PA's economy

[Qdeathstar]

Quite long, but an interesting read.

First, as i know i am a rather seedy character, meaning most have never noticed me before i have actually played since round three without much success, but still have had a good time. Nevertheless, as i watch PAs de-evolution from a simi-profitable game to a game without a profitable quarter in the near future, i ask. Why has this happend.

Well, as far as i can see, it stems from a continuing list of bad business decisions. Lets start from the very earliest encarnation of P2P, and the removal of advertising.

Although it is true that advertising revenue toward the end of the year 2000 began to fade, and the planetarion community was begging to feel the effects of a world-wide recession in the economies it negleted to seek new ways to bring the advertising revenue in. Things such as forced-clicking of banners and sent emails which contained revenue links. Im sure that this at the time might have caused mass-anger built up the in the planetarion community, and we may have indeed lost a percentage of our players who did not want to participate in the future of PA< but, it would have been less that the outrage of pricing.

When P2P was finally announced, the implementation was done poorly. Fearing that there would be a complete Revolt against the p2p they gave people a free option. This was a mistake. For one, the free option still cost PA money to run, and it did not insure that there would be a inflow of new customers. Secondly they totally removed Advertising from its site at all. People, dont mind indescript banners on the top of a page, even in p2p. And, the still free accounts should have been advertising-heavy to cover the cost of their free-planets.

Secondly, PA failed to address another question that is vital in starting any successful business. A: IF people will pay for my product, how much will the pay?

Irrogantly, it seems to me, from my perspected, the PA management decided that their product was so great that they would be able to charge a ten dollar for two account fee, with the grandious idea that people had people in line to give their account to. To many, they would rather buy one account for 5 because thats what they would be using, yet that wasnt an option, and so many felt sour about that.

Another major, almost fatal flaw that PA has had in its structure is its marketing. You, your wits and a browser against the entire universe. That is not the type of game a new player would want to play, and its not what PA is.

that phrase emphasises isolation in a vast network of planets who are all attaking each other. How can a new commer ever hope to survive in a place as desolate and violet as this.

Secondly PA made no attempt to the emphasize the key characteristics which made the game good. IN all their ad campaigns and catch phrases, they failed to adress the real-life action of politics, of group work, and most importantly of Community. People flock to online games like sim-city online, not because of the game itself, but because of the community. PA should have sold its community, before its community sold out.

The innitially high-price of p2p alienated many players who were promised that p2p would never happen. However, im not so ignorant to say that it wasnt a nessary step. IF you want to move to a p2p system, you can just expect to jump right in and have people in line to give you money. Your first step should have been to add new features to the game for p2p and then gradually made more and more of the game p2p untill you had a game that was p2p for around 2 bucks a pop. Then you could have began to charge more, and more, untill you had a product that people felt was worth 10 bucks a round. Along with this, as PA's money probles grew, almost to the point of self destruction, PA still failed to realize that price-hikes were not going to fix its problems. When most businesses are having probles bring in profits (any retailer, or servcie provider) they lower priced to driver more sales, and the more sales the more profits although at a lower profit margin. However, PA 2 times now toward the enevetable end of PA, PA has increased prices to compensate for lost players, failing to realize that this only drives more and more people away from the game.

Additionally, a majority of the people i have had discussions with in the PA community feal that the deal with jolt was a bad move. I havent heard much about this so im not going to speculate so much. Ive heard that in both offers the head team members would have stayed on board as creative developers.Ive also heard that PA took a lower price for the game because they believed that JOLT would put more into the game.

There is little logic in that. Why would a company who is willing to invest less in a game put more into it. The company who invest the most into a game will get the best results, and that is common sence.

IT seems to me that their are a lot of problems with PA's economy and a majority have to do with bad decision making.

So, what can be done.

Well, besides fixing/scraping round 10 (theres another thread for round 11, please dont confuse this thread) we could to something that is not almost impossible to do.

For at least 2 rounds, bring back free PA, with advertising, to bring advertising revenue. You already have jolts banner, why not a few more. At the same, begin a decent marketing campain. Give interviews to gaming sights and stress the pa community. Although it is shaken now, it could one day rule again. This will increase PAs base market again as people move back to a free PA, if even for a while. This has been suggestioned by many who wish to play free games of PA only because they are cheep. They however fail to adress the longevity of such a system. This would be phase one of a three phase re-marketing campaign.

