Airjoe wrote:
Also, while Google is king, there still are other search engines. I don't have much to say in line with this thread, but I do support this particular statement. One of the friends I've made in my dorm (lives right down the hall) is an English major from Taiwan, spending this year in the U.S., and he'd never used Google before he came here. He still primarily uses Yahoo! search. | |
Schnitzelnagler wrote:
BYOND as forum signature I took a stab at making an unofficial signature, but I'm not an artist (hence 'stab' :P)   They're basically bar signatures, which hopefully won't be looked upon as blatant advertising (since some forums forbid it). I like the idea of sort of "status" signatures, but I don't know what kind of draw that would put on BYOND's servers. Right now, I'd wager word of mouth is BYOND's biggest pull. We've seen that good games pull users from across the internet and generate their own, mini-communities; perhaps an official game should be created, one that takes advantage of 4.0's new features. | |
There are good games on BYOND, if you just define good as balanced, original, fun,... Wrong. First, I'd like to introduce you to La-Mulana. http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/lamulana.jpg It's graphics have style, but they look like a NES game, they are not particularly impressive in anyway really. La-Mulana has been featured on many websites and has probably had more downloads than any game on BYOND. This is due to it's gameplay. It is a solid, fun game to play, end of story. Now I would like to introduce you to Barkleys Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/barkley1.PNG The graphics in this game are not special at all. They don't look bad, but they are generic and probably overused by thousands of people in many games. Barkleys popularity dwarfs the entire BYOND website, it's community and all of it's games. It has been downloaded more times that every game on BYOND combined (by a massive amount), it's Youtube trailer is reaching into millions of views, it has been reviewed on TV, PC Video game magazines and on large video game websites like Game Spot and was even included on a disc with one magazine as a "top freeware game". This is not due to it's graphics at all. It is quiet simply a solid, well made game that is fun to play. The Magic Man wrote: Now compare those games to the following. http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=160692 http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=359662 http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=364060 http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=395761 Those games might be good by BYOND standards (which seem to be low), but compared to the games I linked to they are just not that great. Some of those games I linked to are excellent. They are well designed, fun to play and have amazing quality and polish (this is something a lot of BYOND games lack). To come back to the topic though, what do you think BYOND as such could improove to attract people (this includes active and "good" programmers making "good" games!) Actually, Game Maker provides a lot of benefits BYOND doesn't. Game Maker is easy to use but highly flexible and much, much more powerful than BYOND is most aspects. It has a lot of easy to use, but powerful functions, a lot of which BYOND does not provide but are common in a lot of games (advanced path finding is one of those). It has graphical and sound support that far surpass anything BYOND can currently do. Things like file, resource and registry handling are also much more powerful than anything BYOND can do. It's online support, though harder to use than BYOND is much more powerful (and with a plugin this becomes easier to do and you can control every aspect of the online support). Game Maker can literally do almost anything with the only limits being yourself and the computer running what you want to do. The downside to Game Maker is that you start with nothing but a blank canvas, and have to make everything (where as BYOND provides somethings built in). Some things like making an online game, or a RPG menu system can be very complex to do, but come standard with all BYOND games. (Also, Game Maker never was. has or will be illegal to use) I'm not trying to say all BYOND games are bad. But BYOND games and members seem to be stuck in their own little world where only BYOND exists. These games might be excellent as far as BYOND standards go, but just how good are they compared to games from other sources? When the answer to this is good (which it isn't at the moment) then you'll have something that can be shown off to the rest of the world. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
(Also, Game Maker never was. has or will be illegal to use) Ah, right. I was thinking of RPGMaker :P | |
Tom wrote:
