I won't pretend that I have any inkling whatsoever about how a business whether it be on/offline should run. You guys might have already discussed this and thought it was a bad idea or whatever, but have you looked at the possibility of finding a sponsor? and in return you switch a large portion of advertising to be based on their site. I have seen companies like GoDaddy sponsor much smaller businesses. And BYOND would be a perfect sponsee?(idk the name), for them because people who make games would want some sort of virtual server and/or domain to keep their games up. Godaddy gives discounts to their sponsees (:

Kozuma3 wrote:

FIREking wrote:

If BYOND is gone, can my game carry on, given I handle the responsbilities that byond.com would normally be taking care of.

I believe users could still connect via a Link to the server. As if everything was running normally, but keys wouldn't be-able to be used anymore, you'd have to create your own means or stick with guests.

That's not what I'm asking, that's if say... everyone died.

I'm asking, when they decide ok that's it, its over... will they change things so that byond.com doesn't have to be a master server, and we can setup our own database for keys / users and have our own master server.

Yeh, if we decide to close the project we will make sure that there is a graceful transfer so that games can continue in operation. But I suspect that BYOND/DM as a means of making new games would just die out since so much of the appeal (an unappreciated aspect) is being able to attach to an existing community infrastructure.

But I don't really want to go into all of that.

Tom wrote:

Yeh, if we decide to close the project we will make sure that there is a graceful transfer so that games can continue in operation. But I suspect that BYOND/DM as a means of making new games would just die out since so much of the appeal (an unappreciated aspect) is being able to attach to an existing community infrastructure.

But I don't really want to go into all of that.

That's nice to hear, I have invested a lot of money into Legends and I would be panicking if there was no way to salvage the server / key end of things. There's really no other supported engine that could fit the game better. Its an online roguelike with fantasy and role playing elements.

Rexormunde wrote:

I don't mean to rock the boat, but the appeal of BYOND for me is how easy it is to create a game with it, not its existing community. However, I think paying to plug into that community is perfectly reasonable. Just saying.

Unfortunately targetting developers doesn't seem to be a viable business model, unless we were to simply charge for the toolkit (which I suspect would kill the audience entirely). We currently charge a small fee to create hubs-- the starting point to tap into the community-- and make barely any sales, due to the snall numbers of people actually producing games. At the same time, we still have quite a bit of player traffic that generates nothing for us, so hopefully this new pager setup will leverage that a little.

If you can`t program nor pixel art, why the hell you want to develop a game? .-. go play and have fun...

Btw, really tom, I still don`t get how the pager can help byond more then the flash client... Well, if the flash client brings more player to original games, that use byond subscription system, that should totally be enforced since byond gets a decent 25% of subscriptions... Well, if the developers gets more players, they will be motived to make original games, aaand... that could save byond. or I am wrong?

Cuz we can`t ignore that making games also takes alot of work/time/money from the developers, and many of them don`t see a reason to apply all that work into byond, maybe the flash client and better advertises could help in that point.

btw, I am working in a new game for a year now, and I really would like it could help byond, attract more players and developers to this community... the new pager is ultra cool, but I can`t see how it would help BYOND more then the flash client...

The pager brings us income from every user of the system, either through ads or through the Membership. Currently most of our users do not help us financially at all, so our income comes from developers, and that is just not enough.

The flash client would be great, but it's no guarantee to help us financially either, at least not without an associated business model. Just because someone makes a game that can now be played in Flash doesn't bring us income unless 1) they use our sub system and 2) the game itself gets popular. And I think both of those things are do-able right now (at the cost of some users who don't want to download software). Where Flash could really help get exposure would be by getting games on popular gaming portals, but to help us we'd have to be put into the equation, which is more speculation and work.

So basically, the reason why we haven't gotten the Flash out is that, although the technical part mostly works, it's still a lot more to integrate it into anything that will actually help us out without a barrage of feature creep and complaints. The pager, while not a guarantee to be successful either, at least is a fairly straightforward project.

No, investors are only interested in companies that have a consistent and growing revenue stream, or the potential for such a thing. BYOND is not in that situation. Perhaps in 2000 we could have said this would become a huge thing one day but now it is what it is.

What I am hoping to do is for the new system to bump up the revenue enough where it can support itself and maybe one or two programmers to maintain it. If not, then enough to support just the non-programmer maintenance costs (which is mostly does now, albeit with the constant need to watchdog some things). However, the way it is going now, where it brings in nothing and it is just a lot of free, unappreciated labor to keep it going is not something we are going to continue. So we will have to see how this does.

Flick wrote:

It is appreciated Tom. Maybe not by all, and definitely not vocally enough by those that do, but it is appreciated.

+1

Flick wrote:

It is appreciated Tom. Maybe not by all, and definitely not vocally enough by those that do, but it is appreciated. You have spent longer than many of the complainers have been alive keeping this system going, and I know that has been a hell of a lot of work. I realize making a financially successful game would be a much better way for me to say thanks, and I still hope to, but for now, this is all I've got...

Thank you.

+2
Byond is really important for me, great part of my life and fun is here, I am really thankfull for all the hard work you`ve been doing Tom o/
And like he said, best we can do is work hard to make succesfull games o/