For the second or third round bring back p2p at a lower cost (5 bucks) without advertising, perhaps a roid-cap increase aswell, and keep free-advertising revenue based game
This pleases people who still want to be free for the timebeing, while allowing player to add to the game by particingpatiing in paid-only-polls wich have a direct influence on the game, and free speed rounds to a certain number of ppl selected from the p2p at random. Also no 2 universes, as that adds to cost.

the third of fourth round start the all p2p again, with advertsing on portal and message boards
once people have begun to see the p2p beniftis and have gotten used to the idea, and have began to gain appreciation for the comunity a nominal 5 dollar fee for playing wont seem that bad, as long as you emphasis what your game is about. Community.

From their, as long as your player base continues to grow or remain steady, PA could slowing increasy prices.. 1 dollar every 2 rounds or so.

Additionally to get new players keep the interviews with game web sites alive and keep the marketing campaign up. It may be time to move to a flash intro screen instead of the flat PAportal wich is some-what confusing because it is made for people already playing PA, not for new commers.

If youve read this far, thank you. Additional, this is not a flaming, it is just a suggestion on the sugestion thread about what i see was PA's key flaws. PA's management have done, and continue to do extreamly well, what they do, wich is to experiment with new ways of bringing intertainment to the masses. However, theyre marketing skills need help, and jolt doesnt seem to be getting the job done, so ive posted my sugestions.

Deathstar.

[Pilatus]

I don't think they would be interested in running pa for free again, as they would probably loose to much money. I think it would be better with a universe with both paid and free planets in it, and a limit on free planets would be better. Atleast when the free planets were limited to a certain score, there were some ppl who paid for their accounts to continue to grow.

And ffs no flash. 1 of the things i like with pa, is that you don't have to use a browser that supports flash in order to play pa.

[pablissimo]

After their shocking, nay pathetic effort at getting Planetarion advertised for Round 10, I don't think Jolt would be willing to both stump up money for advertising the game and take a hit from not getting money from paid accounts. Forced clicking of banner adverts is almost always against the AUP of the advertising company you're with, and if they see you're doing it you can say goodbye to any funds that you've accrued so far.

If Jolt really wanted to, they probably could advertise the game properly and fund a free round (which I've posted in another thread won't make much of a difference imo). However given recent events and a total lack of interaction from Jolt (hey guys, didn't Keef used to be a forum member?) it seems more and more likely that their acquisition of PA was either

a) A mistake
b) Seemed like a good idea at the time but they hadn't researched the purchase properly

and as such they're getting disillusioned that people aren't playing. Perhaps promises were made about the PAX userbase that didn't come to fruition, we'll never be privvy to that kind of information.

You right, actually advertising the game would help. Unfortunately if the game isn't up to scratch for new players, not even ones that've played before but totally new members, then they won't stay with it and certainly wouldn't pay for it again when it inevitably goes P2P. And there isn't scope to reinvent the game until Jolt get off their asses and sort out new PA Team members/reassignm existing ones and give them the facilities to get on with their job.

[Qdeathstar]

when i said a flash screen i was talking about something that players alread in the game could skip and go directly to the portal, while new playerrs would be liek Ohh Wow.

I know that free accoutns would never happen, but thats what PA needs to do for atleast 1 to 2 rounds if they ever expect to get there numbers back up, and they need to work in the p2p gradually again.

A lot of advertising dont mind forced clicks with Timers, ptc programs and other online games have used the method quite effenciently.

BUt, i guesss my main point here is the in-effectiveness of PAs marketing and lack of common sence in pricing without good propaganda.

[Qdeathstar]

Also, im willing to bet that PAX wasnt the creators idea, something that was presured on to them by jolt

[Andy_r]

From my experiences in PAX beta, seeing all Spinner's posts there and discussions about the features of the new game, I'm convinced the changes for PAX were all Spinner's ideas, and I'd speculate that Jolt actually came on board because they were promised a complete clean-code single-server rewrite.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Although it is true that advertising revenue toward the end of the year 2000 began to fade, and the planetarion community was begging to feel the effects of a world-wide recession in the economies it negleted to seek new ways to bring the advertising revenue in. Things such as forced-clicking of banners and sent emails which contained revenue links. Im sure that this at the time might have caused mass-anger built up the in the planetarion community, and we may have indeed lost a percentage of our players who did not want to participate in the future of PA< but, it would have been less that the outrage of pricing.