I think we need a large volume of users linking back to us (hence the referral banners) Did that a long time ago. Back in 2005 with the original referral system you guys had in place. The only problem is, my website has absolutely no purpose and as a result of that, no traffic. But I'm working on changing that tide. I think the forum banner thing has potential. There are a few large communities out there where you could grab some users if you're creative. Gaia Online is pretty huge and if enough people with the forum banners posted above spent some time there, you'd probably grab some more users. The only down side I can see with it is, they'd probably be more Anime fans than anything else. Another downside is if an abundance of BYOND users go there with forum banners like that and make posts blatantly about BYOND, it could be seen as a spam attack. (The ten post rule people. Make a useful/helpful post a day for ten days, before you start 'suggesting' things to other forum users.) If I'm not mistaken, there are a few older BYOND users in University at the moment. If any of them are doing some programming courses, they could mention BYOND to their friends (if they haven't done so already) and hopefully bring in a few new and mature faces into the mix. As for the making of new games, I stated else ware that the biggest downfall of all semi-serious developers is resources. There are plenty of free resources out there, but they're all of varying quality and when mixed together, they look awful. If BPAS banded together and created a free-resource pack (to be used by programmers who can't afford their services) and even Audiophiles banded together and did likewise. BYOND would have a decent free resource package, which would hopefully encourage BYOND developers who are terrible at art to make some more games using this resource. There are lots of BYONDers out there with their own Free webs site or their own blog site of some kind. The problem is, I see more referrals on users BYOND blogs than I do else ware. And that kids, is just a waste of time. If someone is reading your blog, chances are, they know what BYOND is, or can find out very easily from where they are. As much as it pains me to say it, I think placing the banners somewhere on your MySpace or Facebook page would have a better effect than on your BYOND Blog. Don't deny it, we all know you have them. Aside from the above, short of paying for advertising, I can't really think of any other method to get the word out. | |
<font color="#FFDD11">The Magic Man babbled:
...there was tens of thousands of people making games with it [GameMaker], some of them good.</font> gee... just like BYOND! <font color="#FFDD11">...if you want more users on BYOND then increase the quality of games on BYOND (which in comparison to other similar programs is very low at the moment).</font> i'll address the last part of that line: who? where? please show us a list of similar development tools (3D systems do not count), that offer the same level, or even same number, of quality games that BYOND has. enlighten us! i would bet BYOND currently has the largest variety of good games, compared to other similarly capable systems - Game Maker included. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
Game Maker is easy to use but highly flexible and much, much more powerful than BYOND is most aspects. It has a lot of easy to use, but powerful functions, a lot of which BYOND does not provide but are common in a lot of games (advanced path finding is one of those). It has graphical and sound support that far surpass anything BYOND can currently do. Things like file, resource and registry handling are also much more powerful than anything BYOND can do. It's online support, though harder to use than BYOND is much more powerful (and with a plugin this becomes easier to do and you can control every aspect of the online support). I guess the central question is, do we not have the kinds of games that can attract new users, or is BYOND not even capable of producing such games? Either way, I find the situation pretty disheartening as a lot of us here have put in a great deal of effort to make this a product that can build good games, and if we don't have many after N years, then it doesn't bode that well for the future. I happen to think that a lot of the games that never get played at all are really well-done from a design POV (and could be glitzed up in 4.0 if the authors were still around), but then I am not that in touch with the mainstream gamer crowd. To put it another way, since GameMaker is far superior to BYOND in most aspects, what's keeping developers like yourself around? Do you see some value in BYOND over these other systems and communities, and, if so, how do we advertise that? | |
Tom wrote:
I guess the central question is, do we not have the kinds of games that can attract new users, or is BYOND not even capable of producing such games? Either way, I find the situation pretty disheartening as a lot of us here have put in a great deal of effort to make this a product that can build good games, and if we don't have many after N years, then it doesn't bode that well for the future. I happen to think that a lot of the games that never get played at all are really well-done from a design POV (and could be glitzed up in 4.0 if the authors were still around), but then I am not that in touch with the mainstream gamer crowd. Not at the moment. BYOND is capable of making a good game, but there is some features of BYOND that make this slightly harder to do, especially for a new person who doesn't know how to get around these features (the movement system has always been kind of clunky, the graphical limitations can be hard to work with and so on). And I'd agree, some games on BYOND are well designed. But a well designed game doesn't make it a good or