ID:1363811
 
So I want to help BYOND somehow. I just don't know how. I can't donate right as I literally have no money at all. So far I spent on BYOND donating and giving memberships to myself and other to a total of $160 according to my calculations. I think I will receive money in fall so I will probably start donating $50 per month and give away memberships. I once created the website hirebyondexperts.com but it failed to get any customers. I wanted some of the money to be donated to BYOND. Another idea I have is to create a good, fun, professional game for BYOND that will earn money through subscription to that BYOND game, donations and becoming a member for member-only benefits in the game. I want a team to work on this game for free and when the game becomes popular, all the earnings will go to BYOND. Or maybe advertise BYOND more? So I made this thread to ask how can we support BYOND with money or other ways? I want to help.
If you want to support Byond my suggestion would be the following, and echoed in other threads I've been in:

Come up with a decent game design with original content (don't steal someone elses IP..), preferably without subscriptions as this is difficult when marketing the game outside of the Byond platform.

Look around the community for like minded individuals that are willing to work as a development team. Develop it, work together, work through differences that arise, and come up with a polished, good looking, fun game.

Try to publish it on Desura at least, and possibly later Steam. There's also other ways to market the game out there like the Bundle websites, often which cater to Indie game studios.

One of the best ways to help Byond I believe is making it stand out in the Indie game community, that it can actually make a game worth playing with the features it has as an engine.
In response to Drakemoore
We need a team of free graphic artists and programmers. Others are optional.

How will marketing outside of BYOND help BYOND? Won't they just play it outside of BYOND or do we direct them to BYOND?
You can put a Byond logo in the product, 'Made with Byond' can additionally put it in credits, link the engine / platform in your game menu.

Does it 'directly' help Byond? No.

But neither does SS13 and other games on Byond that don't have a subscription.

Byond makes money from them through memberships / advertisements.

I will tell you that you won't have much luck putting a subscription in and marketing the game outside of Byond unless it's a lifetime purchase or item mall method.
SS13 for example wasn't marketed simply on Byond. It was posted around the internet quite a bit. Very much so on the Something Awful forum and other places.

I suspect that if they really tried they could get a even larger playerbase than they already have.
In response to Drakemoore
SS13 wasn't even advertised in a traditional sense. It's not like the developer of the game went out and tried to advertise it. The players themselves did all the hard work. They spread the word, got more players who got more players and so on.

Moral of the story. If you make a game people really like to talk about, they're going to talk about it.
Ever since talking to Tom and realizing what a cool guy he is I've been working on SS13 players as best I can. It's not easy to undo years of blaming BYOND for the game's problems but I've had a few converts so far. Doing my best to get some more awareness of the platform and its need into our community.

I think v500 will be a huge help with my little campaign. Once people see the massive improvements with the new version and lag starts clearing up it'll be impossible to blame BYOND.