Someone has a partner who is giving the same resources to the competition? Shoot the partner. Why should someone pay the same person more money for the same service?
The percentage solves nothing. There will still be cheap little games taking up resources they can't pay for. When the number rises past a certain point then Dantom has to charge even more. Dantom can't be counting on third parties to raise their prices. It's not a stable business model. It's hardly a business model at all.
Charge everyone a reasonable price per subscriber. (Yes, that's what I was speaking of, Leftley.) I don't mind if it's higher than the costs of the resources so Dantom can make a profit. I don't care if it decreases or increases during Dantom's highs and lows. As long as it is fair. Don't be all flowers and bunnies with the freeloaders and then slap other developers in the face with the pricetag. It is not one developer's duty to build another's net dream.
ACWraith wrote:
Charge everyone a reasonable price per subscriber. (Yes, that's what I was speaking of, Leftley.) I don't mind if it's higher than the costs of the resources so Dantom can make a profit. I don't care if it decreases or increases during Dantom's highs and lows. As long as it is fair. Don't be all flowers and bunnies with the freeloaders and then slap other developers in the face with the pricetag. It is not one developer's duty to build another's net dream. Fine, then we may as well take this to the logical conclusion and just charge for everything that costs us. Free games draw the most users, which subsequently use our resources and take up our time. Clearly we can't have that, so we'll just have to charge for anything that wants to broadcast on the hub. Why restrict charges to the passport system? That doesn't actually cost us anything to maintain. Or we could just sell the client itself, since we've spent so much money developing it and should therefore recoup our costs proportionally. But, you see, I don't want to do these things. I like the fact that people can make a free game and advertise it on the hub. It does cost us money, but it returns intangible benefits by drawing users into the community. These users may in turn put money into the economy, or they may help make BYOND more than a mere blip on the Internet scene, should we look for future investment. I really don't see why anyone would be so offended by the notion of a percentage cut, when they'd be willing to dole out a $5-$10/subscription fee that would in almost all cases be larger than the percentage itself. | |
I don't want charges restricted to the passport system. I want people to pay a merchant fee and pay for storage (along with downloads/uploads involving that storage) as was suggested. I also think the pager service is fair to charge for, but I agree that it might not bring in much. If the passport stuff does not cost you anything then I'd be perfectly happy if you didn't charge or even if you charged a small amount per subscriber to make some profit. Much of what BYOND offers can still be enjoyed for free within those limits.
I simply hate the percentage system. I don't want Dantom depending on some arbitrary price. Nor do I want Dantom calling me a partner when they bury me in with my competition. My advertising decreases for every game you advertise. I should not be paying you more when I have to raise my prices due to your poor support. No reasonable business person should. Nor should you be giving me any special support because you don't have the resources to deliver it. That particular model does not work. Don't place your faith or money in it. It makes neither economic sense nor moral sense to charge people to support their competitors and you can't offer more bang for more bucks. Frankly, if you're running a charity then take donations. You mostly tried. It didn't work. "I don't want to" is not paying your bills. Some BYONDers have been saying they are happy to pay you. Charge everyone equally for equal service. | |
I'm glad to see such frank discussions about BYOND's economic future. I don't understand why it took 7 years to get around to considering how BYOND will support itself, I suppose good will can blind a man's sensabilities. This should have been discussed long ago.
