ID:76963
 
Would BYOND be a better place if no sources like all these bleach sources and the zeta source and wots source would byond be a better place today if those were never released/leaked?
No, and I do believe that. These sources are what bring people to byond, sure their pains int he ass but it's what is keeping Byond running. I just don't want any more sources to be released, because everytime a source is released that screws with things.
Community wise, yes.

But BYOND would have lost a lot of potential money.
Take for instance the REO2 source now there's like 1,000 copies of it under different names.
Also I don't see how you would say byond would have lost potential money when the "ORIGINAL" Anime games still would've attracted potential membership buyers/players.
People come to byond and say, "Holy shit, I can make my own game with this ithout any work, how cool would that be. I can have a blog and stuff to post about it and stuff Ill pay money."
Yes.
No.
removing the rips and sources and etc etc would not actually improve byond, though, because it doesn't add anything positive. all it does is provide less poop to sift through when looking for a good game (which is -not- an issue, byond provides plenty of ways to make good games noticed)

so would byond be better without them? no, not really. it would provide a better first impression, and if you want to make a stretch you could say that would improve the chances of luring in real developers, but i don't think all the rips stop or discourage them in any way; all it does is set the bar really low, so if anything it encourages them because they know they can make something better than all the garbage currently available.

so for those of you who say "yes", why? how would byond actually -improve- from not having all the rips?
If the rips had never come, the anime crowd would never have come, and the community as a whole would be a better place instead of being filled with vulgar 12-year-olds who only care about getting what they want. In turn, serious developers might not have shunned this community.

Once upon a time this community was made up of mature people who could build cool stuff, have decent discussions, and ask proper help questions. Now most of those people are either extremely infrequent or gone.

Had more serious developers stuck around, BYOND might have been a proper development community instead of turning into a stupid social network for pre-teens just because its the only way to make money off them.
Foomer, wasn't it anime that brought a bunch of the developers here? I think I remember Tiberath saying he came to byond searching for DBZ games.
TM The Ultimate wrote:
Foomer, wasn't it anime that brought a bunch of the developers here? I think I remember Tiberath saying he came to byond searching for DBZ games.

I came to byond in search of Naruto games.
DBZ here, but I gave BYOND.....my.... share of 30 something dollars or whatever.

I think that it would have the goods and the bads.
TM The Ultimate wrote:
Foomer, wasn't it anime that brought a bunch of the developers here? I think I remember Tiberath saying he came to byond searching for DBZ games.

Back in '01 anime was barely being introduced to BYOND, and there were already plenty of talented developers.
Just saying I came here in search of a auto duel system Yu-Gi-Oh game.

And now I'm a member but theres not many Yu-Gi-Oh games besides mine and DMO and DMU and DME because there is no sources to use.
Yes we're plenty aware that 90% of the people here now are here because of anime. That's the problem.
No.
Foomer wrote:
Yes we're plenty aware that 90% of the people here now are here because of anime. That's the problem.

I came here to make games o-o. Not anime either.

Foomer wrote:
Back in '01 anime was barely being introduced to BYOND, and there were already plenty of talented developers.
-And-
Yes we're plenty aware that 90% of the people here now are here because of anime. That's the problem.

The thing is, there might have been plenty of good developers, a nice, mature, close-knit little development community, but there were no players...lol

BYOND can't survive on a nice little group of developers, BYOND needs a huge population of users... It doesn't matter how many really good products the developer community can put out (or how many nice conversations, gatherings, etc.) if there's no consumer base to "buy" those products...

The draw that Anime provided filled that need by swelling BYOND's non-developer userbase to a suitable level...

Of course, one can argue that the huge population of mostly Anime-drawn players is not an ideal user base, but it could have very well been the only way to get the required numbers... Without Anime, perhaps the community might have been nicer, but it would also have likely remained far smaller...

That nice little group of mature developers was never going to attract any great following... Some more nice, mature developers, perhaps, but never any huge number of players...

[Edit:] As an example, Murder Mansion now has a High Scores list with around 600 unique keys (of course, that might not mean 600 unique users, but still it's gotta be pretty close) Obviously, the huge majority of that number is made up of player-only users... If BYOND remained the way it was in the past, my High Scores list would likely just be a list of the same old little group of active developers that you'd have seen on the forums back in the day... I wouldn't like that very much...

[Edit 2:] Of course, this is not to say that the source leaks or the rips that followed were "good", and maybe the Anime crowd would have been drawn here regardless, but who knows? Maybe the rips played an integral part in drawing the numbers we have today...
To tell you the truth, I don't think so. Although ripping is bad, a lot of players came to BYOND through these rips. The first BYOND game I played was a rip and it was these rips that inspired a lot of people to actually start original games to prove original beats stolen.