Donations make more since for a byond game then subscribing...Unless subscribing unlocks certain benifits, as long as those benifits are not cruical in order to play the game. Such as forcing people to subscribe in order to save. I believe the reason star traders gets so few people could largely be due to this. I don't really have a beef with the game or anything, I just think that it serves example as what is a bad idea. Besides this, the average person with the "average" (a loose term) amount of money might not mind donating, but paying for a byond game unless it is phenomenal just sounds too rediculous to bother with. If I'm going to subscribe I'd pick eq2, world of warcraft, matrix online, COH, DAOC, Motor City Online, etc. I realize the subscriptions to byond games are substantially less. But the mere fact that this involves bills and credit cards makes it more or less tedious.
Also, I've never understood why people would bother subscribing to a mud, since afterall, they could just find another mud. (The same point can be applied to byond games).
For me it comes down to what they do with subscriptions.
For instance, I'm all for game developers charging for a sort of gift basket of in-game stuff, however I'm against the idea of charging simply to play the game (unless it's a small game like Sheep or Dragonsnot, but there should always be at least a playtable demo). I wouldn't class it as being selfish. I'm sure greed enters the equation, but that's not what I see as the problem. Greed can do some great stuff just as good intentions don't always have good results. The idea of cutting out a large section of your potential player base in such a small market is very bad. All it's going to do is lead to is the few people who subscribed getting bored from not having anyone to play with and eventually leaving the game to die. | |
GokuDBZ3128 wrote:
A good example of this is Star Traders. You get the smallest, crappy newbie ships to start with, hardly any fuel, cannot control anything, and fuel is scarce, but if you subscribe then this is no problem. But see that's the point. You simply can't play the full game without subscribing to it. It's not like a lot of games here where the game is sort of in limbo between free and pay-to-play. You know the sort of game. You could remove the subscription stuff and it'd still be a full game, but the stuff they tacked on for subscribers is so good it's not worth playing unless you subscribe. I don't like that Star Traders is pay-to-play, but it's good because it was designed to be that way. | |
Ter13 wrote:
I agree with donations, but not subscription advantages. In my subscription games, you can always try it out for free. The free version is a trial so you can see if you like the game. It's not meant to be on par with subscribed gamers. It gives people a chance to try the game out and make an informed decision about it. If you like the game, a few bucks isn't much to ask. The rest of this is not specifically in response to Ter13. I spent about 280 hours of work on Tanks and I don't even want to think about how long on Darke Dungeon. The meager subscription prices I ask don't come anywhere near minimum wage at the quantities I'm selling. If it were greed, I could get more money much quicker other ways without putting forth nearly as much effort. Tanks was actually an experiment to stimulate the BYOND economy. I kept nearly all the earnings in my BYOND wallet* so that Dantom could draw interest on it. I want to help make this BYOND thing profitable for Dantom, and if it becomes profitable for me too, so much the better. I never was good at economics though and the Tanks experiment failed miserably on many levels. Any profits I manage to make from Darke Dungeon will be used to help fund a large scale persistent RPG I've been thinking about. I would like to be able to afford a really good internet connection and dedicated server for it. Everyone complains about the low quality games on BYOND and the slow internet connections they are hosted on, but they are unwilling to help financially to improve these issues. You get the quality you pay for. If you pay nothing, you have nothing to complain about. <small>* I used small amounts of it from time to time for minor online purchases. This August I withdrew nearly all of it to pay my car insurance when my paycheck was delayed for 2 weeks due to a mixup at work. :/</small> | |
In my oppinion, if you're dead-set on subscription access, do something like:
-Allow access to several "Avatar" levels after they've completed all the "base" levels that everyone can complete (although, you'd want to keep this number rather small, so the subscribers would only have a SMALL edge [I'd still think VERY carefully about this one, though]) -Allow access to several rare, but expensive to purchase items (this way, they could buy items that noone else has access to, but they still have to PAY for them). -Allow subscribers to access a map creator (for puzzle-type games or strategic games) -Allow subscribers to own more characters than non-subscribers. These are just a few basic ideas that *I* think might encourage subscriptions, but wouldn't discourage non-subscribers from playing, due to unbalanced gameplay. | |
Allow subscribers to own more characters than non-subscribers.
Dude, that's just cheap... "I'm going to make my 4th character, what should I make him..." "Oh, dang, I can only have 3! Now I have to pay to make a fourth? Screw this game. *quits*" | |
I thought allowing subscribers more characters was a perfectly reasonable idea. You pay to use more system resources. It's enforcing it that I see to be the problem. People can use multiple keys and IP checking isn't perfect.
I'm a bit undecided on the map creation. I made Webspinner free so people could create maps for Webcrawl, but only allowed subscribers to load maps in the main game. I figured that making the tools free would increase the chances of a mod community. I got a frustrated remark or two, but I still think the idea is sound. | |
Shadowdarke wrote:
Tanks was actually an experiment to stimulate the BYOND economy. I kept nearly all the earnings in my BYOND wallet* so that Dantom could draw interest on it. <small>* I used small amounts of it from time to time for minor online purchases. This August I withdrew nearly all of it to pay my car insurance when my paycheck was delayed for 2 weeks due to a mixup at work. :/</small> GET 'EM HE'S HORDING! | |
I'm not a fan of counting on donations. If someone likes someone's work, they can always try to give them money. However, I'd rather count on a set contract that offers options for money. I don't have any good will from people before the game is hosted. (Quite possibly not after either, but that's besides the point. ;)) I try to keep subscription options in mind while still designing it.
I'm also no longer a fan of subscriptions that only offer hosting advantages. I don't think they work on BYOND. I've seen too many people ask others to host and too many people complain about the people who host.
I think that, in general, subscriptions for player options might be the only way to go. How to keep those options balanced with the rest of the game might be a problem, but I'm going tend to only work for my subscribers and myself unless the leeches are well-mannered.