Forced Clicking of banners is something that was never possible and will almost certainly never be possible. The simple reason for this is its against most companies terms and conditions of advertising. After all if your a company you dont want thousands of people visiting your site because they were forced to and wont stay longer than it takes to close the window. Breaking the terms and conditions is a major risk that can see a refusal to payout at the end of the month/quarter. Now your probally come up with an argument saying "X does it and gets away with it" and your right others DO emply such tactics and make adequate revenue through it however most are taking major risk with their future. Those who arent taking a risk using such tactics are those who have had the resources to negotiate their own banner ad sales rather than using a third party company. If your negotating the sales yourself you can come up with a deal that would allow you to do this, but your end up getting a much lower payment per click tha before. The problem here is to negotiate such deals you require someone who focus on such a job full time and it not the type of thing you can just get anyone to do, it needs someone with good negotaing skills, good business understanding and preferably some contacts and such people arent going to come cheap.

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

When P2P was finally announced, the implementation was done poorly. Fearing that there would be a complete Revolt against the p2p they gave people a free option. This was a mistake. For one, the free option still cost PA money to run, and it did not insure that there would be a inflow of new customers. Secondly they totally removed Advertising from its site at all. People, dont mind indescript banners on the top of a page, even in p2p. And, the still free accounts should have been advertising-heavy to cover the cost of their free-planets.

You sure about that, i'm dont seem to recall their being a real FREE account in the first p2p round. The whole basis of the first p2p round was co-operating to pay for accounts with accounts being purcahsed in TWO's rather than singles in what can only be described as Buy One Get One Free. This free account was intended to be given to someone else to allow them to play but you could just leave it unused. What most people did was 'sell' the account to another person for half the cost of an account which allowed those who couldnt pay by the normal methods or simply couldnt afford the full price to pay for an account. And the pricing structure was designed so that the costs at the time would be covered for these two accounts by the single payment, in fact it was designed so even the bulk buy packages which give you something like 5 accounst for about £3 each would cover the costs

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Secondly, PA failed to address another question that is vital in starting any successful business. A: IF people will pay for my product, how much will the pay?
Irrogantly, it seems to me, from my perspected, the PA management decided that their product was so great that they would be able to charge a ten dollar for two account fee, with the grandious idea that people had people in line to give their account to. To many, they would rather buy one account for 5 because thats what they would be using, yet that wasnt an option, and so many felt sour about that.

This is the problem PA has, the PLAYERS wont listen to what they are being told. On numorous occasions this issue was brought up and over and over again they were told that it was impossible for them to offer transactions that were under $10. Quite simply the transaction costs on anything lower than $10 would have seen them make hardly anything thus making p2p pointless. If the players at this time hadnt been so quick to jump on the "Spinners trying to make a quick buck and when hes made the money he will do a runner" bandwagon and actually took time to LISTEN to the official word they might have been more understanding. Not to mention even if they were sour about charges it didnt given certain groups in this community to commit Credit Card Fraud against the company which resulted in something like $30k in lost revenue and chargeback fees.

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Another major, almost fatal flaw that PA has had in its structure is its marketing. You, your wits and a browser against the entire universe. That is not the type of game a new player would want to play, and its not what PA is.

that phrase emphasises isolation in a vast network of planets who are all attaking each other. How can a new commer ever hope to survive in a place as desolate and violet as this.

Seems alot more appealing to me than telling the truth of "You against a couple of powerblocks consisting of a few thousand players who like nothing but bashing new players" . When its a game where everyone is against everyone else you have a lot greater chance of survival than one where players are split into large groups while your outside of them resulting in you neing picked off by these groups

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Secondly PA made no attempt to the emphasize the key characteristics which made the game good. IN all their ad campaigns and catch phrases, they failed to adress the real-life action of politics, of group work, and most importantly of Community. People flock to online games like sim-city online, not because of the game itself, but because of the community. PA should have sold its community, before its community sold out.

Did PA have an ad campaign at this time, I certainly dont remember any official one, the game just didnt need it as the word of mouth was so good and people were flocking to play cos it was free. PA just didnt have the money to do an ad campaign. The only thing I can remember that could be consider ad campaigns were write ups on websites and in magazines and if they wish to sell the game one way theres nothing you can do about it.

