The BYOND Fund-o-meter and how you can help

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Jun 9 2013, 4:53 am
In response to Yusuke13
Yusuke13 wrote:
I think your fund-o-meter is a bit inaccurate. The amount says a little over $3,300 but the meter looks more like $1,600.

Cache issue. It's being looked into. CTRL+F5.
Jun 9 2013, 5:02 am
In response to NNAAAAHH
NNAAAAHH wrote:
Not what I meant, the donations are more a way to save BYOND than expand it. If the donations work well enough, expansion is a viable outcome from that; but you don't go to kickstarter say 'I need money to save this project, then maybe I'll expand'. It's more of 'I want to do this with my project, but I can only do that if I can get the money to fund it. If you help me fund this, it will happen and I will offer you _______ for donating x amount.'

Ahh, my bad, sorry about the misunderstanding. While that is typically true, a project can offer digital rewards, in combinations with physical items (T-shirts etc, which several members of the community have offered to help procure.) Kickstarter may not work for BYOND, but there are alternatives out there that may be better.

Jun 9 2013, 5:37 am
Guilted into buying another membership v.v
Jun 9 2013, 11:00 am
There was a BYOND merchandise store at one point before, but it didn't sell very well.
Jun 9 2013, 11:01 am
In response to Nadrew
Of course it wouldn't, because no one knew, at that time, that BYOND was going to die.
Jun 9 2013, 11:31 am
By the looks of things, we're only into the first 9 days of the fund-o-meter and have already raised well-over half of the monthly goal. Although I expect the momentum to slow down, sooner or later, so far it's looking pretty manageable.

It might be down to the fact that, before, we had no way of knowing how much BYOND needed for funding and how much had been donated so far. Every bit of transparency honestly brings the community closer to the developers emotionally. Plus the addition of the new star-ranking system, those who donate a lot are now able to be recognized for their generosity and actually makes it a little more competitive for the community.
Jun 9 2013, 2:35 pm
I don't want to be pessimistic, but I think all of the donations are going to slow down by next month to the point of not reaching the monthly goal each time. We only have a limited amount of members, and they only have a limited amount of money, or even access to said money.
Jun 9 2013, 2:38 pm
Of course they're going to slow down. The hope is that the fund-o-meter provides a reminder so we all don't forget that Tom desperately needs donations.

What would really help is if those of us donating tried to encourage other people we know to donate as well. However, the way it's been going, I imagine just having the meter there will meet this month's goal. For the next month, we can't be sure.
Jun 9 2013, 4:38 pm
so is the money from the ads included in this?
Jun 9 2013, 4:59 pm
I don't think that's allowed. From what I remember.. under strict policies of AdSense, you cannot discuss how much you make. And if money is added to the bar and nobody was donating.. I think someone could track this down by opening an add and refreshing that page a whole bunch of times. But you can always discuss your views.
Jun 9 2013, 4:59 pm
This is purely donations and BYOND membership purchases. Tom spoke about providing an end of year report with all of the figures, iirc.
Jun 10 2013, 11:10 am
Does the fund-o-meter only come from donations/memberships or does it come from the % of subscriptions also?
Jun 10 2013, 11:21 am
In response to King_LiOnZ
Writing A New One wrote:
This is purely donations and BYOND membership purchases.
Jun 10 2013, 11:33 am
In response to King_LiOnZ
We should have the information available to be able to grab subscription cuts as part of this, but as Tom mentioned, there may be reasons we'd want to avoid that. Probably, we would also want to set the goal higher if we did, since the goal was set with just Memberships and donations in mind. But since subscription purchases don't count toward benefactors, we'd probably want to rethink some other bits of the fundraising page as well.
Jun 10 2013, 5:07 pm
Well at least at the end of donations we will see how much people value the work making BYOND was. Good fall back plan on making what money it can. I think anime games heavily influenced BYOND's popularity so to be profitable BYOND should look to access them finically, not sure what that would require though? Getting permission from those who own the anime? Why aren't anime games an option?
Jun 10 2013, 7:44 pm (Edited on Jun 10 2013, 8:04 pm)
In response to UltimateGameMaker
Because it isn't an option, unfortunately. BYOND would have to pay massive amounts of money in licensing fees, and this would most likely only guarantee that Tom and Lummox JR have the rights to create derivative works and profit off of them. There is absolutely no way any company is going to give the greenlight for tens of thousands of people to legally go hogwild with their intellectual property, especially without some sort of guarantee that the games they produce won't be so bad they harm the property's reputation.

The games produced under this agreement would also be held to an extremely high standard (like, they would need to produce six to seven figures worth of revenue), because no company is going to license out their properties just to see them financially fail.

The logistics just aren't there to fall back on anime games as the primary source of profit in this manner, I'm afraid.
Jun 10 2013, 9:03 pm
In response to UltimateGameMaker
Because it would cost far more to get the licenses for that than BYOND could possibly earn from it. That's assuming they even could, because that's more so up to the games developers than BYOND its self.

That's also, in both cases, assuming those who own the license would allow rights to be purchased. Some companies very well may say no, especially given the overall quality and/or quantity of many of the anime games.

It's just no where near feasible to earn any kind of income from the anime games, unless the games either have players viewing the ads (which has been taken care of with the new pager), or the anime games distance their self enough from any specific anime or game that they can be considered their own IP.

Most people really don't want to do that, though, because then it becomes a real hassle for both the developer and the players. The developer won't be viewed all that well for doing so, the players will likely find the comparison obvious and either get confused, annoyed, uncaring, or a number of other less common reactions.

Anime games are just plain complicated, and difficult to work with. The only truly safe, and ideal way to deal with them is to make your own anime-style of game that isn't based off any existing anime, and that is one heck of a challenge to do properly. You would pretty much be making an anime and a game instead of just a game at that point.

(Typed this up before seeing LordAndrew make a comment. His explains it better, but I'm posting this here anyway because of a few bits and pieces, like the part about ads)
Jun 11 2013, 8:46 am
If Tom and Lummox JR approve the anime games before allowing them to be hosted couldn't it be arranged under their names? With criteria based on what the IP owners allow plus Tom and Lummox JR checking up on anime game submissions I think it could work. We have had some decent anime games. Being more strict on them shouldn't be a promblem. If not what made BYOND more popular-what else for revenue.
Jun 11 2013, 8:54 am
I think we just need to advertise Byond more and help search engines find byond better with better keywords.

I also think unique games that are our own property will do alot better. We have alot of good games and good developers and if more people were exposed to our community we would be in good shape.

Anime games are popular but they are difficult to make money with due to copyrights.

We need to combine our efforts and draw more people in.

I suggested before that we should have ads for byond that members can post all over the web, on blogs etc. to help bring in new members.

Perhaps if members do so they get a perk like a badge saying how many people have come to byond due to their efforts and display it on their member page.

Whatever we do we need more people who will play games and get memberships and donate to the cause.
Jun 11 2013, 9:15 am
It's really depressing that BYOND didn't go the way most of the good people here thought it would. I was looking forward to getting some of the games here to Steam. Maybe one day. But for now, I'm being peer-pressured by myself to donate. Stay around a while, BYOND! :D
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