Apr 20 2014, 5:00 am
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Kalzar
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Congrats. Just a suggestion: This might be the perfect time to rebrand BYOND to emphasize the recent milestones, upcoming progress, and change of direction. By changing the name, BYOND would lose the negative attention attached to the website from 10+ years ago.
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Kalzar wrote:
Congrats. Just a suggestion: This might be the perfect time to rebrand BYOND to emphasize the recent milestones, upcoming progress, and change of direction. By changing the name, BYOND would lose the negative attention attached to the website zfrom 10+ years ago. No.. just no.. go home. | |
Flysbad wrote:
Kalzar wrote: And don't come out. I love the name BYOND and what it stands for. We should just continue to grow and build as a community and software and make people learn to love it as we all do. | |
Changing the brand wouldn't do any good anyway. It's not like that hides the history, or changes the software. Everyone will still figure out, and know it is the BYOND they have or could read about; so they'll still think the same things until current and future events change the view past events have caused.
New names don't change the history, and lots of sites might just update to display the name change, like it did from DUNG to BYOND. The branding and such is good as is. | |
Rebranding would be fine, but a name change isn't a rebrand.
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Rebranding isn't designed to reach current developers of BYOND. Think about the perspective from an outsider or the SS13/NEStalgia community. Although you love the name BYOND, the recent influx of players either do not support BYOND or are unaware of what BYOND is. Further, I imagine there are thousands of potential players that are unaware of BYOND and would not understand it.
BYOND's established business strategy is to collaborate with developers and split profits from player membership. While this might work, the word-of-mouth marketing strategy for BYOND is unsustainable because there has only been negative publicity. BYOND needs to be described differently to developers and players. Is it a player-driven gaming community? Is it a development community? Is it like Kongregate/Newgrounds? Or is it integrative suite for amateur developers? With the new direction with developers and upcoming integration with HTML5, BYOND might receive recognition from media outlets. Before then, Tom has a rare opportunity to choose to rebrand. Targeting a specific market would provide stronger model and greater efficiency. Effectively, BYOND could be differentiated and reimagined into multiple products. The brand image would not be eliminated, but refocused to facilitate the expansion of BYOND into more competitive markets. Forking BYOND would provide a mechanism to distance itself from negative connotations, decide its place in the internet, and improve communication/marketability with future developers. BYOND's new direction encourages developers to be responsible for the marketing of their product. Moreover, this would be the perfect time to separate the HTML5 software from the legacy BYOND brand. It can be under the same BYOND umbrella, but it should have a new identity. If BYOND is Apple, DM is OSx, the hub is iCloud, and DS is the iPhone, then HTML5 integration would be an iPad. My poor analogy demonstrates that solutions and products from a single company have separate names to properly market to different consumers. Anyway, this wouldn't change or hide any history. Instead, I am only offering Tom with an alternative business solution, something most could agree hasn't been handled smoothly in the past. It's his company and his new direction. I am excited for the upcoming capabilities, and wish for great success for Tom, Lummox, and developers (current and future). | |
The whole idea that BYOND has this horrible reputation in the outside world is completely false, and always has been. The only people who talk poorly about BYOND on the internet are former anime kiddies and trolls who used to be BYONDers. The rest of the world doesn't know a thing about it.
If NEStalgia has proven anything it's that most people are smart enough to see through random anonymous morons bashing something online. Between having a BYOND game published on Steam and being able to showcase other wildly popular original games like Space Station 13, Eternia, etc, BYOND has never been in a better position to appeal to new developers. | |
I can't agree more. If I can have a full conversation with a total stranger about Space Station 13, it's safe to say the internet knows about BYOND, they just don't know what else it can do or how to do it.
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Wow congratulations Btw i havent even played NEStalgia
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well said silk.
