Honestly, I think it comes down to having a few games that are "hits" (meaning ~100K audience instead of the ~1K you have in our incestuous community) and having those games mention that they were created through BYOND. As such, we are working on features (standalone & website-games) that can make the initial exposure for games easier, and are working with a few users to get them marketing these games.

People get so caught up in the limitations of the language that they don't even realize that these games can be successful with the tools we have now. NEStalgia had a brief moment of internet success thanks to being mentioned on a few articles and during that time got a lot of users and made a lot of money (with some carry over even to this day). Yet the number of people who even saw those ads during that time was negligible compared to the potential audience. If a game can get on some major portals or get prolonged exposure, it will get users, and it will make sales. And that will reflect well on BYOND because some percentage of those users will want to do the same thing.

People need to stop comparing BYOND to general engines like Torque or Unity because those are catered to a different sort of developer, one that generally has a lot of programming experience prior. That is why they can get away with selling their tools for hundreds of dollars. BYOND is built on the belief that there are lots of creative people out there who may not have a lick of programming experience but want to make their ideas a reality. Push those people to these other engines and they won't get anywhere. But with BYOND, there is actually a real chance because the barrier for entry is a lot smaller. And I do believe someone with very limited programming education could make a game like "Words with Friends" in BYOND.

Tom wrote:

Honestly, I think it comes down to having a few games that are "hits" (meaning ~100K audience instead of the ~1K you have in our incestuous community) and having those games mention that they were created through BYOND.

If a Flash game developer plays a fun BYOND game it might inspire them to make a Flash game, but it won't inspire them to abandon Flash and use BYOND instead. Multimedia Fusion and Game Maker have both had popular games made with them (more than 100k players, I would guess) but I don't think that alone made a significant difference for either product. Most of the people who played those games had already heard of or used some other game development program.

BYOND's website doesn't effectively communicate why someone should use BYOND instead of Flash, Java, c++, or anything else. Even though BYOND might not compete with other engines feature for feature, there are still many reasons to use it. Even if you're trying to attract people without any game development experience to use BYOND, they've certainly heard of Flash so you'll have to explain to them why they should try BYOND instead. It's kind of like making a new sweetener. You've got to tell people who use sugar why they should use nutrisweet or splenda isntead, even if they've never had coffee before. If you don't explain to new game developers why they should use BYOND, they're just going to try Flash or something else instead.

What'd have the most impact is if BYOND had a popular game made by someone who previously used Flash or something else. Their success wouldn't just show that BYOND was capable of making a decent game but that it's an appealing platform to use. You might be waiting a long time to have an actual game and game developer come along who fit that description. Fortunately, you don't need to wait. You can already look at other tools and write something or make a video that explains the benefits of using BYOND.

People need to stop comparing BYOND to general engines like Torque or Unity because those are catered to a different sort of developer, one that generally has a lot of programming experience prior.

Even though BYOND is targeted to a different type of user, it's still a game development tool and should be presented in a similar manner. BYOND is unique but that doesn't mean it's unique in all regards and couldn't learn something from how other game development tools are presented. You've said that people could make BYOND games that are as popular as games made with Unity, but then you're hesitant to present BYOND in the same manner that Unity is presented in. Is BYOND a serious game development platform or not? Ford and Ferrari make cars for different types of people but their websites show the same information about their cars. Ford doesn't say "crap, that Ferrari's got more horsepower than our cars so we're not going to show horsepower on our website - we'll just say that our cars do things that no other cars can do."

Alathon wrote:

This discussion dates back to something like 2002 or 2003 by now; one thing that always gets me is that the discussion is very rarely constructive. Everyone has different ideas of what the website is supposed to attract, how to do it, why it isn't, etc. that its simply too vague and broad.

I think it's often viewed as being not constructive because the staff rarely takes anyone's advice. If advice is ignored it'll seem unconstructuve. I'll try to be more direct:

1. Write a list of features that BYOND has (audio support, graphics hardware support, networking, map editor, sprite editor, object oriented language, GUI editor, etc.) and put this on an "About BYOND" page of the site. Compare this list of features to those provided by other platforms (Game Maker, Flash, Python, etc.). This will show that BYOND isn't just some basic scripting language, it's a complete game development tool and instead of simply having lots of libraries avaialble to use (like a c++ or Java user would have), it directly handles graphics, audio, networking, and input for you. Instead of saying vague things like "does things no other tool can do" you'll actually have a list that explains what that means.

2. Make the BYOND website, installer, and software focus on game development, not game playing. People will most likely find BYOND as a game playing site by finding a game made with BYOND. People who find BYOND for what it is will most likely have been looking for game development tools. If you want BYOND to become a popular game development program, the game development side of things should get top billing.

3. Actively blog about BYOND. The blog will get traffic and raise awareness of BYOND. Even if you blog about things that aren't directly related to what BYOND is (ex: writing about some problem you had with maintaining both Windows and Linux versions of programs), any increased exposure will help and make BYOND seem like a more legitimate software product.