fun game to play. A lot of games on BYOND seem to be lacking in the gameplay area, people seem to go the lazy way about things and leave the game feeling slow and clunky with a hard to use interface (which has like 50+ verbs). Polish is also something a lot of BYOND games lack, BYOND RPGs in particular are bad for this. After logging in 9 times out of 10 I am hit with a small alert window which says "new game", "load game", "exit", what is wrong with making a nice introduction/menu screen? After that I am given very little (if any) objective, and just as much reason to play the game. Certain areas of the game also tend to feel rushed, or little effort was put into them. I talk to a NPC and what do I get? A line of text in the output box, along with an alert window which I can answer yes/no to. What is wrong with making a dialoug system of some sort? It is the same with shops, I am given a list of x many items to buy, which a price next to them (using an input window). What is wrong with spending a little time and effort on all these areas of the game? It is the same with interfaces, games that use them do not use them very well. A lot of BYOND games just need polishing off and fixing up a little bit basically. To put it another way, since GameMaker is far superior to BYOND in most aspects, what's keeping developers like yourself around? Do you see some value in BYOND over these other systems and communities, and, if so, how do we advertise that? I use both BYOND and Game Maker, have done for a long time now. I tend to use BYOND more because multiplayer games appeal to me more, and doing them in Game Maker is much more hassle. I also dislike Game Makers community. At the moment though, the only thing BYOND offers that Game Maker does not is that it has a lot of useful features as standard. A movement system, inventory handling (through contents), online capabilities, saving/loading games, you can easily make a chat system and so on. All of these have to be made in Game Maker from scratch, and some of them are not easy to do (datums are something in BYOND that is highly powerful and flexible with a lot of uses, but relatively easy to use. Imitating this feature in Game Maker is very hard and time consuming). Though these features are really good, it is hard to advertise them in any meaningful way. BYOND is definately not useless or rubbish, and there is reasons to use it. It just has a very small list of things that can be shown off compared to something like Game Maker. | |
digitalmouse wrote:
<font color="#FFDD11">The Magic Man babbled: There is one thing you are not taking into consideration. That was what Game Maker was like 7 years ago. When it was only 3 years old. BYOND is what... 8+ years old and still hasn't reached that sort of growth yet. <font color="#FFDD11">...if you want more users on BYOND then increase the quality of games on BYOND (which in comparison to other similar programs is very low at the moment).</font> RPG Maker 2000/XP/VX Game Maker Multimedia Fusion Sphere ika Verge i would bet BYOND currently has the largest variety of good games, compared to other similarly capable systems - Game Maker included. Wrong. Game Maker users produce more games in a week than BYOND users produce in a year. Game Maker has games of pretty much every genre (including 3D games) and it has much more of these games than BYOND. Game Maker has a lot of really innovative games too (something BYOND lacks). If BYOND has it, Game Maker has it, only it has much more of it and it is probably a lot better (Game Maker even has MORPGs that are better than anything BYOND could produce, one of them at one time constantly has 1000-2000 players online at a time and ran just fine, it also probably had more members than the entire BYOND community and could have probably been considered a MMORPG). I am guessing you don't get out of the BYOND community much? Go and look around some other amateur game development websites, you'll soon realize just how little of a presence BYOND actually has. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
I am guessing you don't get out of the BYOND community much? Go and look around some other amateur game development websites, you'll soon realize just how little of a presence BYOND actually has. I do get out quite a bit. I disagree completely with your assessment. Why does the fact that BYOND does not have a large market footprint matter? This thread is about pooling ideas on how to change that - I don't see you suggesting features other systems have, nor trying to provide ideas as to why something else has succeeded? It feels more like you're trying to defend Game Maker than chip in on the issue at hand. I see nothing stopping a game with 2000 players in BYOND - In fact, I see far more support for running a large-scale MMORPG with BYOND than Game Maker. The question here is how to retain users, and identify potential problem areas or issues that make someone turn away. | |
Alathon wrote:
