ID:1154423
 
I'm interested in hearing about BYOND's plans on payment models for when the pager and Flash client are released. I've heard a few different things, some conflicting, some worrisome, but all hearsay. I'd like to hear it from the source.
I haven't decided 100% and a large part is based on the feedback from developers as well as the profitability of the upcoming ad model. The truth is that BYOND is going to go under unless this brings in money so I'm banking a lot on it, along with the understanding from our userbase (I will of course post on this when we release).

What I'm leaning towards is offering a one-time price-point to create a standalone project (maybe the $100-200 range). At this point it would be out of our hands and users wouldn't be required to use our subscription services to sell their games (although we could still have them, perhaps with a more reasonable 5-10% "tax"). We could also offer a free version of the standalone that runs an ad. I don't really want to get into profit-sharing on ads because that's just hard to track, and also brings up liability issues associating ads with fangames (as opposed to the current model where we just have a catch-all ad that's played upon connection to any game).

You guys have nothing to worry about because I'll waive the standalone keys for you. Keep in mind though that if you make a game that is a big hit and everyone plays it through the standalone, unless you are selling subs through us (like NEStalgia), it really doesn't help us out, and we desperately need help at this time.
I think $100 might be a bit high when considering BYOND's target audience as well as BYOND's competition.

Game Maker for example has three basic tiers, Free, Standard, and Professional. The only major difference between the Free and Standard version is the Standard version doesn't have a limit on the amount of resources you can have (code, sprites, sounds) and your game doesn't have a "made with Game Maker" watermark in the game window. The Standard edition is $50 which is a very reasonable price point for a student or someone who's looking to get into game development.

The Professional version is priced at $100 includes more advanced features a beginner developer probably wont need as well as the ability to purchase export modules for iOS, HTML5, Android, etc. There's a final Master tier, but it's just the Professional version with all the export modules.

Unity 3D is similar to Game Maker with its Free/Pro versions, but the Free version is still enough to make a decent game. The Pro version has support for NavMeshes, LOD models, audio filters, shadows, HDR lighting, and so on. Though, the Pro version is $1,500 which is quite the barrier for someone just starting out with game design. Just like with Game Maker you can pay to export to iOS, Android, and Flash.

UDK is free until you make $100,000 or something like that, and Torque 2D just went open-source.

I'm no marketer or economist, but something like $25-50 seems much more reasonable. BYOND is a great tool but the competition has a lot to offer. What BYOND definitely has going for it is its user account and subscription systems, but the subscriptions need a lot of work in order to become better than setting up your own through Paypal. Developers need ways to sell DLC, tokens, and so on.
In response to SuperAntx
SuperAntx wrote:
I think $100 might be a bit high when considering BYOND's target audience as well as BYOND's competition.

tl; dr -> $100 for standalone availability is fine, you're targetting developers/teams wanting to market a game anyway, who hopefully have a budget. You get BYOND for free already, which is a rarity these days in frameworks.

I feel I should chip in here. While Game Maker is in some sense comparable to BYOND, you can't simply compare prices vs. features. Game Maker has a very large community of active developers, which makes $50 for them perfectly acceptable because they have, at minimum, 200x the community size.

You're only going to sell a limited number of paid licenses, and of those you sell, some percentage are going to be in the 'Won't pay more than $49.99' crowd, and some are going to be in the '$100 is fine' crowd. If you're top-heavy there, but low in raw numbers, then selling at $100 makes far more sense. Or $200. If you can sell 4 licenses at $200 but only 6 at $100, then you still win out with the $200 price-tag. Of course, there are other concerns as well (Developer attrition, community view as well as considering who can afford $200 vs. $100 vs. $50).

BYOND is nearly feature-complete without the purchase, meaning intended purchasers are probably out to market a game. A $100 one-time framework purchase is... peanuts. For a short comparison, I was really wanting to try out C4 Engine, a 3D framework which also has networking and other jazz. However, the minimum price for 1 1-person license is $750, and theres no source-code access or ability to work with the framework for anything less - I even sent a semi-pleading e-mail to the author, to see if he'd open the option of a student discount or similar. To no avail.