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Silk Games wrote:
The whole idea that BYOND has this horrible reputation in the outside world is completely false, and always has been. The only people who talk poorly about BYOND on the internet are former anime kiddies and trolls who used to be BYONDers. The rest of the world doesn't know a thing about it. While anime kiddies and trolls contributed to the small reputation of BYOND, Tom and the rest of the developers have an opportunity to drive the discussion about the BYOND platform. Although NEStalgia being published on Steam obviously demonstrates BYOND is in a great position, it does not change the fact that the different integrated products (DM, DS, pager, hub, HTML5, etc) convolute the capabilities of BYOND. By separating these products, customers could be offered different solutions for specific needs. For example: A new player joins NEStalgia and clicks on an ad - "This game was created using BYOND". He is an amateur developer and is interested in learning about BYOND. After exploring BYOND, he finds most of the games require a strange download. Yet somehow NEStalgia can be played on Steam. Then he thinks that the owner must have had to programmed complicated networking processes to connect to Steam. Rebranding BYOND would not be complicated if each product was thought as a standalone solution. A new developer might only be interested in HTML5. Why increase complexity and risk scaring aware possible users? This alternative business strategy would provide a stronger sales pitch, improve efficiency, and position BYOND to enter multiple competitive markets. | |
A lot of it comes down to how far we want to take this. We've been working on this a long time, and there are still a million things we could do, but at some point we may just cut the cord and say enough is enough. I want to get this web version out and possibly integrate it into a standalone system. We might go the route of just selling a "create your own standalone game" kit (although I kind of doubt it would generate enough sales to support a business). We might just open source everything and do something else. We'll see. We have a bunch of different experimental projects going on right now and how far we go with them largely depends on how much revenue they generate and whether we enjoy working on them.
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I really wish Eternia had a potential on the 'mainstream' market, but unlike NEStalgia the audience that Eternia caters to is way, way more niche than the 'retro 2D orpg' audience. Still, there's always hope for the PvP version that (probably?? I stopped working on it a while ago) is in the works.
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This is good news Tom, I am glad to see that BYOND has started branching out and is considering communication with Steam. I'm sure that Steam would bring BYOND more popularity than it's seen in a long while from my experience.
I am truly sorry about what happened earlier last year in that one forum thread you created about the changes to the website and the way that HUBs work. Having re-read that and aged a little bit I can understand your point of view on all of the changes that were made. I am sorry if I offended you and you were right, back then BYOND membership really did have little to no purpose. I'm getting used to the forum changes and honestly think they're all very nice, sorry for acting the way I did. Cheers, Simcra. | |
I haven't been on this website for nearly a year and I come back to the most promising news post ever. BYOND games going to Steam? Standalone clients? BYOND on HTML5? Jesus guys. Good job.
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I love the addition of the HTML5 stuff (it's what I do for a living now- teaching HTML5/Javascript). That could very well bring me back into development and hosting services! Keep up the great work, guys!
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I'm sorry you are jaded but it is justifiable given that we have not delivered on a lot of expectations. This is why I keep telling people that you should treat BYOND as a complete software-- and if it doesn't do what you want right now, don't use it-- because just banking on some future feature is going to cause a lot of grief. Believe me, we are trying to get these things done, but at the same time-- and you can see this from our Fund-o-meter-- BYOND is barely making any money and it is just hard to devote the necessary manpower for this barely-business.
Since the standalone system is largely complete, one thing I would like to do is at least release a version that lets single-player games work ad-free and multiplayer with a single ad connection (similar to the pager), or maybe some compromise. I agree that we need a better way for our devs to distribute games in the interim period before we have a web client. | |
You guys expect 5k a month some people don't even make 1k a month you make more then a lot of people that work jobs such as McDonald's & Taco Bell. (Unless no one donates lol)
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I like where things are going with the standalone plans, and I hope the web client gets released and eases a lot of the developers who've been waiting so long; I personally haven't been waiting for it but I am looking forward to it hopefully releasing at some point. Maybe it'll finally help get things on the right track, though I won't count on that; it's just something to hope for.
@Ganite. Those people that make less than 1k a month don't have to pay to run the Mcdonald's & Taco Bells they work for. They have to pay for their lunches and gas bills, but that's far less than it takes for running BYOND. That's also going off a one person income, BYOND has Tom and Lummox, even if Tom may or may not always work full time because of the financial situation. They also strive to make more. Tom & Lummox are no different. 5k a month is not unreasonable, it is a goal, it is not being reached, and they are striving to get it reached regularly and to run things as strongly as possible. Also, I believe Tom was referring to hiring more full time workers to ensure these things are both done, and done faster. As it stands the goals not being met very often, in fact it often only reaches about half that, yet Lummox keeps working hard, and Tom seems to be putting in time as well; so in theory they are working for roughly 1k a month. So... My point? I don't think there's any problem with the goal here. | |
I wasn't saying there was a problem with the goal, just he mentioned something about financial status or w.e and I stated they make a lil more then someone working min wage. (Which isn't really much lol)
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