I agreed and obliged, and no one has really complained since then, but I'm starting to get it through my thick skull that most people kind of resent having anything there at all. Perhaps they are silent in fear that we may stick the DUNG logo back in that slot!

Ha! I don't mind the logo, honest. For that matter, I'd stick with the system even if you did go back to DUNG, though I do think BYOND was a step up in mass appeal...

I've thrown in some ideas whenever the issue has arisen, but that's just because I've developed the electronic equivalent of a big mouth. I can certainly think of occasions where it might be fun to use that banner for some custom purpose, but in general, I'd be happy to have a given player see the BYOND banner most of the time. (Until I wake up tomorrow morning with a crackpot game idea that centers around using the banner constantly. :)

Also, I think the reason the "BYOND browser" view isn't all that common among the developers is that many of us are aiming to make games that will keep people absorbed for hours, a la EverCrack, as opposed to games that are amenable to world-hopping every half-hour or so (e.g., chat rooms, checkers, Space Invaders). As the user base grows, no doubt there will be more representation of those people who have ambitions more in line with the "browsing" model.

At any rate, the banner isn't there for purposes of recognition or an ego boost or anything.

Well, that's reassuring... wouldn't it be silly to get all puffed up over spending a mere five years building a programming language and development environment! :)

Dan has had a different motivation in mind, one that I find quite refreshing (but perhaps difficult to pull off). He thinks that if we do any advertising, the profit should be shared by the developer. So the developer would have a choice in activating the banners or not; if they did, they would get some percentage of the generated revenue. This will likely be negligeable for both parties, but it may be nice to know that everything is shared. And of course the developer could just turn off the banner or replace it with one of their own if that was the decision.

Sounds excellent.

On the most basic level, you could maybe do something like this:

var/myBanner = banner('gameGraphic.bmp')
usr << myBanner

and then, to turn it off:

del myBanner

In other words, basically the image() syntax. And when the programmer isn't using the banner, it reverts to Dantom's control. The banner could be turned off entirely just by doing something like:

usr << banner(null)

and given back to Dantom with something like:

usr << __DANTOM_BANNER__

Only problem is, the advertisers might only get a two-second blip before the game decides to put up the next custom banner...

We have also considered removing the banners from the current location and just making them done in the text body itself. This would allow for arbitrary graphics sizes and "text banners" consisting of html. Unfortunately it probably could only be done between games so as not to disrupt the flow. I personally would find it quite annoying if a commercial got played in the middle of a mud or something.

Yes, I think having the banner in its own area is much more palatable than dropping it into the text. And banners between worlds wouldn't be too effective if a player is really only interested in one world (though once they've taken the time to install the client, it would be a shame if they didn't at least sample the other worlds out there; I think most people will do that, and pick out a few favorites).

In the next few days I may experiment with a couple of different interfaces that will likely be less obtrusive, so that new users won't have BYOND forced down their throats. Know that this was never our intention.

Any thoughts?

Well, my instinctive reaction is, "If you don't like it, go ahead and find a better development package." But of course it's easy for me to take that attitude because I didn't build the system; I'll just make my little games that people will either play or they won't, and if they don't, I've at least become a much better programmer and had some fun doing it.

If the banner can help BYOND be profitable, then it's in my best interest to support the banner so I can keep using the product and keep reaping the benefits of future improvements.

Any thoughts?

Ooooo. I don't really like the text-output idea. When it comes to chat, even, I get totally annoyed when I say something and then when I proofread it 5 or 6 lines pop-up underneath while I'm halfway through. My literacy (if most people have been paying attention, I do try to spell everything to the best of my ability =) comes from the fact that I always look over everything I do. If I make a mistake when I say something, I either correct it within about 5 seconds, or I just let it pass because the mistake is hardly noticeable. But when I'm trying to proofread stuff, and my eyes jump around, I make big mistakes, and get PO'd when I make bad one's and don't correct them. =P

Well, other text output, not in chats, also annoys me. For example, when I was playing Hunter, I was getting annoyed at my own little turn expiration warnings.

I must be a freak (I get miffed at itsy bitsy things), but I'd much prefer graphical ad banners instead of stuff where I'm trying to read.

To me, it's like pop-up banners. I hate pop-ups. =/

Thanks for all the responses.

So it appears to me that the main problem is that the current banner induces confusion. I guess that leaves us with a couple of options:

* Remove it altogether, or just have a small netscapey like button, as Guy T. suggested. We even have the perfect button designed (it comes from the cover of the new book).

* Let users supply their own banner, perhaps supplemented by a simple "Built in BYOND" text string at the bottom. We could either auto-generate a default banner (based on the world name) for those who don't supply one, or maybe just keep the space blank in that case. (Deadron)

I'm starting to think that simply removing the banner space might be the way to go. As Al noted, if the system does catch on we should have ample advertising opportunity at the source on the web. If we are to attract an investor though, we will need to have a system in place that takes advantage of our (presumed) popularity. This was one possible idea. How does Napster make money?