I do get out quite a bit. I disagree completely with your assessment. Why does the fact that BYOND does not have a large market footprint matter? This thread is about pooling ideas on how to change that - I don't see you suggesting features other systems have, nor trying to provide ideas as to why something else has succeeded? It feels more like you're trying to defend Game Maker than chip in on the issue at hand. You have obviously not been reading any of my other posts. The reason why something like Game Maker is more popular than BYOND is only partly due to what it is capable of, but more than that it is because people are making excellent use of it and showing off what it can do. This is going to attract a lot more people than saying "Game Maker is aces!". I could go around telling people BYOND is so awesome it can dance on the head of a pin, but unless I could show people BYOND dancing on the head of a pin do you think they would care? (Here is a hint, no) Get me 5-10 quality games made by BYOND and I am willing to bet you than in a month I could triple the current number of users BYOND has. Without those quality games (which is the current situation) I have been trying to advertise BYOND for some 3 or so years. In that time I have probably gained BYOND less than 10 new members. I see nothing stopping a game with 2000 players in BYOND - In fact, I see far more support for running a large-scale MMORPG with BYOND than Game Maker. The question here is how to retain users, and identify potential problem areas or issues that make someone turn away.I don't doubt that BYOND could do that with some clever design, it could maybe even do better than that (but so can Game Maker), but I have never seen it done before. The only reason that Game Maker MMORPG is not around anymore is because the developer of it only optionally charged people to play (more like a donation button), and was constantly exceeding the bandwidth limits allowed by his host... And was running up bills in excess of $10,000 a month. (Running a game of that size is going to cost money, and a lot of it) The issue at hand is simple. From my experience of trying to advertise BYOND on several large scale amateur game development websites people just are not interested in a list of features and a small summary. But add a few screenshots from some good games and links to those and suddenly everyone is interested. An example is Action Game Maker. Ever heard of it? Probably not because it is not even released yet. But I am willing to bet that when it is it will quickly become more used than BYOND (it already has several fansites and a lot of large websites with thousands of people talking about it) because it is already showing off good looking, fun games (screenshots and demos). Want to know the exact list of features that have been released for it? "It can make several types of action games", no really, that it is. I know it is easier said than done. But the fact of the matter is, until we get some solid, good games by everyones standards (and not just BYONDs) then BYOND just isn't going to attract many new members. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
I know it is easier said than done. But the fact of the matter is, until we get some solid, good games by everyones standards (and not just BYONDs) then BYOND just isn't going to attract many new members. Yes, it is quite evident that having quality mainstream games will attract more users. However, this is also somewhat circular, because we need the users to build these games. Although we have a decently-sized community right now, it is almost exclusively centered around a niche (Anime) genre that doesn't appeal to the mainstream. As such, we don't have a large volume of mainstream games being output, and I suspect we lose a lot of users-- potential contributors and developers-- who view us as an Anime site or what-not. The guilds system was an attempt to mitigate this effect by segregating the different genres, but it hasn't really worked out that well because the non-Anime sites haven't grown. If the solution is simply "build a hit game and advertise it", then we are far worse off than I hoped, because such a thing is not so easy (nor something I can contribute to with a very limited budget-- it'd have to be up the users). I also don't believe our community is really in a position to accomplish this anytime soon. Before we abandon our existing assets, I'd at least like to explore what BYOND currently has to offer the mainstream audience and see if we can't leverage that. Perhaps by building off some existing games we can bring in some users in the short-term, which will drive production in the long-term (shortcutting the catch-22). Like I said earlier, I do think we currently have a number of decent games that could appeal more widely if we had a community for them (again, back to the circular argument). Many of these were developed a number of years ago and could just use some of the new 4.0 glitz and some advertisement. For example, I used to have a blast playing 'Tanks' -- a clever action/strategy game in the spirit of Bolo (which was immensely popular at one time). I could see something like that having mass-appeal, especially if it were constructed in a manner that allowed it to accept runtime content, that sort of thing. There are a lot of games of this sort that could theoretically take off in the right environment. The RPG games probably have more lasting power. I'd like people to offer some concrete ideas on things that we can actually do now to improve the situation. Blanket statements like "BYOND needs better games" really don't accomplish anything. | |
Give the people here an insentive to make games?