Dantom have done more than anyone should ever expect, and what's more they have done it with no thought of financial prosperity. They have sacrificed more than any of us could possibly fathom, and it is wrong for them not to be compensated for their work. I trust we all agree on this. That said, the only source of revenue anyone of us can hope for will invariably come out of the player's pockets. In order for Dantom to reap thier fair share, players must be willing to spend their hard-earned money here. In order for the players to spend money on games, they have to be confident that what they are paying for has value. I don't like saying it, but there are very few games here of any real value to a gamer. The few gems that are worth paying more than $10 for are lost admidst the countless rips, fangames and miscelanous crap that's choking the system. Someone suggested it before. I'll suggest it again. Remove the fat. Up the standards of games listed on BYOND's website, the HUB and the banner system, and toss the rest out into the cold to fend for themselves. You have already done far more than anyone could ask by creating this wonderful system, noone should expect you to host 500 copies of the same game, when that game is never going to benefit you. You say your bandwidth and space are valuble, and expensive. Prove it. BYOND means nothing to anyone outside of BYOND, and new players aren't going to care how great a language DM is. They are very quick to judge, slow to spend, and hardly ever think twice. When you fling those big doors open to the public, and they come in and see 200 "things" being advertised, listed and hosted that don't even resemble a game, they will go back to Yahoo and MSN and put their money where they know the value is. They will tell their friends about how much BYOND sux, and how it's nothing more than a fanboy engine for lame rips and poor game designers with no talent for game design. Do yourself a great service now, while you have the chance, and stricken anything that is not percieved as complete, fun, and valuble to players. Everyone else can fend for themselves. If that's too harsh for the DBZ developers and fanatics, then they know where the door is. No one here deserves anything more. Heck, we're lucky BYOND is free to download and use to develop games. Why should we expect anything more? Simply put: Unless it is percieved that a game will draw players, keep players, and be considered valueble to players, it has no business being listed anywhere on BYOND's website. I'm sure the 50% cut to Dantom will be much less painful to many developers if they knew that money wasn't going to pay for space for the next 100 DBZ rips. ~X | |
I simply hate the percentage system. Now I don't know... the more I read the discussion of the percentage system, the more I warm up to it (or re-warm up to it, since I didn't initially have many objections). I think my contrast of "print shop" and "publisher" models left out a much more exciting model: the "Mob Boss". Sometimes the Mob Boss will help you, sometimes he'll step in and tell you what to do, and sometimes he'll leave you alone. But one thing remains constant: he always gets his cut. The trick is to make a whole lot of money, because 50% of a whole lot of money is still a lot of money. | |
Xooxer wrote:
I'm glad to see such frank discussions about BYOND's economic future. I don't understand why it took 7 years to get around to considering how BYOND will support itself, I suppose good will can blind a man's sensabilities. This should have been discussed long ago. And of course it was, many times. And has been a major consideration all along, which is why BYONDimes exists, the referral system exists, the subscription system exists, etc. If you can find another game system out there with as much consideration for how to make money built in, I will be quite surprised. Someone suggested it before. I'll suggest it again. Remove the fat. Up the standards of games listed on BYOND's website, the HUB and the banner system, and toss the rest out into the cold to fend for themselves...You say your bandwidth and space are valuble, and expensive. Prove it. Over the last few months the criteria has increased considerably and we've redesigned the approach to the game listings to emphasize the games most healthy for the system. I've taken lots of heat for making these changes, but I insist it's in the interest of BYOND. We're getting very serious about game listings; the number of reviewers has been quintupled or so recently (specially once I get a few more committed people added, hopefully today). When the next version is released, I will ask the reviewers to re-review all listed games with new criteria in mind based on the new features. We are working to add some new ways to highlight the best games, which will be available in coming weeks. | |
You could earn $200 through lots of little subscriptions or through a smaller number of large subscriptions. How does it make sense that in one case Dantom would be entitled to one amount but in another case Dantom would be entitled to a different amount? $200 is $200, whether it represents two thousand $0.10 subscriptions or one $200 subscription or anything in between. If they're going to get a cut of things, a fixed percentage is the fairest way to go.
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ACWraith wrote:
I don't want charges restricted to the passport system. I want people to pay a merchant fee and pay for storage (along with downloads/uploads involving that storage) as was suggested. I also think the pager service is fair to charge for, but I agree that it might not bring in much. If the passport stuff does not cost you anything then I'd be perfectly happy if you didn't charge or even if you charged a small amount per subscriber to make some profit. Much of what BYOND offers can still be enjoyed for free within those limits. But you haven't suggested anything that will actually make us money. That's the point! If we had a policy of only charging for things that cost us, we'd have to charge for the software in general. Every new user that comes to our system ends up costing us in some way, even if they never invest a dime into the economy. Merchant fees and pager services won't make us any money, because they won't apply to any signficant percentage of the audience (I'm not so sure about the pager, but that seems to be the popular opinion). The money is in the subscriptions, so that's where we have to take our cut. I also see some justification behind the "partnership". BYOND is a piece of software that saves you from having to write a lot of code. If you wanted to write this kind of game traditionally, you'd probably either put in a whole lot more hours or get more people involved. That would cost you some fairly signficant percentage of your profits. Also, with BYOND, you get exposure to an existing audience, marketing tools via the pager and hub, and the ability to handle monetary transactions. Perhaps it is a matter of principle. You don't want to see your dollars go towards promoting stuff you don't care about. I would argue that they aren't "your" dollars; you just happen to be able to dictate the fee. If you have no interest in assisting the community financially, then don't charge for a game. On BYOND, you can even go one step further; you can make your game, not affiliate it with the hub, and keep whatever profits you'd like. But I like to think that BYOND developers would want to help out the community as much as possible, even it is for the self-serving goal of popularizing the system in order to get more users themselves. | |
We are working to add some new ways to highlight the best games, which will be available in coming weeks. . . . and what exactly are "the best games"? | |
Deadron wrote:
We are working to add some new ways to highlight the best games, which will be available in coming weeks. Well, "weeks" is optimistic :) but I can tell everyone that the hub is being totally revamped for some time in the near future. Deadron and Mapster have volunteered to lead this program, and they are doing a mighty fine job so far. The plan is to glitz up the look and feel of the webpages, promote the most impressive games, and have better monitoring and filtering of the entries. | |
My guess would be that they look for games that 1) are thoroughly debugged, 2) represent a finished product (or an ongoing project without any obviously dangling loose ends), and 3) highlight BYOND's features.
