ID:132516
 
Byond makes money from memberships and paid advertisements placed on the website, and possibly other ways that I don't know of. But I would like it if byond were more profitable, it'd benefit 'the players' a lot in the long run too if byond were more profitable.

A problem with the ads, in my opinion, is that they are in places that aren't visited frequently enough. 'Hardcore' players hardly use the website, they have already found their favorite games, and added them to their pager, and access them from there 99% of the time. Only new players find games on the website and once they add them to pager they hardly visit any more.

I think some rotating ads should be placed on the pager. I also think there should be ads in more places on the website than there are already. In the developer's area for instance, there seem to be no ads.

I think people will be fine with a few more ads if it helps byond out. There is nothing wrong with uninvasive ads.

I just want to 'help' byond because I heard it's failing financially. I don't know if that's true but not really the point.

I think an ad on the pager is the best idea out of these...
I dunno about a lot of people but I never click ads. I don't want my PC getting spyware infested.
Dragonn wrote:
I think an ad on the pager is the best idea out of these...

And thats when I stop using the pager and play as Guest-XXXXXXXX
I'm sure bringing this up has no bearing, because they've already considered the options.
They could make an interface control that displays ads

Leur wrote:
And thats when I stop using the pager and play as Guest-XXXXXXXX

There's already a giant BYOND logo on the pager, I don't see how replacing it with an ad on occasion would at all effect your use of the pager.

The only ad I currently have a problem with (placement wise) is the one that splits the first server on the live games tab. And that's only because it makes the server list look stupidly inconsistent. They should pop a random ad on every server listed if they wanna do that. Or at least format the rest to look similar, even if they don't have an ad stuck in the middle.
In response to Falacy
I wouldn't mind text based ads or a simple image ad. But when flash ads come into play...
In response to Naokohiro
Naokohiro wrote:
I'm sure bringing this up has no bearing, because they've already considered the options.

I like hearing suggestions from the community, esp. since I am no good at making money :)

I would love to steer free of ads because I can't stand them. However, they do make a little money so if we can use them in a non-annoying way as an interim solution until we hit the big time, that's reasonable.

Last year we worked on a web-pager (that ran both as standalone and from the website)... it had an embedded ad that wasn't too annoying. If we can iron out the glitches in that, it might be a possible solution since the pager gets a lot more traffic than the website (although, again, I'm not a huge fan of driving people away from BYOND and onto other lame sites). Aside from the financial incentives, it was also a cleaner setup for navigating games from the pager.
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
I dunno about a lot of people but I never click ads. I don't want my PC getting spyware infested.

Yea, but there's certain kinds of ads (I think theyre called 'pay per impression' ads) that pay for each person that sees the ad, regardless of if they click it. I used them before and they paid an average of 0.05$ for each person that saw the ad. Not a lot, but I don't know if it's better to get paid 0.05$ for 100% of people who see the ad, or 1-5$ for the 2% of people who click the ad (usually by accident).

Google Adsense never has spyware and they pay a lot more than most ad suppliers. They can automatically detect your sites content and offer relevant ads, to Game Informer magazine for instance. Or you can go in-depth and customize what ads are shown, but I found that uneccessary for my purposes because it detected what ads to show on my site very well. I used the image ads not the text ads.

But I'm banned from Google Adsense now for trying to do something........bad. =P

I once made this website, and put some Google ads on there, and was surprised to be making 600$ a month with what I considered to be very bad traffic levels. Maybe I was just lucky, I don't know.
Ahem. Suggestions. I feel making obvious improvements are more important than ad placement at this point.
In response to Vermolius
Vermolius wrote:
Ahem. Suggestions. I feel making obvious improvements are more important than ad placement at this point.

Ahem. Where suggestions go if you want them to matter. And I wouldn't call many of those suggestions obvious, some of them I completely disagree with.
In response to Falacy
Well, the obvious one is that the website is something terrible. I don't agree with everything he said there, either. It's just that he does mention quite a bit that could be improved upon--and some of it they have already touched upon. Primarily, I was sanctioning effort on things besides ad placement.
In response to Dragonn
Google Adsense never has spyware and they pay a lot more than most ad suppliers.