Does anyone like this shared advertising scheme, where the designer has the say in weather they want to flash banners or not (and to a lesser degree, which banners will be flashed)? I think that conceptially it's a great idea, but a part of me hates being a part of this kind of commercialization. I'm pretty sure that if I wrote a game in this system I wouldn't want these kinds of advertisments, since it makes it look amateurish. Then again, if we make this a choice, I suppose all's good.

We have given quite a bit of thought to other places that can be targeted by this product and thus gain us either popularity or income, or both. I really like the idea of using it for education. While this might not buy us noteriety, it would be delightful to see a younger crowd familiarize themselves with coding with DM. I think that a big problem with starting out in a "low-level" language like C is that it takes so much code to produce anything, dare I say, noticeable (to others .. all coders should rightly be pleased with any of their accomplishments!) DM allows you to at least get some results relatively quickly, and I think this is key to the learning process. And since it has a basis in C, it is trivial to move over to another language if you ever feel the need (why you would is another question!) For instance, if you understood that "pass by value" discussion I had with Guy T. in one of the earlier forum posts then you know something quite fundamental to most of the general programming languages.

I think it is also important that we find a particular niche. If we could become the standard for, say, chatting, or mud-building, then we would have an immediate, huge market. This would presumably produce an audience for the other games so it would be beneficial to all involved. To me, the knowledge that an audience will be around to try your game is a big drive to coding it. For instance, I'm thinking of writing a server/client file-transfer program like Napster (it's quite trivial in DM), but right now I know that it would be somewhat useless without an audience to support it. That should come in due time.

Finally, I must address one comment by Deadron:

I worry sometimes that Dantom is afraid of making
money...or at least of doing any of the things that might
be required to get there...

This rings quite true. In fact, a friend of mine has been nagging me about this for quite a while. However, the tide is turning. We have recently invested quite a bit of money to print the new book and will this month be spending even more to get the main server going. Aside from the products they produce, these expenses are very good in a way, because will force us to legitimately attempt to make money (by attracting users), or find someone who can meet that need. I suspect that the next six months will determine a lot about the fate of this project. It should be quite exciting.

Whew. Okay, I'll do some work now.

(Of course, you may also lose some autonomy... d'oh.)

I don't know... if I got paid a regular salary instead of a pure commission, I'd be that much happier. Not that I'm getting paid yet or anything, but if I were... (I'm saving my extreme talent (?) for next year. Next year, 9 months after I'm licensed to drive (6 months into 2001), I'm going to get a job... not before, and only if I think that I won't be able to sell enough of my games as stand-alone executables =)

Oh! Which reminds me (three guesses why =). At some point in the future, a really really really excellent feature would be to allow BYOND to create stand-alone .exes, which contain all the Dream Seeker's stuff, compiled into one handy package. Then, if people wanted to, they could distribute their game along with byondwin.dll, and they'd have a completely ready-made game, which would have the Built in BYOND logo stamped beside it... Of course, it wouldn't be a game you could connect to like a browser, but it might make a few people happy. And unfortunately there'd always be those hacky neophytes who'd want to make a program to strip the file of its logo.

Okay, I can't help it... hackers should get a life. *cough* What, did I say something?

On 8/3/00 2:47 pm Guy T. wrote:

MDude: Hey what are you AAAIIEEEEEE!

Hah! Hell, I'll sell out if the money is right! I told you that we were capitalists, didn't I?

Warning:

This is a long message about boring stuff like profit models and business. Read at your own risk. :)

I've done a lot of thinking about profit models for a lot of things, including games.

Some people are more than willing to create fantastic products such as BYOND for no compensation, but eventually the economic reality slaps most of them in the face. If they could make money doing what they really want to do, they could do away with their pesky day job and work on their programs full time.

The maker of the development tools and the maker of the games both deserve to be paid for their work if they want and I think there are ways to do that without having Draconian licensing arrangements such as the game designer not being able to sell their work, only being able to put the game on a specific server, or having absurd royalty agreements.

Let me say that banner ads are proving to be a horrible marketing tool. People are ignoring them like they do most advertising. In fact, many sites are going to text advertising. I guess to trick people into thinking it's a link within their own site. That will only work for so long, too.

My philsophy is that in order to get people to pay attention to a product, you have to give them a very compelling reason. Just throwing up a banner that says "click me" certainly isn't going to get it done.

Right now, I think the best advertising model might be in game advertising, actually weaving a product or service into the game in some fashion.

I'll give a few examples that I, being a blatent capitalist, would think of as being good ideas:

1.A product giving special powers in a game. For instance, a soft drink might add health or a certain food item might give extra energy. Companies would go ga ga over the prospect of game players searching frantically for their product.

2.An item could be placed in the game that would be a real product. Whoever finds the item wins the product. Again, companies would be thrilled to have people searching for their product.

3.This is one I am personally drooling over. The potential for having an item in the game bring up a Web site when it is used. I am a newbie with BYOND, but I assume this is quite possible to do. When you use the item, you might have a chance of winning the item, getting a discount, or some other benefit.

These are just some of the ideas I thought about for generating revenue. I was also thinking about the potential for forming a consortium of developers that could share a server and do a little collective bargaining with advertisers. It would be a big task, but I would be willing to work on it if some of you would be interested. Basically advertising would be sold and integrated into the games and the profits shared. There would have to be some kind of tracking so the most popular games got compensated more. Let me know if you think it is a good idea.

