Or, by the same token I guess, that the finances of the fund meter were there solely to fund growth in the service. And not say ... help resolve a noticeable deficit that if continued, made the continuation of the service (site, hub, bug fixes mostly) untenable.

I'm not interested in the "What If" scenario. But, how has it affected the user base. The main goal is/was to make BYOND profitable and grow. Is it profitable? Maybe. But it is more than it was before, because, of donations and not actual player growth?

But has it grown and become more profitable not because of us? Tom himself mentioned that site ads revenue decreased, that sounds alarming.

(Tom: "We do make some money from the pager ads (and I think this method scales nicely) but the website ad revenue has decreased a lot due to less site traffic.")


The funding meter was added not much longer then when the ability to donate became available. I actually requested a way to donate directly, not just indirectly.

The funding meter also became a game of sorts where people wanted to be at the top. This must have affected it some how. Meaning, that before it, donations must have been low.

The moment when the feature was there, fully, till now, interests me. And it should interest everyone.


How has this affected the user base, the community, the players? And, of course, what are the players like? When do they play, how do they play, for how long, etc...


Is it an issue to get that information?

I for one, think BYOND has been moving in a solid direction since the fund-o-meter came out. We've addressed longstanding issues with the language that stole efficiency from projects made with it, and we've added a series of increasingly huge new features for developers. The client going HTML5 will be the single best thing to happen to BYOND in over a decade. The question is whether we have enough of the community left to use it properly.

Here's the thing, 2D, and I don't think you are going to like what I have to say about this...

If improved features translated to increased revenues, you wouldn't be asking these questions. Unfortunately, the reality is that people are willing to donate to keep a videogame alive if it brings them joy (See Bay12's Dwarf Fortress.), but people just aren't willing to donate money to keep a game development engine alive. The problem is obvious if you think about it. With a game development environment, rather than a game, the audience that makes games with your product are going to be the ones who see the strides the engine is making. The playerbase largely won't see these improvements, and won't be able to discern engine improvements by BYOND's development team from game improvements from the developers of whatever game they tend to play.

Since the vast majority of our audience are players and not developers, we're seeing the effects of that right now. A very small minority of people are keeping us afloat, and largely speaking, when the non-developers speak about the financial status of BYOND, they don't actually know what's been going on behind the scenes, and can't understand the engine improvements that have happened in the last few months.

There are very few new games coming out from BYOND, and the ones that are coming out are mostly using techniques/parts of the BYOND engine that were already old in 2005. This gives our playerbase the idea that nothing new has happened since 2005, when they are wrong.

We're in the tough situation where we have very, very few competent developers around here anymore, and on top of that, our forum community is so toxic to one another that it chases away a lot of the hope we have for getting more.

Even if things turned around today, it'd take 12 months or more for the changes to be visible, as a new crop of games are put together to stimulate growth. In the end, BYOND is a product that's borderline impossible to market in its current form owing to the player-developer disconnect, the demographic problem, and the existing reputation of the site and software.

Ultimately, Tom's marketing of BYOND towards "Make and Play" was naive. Admirable, but naive. "Make and Play" just isn't going to pay the bills --ever. There is some good news, though. Releasing an HTML5 client will put us into the mobile gaming niche, which will make us hugely more competitive, as there are almost no HTML5-multiplayer-built-in game development engines out there. We simply wouldn't have competition in that market for another few years, and it would give us a unique feather in our caps with which to try to attract more ROI-minded developers.


The answer to all of your questions is no. We've been stagnant with a slow grinding loss of players and developers for years, and if you expect Tom/Lummox to keep throwing money/time at the problem hoping BYOND will become profitable, it's probably best that you move on. Tom's said it himself. He doesn't have the energy anymore to argue with people about how X feature will bring in billions, because every time they've listened to what the community claimed they'd pay huge sums for, the community simply fails to make good on their promises.

At the end of the day, the only thing we can do, is make games and try to showcase what BYOND can do in the here and now, not with features that are upcoming. There's no reason that the current games for BYOND are as slow/buggy/ugly as they are right now. Tom isn't the one that's failing to uphold his end of the bargain, it's those of us who are failing to use the engine to demonstrate what it can do. After all, BYOND can only make money as long as we give people incentives to play BYOND games, to purchase memberships, and to purchase credits.

Ter13 wrote:

There are very few new games coming out from BYOND, and the ones that are coming out are mostly using techniques/parts of the BYOND engine that were already old in 2005. This gives our playerbase the idea that nothing new has happened since 2005, when they are wrong.

Exactly! That's why I have been commenting so much on the teaching aspects of BYOND.

BYOND depends on the games made, but they don't improve on that. The resources are outdated. Its not newbie friendly. And scattered thru out the site. You can't just point someone to the Guide, which used to be a good resource 10 years ago, because its outdated and error prone.

If BYOND is not adding developers, it is simply shooting itself in the foot. They are failing at there own money making plan. Cater to the devs but don't forget of adding the newcomers who want to Build their own net dreams.