4. Make videos or written blog posts that showcase benefits of BYOND. It could be showing "here's how simple it is to do XYZ with BYOND" or you could be showing "here's something that's hard to do with Flash that's easy to do with BYOND".

5. Improve BYOND. If you write a list of features and make the table that compares BYOND to other programs, you'll probably realize some ways that BYOND is lacking. To give the blog ways to say "here's how BYOND is better than something else", it'll need to be better than something else.

I think what Forum_account is getting at here is this.

When applying for a job, you want your resume in it's best shape so that the employer has a reason to pick you over other candidates. In this case, Game Developers are like employers, and DM is the applicant, whereas DM needs a good resume to get the job.

Things will only get better if we can honestly see how bad things currently are.

This is the single worst piece of advice I've ever read on this forum and represents so much that is wrong with Internet culture. It is unfortunate that your curmudgeonly thoughts aren't contained to a vacuum, because they have a genuinely negative effect and offset the good you otherwise you do here.

Anytime you have a community surrounding a product, you are going to have negativity and criticism. If you went by comments, you'd think youtube was a cesspool too. The fact is that we do have good games, and have for some time, and it is the exposure of these games that encourages new developers, not verbiage on a website. Certainly if said verbiage could get us top search billing, it'd help, but it doesn't so it doesn't.

Say you made a BYOND game and got it on Steam or some other major distribution. If you said "i made this with the system at byond.com", then of course other people will try to do the same thing, because that speaks more for the system than any marketing fluff. I know this because that is how everyone finds BYOND or most anything these days. We have so many anime games because one got popular and some percentage of the player base wanted to do the same thing.

Unfotunately only a couple of users ( and none of the chronic complainers) have ever tried to market their games because they figure the small user base here is good enough or they don't know how to go about it or..... something. So we are taking things in our own hands and working with some of the more popular games to figure out how to help in this effort (including technical efforts like reducing the distribution and installation steps through a standalone system). I see no reason to believe that these games can't become exceedingly popular-- those with a negative outlook feel differenly which is why the are instead just complaining about the software all the time.

When we have an influx of new users, then we may see there is some confusion over the presentation of materials because there will be forum questions to the matter; although I doubt this is the case because we should be seeing this already. The proof of concept for the developer is simply the game that brought them to the site. This is fundamentally how BYOND is different from most engines.

Tom wrote:

Anytime you have a community surrounding a product, you are going to have negativity and criticism. If you went by comments, you'd think youtube was a cesspool too.

There's a difference between negativity and criticism. I'm not saying that BYOND is full of bad games because I have a negative outlook - it truly is full of bad games. You can easily count the good games on one hand. It sounds like you want BYOND to be the kind of youth soccer league where everyone is a winner and they don't keep score. This doesn't yield good soccer players, just a bunch of kids running after a ball (and some picking grass or staring at the sky), and that's basically what BYOND has. It doesn't have game developers, it has a lot of kids running around pretending to be game developers. If we can't realize that, things won't get better.

To improve something you have to recognize that it could be improved - that it's bad, lacking, or insufficient in some way. For BYOND to have good games, we'll have to be able to recognize when games aren't fun. For BYOND to improve, we need to be able to find and discuss the software's shortcomings. For the community to improve, we have to realize what it's missing. The DM libraries I've written are good because I'm always looking for ways to improve them. It might be a more "positive" activity to sit around patting myself on the back, but that's not how you improve things. I'm sure SilkWizard often looks at NEStalgia and thinks that it's missing something or isn't good enough - if he thought it was good enough, he'd have stopped working on it. This isn't negativity, that's just how these things work.

Say you made a BYOND game and got it on Steam or some other major distribution. If you said "i made this with the system at byond.com", then of course other people will try to do the same thing, because that speaks more for the system than any marketing fluff. I know this because that is how everyone finds BYOND or most anything these days

Suppose a restaurant gets a good review and you decide to try it out, but when you get there the restaurant is full of rats and garbage, would you still eat there? The review gets people to go to the restaurant but the restaurant itself is what makes people come in and eat. Successful games made with BYOND will get people to your website but it's the software and the website that'll make those people become BYOND users.

You're assuming anything you say about BYOND would be "fluff", but look at this page. There's hardly any fluff.

Iobject wrote:

Guys, read my last post. It states that I have made my own incomplete source for a project that can be an open-source one. It's called "The Quest For High Quality" and I cancelled it but kept the source.

If you guys want, I can host a Dropbox or online server for people to work off of it and mame it something to be a byond hit.

That kind of stuff sounds good but it doesn't work like that. Making a game isn't that hard and it's not something we all need to work together on. To make a game you need one good idea. Having 100 different people come up with 100 ideas, each being 1% as good won't add up to the same result. Things also have to be set up carefully for people to work together or to benefit from each other's work. Someone will benefit from using a 1500 line library because it was written to be used by other projects. People won't benefit nearly the same amount from building on the 1500 lines of code you wrote for your game because it wasn't made to be used that way.

