Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pBo-GL9SRg

Perhaps it has come across this way, but I want to be clear that my comments were not meant to be "doom and gloom". I am simply telling you how it is. I care less about money than most people, which is why I quit a good job to try to make this happen. We had a few years where we did OK but as people migrated to other parts of the evergrowing Internet, the DMCA stuff knocked out some popular games, and so forth, we lost some ground. We had to play around with various different ideas for making money in the short term rather than focus on technical efforts and those didn't pay off (the current is yet to be seen). But without that, we would have gone down a lot sooner, so there's a method to the madness.

As long as BYOND brings in enough to support the server costs and a bit of time to take care of things, it can survive indefinitely. I hope those of you interested in this ideal will continue to contribute through Memberships or the development of games. What I can't promise is further development -- although we'll at least try to get existing efforts like the Flash client out in some state. It's simply not economically feasible for us. Like I said, I have considered open-sourcing or decentralizing the service but there are a whole host of issues with that so that will take more thought. Probably we will take a hiatus to try a different project.

The only thing that saddens me in this thread is the vitriol towards the product and its developers. We've never been greedy or had any ill will towards anyone and have worked so hard for many years to provide something that is unique and hopefully somewhat fun. Most years we did this without attempting to bring in any income (which was very dumb), and even since then, I've made a real effort to ensure that developers wouldn't be limited by what we did try to collect on. I also feel like the scope of services we do provide for free is pretty good. In fact, the main thing that prevented me from pulling the plug on this years ago was worrying about how the developers would be able to migrate away from BYOND.

Infinite Monkeys wrote:

BYOND only has one good game, and I agree that the community is entirely at fault. The reason for that, however, is that the simplicity of BYOND attracts 12 year olds and people who've never coded in their lives who want to learn how to make games, and nobody else. Anybody serious and talented in making games would not be using BYOND because of it's severe technical limitations, so while the community is certainly at fault the bad community is a direct result of the shitty engine.

I hope you are not refering to SS13 as BYOND's one god game, I played it once, was unimpressed; probably worst interface I have seen on a "popular game", I'd rather play nestalgia(which isn't all that either). Hell Feval has 10* more replayability than those two games I listed, but thats just me. What im trying to say is, quantity of players =/= quality of game

ON-topic: BYOND's target audience has been naru/ichi/goku for quite a while. I believe the way I found byond was searching google for "make naruto mmo". Gamemaker was the first result; and I didnt like the website layout. I found BYOND shortly after, it suited my needs, not too professional but still looked feasible. Many people conveniently forget that fact.

Also, I haven't seen much in the form of feature requests from you, if you had a page of un-answered requests, I would sympathise with you, like how I didn't put anything against Forum_a.

Infinite Monkeys:

Actually I gave Falacy a worse time than that. But considering how many people come on OUR site basically to say "this is crap", I will lash back once in a while. FFS, I'm not a saint. That's hardly ill will though. I did end up engaging with the guy and, to my surprise, he bought a Membership, which gives me some faith in humanity.

And for the record, yeah, I think if you use a product for over a year and it has something asking for $20, you should pay it because that's what keeps it alive. If you aren't, you are either broke, oblivious, or leeching off someone else's hard work. But maybe most people don't see it that way.

The reason for that, however, is that the simplicity of BYOND attracts 12 year olds and people who've never coded in their lives who want to learn how to make games, and nobody else.

While that's almost entirely true ( we actually attracted SOME people who weren't 12 year olds with no programming experience, just not a lot ), certain people that ARE capable are just sitting on their butts obsessing over what BYOND can't do. My argument isn't that BYOND has no room to improve. My argument is that, it's completely possible to create a fun game, build some momentum and a fan-base and make a profit with the state that Dream Maker is currently in. Why? Because a development team here has already done it. "Shitty engine" can't be used as an excuse when a team has shown the engine is viable.

A lot of us a while back agreed in some thread that the main way to help BYOND was by making good games. The idea was that we made good games, which drew in people and profit for Tom, which would keep ramen in Tom's bowl so that he could dedicate more time to this project. But pretty much no one lived up to our end of the bargain. We forgot about the "make some good games" part and skipped straight to making Tom's to-do list longer and longer meanwhile we announce projects that we never get around to finishing. Then when Tom informs that he's failing financially, the neckbeards from SS13 come out the woodwork to say the engine is shitty and not worth giving money to, and that he's a Nazi for wanting us to view ads so he can cover the cost to keep BYOND's lights on.

Dr. Cogwerks wrote:

"ON-topic: BYOND's target audience has been naru/ichi/goku for quite a while."

ahahahahahahaha oh my god

hahahahh

Infinite Monkeys wrote:

EmpirezTeam wrote:

The reason for that, however, is that the simplicity of BYOND attracts 12 year olds and people who've never coded in their lives who want to learn how to make games, and nobody else.

While that's almost entirely true ( we actually attracted SOME people who weren't 12 year olds with no programming experience, just not a lot ), certain people that ARE capable are just sitting on their butts obsessing over what BYOND can't do. My argument isn't that BYOND has no room to improve. My argument is that, it's completely possible to create a fun game, build some momentum and a fan-base and make a profit with the state that Dream Maker is currently in. Why? Because a development team here has already done it. "Shitty engine" can't be used as an excuse when a team has shown the engine is viable.

Most of the people complaining in this thread are ON that team though...

I think we're talking about two different games here. :)

EmpirezTeam wrote:

Infinite Monkeys wrote:

EmpirezTeam wrote:

The reason for that, however, is that the simplicity of BYOND attracts 12 year olds and people who've never coded in their lives who want to learn how to make games, and nobody else.

While that's almost entirely true ( we actually attracted SOME people who weren't 12 year olds with no programming experience, just not a lot ), certain people that ARE capable are just sitting on their butts obsessing over what BYOND can't do. My argument isn't that BYOND has no room to improve. My argument is that, it's completely possible to create a fun game, build some momentum and a fan-base and make a profit with the state that Dream Maker is currently in. Why? Because a development team here has already done it. "Shitty engine" can't be used as an excuse when a team has shown the engine is viable.

Most of the people complaining in this thread are ON that team though...

I think we're talking about two different games here. :)

I was talking about the game with over twice as many players as the next closest and far more players than every other game in the first page combined: http://puu.sh/34brr.png

Gakumerasara wrote:

Infinite Monkeys wrote:

I was talking about the game with over twice as many players as the next closest and far more players than every other game in the first page combined: http://puu.sh/34brr.png

If I can get 400 idlers in a game, will that make it better than SS13 by default? It isn't all about quantity, you know.

The people playing SS13 aren't idle though, so... no?
e: I'd like to see you try though

Also in terms of income it IS all about quantity. You and your best friend Chico might think your shitty naruto pony RP game is the best thing ever, but unless you're personally buying dozens of memberships for the hell of it that doesn't count for shit.