BYONDers have it good ;)
In response to Alathon
Alathon wrote:
tl; dr -> $100 for standalone availability is fine, you're targetting developers/teams wanting to market a game anyway, who hopefully have a budget. You get BYOND for free already, which is a rarity these days in frameworks.

I think this is probably what should be clarified the most here. Who exactly is BYOND targeting? I had always assumed it was younger kids, somewhere around 13-20. Get them playing BYOND games while promoting Dream Maker. That's pretty much what happened for me and probably most of the regular developers still around.

$100 would have been an unimaginable amount of money for me back then, but even today it's still a huge chunk of change. $50 on the other hand is more reasonable, while $25-$50 would have been something I could have talked my parents into paying for.

Also, about the community size. Couldn't you make the case that more users = better, therefore more expensive? I feel setting the price so high like you described is sort of betting against BYOND, like you would be trying to get a quick few bucks before it goes under. With those prices there wont be many new, younger developers buying it since they'll be going for cheaper alternatives. Without the new blood you've got a stagnant and eventually shrinking community.

Unity and Game Maker both support networking and with the bonus of client-side processing they are probably better long-term choices if you intended to market your game. BYOND seems like the antithesis to that where you're able to make a game as cheaply and quickly as possible then just push it out there onto the hub. That's probably what BYOND's niche is and a lower price point is something I think just makes more sense.
The way I see it, we're not really marketing the standalone; that is, I have no expectation that the standalone will bring us any useful income based on volume sales (which is the GameMaker business model). This is because even if 10% of our developers would shell out $20, we'd make nearly nothing.

What the standalone is is an available option so that you can produce and market an independent game if you want. Initially the idea was that we'd just provide this privately to a few popular games and share revenue with them-- the NEStalgia/Greenlight model-- and we can continue to do this for any games that show promise. For others, we can either provide a free standalone that shows an ad (replicating the new pager model) or have a one-time cost.

The point is that, in our new model, we want people using the pager to connect to games because that's the only way we become a part of the process. And that is all completely free and functional. We'll see how users react and if this saves us as a business. I don't think it's a heck of a lot different with what people have been used to all along, prior to the standalone availability, unless the video commercial is really that big of a deal.
In response to Tom
I don't like the idea of the standalone being just an option. It should be a core component of BYOND, something you should have confidence in, something developers should absolutely want to pay for. The idea that games should become successful on BYOND then be given a standalone key to try elsewhere is completely backwards in my opinion.

Single-player games in particular are underrepresented on BYOND and seem to have no place in the ad-supported income model. Those games are meant to be played alone, they might even have absolutely nothing to do with the pager or BYOND accounts in general. It wouldn't make sense to display ads on them because they're meant to be played offline. The kind of developers who make those games are an untapped resource, an entire demographic you're completely overlooking.

If BYOND was sold for $25-$50 then it would be much more appealing to that sort of developer. A hobbyist game developer would have little problem coming up with that amount of cash to pay for a very decent 2D game engine, one they wouldn't have to worry about ads, memberships, or installer keys. It would work to BYOND's benefit as well since you wouldn't have to worry about picking and choosing which games are "worthy" enough for an installer key.

Of course, this all still works fine with your idea of having an ad-supported pager. Only instead of regular users footing the bill you would have game developers paying their tax (covering the cost of the game engine they use) to have ads removed from their games.
I understand what you're saying, and for the most part I don't have a problem with making a cheapy standalone sale, although I'm doubtful we have the developer audience to make it worth much to us financially.