Anyway by the time P2P came into existance the community had already started devouring itself, it wasnt the nice friendly place of before and was becoming more and more hostile per day. Zeus and a few others tried to get some friends to join around this time and after checking out the forums almost all came back with the responce "No thanks I dont want to take part in a game where everyones as hostile as that. Ever since Fury/Legion/RB had managed to 'cheat' to get themselves in custom galaxies in r3, the heart of the community was destroyed and the attempt to balance this exploit in r4 by given everyone private galaxies pushed it over the edge. It went from a community where everyone was mixing and one where there was a sense of fun to one where players became segregated by alliance lines which led to the game becoming serious business and less about fun. It was maybe slightly more fun for the real n00bs turning up in r4 who were stuck at the end of the universe with other n00bs where none of them had any previous aligences to withold and were hence happy to mix but stuff like thsi only lasts a round because during their first round they get recruited and become part of the problem the community was having

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

The innitially high-price of p2p alienated many players who were promised that p2p would never happen. However, im not so ignorant to say that it wasnt a nessary step. IF you want to move to a p2p system, you can just expect to jump right in and have people in line to give you money. Your first step should have been to add new features to the game for p2p and then gradually made more and more of the game p2p untill you had a game that was p2p for around 2 bucks a pop. Then you could have began to charge more, and more, untill you had a product that people felt was worth 10 bucks a round. Along with this, as PA's money probles grew, almost to the point of self destruction, PA still failed to realize that price-hikes were not going to fix its problems. When most businesses are having probles bring in profits (any retailer, or servcie provider) they lower priced to driver more sales, and the more sales the more profits although at a lower profit margin. However, PA 2 times now toward the enevetable end of PA, PA has increased prices to compensate for lost players, failing to realize that this only drives more and more people away from the game.

In an ideal world yes this is probally the way it would have been done (well no in an ideal world it would have remained free). The playerbase wanted the game to be free and spinners dream for the game was always to have it free and have it pay for itself. It was however his attempt to keep it free to both fulfil his goal and to keep the players happy that made this ideal situation not possible. The game wasnt making money and while before the backers of the game were happy to give the game time to make a profit once at first as soon as the internet bubble burst, like most investors in net firms the backers got cold feet. Without the support the game couldnt run in a loss making state and drastic measures had to be taken to keep the game going. Perhaps if we as a community hadnt been so adament that the game should be free and came out in favour of schemes that involved payment instead of shooting them down as we did, then perhaps spinner might have been more inclined to give up his goal in order to be finacially viable and the slow move to a P2P model could have been started when money started to become an issue and not as a last resort like it was.

Also perhaps if we had clicked more banners as a community then they might have had more cash to support the game on as a more gradual move to P2P could have been made. After all when you have 180k playing the game in r4 and only 2% of these accounts click a banner a day theres alot of people not giving anything back to the community and then moaning when they are asked to pay.

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

Additionally, a majority of the people i have had discussions with in the PA community feal that the deal with jolt was a bad move. I havent heard much about this so im not going to speculate so much. Ive heard that in both offers the head team members would have stayed on board as creative developers.Ive also heard that PA took a lower price for the game because they believed that JOLT would put more into the game.

There is little logic in that. Why would a company who is willing to invest less in a game put more into it. The company who invest the most into a game will get the best results, and that is common sence.

To answer the second part first, theres actually alot of logic in it. Its not like we were talking major companies like Microsoft who could pay whatever they wanted for the game and still have as much to spend on development as they wanted. We are talking about smallish companies with limited budgets and it can be safely be assumed that the more of that budget spent aquiring the game the less they then have to spend on developing it.

Having said that I'm not sure how much truth is in the fact that Jolt paid less for it. After all it wasnt the Creators or community selling the game who actually cared about what happened to the game, it was Fifth Seasons who were selling the game and Fifth Seasons was the investors in the game. As such they would imho be more likly to take the most money even if it meant no future for the game. The only reason I could see them taking less would be if the second offer was deemed to be unrealistic and they hence felt they wouldnt get the money.