I do agree with the idea that BYOND users can accomplish more if they work together but people don't have to work together so literally. If you use libraries, ask questions on the forum, and get feedback about your game from other users, it's technically a solo project but you are working with other people. We can make things like this which greatly lighten the load on developers so that people can more easily do things on their own. Ultimately this is a better approach. Instead of having a game that's a compromise between the ideas that 20 different people had (which is bound to be bland even if one of the users had some really interesting ideas), you get to see one person's ideas (which has the potential to be much better).

Plus a community "mosh pit" source would be truly and epicly terrible. Just... no. That's like putting up a canvas in 4chan and saying, "Let's all create the most beautiful image ever".

Tom wrote:

If you really think the BYOND software and website is the computer equivalent to "rats and garbage"

The example was clearly an exaggeration - restaurants aren't literally full of rats and garbage. It was a deliberately extreme example meant to show that people won't use BYOND simply because they've heard about it and that BYOND still has to be appealing to people.

Not to toot my own horn (because god knows a lot of people have contributed to this), but the software and website are amazing! You can download this tiny piece of software, make an online game without knowing the first thing about networking, and get players right away!

You know those things are true. I know those things are true. Other BYOND users know those things are true. The only people who don't know those things are the people who haven't used BYOND, and those are the people who matter most here. They only know what the BYOND website tells them and compared to the websites of similar products, BYOND's offers hardly any information.

You can be negative and say, well, look at what BYOND does compared to Unity or Flash or Java or whatever. I really don't care. BYOND does cater to a lower-end developer and there is no shame in that.

I agree completely. It's not about what BYOND can or can't do, it's about how you present BYOND. It doesn't matter if you're presenting it as a game development tool for beginners or if it's not as powerful as other tools, it's still a game development tool and should be presented as one. Look at these other sites:

http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d
http://unity3d.com/unity/

They're talking about what their products provide and how they help you make games. Look at byond.com, it's saying vague things like "does things no other game maker can" and is talking about making money - it sounds like a scam (the membership fees and shady installer don't help with that either). You don't have to change BYOND much, you just need to present it differently. As long as it doesn't look like a serious game development tool people aren't going to take it seriously.

This is an opinion and I hope it wasn't stated before, but some people are too lazy to learn how to program with DM and post on the Classified Ads, "[Unpaid] Need a Programmer".

Kaiochao wrote:

Speaking of what it looks like, DM is the oldest, most boring-looking game-making program I've ever seen.

If I phrased something like that, Tom would have posted a lengthy paragraph about how negative my attitude is!

Not only does DM/BYOND's interface look old, it doesn't seem that easy to use either. The Game Maker and Torque 2D websites talk about the integrated tools, intuitive menus, WYSIWYG/drag-and-drop interfaces, and extensive lists of built-in features. Tom doesn't seem to like comparisons between BYOND and other tools, but for BYOND to be the game development program for newbies it's got to be even easier to use than those other programs.

Imagine if when you made a new environment in DM it asked you what type of project you'd like to make (RPG, RTS, shooter, platformer, racing game, board game, blank project, etc.). Once you made a choice it could ask additional questions. It could ask if you want to include a sample game and what graphics set you'd like it to use. If you select "RPG" it creates a project that includes certain libraries. If you pick that you want it to include a sample game too it populates the new environment with some code, icons, and maps so you have a game you can compile and run right away.

This would make BYOND a game development tool that is truly easy for beginners to use. Not only would it be easy to use, but it'd be easy to get help with it. Instead of going to the forum and asking for help with your 100% custom RTS game (which, if you're a newbie developer, is probably poorly written), you're asking for help with the same well-written RTS kit that many other BYOND users are using. It also makes it easier to develop resources. Instead of posting a .dmi file that people can use (if they change every icon_state name in their project to match what you named them), you could create a graphics package that can be used by the stub games. Instead of creating an equipment system that people may have trouble using in their games, you can create an equipment system that's made to work with any game using BYOND's RPG kit.

Alathon wrote:

I think that theres merit in all of the things said, actually. I think the website could stand for some specific improvements, that would be beneficial to BYOND as a whole. I think there are certain software features that would certainly make BYOND appeal to more developers than it currently does.

There are certainly some technical improvements that could be made that'd really help, but what makes the most difference is presentation. BYOND is already a pretty good game development tool but it just doesn't come across as one. The programs look confusing and the website doesn't explain what BYOND provides. Other game development programs are more appealing partially because they have more features, but mostly because they're presented in an appealing way. BYOND's appeal is hidden inside the software and most people won't ever find it.

I get the impression that Tom has somehow gotten to a situation where he started rejecting advice and just can't stop because it'd look silly to reject advice for years then suddenly accept it. He tries to rationalize it (ex: calling me hostile and negative when I'm not) but it ultimately holds BYOND back. I feel like I'm guaranteeing that things will never happen every time I make a suggestion. Do other people get that impression?