The problem is that we are top-heavy-- a few games bring in most of our traffic. So if all of those games suddenly use an outside executable, BYOND gets completely cut out of the equation and any benefit we get from ads/selling memberships on the pager is lost. And this is in return for a few hundred dollars in standalone sales.. basically nothing. Ideally, in those cases, we can recoup the loss through shared subs, but not all games use these or want to go through BYOND (which is why we made it a requirement of the initial standalone).

I don't think BYOND works as a product we can peddle to developers for $25. At a minimum, we'd need that $25 to cover the ability to use DreamMaker, period (and even then it'd require a serious marketing effort to survive off that). BYOND is a service and for us to make money we need to leverage the player base of that service. We've tried to do this for years through Memberships (which offered very little ad-on value) so this new model will hopefully work better.

I'll try to come up with a compromise. Honestly, I need to get an idea of how much money this new pager system will bring in (via ads and Memberships). If it is nothing, then I'm going to have to throttle this project anyway and at that point all of this stuff will be free.
Has the flash-client been introduced into this business model?
If / when it is released, I assume ads would play there too?
IMO, a flat fee of something like 20% is the way to go - sure, a lot of people might not be especially pleased, but I'm sure they realize that BYOND needs the financial support... And I think that the exposure from Flash portals will be a huge help. If a game uses the subscription system, I think ads should be disabled for their users though - because they're just off putting.

Example: Most of this game's player base come from websites like Armorgames and Newgrounds - they usually have ~2500 people playing: http://www.fantasy-mmorpg.com/ It's a fairly simple ORPG and something similar could be made in BYOND. Eternia's PvP version is my aim and I hope it'll be decent enough by the time the Flash beta goes live.

Although, I do agree that the subscription system needs to be more flexible, so games can make use of things like tokens... But I don't see BYOND surviving if it offers Flash keys at $25. As stated, there's just not enough developers to make use of that (heck, even at $100 it doesn't seem too worthwhile).
This seems like the best thread to ask in, so I'll pose my question here.

Will the $100 towards the standalone key apply to only one game (meaning you'll have to buy individual standalone keys for each game you wish to convert to an executable), or will it be a one-time payment of $100 to get standalone keys for all your games?
To me, based on the first beta topic, it sounds more like a one time per-key "Developer/publishing license", rather than per-game.
Random idea.
Set up a few libs of high quality "official" libs, and price them based on usefulness. Nothing ridiculous, but say 5-10 $ for download and use privileges. This would be an optional step for the assumed targeting market,(those who would pay for the standalone, professional or indie dev. teams looking to play outside of the realm of byond.)

Offering some high quality, highly tested and approved libs,( complete with maybe some tutorials) libs they can plug and play into their projects to speed up their work- that also work well with one another approved libs. Just a random idea I thought I would share.
In response to Dariuc
I feel like that might be more hassle than it's worth. Since it's just code, people can copy and paste it to their friends for free. The -only- way I can see that being feasible, is if they come in the form of plugins to your DM.
Tom, as far as I know, I don't understand why you haven't contacted a business consultant. I remember I said this a few years ago when it was first realized that the income from BYOND memberships wasn't going to keep BYOND afloat. Its someone's job to analyze past and current businesses to determine where the faults are in the payment schemes and where there is room for profit.

I know these resources cost money, but it might be worth it in the long run. Maybe you have an old college buddy who'll help out pro bono. For years it has been you and the small group of people deciding the direction of BYOND. I understand, your livelihood, your choices and I'm happy there is a little more transparency, but honestly, if it's one bad business decision after the next maybe you're not talking with the right people. Everybody on this site are programmers, how many of them have sold a successful product?

You might be a great programmer but far as I know, business isn't something you've studied. People dedicate years of their time to understand markets and the psychology of getting people to buy a product.

I don't mean to make this post come off as belittling, it's just that I want BYOND to be successful and profitable for you. You've put in too much time to not reap the benefits.
The main issue with BYOND game's is that, they are BYOND game's, the websites name has been tarnished over the years, and not a lot of people jump at the idea of using it. Whereas with a standalone client/flash client, more people would likely play the games, and thus hopefully more attention would be brought towards BYOND.

