Does byond bother to advertise its existance at all? Or does it just go with the flow and see who comes?
Because I'm a little bored with the small community compared to about a year ago, I know there will always be a lot of "rips" but this era of byond has a serious lack of active, new, and original games. Im just getting so bored. I cant help with any of this because nobody I know even plays games, internet or otherwise. Im sure there are some plans to expand byond's popularity but I havent heard anything. And I heard that byond is trying to appeal to a board game (or something like that) crowd, but everyone I know here seems to be more attracted to the action and anime sections of games. The board type games can be fun, such as incursion (though I always wished it were more complex in ways) but my main fix (used) to be the action and anime sections where I spent 90% of my time. However now days I just hang out on my game talking or screwing things up.
One day soon I'd like to see 10'000 people online. Twice what the normal high is. If that many people come on I'm sure a higher percentage of the community will be developers, which is what I look forward to. Actually I'm wrong I actually look forward to more players as well, because if there aren't 100 players on my game at all times I am incredibly bored.
ID:182518
 May 16 2008, 1:47 am (Edited on May 16 2008, 1:52 am)
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SuperAntx wrote:
There are a lot of original games in the works. BYOND has no shortage of capable programmers, designers, or gamers; what we lack are pixel artists. Where are you coming from here? What about the hundreds of games on BYOND that have well-done icons but horrible programming? Regardless, I would say in general there isn't a real abundance of good programmers over good pixel artists, but I haven't looked into it or anything. It doesn't matter how advanced or how optimized a game is, nobody is going to play longer than ten seconds if it doesn't look good. Artwork is a major part of a game since it's the only part the players can actually see! Really...ever heard of text-based games? Anyway, I had a post somewhere about just the point of your post here... lemme dig it up. Here [link] | |
Kaioken wrote:
I would say in general there isn't a real abundance of good programmers over good pixel artists, but I haven't looked into it or anything. Maybe you should look into it since we're actually losing talented artists. Really...ever heard of text-based games? Name a popular text-based game released in the last five years. ... Take your time. | |
Kaioken wrote:
SuperAntx wrote: You said what I was thinking. I know for a LOT of people graphics > gameplay but to me, I choose a game with good gameplay and n64 graphics over a game with the best graphics and crap gameplay. And I dont just diss a game first thing because of graphics like you said in that statement that people will do. | |
Dragonn wrote:
Does byond bother to advertise its existance at all? Or does it just go with the flow and see who comes? We've been trying to advertise as we can, but it has proven slow-going. We hoped that people would use the BYOND Referral Program to help do the job for us (just having links to our site helps our Google rank). Unfortunately, despite our efforts to make that well-known, no one is really using it. We're still thinking of ideas, but unfortunately none of us is a marketing expert and we don't have the funds to employ one. | |
You have games a and b, a has great graphics and b has very poor graphics, both have identical programming and gameplay... which do you choose?
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Dwarf Fortress, practically every Roguelike ever released. And if you google for MUDs you will find thousands of them, some with player bases that rival the size of smaller MMORPGs.
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SuperAntx wrote:
Maybe you should look into it since we're actually losing talented artists. But that's just 1 talented artist. And naturally, people come and go. Programmers too. Anyway, what about the other points of my post? Really...ever heard of text-based games? Har har. =P In fact, indeed, I do not know of such a game, however that is because (much like yourself) I am not a text-games player (it was just an example). I do know though that a lot of people do like those, so wait for them for examples if you want em. While not specifically liking text-based games, I, like Dragonn, don't judge a game according to its graphics alone. If the gameplay is good and makes up for the bad graphics, I will still play the game and enjoy it. This is of course in a matter of opinion, but don't think the "gameplay > gfx" camp is necessarily much smaller than the "gfx > gameplay" camp, or what we like to call, "graphics whores". =P A trend with a lot of recent commercial games is to focus on having awesome next-gen graphics which indeed creates a lot of initial hype, but some of those games like the famous Crysis have crappy gameplay and frankly are not all that fun, since looking around at the scenery isn't all you do in a game. This is quite offtopic here though, so maybe we should take this to another topic (this could even possibly belong in the Design Philosophy section) if we're going to start an <small>argumentative</small> discussion. | |
There is a mountain of original games on BYOND, just check any of the official BYOND guilds. Though you could go and say, "Well no one host them so I won't play it" approach but the truth is, there are several other people who have that same opinion. Create weekly sessions where we can all get together and play several games, this will not only be fun, but newer members will see players within these games and will be tempted with joining.