Anyway we cant really blame anyone for choosing JOLT, they made alot of promises which once the whole confusion over who were Sim-Tech and what was their connection to JOLT was cleared up was a choice that even the community seemed to agree with. Its no-one but JOLT fault really that the promises werent fulfilled but having said that the Rival offer could have turned out the same way and I suppose we should be thankful that JOLT did atleast give PA a lifeline

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

For at least 2 rounds, bring back free PA, with advertising, to bring advertising revenue. You already have jolts banner, why not a few more. At the same, begin a decent marketing campain. Give interviews to gaming sights and stress the pa community. Although it is shaken now, it could one day rule again. This will increase PAs base market again as people move back to a free PA, if even for a while. This has been suggestioned by many who wish to play free games of PA only because they are cheep. They however fail to adress the longevity of such a system. This would be phase one of a three phase re-marketing campaign.

As I've stated above ads were almost useless back in the day and are even more useless now with the reduced rates they pay. For ads to be worthwhile you need people to be clicking them and with Past experiance showing that only 2% of PA players click banners its never going to work. Even if they could up this to the average percentage (which I seem to recall reading was around 5-6%) its still not going to bring that much money in. As for a marketting campaign, this would require money which JOLT have made clear they arent willing to spend. For a marketting budget to become avaiable PA is going to most likly need to make some serious money first pr atleast show signs of making some money.

As for interviews I have to ask who you think would be willing to do one of these for any publication that would help increase the customer base and more importantly who could they really interview of any intrest. No offence to MrBrick here but he isnt Spinner or Zeus, hes new to the job and as such has very little experiance to really comment on and as such hes not going to be someone people jump to interview. And PA is no longer a game that most places would be willing to cover anyway its just not high profile or successful enough atm

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

For the second or third round bring back p2p at a lower cost (5 bucks) without advertising, perhaps a roid-cap increase aswell, and keep free-advertising revenue based game
This pleases people who still want to be free for the timebeing, while allowing player to add to the game by particingpatiing in paid-only-polls wich have a direct influence on the game, and free speed rounds to a certain number of ppl selected from the p2p at random. Also no 2 universes, as that adds to cost.

Again as I've said above lowering the costs isnt something which is easy to do. Payment transactions cost money for the company amd the relative costs are often more for lower amount transactions, for example as i've already said back when P2P started amounts under $10 werent viable to take as the money received from them was very small. Now JOLT could be able to offer lower priced transactions than FS used to be but by the same count they might need transactions to be more than FS needed.

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

the third of fourth round start the all p2p again, with advertsing on portal and message boards
once people have begun to see the p2p beniftis and have gotten used to the idea, and have began to gain appreciation for the comunity a nominal 5 dollar fee for playing wont seem that bad, as long as you emphasis what your game is about. Community.

Yes paying for an account might be more appealing with the half and half round as the number of free players boosts the number of planets enough to make the game more enjoyable BUT as soon as it goes fully P2P your immediatly back to the same problem we have now. And the numbers will drop because theres a great number of people who have played PA who refuse blindly to pay for the game (or any game on the net) as they still believe everything on the net should be free. PA needs an increasing (or at least a steady) playerbase because a declining one just makes the game a little less fun.

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

From their, as long as your player base continues to grow or remain steady, PA could slowing increasy prices.. 1 dollar every 2 rounds or so.

Additionally to get new players keep the interviews with game web sites alive and keep the marketing campaign up. It may be time to move to a flash intro screen instead of the flat PAportal wich is some-what confusing because it is made for people already playing PA, not for new commers.

Every dollar the price increases means less players and also means its less appealing for new players to try, if your lossing players and not replacing them your numbers are going to decline. And no matter how many interviews you do a high price product isnt going to get many new players and a shrinking playerbase isnt going to keep the few who do take the risk

As for a flash intro screen, that doesnt really shout out "professional" to me and certainly wouldnt attract me. A well designed static image splash page is imho a better choice as its simply less annoying and if done well looks a lot more impressive. Although I do agree the portal as a front page was one of the worst ideas ever. You just arent given the instant impression about what Planetarion is, in fact its easy enough to dismiss it as another pointless portal about nothing in particular. The old style spash pages with quick linsk to signup, login, the manual and a small page giving an outline of PA is much better, with the portal then being somewhere you can visit from here for news ect

Originally Posted by Andy_r

From my experiences in PAX beta, seeing all Spinner's posts there and discussions about the features of the new game, I'm convinced the changes for PAX were all Spinner's ideas, and I'd speculate that Jolt actually came on board because they were promised a complete clean-code single-server rewrite.

