SO, we are now OFFLINE and, at this point, will be until I get another comp to put the game into. We were pretty lucky the last few days.
(Please note - what follows might sound pretty negative. It's not negative as much as realistic. I want to keep running the game. I love this game. I always have. But we have to be both honest and realistic. There aren't any CONCLUSIONS here, really.)
So here's a big problem. The game has to be self-supporting.
John and I were talking about this yesterday, and I mentioned the public broadcasting model. For those of you not familiar with public broadcasting, they generally they have an annual fundraising drive for a week or so, during which time all (or most) regular shows are suspended and a group of people sit around and talk about how awesome public broadcasting is and how it hasn't got any ads and how it would be a darned shame if they didn't make budget and had to shut down. Everybody HATES fund-raising week. People pledge a certain amount once a year which is generally paid through credit card on a monthly basis. Depending on the amount of the donation, the donor gets anything from a nice thank you letter to a T-shirt or mug or a CD with operatic highlights or something. They don't get their own SHOW or get to tell station managers how to run the station. They don't even get to fight monsters or have a house or anything else. They, like everyone else, can simply can turn the radio or television on and listen to precisely the same shows as people who don't give a cent. And they raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
I like that.
I have always disliked and have always argued against selling items that have a substantial effect on gameplay (what's the point of having a game if people with money simply buy their way to the top? That's NOT a game) or that could have the effect of buying favoritism. I strongly feel that the point where B started selling sets of armor for $100-200 was where we lost the game. There is statistical evidence to back that up. It led to substantial player dissatisfaction, both among the people who had paid money and those who didn't.
People have often asked me (and B) how much it costs to run the game. In the early years, a lot of the expenses were absorbed because adults were paying all the bills. He had access to excellent computers ($1500-3000 each) and for the first few years we ran without having a lot of extraneous expenses. The massive increase in the electric bill was of concern to the people paying the bill, but that wasn't B. so other than noting that they were upset about it, it wasn't an issue. And at that time, right or wrong, ethical or not, we had unlimited free advertising. There were days when we had 20 to 50 new players.
When he moved out and became at least partially self-supporting, the game changed. It was subtle - we didn't talk about it, but suddenly we were in the "items for cash" world.
To give you a rough idea of how much it costs -
$10-20 a month computer amortization. The game has to be the only thing on the comp. There are two reasons. A) Everything else slows down the game process. B) The game will fry a comp in a matter of 6 - 12 months. When it goes, everything on the comp goes. This is a low figure, estimating a CPU to cost somewhere between $70 and $100. Some have cost considerably more. It would be REALLY nice to have an expensive comp, but that's completely out of our range at the moment.
$35-48 a month for electricity to run said comp and since it's the only thing on the comp, you can't assign partial allocation. This is a non-negotiable amount.
$15 a month hosting fees/domain name registration, etc. Relatively non-negotiable. We've been with the same hosting company for almost ten years. I'm satisfied with them. They're stable and responsive when there's a problem. I could possibly shave a few dollars off hosting fees, but the site has to be hosted from a professional site and domain registration is a non-negotiable price. I don't think we can possibly get a better deal that I would be more comfortable with.
$80 cable. I don't NEED cable, except to run the game. Even if you only allocated 50% to the game, that's still $40. It's a non-negotiable price. In reality, we should have a commercial cable account which would provide better, more stable service but also cost between $120 and $500 a month.
That's a minimum of $100 - $163 a month out of my pocket. Yes. Out of MY pocket. Personally.
I didn't add in lots of other incidental expenses (backup storage which is absolutely necessary and could easily run $100-200 a year, other hardware and software, etc. and the BIG one, which is advertising. Advertising can be 60-80% of a game's budget. I remember one set of ads B. bought cost $160, ran 24 hours and netted us 0 players.). Please notice also that there is not one penny in there to compensate me (or anyone else) for time spent working on the game, running the server, monitoring it, doing customer support, writing support documents, keeping game and financial records, fundraising, etc.).
Thus, per year, I pay out of pocket $1200-$1944 for the privilege of having the game online even if not one player is on it. That means that since we went back online, I have spent (yes, spent) a MINIMUM of $3600 - $5,542 to run the game. That would be a fairly nice car that I can't have because I chose to do this instead. I have received in donations/item sales, a minor fraction of that amount. To each person who has given money, it seems like a lot, especially in comparison with the perceived received rewards.
If you give us $800 a year, or $200 or even $100, you would expect something pretty substantial in return. If you were paying $100-$163 a MONTH for something, you should expect to get something pretty substantial out of it in return. It should AT LEAST meet the expenses.
If the game isn't worth supporting, the game isn't worth having.
And I personally would rather (much rather) see small financial donations ($10-20 a year) from MORE people who are simply happy to have the game online than have a few big contributors. And you can't really compare this to any of the other "free" games that have millions of players online, a small fraction of whom will buy items. Nor can you compare it to a game that you buy for $15-60 that sells millions of units.
I have had very generous offers from other people to run the server. The problems are
a) it has to be the only thing on the comp
b) you cannot be downloading or otherwise putting a heavy load on the cable because it'll slow the game down
c) I have to have access to the computer 24 hours a day through a virtual network. (I really don't like using virtual networks.)
d) I have to be able to call the host 24 hours a day and say, "Hey, the game crashed" and have the host drop everything and reboot. If you have a reasonably normal life, this is going to be unpleasant and I am reluctant to enter into that kind of a relationship with someone else at this point.
Those factors make "farming the game out" unattractive both to me and, without a doubt in a short period of time, to the other person.
The strategizing is done from a financial standpoint with the current game. I don't see how I can possibly run the game cheaper than I'm already running it (or not running it).
I am not COMPLAINING about this. This is simply the reality of running a small game and if we're going to make good decisions, we have to take all the factors into account without setting any aside. (People like to tell me "You can't count the electricity!" Yes, we HAVE to count the electricity!)
We have options -
a) try to get outside funding (loan, grant, crowd sourcing)
b) try to increase the number of players with the understanding that only about 10% will contribute financially. In other words, we have to bring in 9 people who won't contribute for every one who will! That's going to be a LOT of players, given that the average contribution per contributing player so far has been about $15 a year.
c) develop other Asherah-related products/games, etc. to increase potential income, etc.
d) sell advertising
e) partner with an ad company that would provide development money in exchange for promotions
f) sell the game
g) "rent" the game out for events (LAN parties, for instance)
There are undoubtedly other ideas that I'm not thinking of at the moment, but you might. Options d, e, and f would allow us to continue the game but would change the entire game culture.
So what do you think? Some of you who have run games in the past are familiar with all of this. I'm sure a lot of you have really good ideas.
This morning I'll keep the baldon account on gmail open if some of you want to message me.