We can not complain as a community how may rips are on BYOND as they hardly affect us. Even though there may be a more people within BYOND anime, we have a lot of people within the developer and non anime part of BYOND. Why can we not help each other out? When a person releases a game we should try giving that person as may suggestions and ideas as we can. Original BYOND games come and go as we have a tendency of ignoring them and rather be more interested in bashing the anime community. Let’s not fight against the rips as we will never win that battle, it is the staff’s job to decide what they want to do with this. Let’s just ignore the rips; giving them all this attention does not do any good. | |
Maybe someone should start a BYOND gamer's magazine, whose job it is to keep track of any decent new original games coming out and do interviews and advertise play sessions and stuff. That way people can find out about new games and find out when a load of people are going to be playing them.
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Dragonn wrote:
Does byond bother to advertise its existance at all? Or does it just go with the flow and see who comes? Because I'm a little bored with the small community compared to about a year ago, I know there will always be a lot of "rips" but this era of byond has a serious lack of active, new, and original games. Im just getting so bored. I cant help with any of this because nobody I know even plays games, internet or otherwise. Im sure there are some plans to expand byond's popularity but I havent heard anything. And I heard that byond is trying to appeal to a board game (or something like that) crowd, but everyone I know here seems to be more attracted to the action and anime sections of games. The board type games can be fun, such as incursion (though I always wished it were more complex in ways) but my main fix (used) to be the action and anime sections where I spent 90% of my time. However now days I just hang out on my game talking or screwing things up. One day soon I'd like to see 10'000 people online. Twice what the normal high is. If that many people come on I'm sure a higher percentage of the community will be developers, which is what I look forward to. Actually I'm wrong I actually look forward to more players as well, because if there aren't 100 players on my game at all times I am incredibly bored. I have not read any of the replies yet, but let me just say, I have been around since the beginning pretty much. We were lucky to get 50 players on. The fact that we are getting thousands a day is way more than enough for me. | |
Neither of those focus on games, they're more aimed at developers. BYONDscape doesn't even seem to exist anymore.
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Actually :[ From personal experience I can say that rips DO negatively effect BYOND. They might not effect you as an individual, but they do effect BYOND and it's community.
I have tried advertising BYOND on other websites, most of them larger than BYOND and aimed at amateur game development, sometimes I have even pointed people asking how to make multiplayer online games towards BYOND. I have always been confronted with the same reply to this, and that is that BYOND is only "good" at making rubbish games/anime games. You'd never guess where people got their perception of BYOND from, would you? (About the only other reason I have been given for people not using BYOND is because the game more or less always has to be related to the BYOND website, whether that is because you have to download BYOND to play games made with BYOND, register at BYOND to play online BYOND games or whatever) I've probably advertised BYOND to a potential 200,000 or so people, I'm willing to bet not a single one of those people joined or uses BYOND. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
I've probably advertised BYOND to a potential 200,000 or so people, I'm willing to bet not a single one of those people joined or uses BYOND. Which sites have you tried to advertise BYOND to? I am very curious as to their reasons for not trying it out. I do think that there is a general perception that BYOND is a "toy" and not a serious development platform, which is unfortunate but somewhat unavoidable (many programmers frown upon game toolkits since by their nature they have limitations). While I don't think that the plethora of "rips" is helping the cause, I doubt were losing a lot of people on account of them, because most users don't even bother to download & try BYOND (and hence see the volume of rips). Those are more damaging to our existing userbase. For us to really have an influx of new, diverse users, we're going to need a few hit mainstream games. The volume of Anime users are here because we happened to fill a niche a few years ago. That gives us an audience of gamers (albeit not an ideal one), which is a start. Now we need to do what we can to encourage those gamers to make & play other types of games, which is what we've been trying to push with the guilds, banners, contests and so forth. Nothing has caught like wildfire yet but we're still trying. | |
Tom wrote:
Which sites have you tried to advertise BYOND to? I am very curious as to their reasons for not trying it out. I do think that there is a general perception that BYOND is a "toy" and not a serious development platform, which is unfortunate but somewhat unavoidable (many programmers frown upon game toolkits since by their nature they have limitations). While I don't think that the plethora of "rips" is helping the cause, I doubt were losing a lot of people on account of them, because most users don't even bother to download & try BYOND (and hence see the volume of rips). Those are more damaging to our existing userbase. For us to really have an influx of new, diverse users, we're going to need a few hit mainstream games. The volume of Anime users are here because we happened to fill a niche a few years ago. That gives us an audience of gamers (albeit not an ideal one), which is a start. Now we need to do what we can to encourage those gamers to make & play other types of games, which is what we've been trying to push with the guilds, banners, contests and so forth. Nothing has caught like wildfire yet but we're still trying. What I noticed is, is that when you guys advertise BYOND (even on the front page) you advertise it with board games, etc. and people do not really want to join a community thinking it only provides board games. If you show shooter games, action/adventure games, and the likes, I guarantee you we will have people pouring into the website. I am not saying I do not like Last Robot Standing, Incursion, and other board games on here, don't get me wrong. I love those games, but the fact of the matter is, people curious about this website will see that, and probably leave. Those games are being advertised everywhere. If they were to see some nice shoot'em'up and action/adventure games, they would probably join in a second. | |
Cavern wrote:
What I noticed is, is that when you guys advertise BYOND (even on the front page) you advertise it with board games, etc. and people do not really want to join a community thinking it only provides board games. If you show shooter games, action/adventure games, and the likes, I guarantee you we will have people pouring into the website. I don't buy this as a legitimate problem though. If anything we want more gamers of the board/card/strategy variety, so this is a good thing. These are also BYOND's strongest suit. I am not saying I do not like Last Robot Standing, Incursion, and other board games on here, don't get me wrong. I love those games, but the fact of the matter is, people curious about this website will see that, and probably leave. Those games are being advertised everywhere. If they were to see some nice shoot'em'up and action/adventure games, they would probably join in a second. I think that's only true of people who are especially into action/shooter games, and those aren't exactly hidden. Anyone checking out the games page is gonna see we have an action genre and they'll quickly see a whole host of games there. Lummox JR | |
Tom wrote:
I do think that there is a general perception that BYOND is a "toy" and not a serious development platform, which is unfortunate but somewhat unavoidable (many programmers frown upon game toolkits since by their nature they have limitations). While I don't think that the plethora of "rips" is helping the cause, I doubt were losing a lot of people on account of them, because most users don't even bother to download & try BYOND (and hence see the volume of rips). Those are more damaging to our existing userbase. How many people, once they're beyond the download & try it phase turn and leave once they see the rips? Once someone gets a feel for the general feel for BYOND's "Oh, just pretend they aren't there..." I imagine a lot don't stick around for long. People also get told to basically not give anyone else anything. If they do they're basically screwed. How much realistically do people make from their BYOND games? Sure, the odd person made out with thousands, but most probably don't even make $50. $50? Thats not even enough for the retainer fee for the lawyer they would need to deal with the blatant copyright infringement they have to put up with here at BYOND. The site may actually hurt too. A simple, straightforward site makes a site much easier to use. Information presented via http://www.byond.com isn't too terrible, but once you've created a username that information is completely gone. Sidebar? Nope, sorry, just some ads and a benefactors list. The top bar? The top bar is completely useless. Where the hell is a download link? Links to tutorials? Theres a download link buried in the "Thanks for being a Member" block of text. Tutorials? How the hell is a new person supposed to know to they have to look under "Developers->Dream Makers" and then find the tiny link to "DM Tutorials" on the side of the page? Then you have the actual part where the BYOND site itself is actually made up of 7 different sites. You have yourself a needlessly complicated system, that people probably lose interest in simply because they just can't find what they need without jumping through hoops. I've been around for almost 6 years now. About a month ago it took me about 15 minutes to find where the hell the tutorials were to give the link to someone. God help any new people who come around. | |
It doesn't matter how advanced or how optimized a game is, nobody is going to play longer than ten seconds if it doesn't look good. Artwork is a major part of a game since it's the only part the players can actually see!
While we do have some artists floating around I think they're set off by the way deals are made. Almost every post in Classified Ads is "icon for gm" or "i cant pay." There aren't that many offers for partnerships or profit sharing. They're really getting the short end of the stick and I think it's hampering the development of real games.
We have the DM Guide, Code Problems, Design Philosophy. Even Chatters has showcode! Yet with all the programming help there's only a single link to the Pixel Art Society's guild page hidden away in Dream Makers as another developer resource.
BYOND has almost reached maturity as a development tool and as a community. Version 4.0 has been a massive advancement and the Members section has connected the community in ways a simple forum could never accomplish. All we need now is for Unknown Person to finally release Ultimatum and start the wave of BYOND's own next gen 4.0 games. It's been in beta for two years, release the darn thing!