into vaporware) so someone who dared sell a game that wasn't up to the elitist standards of the time wasn't really appreciated.

Aveyond was liked outside of the RM communities though.

Edit: I forgot to mention a detail. Western games made with RPG Maker 2000 or 2003 couldn't be sold because they were made with a pirated version of the product. The first RPG Maker to be legally available in the West was XP, released late 2005.

 

[Jaike]

I think the very first western dev to do so was Amaranth with the Aveyond series, specifically Rhen's Quest in 2005 or 2006. I was mostly a lurker in the RM communities at the time but I remember the game being often mocked for being generic and using a lot of edited RTP resources. Back then the "meta" was using SNES rips or spend years doing your own pixel art (and ultimately falling into vaporware) so someone who dared sell a game that wasn't up to the elitist standards of the time wasn't really appreciated.

Aveyond was liked outside of the RM communities though.

Edit: I forgot to mention a detail. Western games made with RPG Maker 2000 or 2003 couldn't be sold because they were made with a pirated version of the product. The first RPG Maker to be legally available in the West was XP, released late 2005.

Thanks! That's a very useful answer. Looks like they (she? if it's just a 1-woman show)

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but

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, in a way. I see they never priced down their old games. But there's a free prequel. It seems female self-insert power fantasies in super generic plots were their only trick? Titles with "quest" in it and "save the world!" plots, just my thing!

And it makes sense they'd only start selling western games when legal versions got available.

 

[Duke Greene]

It seems female self-insert power fantasies in super generic plots were their only trick? Titles with "quest" in it and "save the world!" plots, just my thing!

Women in their 30s or 40s with little RPG experience counted for a good chunk of Aveyond's fandom, I think. This is probably why Amaranth managed to live off this (and later Indinera copied her). She chose to chase a valid market and decided that the validation of Gaming World forum's "elite" was worthless.

I'm still friends with a few of these elites and unsurprisingly growing older changed their outlook a lot. They'd definitely bitchslap their younger selves if they could. Also, in the name of honesty, I'll confess that my own opinions were not much different than theirs at the time. But like them I grew up and learnt that the "everything for the Art" mentality doesn't get you very far in real life.