I for one know that artists avoid BYOND like the plague, there are hardly any of us on BYOND, and the few that are on BYOND likely originated from BYOND.
In response to Kalzar
I'm not entirely sure if you've done this already, but if your current problem is that 'you absolutely need the Flash client and the new Pager to be economically successful', looking into Kickstarter and Indiegogo could definitely help you there. I'm not sure if you're comfortable with this; I'm just throwing ideas out there.

With that being said: I completely agree with Kalzar on the matter of consulting a professional.

Kalzar wrote:
Tom, as far as I know, I don't understand why you haven't contacted a business consultant. I remember I said this a few years ago when it was first realized that the income from BYOND memberships wasn't going to keep BYOND afloat. Its someone's job to analyze past and current businesses to determine where the faults are in the payment schemes and where there is room for profit.

I know these resources cost money, but it might be worth it in the long run. Maybe you have an old college buddy who'll help out pro bono. For years it has been you and the small group of people deciding the direction of BYOND. I understand, your livelihood, your choices and I'm happy there is a little more transparency, but honestly, if it's one bad business decision after the next maybe you're not talking with the right people. Everybody on this site are programmers, how many of them have sold a successful product?

You might be a great programmer but far as I know, business isn't something you've studied. People dedicate years of their time to understand markets and the psychology of getting people to buy a product.

I don't mean to make this post come off as belittling, it's just that I want BYOND to be successful and profitable for you.

Unless you're planning on giving volunteer developers the opportunity to work directly with the product's source, or... something among those lines, I don't think we can be of much help. I can't provide significant feedback/analysis/input on your issue, because I don't fully understand its nature. Most of us are programmers, not businessmen.

I want BYOND to succeed, and I want you to succeed; but if, as you say, even 10% of our developers put in $20, it still wouldn't be enough, then you probably shouldn't expect to find the solution in that demographic -- not for now, at the very least.

I sincerely appreciate the transparency with which you're handling this, Tom.

Lastly,
You've put in too much time to not reap the benefits.
I appreciate the concern and feedback. In fact, I have consulted a few business/marketing advisers, and at one point (quite a while ago) we actually had an investor but the logistics didn't work out.

At this point, I am not all driving towards BYOND being a huge enterprise as was the initial ambition-- I need to move onto other things. I do want to make sure it can at least sustain itself without me having to exhaust my dwindling personal funds and, ideally to be able to employ a person or two to allow it to be maintained (and possibly grow). I think that this new system we've setup could accomplish that, but as it is uncharted waters we won't really know until it's released into the wild. This is the first model I'm really satisfied with because we're aiming at simplifying everything about "Membership" and making it basically about one thing targeted to the vast majority of our playerbase, with the payoff being that, in theory, non-paying users won't cost us as they have in all of the other models (since we receive ad compensation).

As far as the Flash client goes, I do believe that will bring in traffic, but we have to make sure that we benefit from the traffic since it introduces some new unknowns. One of the main reasons it has taken us so long to release the client (which has been largely working for two years) is that we have to consider these unknowns as well as the added "feature creep" workload that comes when dealing with a new product. For example, with a flash client, we'd want the ability to integrate with existing social networks like facebook, which adds technical overhead and so forth. With a project that is operating essentially without a budget and has no guarantee of future income, we can't commit to big expansions without careful consideration.

Hopefully this has clarified a bit. I don't really want to discuss this much more. When we do our public release of the new pager, I am going to make some posts (perhaps videos as it's easier) explaining the state of things to those who are interested.
In response to Tom
In regards to the Flash Client's social integration, would this be for the developer? It's pretty simple to enable a social "plug in" on a BYOND game, it's not something you should have to do IMO.

Two years is a long time, I understand that you have one developer and yourself, but really I would of stepped up to the mobile platform .. screw flash every guy wants to play pokemanz and naurto on his iPhone or smart device...