ID:1979180
 
Imagine if nobody at all made an anime-based/inspired game for Byond and only created original concepts ever since Byond's creation.

How do you think things would have played out?

I'll start off. If Byond was never anime-based, for starters, I would never been here because the only reason I found Byond was cause I was searching for Online Naruto games like eleven years ago. That would probably be the same case for mostly everybody. People wouldn't try making their own dragon ball z clone and make their own NEStalgia or Space Station clone. I also think that even if all the games were original ideas, I don't think anyone would bite and look elsewhere entirely. I'm not trying to discredit original game concepts completely, its just how I think Byond would be if nobody made an anime game from it.

Refrain from starting fights by the way, I'm not trying to say Anime games are better, its just a what if.
I think a poll asking if people found BYOND via fangames vs other means would collect better results from the community.

Anyone who stumbled on it for fan-game reasons would more than likely not be here today if said fan-games didn't exist. Unless of course, they were into the type of games being created or programming.

I found BYOND because of fan-games. I stay on BYOND because of a passion for programming.
Me and someone, I forget who apologies, had a small discussion about this on the BYOND Skype group.

We concluded with something along the lines of, BYOND is stuck between a rock and a hard place,

You either A: Alienate you entire current playerbase, with the hope that you'll attract a new more mature one
or B: Leave your current playerbase, but turn off most new mature programmers from wanting to join.

There's no way to win it, it's not worth discussing. Do I believe BYOND would have done better if it never hit the DBZ Zeta singularity? Most certainly. Do I think anything can be done about it now? No.
In response to Rushnut
I'm pretty sure we talked about this the other day. I think BYOND could benefit from becoming more of a developer's community in many ways, but at the same time we'd lose a large portion of our population.

I think with some advertising, BYOND could grow beyond (heh) what it ever anticipated, or more accurately, the dream Tom had for it.
Doomed. Anime games kept BYOND afloat in the early years in community and subscriptions. BYOND's IDE isn't particularly good. In the early 2000s it might have been fine but its failure to grow as a language are what caused people to leave and use other languages. Granted, the community MAY be more mature (horse picture posters may as well be 10) if the age 13 kiddies didn't join but in that same vein, probably wouldn't have gotten the money to stay alive.