ID:1071855
Dec 1 2012, 10:38 am
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Redundant
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Hi! Well my BYOND membership is about to expire soon and now the only reason that I want to renew mine, which I may not be able, is because of the ability to make hubs. In the beginning, I only bought a membership to edit my own member website. Could we have the CSS Edit back and also delete the advantage to let the hub making ability to only the BYOND Members. I find it a little unfair... Why?
Free Forever That said, we do need to eat! If you want to contribute to the project, consider purchasing a BYOND Membership for yourself or a friend. Membership gives some perks-- primarily the ability to create the hub entries mentioned above-- but it is mostly intended as a show of support. We hope you believe in this software and community as much as we do. To make a game it's free forever and how about to put it out in the hub?! | |||||||
Yes, but again, the game is just like a Ghost City.
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Of course. If you want people to know about your game, you have to advertise it. Show it off to the various indie game sites out there, get word of mouth going, anything to let others know your game exists. One cannot just expect to make a game and have people flock to it.
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As has been mentioned elsewhere recently, they're already thinking about changing this policy.
Also, ++ what LA said. | |
Let's stop and think about this for a minute. What if BYOND did give away hubs to all users for free? You might think it would lose money from a decrease in subscriptions, but I doubt that would actually be the case. So what is BYOND's primary source of income? I believe that when it comes right down to it, games are the primary source of income.
Right now, BYOND mostly relies on the subscriptions of existing members of the community for money. The problem is, BYOND isn't really getting most of its money from new members coming into the community. It's mostly just the same community members buying memberships over and over, and as a result, BYOND's income remains stagnant. So, what exactly was it that brought the current BYOND members here in the first place? The answer should be obvious. It was all the games! Therefore, the games are ultimately BYOND's primary source of income, or at least they should be, since BYOND's income doesn't really seem to be growing. So, what do we have to do, to bring more people into the community, that could potentially buy subscriptions? Well, first of all, we need to start making more games of course. Then, we need to be advertising those games. Advertising any and all acceptable BYOND games, is going to benefit BYOND as a whole. If BYOND advertises more BYOND games, then more people will come into the community, and those people will start talking about how BYOND has so many games, exponentially increasing its poplularity. Then, when BYOND has more people in the community, there will be more of them buying memberships. Also, with more people, there will come more developers, and as a result, even more games, so it will become a cycle that feeds off of itself! What I'm trying to say here is that making memberships required for hubs is just like throwing a wrench into the gears of what should be BYOND's source of income. This will only slow down progress. BYOND has nothing to lose from advertising the games made with its software, and everything to gain! Just think of how YouTube works. It lets users upload videos for free. By advertising its vast amount of videos, it basically pays for itself. I think BYOND could work the same way. When the flash client comes out, BYOND should have all the games embedded right here on the site! Do you have any idea what that would do to its popularity? BYOND as a business, could just go on autopilot, and rely entirely on its community to support it. It could become the MMO game version of YouTube. You develop the game, upload it, and play it right on the website with hundreds of other people around the world. The best part is, it could all be free, if the community grows large enough. Depending on the size, even a seemingly small percentage of the total community could support BYOND with memberships. You just have to think about how the percentage of memberships grows as the community as a whole increases in number. Hopefully, this actually makes logical sense and it's not just a delusion. I don't really know all the statistics of BYOND memberships or who exactly is buying them, but based on what I have witnessed, I believe all of this to be mostly true. | |
Multiverse7 wrote:
You develop the game, upload it, and play it right on the website with hundreds of other people around the world. You're right for the most part except that, play in the website is so not awesome. But BYOND is mainly to entertain people and to do so it needs game! But there are a lot of people who can't Program or Pixel Art. The Book is also another way of making money. If you make BYOND poppular, you could sell book in America, which is where about 40% of BYOND players lives. You could sell them with different language. Well that's just an idea. | |
Sorry for posting twice in a row.
There's a lot of way BYOND could make money, they could do like Pokie Ninja and advertise trough websites with their best game and most interesting. They could also get license from FUNimation so we can make One Piece games and others :) | |
How about this. Take out the 'wrench' like Multiverse7 suggested, and instead, players should try to promote membership through games by giving BYOND Members the good-old boosts(dunno if that function still exists).
Boosts shouldn't be so absurd that they cripple non-Members, but it should just be a little incentive. Games with Membership-advantage support can receive better advertising than those that do not. This could be an initiative people could get going, because, the only reason I previously cared for membership was for the blogs -no matter how off-topic they went, they gave a little perspective into the developers and members of the sight which I appreciated-. Then again, this is just a suggestion. Gotta leave everything to the powers that be. | |
Vegetas4 wrote:
Sorry for posting twice in a row. You know that would cost thousands of dollars, right? Plus they wouldn't like to see people earning money from their ideas. Stop acting like a child please. | |
Name 5 games made on byond that would make sense to be sold in Gamestop...
You really can only name one, and thats NEStalgia. And that's because its honestly the only game that is most complete and has a business model (a successful one, at that). Byond needs more of these creations in order to thrive. Its really that simple. No matter how much time they put into micro managing the features, the developer resources, or even hacking away at the requests of the fans and developers alike, its all for nothing in comparison to what a great game will do for attention, web traffic, and increasing user base. I've been gifting memberships to community developers that I feel deserve it, because that means they'll be more apt to contribute something to the community via their hub, and the community will hopefully benefit from it. But even with that, the bottom line is we need more great original games to boost the economy in BYOND. And for the record, I've been a member since 2001. | |
FIREking wrote:
Name 5 games made on byond that would make sense to be sold in Gamestop... And again as I said, they should sell the book or if possible make different language version. Would need one as a reference (Stating the book in a different language) | |
Tom stated awhile ago that they're planning to bring back the hub making for anybody that wants to make them. They're going to have to think of a new strategy here, but it sounds like they are thinking and want to make BYOND into a place that really encourages developers -- at least I hope. We'll see what happens.
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I guess most developers would prefer making money then making a fun community.
// By making money I mean if they get to do a job they must be paid. | |
Galactic Soldier wrote:
If Tom wants people to make great games, he's going to have to give us a reason to. What gives aspiration to develop, is the fun in the community, and there isn't any anymore. Tom has made the most asinine move towards that, he took away personalization, blogs, guilds, "gaming domains", guild rankings, everything that helped guise BYOND into something fun and unique. All the great developers don't want to develop BYOND games because Tom hasn't given a reason to. I'm actually with you on that. The old BYOND site had a lot more personalization and community. Now it's just a forum. As a developer, it was like having my own personal site to post about whatever I wish. Nowadays I either make a forum post or make a blog post that nobody will read elsewhere. | |
In my opinion they should find another way to make money instead of only counting on the subscription and the Membership. I mean there's that other guy he asked me if I could teach him the DM language. Why not do a BYOND DM School where they teach people how to code and they get paid while doing that. (Of course the "teachers" should be moderators)
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Yusuke13 resolved issue (Redundant)
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Developers always overlook the fact that the tools are free and focus on "If I don't have a hub, I don't have a game!", which is patently false. If you develop a game in C++ or Java, then you have to advertise your game yourself. There is no dedicated "hub" to put your games on their site.
Again, a hub is not required to "have a game", nor is it a rule that your game must be confined to a BYOND hub. There are a number of alternatives to advertising your game, such as having it on its own website.
As for customizable member sites returning, I don't believe it's a priority in the least. Having a fancy style sheet for your member space has nothing to do with game development, and as the past showed us, detracted from it.