Maybe competitions with themes and prizes (the prizes don't even have to cost money, it could simply be a free/extended membership, or bragging rights on their account/games hub saying they wont a contest). You don't really need new members to make new games (though obviously more new members would mean more games being produced), you just need to give current members a reason to make games. Compared to the Game Maker community BYOND actually has a lot of skilled users. They might not be making games, but they definately possess the skill to do so and can make BYOND do all kinds of crazy stuff. If you could get these people to make games instead of sitting around the forums all day showing people how much more awesome they are than them then I am pretty sure they could make some good games. Another thing I have noticed with BYOND is how certain games are hard to advertise or find. Single player games in particular. Kajika made a pretty awesome Megaman clone, http://www.byond.com/games/Kajika/MegaMan this is the sort of game that you could go and show off to other people, and it might even attract members. But since it is a single player game finding it's hub is pretty hard (I wouldn't have known about it if someone didn't tell me) because it is never displayed in any easy to view list. I am pretty sure if this was changed, and it was easier to find more people would know and talk about it, and word would spread, and it might attract new members. Those are my suggestions at least! | |
The Magic Man wrote:
Kajika made a pretty awesome Megaman clone It would be awesome if the shooting and jumping weren't completely broken. You do make a good point though, the hub page is very hard to find unless you're specifically looking for it. How about a single player section? It's not really a game genre, but neither is Anime. Also, put the Pixel Art Society in the Developers drop down menu already. We should be doing everything we can to support our pixel artists. Well, unless we want to see the same RPG Maker icons in every other game. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
Also, put the Pixel Art Society in the Developers drop down menu already. We should be doing everything we can to support our pixel artists. Well, unless we want to seethe same RPG Maker icons in every other game. This is another idea! There is more to making a game than mad coding skillz. Graphics, sound and planning are all part of it. Planning/design has a section, that is not used enough. Pixel art has a section that is not easily accessible. Sound/music... Does it even have it's own section on BYOND? I know people who don't make games, but are usually more than willing to make graphics or music for a game. If these sort of people had their own (easy to find, well publicised) area of BYOND you might attract some of them, and it could help with the making of games because developers have one/two less areas to worry about. | |
Look at the ads on BYOND for other games. Do you EVER see any mention of game play? No. What do you see? Graphics, stunning visuals, cutesy anime characters and cool fonts. All of which are graphical glitz that add nothing to the game play. You can't expect to attract new developers and players if you're not willing to meet their graphical expectations.I agree that improved graphics are would be beneficial, but I do see outside ads mentioning gameplay. Those are the ones that I click on. I'm older than most on BYOND, but my priorities are different. I see ads all of the time involving different graphical themes. Frankly, they all run together. In a comic, I want to know about the writing. In an action or strategy game, I want to know about the mechanics. In an online RPG, I want to know about the service. The graphics are just there to bulk up how much screen space the ads take. Not that my games are popular, but I started getting more downloads of PathWrath 2 once I adopted the practice of putting gameplay descriptions in my banners. The same appears beneficial with Occupied Forces and that uses the worst graphics I had in order to meet banner file size restrictions. (I should really add some screenshots to my projects soon, but I reworked the interfaces a few weeks ago and have been adjusting to my new computer.) | |
Gah, Superantx stole the post I was going to make 4 days ago!
Rant: Anyway yeah after reading quite a powerful post from Xooxer I agree with many points he made. Our name is being throwing around alot in this thread yet we're practically hidden from the site. At a time I made one blog post and got 30 comments within a week, just from appealing graphics. The graphical aspect of game development on byond is far too underrated. And let me clarify myself before one of those "awesome people" such as Kaioken start nitpicking. Marketing Scheme: What if we moved "pixel-art" to the front page? And promoted it's existence? • We have many intelligent programmers, now what if we were to attract serious artists such as people like http://www.pixeljoint.com/? • Give people another reason to use Byond. We can attract a certain group of people that come here to learn pixel art. • Believe it or not there's not many pixel sites on the net so it's sure to come up on google. Pixeljoint itself has 20,000 members. Then there's pixelation which is probably not too far off. • Developers all over the net will come here looking for staff. Where there's developers there's more opportunity, it's almost inevitable that they'll check the rest of the site out. At the end of the day we need to think to ourselves that we really have done everything we've can. | |
Look at the ads on BYOND for other games. Do you EVER see any mention of game play? No. What do you see? Graphics, stunning visuals, cutesy anime characters and cool fonts. All of which are graphical glitz that add nothing to the game play. You can't expect to attract new developers and players if you're not willing to meet their graphical expectations.
BYOND games that use ripped console sprites, RPG Maker sprite sheets or other high-quality images are flocked to here. When people see a new title screen the think is good, they want to play the game, even though the game isn't even described. Why? Graphics. Simple, effective, potent graphics.
The players aren't wrong for liking nice images, we're wrong for expecting them to overlook bad images in hopes of good game play. We're delusional, and it's time we come to terms with that.