Yes, adsense doesn't. but some of it's advertisments link to it

But I'm banned from Google Adsense now for trying to do something........bad. =P

shame on you...im banned too. =D

-----------------
I wouldn't mind having a pager with up with ads, maybe replacing the little byond logo and on the homepage?
In response to Gigimoi
PLus, I'm sure BYOND wouldn't use ads that when clciked, direct you to a site with ad-ware. I wouldn't know since I don't click them, but I'm sure they don't.
Dragonn wrote:
Byond makes money from memberships and paid advertisements placed on the website, and possibly other ways that I don't know of. But I would like it if byond were more profitable, it'd benefit 'the players' a lot in the long run too if byond were more profitable.

Tip jar? Bounty for feature requests?

The migration to Flash would make it much more palatable for BYOND's use for commercial games. Looking forward to that. (Plus I'm usually in OSX.)

I'd *love* to see the BYOND framework merge with "MapTool" (rptools.net), BYOND has far superior scripting, MapTool has a superior UI (at least for RPG playing.) But that'd just be me daydreaming...But anyways they face similar problems and have a tip jar and bounty system for feature req's.
In response to Cloudnein
Cloudnein wrote:
Tip jar?

Can already be done now, the option to donate more money is there when you purchase someone a membership. I'm not sure if you can do it without the membership purchase however.

Bounty for feature requests?

I assume this means that either people can pay for feature requests or the developers pay people for their feature requests. Either way, it wouldn't work for BYOND.
In response to Tiberath
Tiberath wrote:
Can already be done now, the option to donate more money is there when you purchase someone a membership. I'm not sure if you can do it without the membership purchase however.

Yes, but a literal "Tip Jar" button would probably be more effective. I didn't know about that donate option on gift memberships until just a few days ago.

I assume this means that either people can pay for feature requests or the developers pay people for their feature requests. Either way, it wouldn't work for BYOND.

Why wouldn't that work? I'm rather tired of having my bug reports and feature requests "deferred", or even worse, completely ignored. I wouldn't mind paying to get some features put in.
I'd be willing to pay a pretty hefty amount to get them to implement pixel movement. They've already added these worthless map_formats. I don't see how much of a stretch a similar pixel movement system could be. And it might actually make BYOND games... you know... not suck. Especially if it could be easily applied to existing projects, though that might be a stretch.
In response to Falacy
Falacy wrote:
Yes, but a literal "Tip Jar" button would probably be more effective. I didn't know about that donate option on gift memberships until just a few days ago.

I suppose that kind of knowledge is kind of limited to people who often give memberships to others.

Why wouldn't that work? I'm rather tired of having my bug reports and feature requests "deferred", or even worse, completely ignored. I wouldn't mind paying to get some features put in.

And people who can't afford to have features put in regardless of how good the idea is, instantly get thrown to the bottom in favour of some random who might have an OK idea and is willing to throw money at it? Pass.

I'd be willing to pay a pretty hefty amount to get them to implement pixel movement. They've already added these worthless map_formats. I don't see how much of a stretch a similar pixel movement system could be.

I don't believe adding in the extra map formats to be worthless. People just aren't using them because it's not as easy to do as the standard top-down games. That's not the fault of the developers and certainly does make the extra features worthless.

And it might actually make BYOND games... you know... not suck. Especially if it could be easily applied to existing projects, though that might be a stretch.

Throwing features at BYOND wont make existing games "not suck". People have to use the feature. Sure, you can throw pixel movement in, but most of the games aren't designed to use it, so naturally it can and will break a lot of games. Much like the map_formats people will have to enable it to use it and design their games around it. Which as we've seen with the map formats, probably wont be as super-awesome as you think.
In response to Tiberath
Tiberath wrote:
And people who can't afford to have features put in regardless of how good the idea is, instantly get thrown to the bottom in favour of some random who might have an OK idea and is willing to throw money at it? Pass.

Doesn't mean they have to ignore good ideas. I feel like they only work on the software once in a blue moon. Maybe if they got some money to implement paid requests, the free ones would come along with them. And its not like they don't ignore the boatload of good ideas as it is now anyway.

I don't believe adding in the extra map formats to be worthless. People just aren't using them because it's not as easy to do as the standard top-down games. That's not the fault of the developers and certainly does make the extra features worthless.

If the other map formats are more difficult to work with then that was a failure on their part. Though I don't necessarily agree with that in the first place.

Throwing features at BYOND wont make existing games "not suck". People have to use the feature.

