(I may be guilty of putting this in the wrong forum, but since I'm currently the only moderator .. mwuahahaha!)

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the subscription system and the use of BYONDimes. Considering that we are in the early, "experimental phase" of this system and have only marketed by word of mouth, it is pretty impressive that dimes are moving at all! I credit the influx of great games that have incorporated this little element of e-commerce, whether it be by donation, subscription, or in-game transaction. I expect that as we get many more users over the next coming year, the economy will really pick up.

My current concern is that of "deflation" (or "inflation", depending on how you look at it). Basically, I'm referring to the perception of a BYONDime being worth a lot more than it actually costs. Some examples:

"But when the average going rates for subscriptions to most of these games are around that for a lifetime membership... That 2 bucks for ONE graphic (regardless of how many states it has...it's still only one graphic)...is quite over budget... "

"Subscribing to the other game, which had a 30 day trial, only supported 2 players, and had no online capabilities would cost you an entire $20.00... Subscribing to Echelon would cost you an entire $0.20 or $0.50, it comes with online capabilities and supports up to four players... Yet, absolutely no one bothers to subscribe to my game!"

Actually this kind of thing is very true of the Internet in general. Since people are used to getting everything for free, they attain a skewed perception of the actual costs involved in creating the products. I remember reading that the average webpage on Geocities cost around $6-$8 a month to support, but most of the members wouldn't consider paying a fraction of that cost. Part of this is that the product simply isn't worth the money (not everyone cares enough about a webpage to pay for it), but I think a larger factor is the fact that the "freebie" perception has been ingrained into our minds. After all, people will glady dole out $5 (50 BD!) for a fast-food meal, almost exclusively because that's what it costs.

It is really way to early in the system to make an accurate judgement on how this will affect us, the BYOND community, but we'd like to at least nudge things in the right direction. My worry is that people will look at a game that charges, say, 20 BD, and think that it is way too expensive, because, relatively speaking, it is. Considering that each of these games takes countless hours (days, weeks, months!) of labor to produce, it would be depressing if the designer could only make a few dollars off his or her efforts simply because of the "exchange rate perception". Many coders aren't doing this for a profit, but they should at least have the option. If a game only charges a few dimes for a lifetime subscription, it will probably take a few thousand subscribers to be seriously taken as a source of additional income for the designer. If (nay, once!) we get immensely popular, I think this should be possible, but it will still involve some marketing effort on the part of the author. On the other hand, if the subscription costs go up (say, $5 a pop), then significantly less players are needed to reach that goal. The question is whether we can, or should, shift things in that direction.

In hindsight, I think that the use of "dimes" as the base unit of currency may have been a mistake. The idea was to make it sound like an insignficant, almost throw-away amount, not have the opposite effect! If we had gone with the "BYOND Buck" for instance, then $5 (5BB) might not seem like such a big deal. Of course, it is not too late for changes. We could enforce a minimum transaction amount, up the minimum deposit, and so forth. On the other hand, I almost hate to banish the "tip" system ("Hey, give me a dime for my efforts!"), used in such games as Gughunter's SpaceTug. Clearly this will require a bit of thought.

Currently, a large percentage of BYONDime deposits come via $5 checks, which just so happens to be the minimum deposit amount right now. This leads me to believe that we could increase it without much change, which would allow designers to effectively double their profits. Obviously at some point the balance has to switch over-- I doubt that making 1BD == $100 US would work too well! Who knows, it may be that we have the perfect figure right now, and that the limiting factor is simply the rather small quantity of active participants at the moment. That will undoubtedly change, I have confidence in that.

All that said, I think that for now I'd simply like to encourage people to do the translation for themselves when using the commerce system. If you are having fun playing a game, and the designer asks for 20 BD to support his or her efforts, consider for the moment that this really is a pretty small amount of money, more symbolic than anything, considering that no one is making a killing just yet!