It's a matter of putting your best foot forward. The first games new people see should be ones that look professional and make BYOND look professional. | |
Gakumerasara wrote:
We are working to add some new ways to highlight the best games, which will be available in coming weeks. The games that BYOND staff think are best. We are planning to provide a way for players to rate games also, separately from staff reviews. | |
Tom wrote:
On BYOND, you can even go one step further; you can make your game, not affiliate it with the hub, and keep whatever profits you'd like. This is an important point. ACWraith is free to use BYOND and not have to kick any money at all into the system, so there is no need for moral objection. If anyone contemplates this and says "Yeah but then I won't get X for my games"...well, that's what you'd be kicking in money for! | |
Only things that cost Tom and Dan money at the expense of our own gain will cost. They really wanna keep it free!
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I havn't read all of these but I would like to say just this.... I WOULD pay for myself. Since I actually do things. But, then there's my brother. He rarely gets on (mostly becuase I'm on, LOL). Anyways, he'd probably use MY account. And that would suck. So I don't like the idea of charging for accounts.
The 50% cut seems unfair at first. But when I think about it for a while, it seems just. Hopefully, BYOND will one day have 1 million users, and have about 300k-500k paying. That be a helping hand. Maybe a BYOND Plus program could be made? You could have lots, and I mean LOTS of new features to use. Make it worth it! It could be 5-10 dollars a year. I really want to help out BYOND, infact I might just start up working on my games again. I hope that one day, I'll be watching TV, and all of a sudden a commercial popups.... Annoucer: "Come play exciting games on BYOND! Play games like: Super Hero Bash: The Third Mutation, Tanks!, and much much more!" -Screenshots and videos of the games flow by.... - BYOND Logo fades in and the adress is shown And I can be like, "Wow, I helped BYOND!" It won't happen, if we don't keep it alive now. -Sariat | |
*I* have not suggested anything that would make you money? That's mostly correct. Those were from your post, Tom. I just agreed. You might not gain anything for the merchant and storage fees, but you won't loose because of them either. If you're having financial troubles then cut the costs and don't offer those services for free.
It's not as if those quotes around "publisher" in your percentage plan are racing stripes. Here's the argument you and those around you have offered:
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Lesbian Assassin wrote:
You could earn $200 through lots of little subscriptions or through a smaller number of large subscriptions. How does it make sense that in one case Dantom would be entitled to one amount but in another case Dantom would be entitled to a different amount? $200 is $200, whether it represents two thousand $0.10 subscriptions or one $200 subscription or anything in between. If they're going to get a cut of things, a fixed percentage is the fairest way to go. I'm sorry, Lexy. If you were not a someone of influence on this forum then I would not pick this argument with you. However, your math is leaving out the costs to support the subscribers. You're comparing apples and oranges. $200 from a single subscriber to a game -> $200 - 1*(cost to support a subscriber) $200 from 2000 subscribers to a game -> $200 - 2000*(cost to support a subscriber) 0 from any subscribers to a game -> Dantom in debt It makes a HUGE difference. Dantom looses a lot of money supporting the cheap and free games. Those who charge more for subscriptions won't balance it. | |
If somebody makes a viable $20+ game on BYOND, then would be the time to start talking about a $5-10 cap.