From what I can tell, funding a BYOND project on Kickstarter would be a good idea, although it should wait until after the flash client system is finished. I can't find anything in the Kickstarter FAQs or Terms of Service that say you can't use it to fund free products. BYOND gives people a very good reason to donate to it: it is free software! With all the ridiculous projects making ridiculous amounts of money, I wouldn't be surprised if BYOND raised over $300 thousand dollars on there, given how serious it would be compared to most things on that site.
As for changing the name, that should never happen. That would just be like accepting BYOND as having a bad reputation, and trying to hide it, which is a very bad direction to go. BYOND needs to keep its name and live up to what it was always meant to be: a way to Build Your Own Net Dream.
Anyway, I think if you were to give BYOND a Kickstarter project, then an advertisement or demonstration type video (on YouTube) would be obligatory to the campaign. The real question here though, is: What exactly would the project be funding? The BYOND suite already exists, so what big change would you want to make to it, using a large amount of funding? Assuming you got enough to hire a small development team, you could simplify the language, and get out of the tile-based framework as mentioned. Of course, this needs to be done in a way that won't break existing games. I'm sure that with a development team, you could also easily redesign the look and feel of the whole BYOND software suite. I'm certain that the popularity of NEStalgia and maybe a few other games is going to just explode (along with BYOND) once the flash client rolls out, so any fundraising/advertising campaign would likely be more effective if launched after this initial popularity boost. The flash client, when it comes out, will literally give games the ability to go viral across the web.
Again, Tom doesn't have to be the one to do this.
A developer could come up with an idea, take it to Kickstarter and raise money, then donate that money to BYOND. Kickstarter is for funds to complete a project. Donating the money to Tom so he could possibly hire new people and speed up the development of the engine helps with that. Tom has already said a bagillion times they already have a list of what they're doing with the project. I doubt they're going to drop everything they're doing to run a massive Kickstarter campaign. Like always, it's up to the developers to make BYOND popular. | |
Don't forget to report that donated money to the IRS.
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I think BYOND has been moving in the right direction forever, just maybe too slowly due to the lack of funds and staff.