For any of you who have played Proelium, you probably know that the game will soon have a subscription option for extra character classes. The game currently has 8 very different classes, and a subscription will allow players to access an additional four classes. Today in the game someone asked me how much a monthly subscription would be-after I told them that it would be 10 dimes a month, I was bombarded with complaints: "You're Greedy," "That's more than any other BYOND game," "I'm not going to play anymore" etc. Is asking a dollar a month to enable a few extra features asking too much? The game is still fully playable without a subscription-and while the new character classes may be useful or fun they won't unbalance the game for non-subscription holders.
It seems to me like most people on BYOND think that BYOND Dimes are made of gold... My hope was to use the subscription profits on webspace for the game's website. Of course, most of the people who were complaining also started to complain about Tanks, which is only 2 Dimes a month!
ID:154151
 May 11 2002, 2:38 pm
|
|
I would probably pay 10 dimes a month for it. I would also like it if there were a 20 dimes for life feature or something, so that I can pay and not worry about keeping my subscription current. Good luck, Silk!
-LoW | |
I am just a player, and I know the mind of a player. On BYOND there are three types of players.
Newbie - Play any game for 10 minutes, then move on. Like internet nomads. WIll NEVER pay money for BYOND games. Normal (Me) - Play games and keep saved charectors and crap. Has favorite servers and hosts, plays games for hours on end. Maybe pay money for BYOND, maybve not. Hardcore - Big-time developers, hardcore gamers and such. Like the people on dBZ rpgs that have a trillion PL, the ones that devote a wee-bit too much time on BYOND. They will pay at most $5.00 a month for games. The point I'm trying to reach is that while a certain percentage of players may continue to play, guys like me will just not play. I will not pay any money for BUYOND games at all. So, by charging, you may lose a huge percentage of players. It is definitely your choice, but I think it is wise to keep BYOND free. (But I didn't spend weeks making the games, so I really don't have the right to talk, do I? ^_^) Thnnks for your time, ---Kujila | |
people are always going to complain if something isn't free.
I myself would pay money for a game if it's good enough. If you think it's good enough that people would pay then go for it, if one person subscribes then you're 10 dimes richer so who cares about the people complaining? I mean you created the game, and it's fun so why shouldn't they praise you for it? | |
True, but if charging makes people not play the game, there is no point to even have created it in the first place! You should ask yourself this question:
"Which is more rewarding; to see people enjoying my creations, or getting minimal fees from the few..." | |
A few things to consider...
If you're around the age of 12, you're familiar with BYOND games and want to play one. You find one you want to play and you stick with that one. Suddenly the game creator wants to charge $1 a month to play with additional classes. While this is totally no loss to you because it's only charging for additional features, you're probably not smart enough to realize that because you're only 12, and if you don't have the best of everything it gives you a reason to complain. Basically, while BYONDdimes aren't gold, they're more valuable than regular dimes because they are harder to come by. Not everyone has access to a way to transfer money online. Heck, even plain adult people like me sometimes don't have credit cards (like me). That often means that the only way to earn BYONDdimes online is to win them in contests, bum them off your friends, or build something that charges them so you can earn them. If you spend a few weeks or months building a game to charge money so you can get BYONDdimes, that makes them alot more valuable. And considering that BYOND's post-teen population is fairly slim, most players probably are youngsters who have to search for ways to get Dimes. Now, suppose you spent that week so you can charge a dime or two for your game. How much does that make each of those dimes worth compared to what someone would expect to earn in the real world? Someone made a program and sold it for full price (in the real world) of $20. He made somewhere around $10,000 off it from a few hundred customers. Compare that to the maybe 50-500 dimes one would earn with a BYOND game. Since the BYOND game is probably only going to have one tenth at best the amount of subscribers that a real world would, we'll calculate from there. That calculates the BYONDdimes value at between $2-$20 for the average youngster. Meaning your 10-dime per month game is like charging $20 to for the average player, or more if they have an especially hard time getting dimes. For the people who do, it'd put it more in the hardly accessable $200 range. No one's going to pay that a month to play your game. Of course, skilled or experienced programmers (like yourself) tend to be the ones with dimes because of it, so while your 10 dime game is looking like $20 to $200 to most players, you only view it as what it is - $1. Tanks costs 2 dimes a month, which is about $4 to decently rich players. Star Traders costs $10 a month, which is getting spendy. Some people might be willing to pay as much as $50 for a game (25 dimes), but beyond that you're getting too expensive. While this concept is a bunch of nonsense, on the bright side it makes me feel good because I have $960 to $9600 lying around in my account. Yay! If I weren't a darned penny pincher I'd go shopping! | |
Well on the bright side, the few are generally decent because charging to play keeps the idiots out.
But then, SilkWizard is talking about charging for extra features, not to play. | |
Foomer wrote:
Well on the bright side, the few are generally decent because charging to play keeps the idiots out. A lot of people like to think that, but my thought is: It also keeps some of the non-idiots out. I like to think of myself as someone who is usually intelligent, and sometimes stupid when he's tired, but that's besides the point. My only income of Dimes is from people putting them into my account, either from A) Contests or B) Donations. By him charging 10 dimes (1$) a month, he is practically keeping me out of his game. (Not that I play it anyways..) There is a prime example of population downsizing, and a falsification of the "keeping the idiots out" theory. </rant> | |
Kujila wrote:
Newbie - Play any game for 10 minutes, then move on.Like internet nomads. WIll NEVER pay money for BYOND games. I will not pay any money for BUYOND games at all. Doesn't that make you a Newbie under your own rules? | |
My other suggestion would be to make an alternate, one-time lifetime subscription fee of $10-$20 or so, in addition to the $1-a-month deal. Though the nature of the costs that you're trying to cover with subscription money isn't one-time, do keep in mind that conventional game distribution is; if someone wants to play Proelium with all the trimmings for a full year, that's $50some dollars. That kind of money is enough to purchase a higher-end commercial game and potentially enjoy it for quite a few years.