Vast majority of games on BYOND would be better with pixel movement. Vast majority of non-BYOND games use pixel movement, and vast majority of them are better for it. I would pretty much guarantee if there was pixel movement that any future games made would want to use it. The tile approach is pretty much only good for certain genres, we devs around here just wonkily make it "work" for action games because implementing pixel movement ourselves isn't worth the effort.

Sure, you can throw pixel movement in, but most of the games aren't designed to use it, so naturally it can and will break a lot of games. Much like the map_formats people will have to enable it to use it and design their games around it.

As I said, implementing this to be backwards compatible with existing games would probably be hoping for too much. However, I can't see any reason why any games developed after its implementation wouldn't want to use it. Unless they were of the aforementioned tactical/strategy/rpg genre.

Which as we've seen with the map formats, probably wont be as super-awesome as you think.

I feel sorry for anyone who thought the new map_formats would be anything but fail. I posted that they would suck long before the came out, but everyone ignored me. Not sure why since I'm always right about everything! But oh well, whatever floats their goats.
In response to Falacy
Falacy wrote:
Doesn't mean they have to ignore good ideas. I feel like they only work on the software once in a blue moon.

That's because they're simply quiet about what they're developing unless you're in the right social circle, and even then it's awfully hazy. I would love to see them advertise what they're working on more just to alleviate these kinds of concerns, but thems the breaks in the big city. You have to remember C++ isn't DM. You can achieve noteworthy results in DM in minutes, it can take days or weeks to achieve noteworthy results in C++.

Maybe if they got some money to implement paid requests, the free ones would come along with them.

Start paying them to do requests, and how long before the mindset of "I'm not being paid for it so I wont do it" kicks in? Don't get me wrong, the powers that be are quite humble and it's highly unlikely that it could occur, but every man has his price. If they started raking in the cash from such a scheme, I imagine anyone would start ignoring the free requests, time is money after all.

And its not like they don't ignore the boatload of good ideas as it is now anyway.

Again, it's not so much as ignoring as it is not replying. I don't reply to every message I'm sent, I still read it and assess it. I imagine it's the same with the powers that be, an idea may be good and they may see about implementing it. But their current method of keeping quiet about what they're doing tends to make replying "sure thing!" kind of difficult. AFAIK, most of the replies from the powers that be are generally around the "we'll see what we can do" and "that's just not feasible" content, most of the time, very little is actually said about the feature request or it's status. Then again, I'm still two months out of date, so I could be wrong here.

If the other map formats are more difficult to work with then that was a failure on their part.

Not going to dignify this with a response.

Vast majority of games on BYOND would be better with pixel movement. Vast majority of non-BYOND games use pixel movement, and vast majority of them are better for it. I would pretty much guarantee if there was pixel movement that any future games made would want to use it.

Sure, but once again, it'll make using the engine just that little bit more difficult, and thus, people will have to learn how to use it, and much like the aforementioned map formats, lots of people will be unwilling to do so and ignore it. Though it does have one advantage of the map formats: That being the resources for code is much higher than the resources for graphics. You want top-down graphics? Bam. There they are. You want isometric graphics? Straight to google, very unappealing. A new code feature is released, and within thirty minutes of it's release, a demo, library or tutorial can be published (only they aren't, how the hell is my Dream Makers post still the latest tutorial on Dream Makers) on it.

The tile approach is pretty much only good for certain genres, we devs around here just wonkily make it "work" for action games because implementing pixel movement ourselves isn't worth the effort.

Only good for one genre? BYOND has survived for over a decade with just tile movement which has generated games for all genres. Obviously something about it works. It might not work exactly how you want it too, but it clearly works. Please don't attempt to speak for all developers so casually.

As I said, implementing this to be backwards compatible with existing games would probably be hoping for too much.

And pointless hoping it would be. As previously stated, it would beak them.

However, I can't see any reason why any games developed after its implementation wouldn't want to use it.

Same with map formats. General laziness of the majority of the developers on BYOND. You have to remember, there are more developers than the fifty or sixty odd out there that push out decent games every now and again.

I feel sorry for anyone who thought the new map_formats would be anything but fail.

Not going to dignify this with a response.

Not sure why since I'm always right about everything!

I'm going to take the exclamation mark there to mean this sentence is written in jest. Poe's Law and all.
In response to Falacy
Not sure why since I'm always right about everything!
Precisely. He's always right. If you argue against the fact you're a troll that's instigating fights constantly and flaming him. You are also jealous and have a bone to pick with him.
Page: 1 2