Do a Tick-Tock cycle ala Intel, add features then concentrate on bug fixes and newbies.

Ter13 wrote:

We're in the tough situation where we have very, very few competent developers around here anymore,

And I believe that the mayor reason for that is that BYOND forgot about its roots.

Stephen001 wrote:

"Within the existing development resource, is BYOND making changes that encourage growth?".

My answer is, Yes, by aiming at who they already have. Not by adding more developers.

What's yours?

2DExtremeProductions wrote:

Ter13 wrote:

We're in the tough situation where we have very, very few competent developers around here anymore,

And I believe that the mayor reason for that is that BYOND forgot about its roots.

Stephen001 wrote:

"Within the existing development resource, is BYOND making changes that encourage growth?".

My answer is, Yes, by aiming at who they already have. Not by adding more developers.

What's yours?

...I'm not sure we forgot about our roots, but rather, the nature of the internet fundamentally changed in the mid 2000s. Online multiplayer gaming was very limited when BYOND/DUNG came out.

BYOND hasn't forgotten the roots, and we haven't been failing to teach. Look at all those blue and green stars between the lot of the people in this thread. We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to help people --and it most results in us catching a lot of flak from the community.

Stephen, DC, and I are some of the longest-standing users around the boards, and it's no coincidence that we spend the majority if our time helping new people --we've been doing it for years. What's changed since then?

This is not a simple solution. Simply better teaching tools aren't going to solve the problem. I answer the same question at least a half dozen times a month. Half of those are from the same people. I spend more time on the pager helping people than I do on the forums.

I don't think it's the roots that were forgotten, but the branches, as it were. We stagnated in 2005, and 3.5/4.0 pushed us in a direction it's taken us almost 9 years to dig ourselves out of.

2DExtremeProductions wrote:

Then what is the problem in your view?

The problem in my view? DM is its own language. That's the problem. Learning DM is easy at first, but the fact that it's a language means that you have to learn software design techniques just like any other language. The first step is less of a climb than say, C++, but not much less of a climb than C# or Java. The trouble is, that we have a lower ceiling than C# or Java because BYOND has some unique limitations compared to those languages.

Add in the fact that we have a very limited deployment platform (windows only, hard to cut ties with BYOND proper, borderline impossible to monetize), and extremely limited cross-application toward other environments (legacy IE7 browser, locked-in graphics format, limited sound support, lack of client-side customization), and what winds up happening, is people tinker with BYOND, then move on to a proper language once they figure out that they aren't skilled enough to make BYOND work for them like they want it to. By avoiding the low ceiling of BYOND, they can actually do well in another language. The trouble there, is that by moving to the other language, they don't address the problems that made them hit that ceiling in the first place. By the time they realize that they were using BYOND wrong, or hadn't learned some very important techniques, they've already moved on.

Then there's the games issue. We're too focused on our little insular pocket. Games aren't being made marketed toward gamers, they are being made marketed toward BYONDers. So what little we do produce is isolating our community's expectations further. Statpanels, GDI element-interfaces, clickable verbs, etc. aren't acceptable to any outsider, but they are here. The longer that keeps up, the worse things are going to get.

Take a look at all the threads complaining about how the flash client won't support interface customization back in the day. BYONDers are so attached to the very things that drive mainstream players away that they simply would not even open their eyes to the changes that should have taken place in 2003 to begin with.

All of these problems can at least be balanced against a proper HTML5 deployment platform. If developers can start writing their own client-side interface foo with HTML5-compatible embedded elements, and start deploying an install-free testing environment for their little pixel games, we might stand a chance at at least getting some more serious developers helping pad Tom's wallet a bit. I doubt it'll ever truly be profitable, but breaking even would at least be a decent change of pace.

The only problem, is that it increases the first step for access, in that our existing developers will have to learn HTML5 (when the majority of our community already can't even passably demonstrate proficiency in DM), as well as new developers will have to learn DM when they could probably just as easily use HTML-5 exclusively.

BYOND, as a product, offers very, very little to the power-dev, and the non-power-dev offers very little to BYOND. The problem is simply that Tom should have made a game, not an engine.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy BYOND for the challenge it offers me. It allows me to tinker in an engine people generally think can't do a whole lot, and it has been a very large part of the reason I've become a solid programmer. Without BYOND's low ceiling, I wouldn't know half of the efficiency tricks I do now.

Ter13 wrote:

as there are almost no HTML5-multiplayer-built-in game development engines out there. We simply wouldn't have competition in that market for another few years

More like 6 months. :)

Airjoe wrote:

Stephen001 wrote:

Once you understand that, you understand how a HTML5 client, as I understand the solution Tom is exploring, is an integral step in addressing the accessibility of the platform to new gamers, and so, it's viability for new developers.

In your opinion, why isn't the HTMl5 client the top priority in that case?

You didn't ask me, but more than likely a growing pessimism caused by the failure of prior major overhauls (OpenGL, Flash, etc.).