As far as the makers of BYOND, I think there are several options. I read some good ideas. Selling the book is a good idea, selling server space, hosting a main BYOND launch point and selling ads. As part of a consortium, I for one, would be willing to set aside a percentage of profits to go to BYOND development. After all, it's my best chance for making a good game right now. :)

Comments, critcisms?

I'll stop typing now.


On 8/3/00 6:59 pm Guy T. wrote:

Hah! Hell, I'll sell out if the money is right! I told you that we were capitalists, didn't I?

Now you're getting the hang of this business stuff! :)

Actually, most of the stuff in that little mini-drama is stuff I routinely submit to when visiting sites that appeal to me a lot less than BYOND--although I think I'd be a little uneasy about the part where the company gets ownership of the users' creations. (Some sites that provide free Web pages actually have stuff like this buried in their EULA's, although as far as I know they haven't used it... yet.)

What's a little scarier is this scenario:

Mr. X: Hello, is this Mr. Dan and Mr. Tom?... Excellent. My name is Bill... er, just Bill. I have a proposition for you. I'll give each of you one million dollars to completely bury your project. Just replace the site with a farewell page for your users; destroy every disk, backup, and hard copy of the BYOND source code and documentation; and sign an agreement that you won't design or contribute to the development of any programming languages or development environments for public use for the next ten years.


Hmm, what would I do if someone offered me a million dollars to destroy the things I've created up to this point in my life, and promise not to recreate them? That's not an easy question to answer, though I suspect the offer would be hard for me to resist. When I was in college, one of my roommates had a little book full of nothing but weird hypothetical dilemmas like that. It fascinated me, but at the same time it annoyed me...

Well, I think I've pretty thoroughly crossed the line into Babble, so I'll shut up now.

I think companies are desperate to find out what works on the Web and digital medium in general. Most established companies like McDonalds, GM, Coke, are interested in "institutional" advertising, something just to keep their name in the public. They have huge amounts of money to spend on this blanket approach.

New companies, especially the huge wave of tech companies, have been trying to advertise like the huge established companies and finding out it doesn't really work unless people are familiar with you in the first place. Yahoo is doing it now with their "Do You Yahoo?" commercials, but they might have the name recognition to make it work.

But I digress. :)

A lot of companies currently pay money(I'm not sure how much) to get their products featured in games, usually in the form of product placements like they use in the movies. I think companies would pay to have their products featured as part of the games and if you were giving away prizes in the form of the companies products, well, the promise of free stuff tends make people take notice. Even if they don't win the prize, they still might buy the product now that they are familiar with what it is.

If the products have meaning in the game, the players will pay more attention to the product. Most advertising gets ignored, but if people like the game and accept the fact that they need to get a quarter pounder to thrive in the game, then that is as good of advertising as you possibly can get.

For an independent game developers, I think an advertising profit model is the way to go. Oh yeah, and selling movie rights, but that's really dreaming big! :)

As I mentioned in my previous message, I'm really interested in the possibility of getting several developers together and selling advertising to companies as a group.
If you interested, you can email me at:

[email protected]

As you have probably figured out, I'm not shy about sharing my ideas. :)


On 8/4/00 6:07 pm Tom H. wrote:

On 8/4/00 4:45 pm Taipan wrote:

Comments, critcisms?

Very interesting ideas! I really like this concept of advertising within the game itself. It is quite easy to link to actual product webpages through text output. I can only imagine the ensuing hilarity:

Your hunger needs look to be met by a fresh quarter-pounder, courtesy of America's favorite chain, Mcdonalds.

[click]

mmm .. that hit the spot. [+10 health] But now you're thirsty!

I remember about four or five years ago there were a couple of webpage trivia games that worked along similar lines. You had to go hunt around for clues embedded in certain web pages, with the end goal of matching the clues to answer a question for a large cash prize. I don't know if it actually helped the advertisers or not, but this kind of things is certainly less dry than typical advertisement.

On 8/4/00 6:07 pm Tom H. wrote:

Your hunger needs look to be met by a fresh quarter-pounder, courtesy of America's favorite chain, Mcdonalds.

[click]

mmm .. that hit the spot. [+10 health] But now you're thirsty!

It's time to own up to my devious advertising plans... I've long desired to make it so that when someone enters Cerulea, they get an ad they must click before they can actually enter the game. I figured that was a pretty unobtrusive way to get a few cents trickling in for my effort. But I wasn't sure it was possible to have a link that both opened an advertiser's site and sent a message to Topic(). Is it?

Z

Yes. You can do this by having the link() to McDonalds (or whatever) be called from within the initial Topic(). For instance:

proc/advertise()
usr << "Come to [a href="byond://#McDonalds"]McDonald's[/a]"

client/Topic(T)
if(T=="McDonalds") usr << link("http://www.McDonalds.com")

Ahh... but... how is it that most sites get advertising revenue? I always assumed they signed up with some service that gave them a bit of code to put on their page, which would link to an ever-changing ad banner on some other host site. In which case I would have a problem doing the above.

Z