Most of the changes were almost certainly initially from Spinner and Fudge, HOWEVER i'm also sure than most of what got into PAX isnt how Spinner and Fudge imigined it should be. Too many of the ideas seem like cut down ideas made either to please the current players, fit in with what jolt wanted or simply just to meet a deadline set down by jolt.

[Qdeathstar]

Originally Posted by Andy R

"seeing all Spinner's posts there and discussions about the features of the new game, I'm convinced the changes for PAX were all Spinner's ideas."

I wasnt saying that the ideas about the new game werent Spinners Ideas, but that the push for NEW development was partly Jolts Idea.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"Forced Clicking of banners is something that was never possible and will almost certainly never be possible. The simple reason for this is its against most companies terms and conditions of advertising. After all if your a company you dont want thousands of people visiting your site because they were forced to and wont stay longer than it takes to close the window. Breaking the terms and conditions is a major risk that can see a refusal to payout at the end of the month/quarter. Now your probally come up with an argument saying "X does it and gets away with it" and your right others DO emply such tactics and make adequate revenue through it however most are taking major risk with their future. Those who arent taking a risk using such tactics are those who have had the resources to negotiate their own banner ad sales rather than using a third party company. If your negotating the sales yourself you can come up with a deal that would allow you to do this, but your end up getting a much lower payment per click tha before. The problem here is to negotiate such deals you require someone who focus on such a job full time and it not the type of thing you can just get anyone to do, it needs someone with good negotaing skills, good business understanding and preferably some contacts and such people arent going to come cheap."

The key here, and i think i posted it in my thread, is timers, thirty second timers wich require people to stay on a page for a certain ammount of time. I dont know when the last time anyone has actually looked into this is, but their are several Paid to Click and paid to complete survey programs which use this timer-method quite succesfully and quite legally. I relize you need qualified people to do this.. but why dont ge get some qualified people. Isnt that what successfull businesses do?

Originally Posted by Wakey

"
This is the problem PA has, the PLAYERS wont listen to what they are being told. On numorous occasions this issue was brought up and over and over again they were told that it was impossible for them to offer transactions that were under $10. Quite simply the transaction costs on anything lower than $10 would have seen them make hardly anything thus making p2p pointless. If the players at this time hadnt been so quick to jump on the "Spinners trying to make a quick buck and when hes made the money he will do a runner" "

I certainly dont think that that spiner was getting rich or trying to rich off of this, he would have did a bit more research with better implimentation. Transactions under 10 are not immposible or inprofitable. One simple solution would have been to set up a 1-900 number, other online games are doing this and only charging their customers 3 dollars. Pay pal is also a low-cost way to bring money from us to you. Maybe the options you looked at made it worth-less to charge under 10, but there were other options. (when i say you, i mean the PA management, sry)

Originally Posted by Wakey

"The playerbase wanted the game to be free and spinners dream for the game was always to have it free and have it pay for itself. It was however his attempt to keep it free to both fulfil his goal and to keep the players happy that made this ideal situation not possible. The game wasnt making money and while before the backers of the game were happy to give the game time to make a profit once at first as soon as the internet bubble burst, like most investors in net firms the backers got cold feet"

Of course, the internet buble burst, if fact the world-wide economy suffered a recession. The problem wasnt p2p, its the fact that PA went from free to high-priced. The PA community suffered a shock, and did not comprehend the fact that with 10 bucks, the way PA had sed things up they would be at best breaking even. Im saying that had PA used other methods, they could have kept the prices lower initially, and kept more players.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"Having said that I'm not sure how much truth is in the fact that Jolt paid less for it. After all it wasnt the Creators or community selling the game who actually cared about what happened to the game, it was Fifth Seasons who were selling the game and Fifth Seasons was the investors in the game. As such they would imho be more likly to take the most money even if it meant no future for the game. The only reason I could see them taking less would be if the second offer was deemed to be unrealistic and they hence felt they wouldnt get the money.

Anyway we cant really blame anyone for choosing JOLT, they made alot of promises which once the whole confusion over who were Sim-Tech and what was their connection to JOLT was cleared up was a choice that even the community seemed to agree with. Its no-one but JOLT fault really that the promises werent fulfilled but having said that the Rival offer could have turned out the same way and I suppose we should be thankful that JOLT did atleast give PA a lifeline"

Of course we cannot blame anyone, and thats not what i did, i said that i thought it may have not been the best of moves with the information I had, and i clearly stated that my information was not fact, but other players perceptions. I for instance, did not know that 5th season, not the creators sold the game. What i read sounded like spiner was the cheif salesman.

"As for interviews I have to ask who you think would be willing to do one of these for any publication that would help increase the customer base and more importantly who could they really interview of any intrest."
[/quote]
Eww, im sorry, i didnt clerify that enough. The intervies would be after the 2 free rounds, once perhaps the game got back into gear, by that time Mr. Brick should have plunty to talk about, besides theirs always fudge.. if he isnt too busy.

While you shoot down the adverit revenue, you keep forgeting timers, which many advertisers accept and many ppl use.

Originally Posted by Wakey

eems alot more appealing to me than telling the truth of "You against a couple of powerblocks consisting of a few thousand players who like nothing but bashing new players" . When its a game where everyone is against everyone else you have a lot greater chance of survival than one where players are split into large groups while your outside of them resulting in you neing picked off by these groups

Um, what about galaxies.. and their is a community, whether or not it is shown in game. IRC and Forums are great examples, and since we have moved quit messages to a special thread ;-) even better.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"Yes paying for an account might be more appealing with the half and half round as the number of free players boosts the number of planets enough to make the game more enjoyable BUT as soon as it goes fully P2P your immediatly back to the same problem we have now. "

not if you do it gradually, you lost so many players in the begging because you went abrupty to 10 bucks p2p... and the majority of your player base doenst have or doenst use credit cards to pay for what they buy, meaning they haveto ask someone else ot make the puchase, while PA stil pays fees to credit card companies. USE paypal, and you can still get your credit card, just without as much fees.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"PA needs an increasing (or at least a steady) playerbase because a declining one just makes the game a little less fun."

The only way of doing that is to stop pricing for a bit. and gradually build up. Any other suggestions.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"Every dollar the price increases means less players and also means its less appealing for new players to try, if your lossing players and not replacing them your numbers are going to decline. And no matter how many interviews you do a high price product isnt going to get many new players and a shrinking playerbase isnt going to keep the few who do take the risk"

Of course, i didnt say we should take way the 2 week testing area.. so they can get a bit of feeling for the game. *have computers that let you win play in the free area that way the ppl would have a great expereince(HAHA JJ) And if you wanted to be sneeky, provide a money back guarantee, but with no contact information (another joke), but some companies do that for great success, none that i want to be associated with.

Originally Posted by Wakey

"As for a flash intro screen, that doesnt really shout out "professional" to me and certainly wouldnt attract me. A well designed static image splash page is imho a better choice as its simply less annoying and if done well looks a lot more impressive. Although I do agree the portal as a front page was one of the worst ideas ever. You just arent given the instant impression about what Planetarion is, in fact its easy enough to dismiss it as another pointless portal about nothing in particular. The old style spash pages with quick linsk to signup, login, the manual and a small page giving an outline of PA is much better, with the portal then being somewhere you can visit from here for news ect"

Well, at least we agree on something, the screen has to be changed. Any thing that is well disiedn would be nice. When people go to www.planetarion.com com and see a picture with signup-login-portal they have no idea what the game is, and perhaps no idea what a portal is. Some people are dumb. You should know that by now <--- :-/. Anyway, Some description or some screen shots on the front... (Not thumnails or with 100 opacity, but blended nicely. Flash, i was thinking more of macromedia, because they have nice menu options ect.. and if its done right you can get some good effects.

Originally Posted by Andy_r

"From my experiences in PAX beta, seeing all Spinner's posts there and discussions about the features of the new game, I'm convinced the changes for PAX were all Spinner's ideas"

Originally Posted by Wakey

"to fit in with what jolt wanted "

Ill let you all discuss that one.

[Helix]

ffs, stop the insane quoting back and forth...

Fact 1) there were never 180k people playing planetarion, you would be lucky if that number even approached 50k individual IPs. Everyone knows that the average hardcore player had somewhere on the order of 10 multi accounts

Fact 2) Advertising does not bring in very much money anymore not so much because of the internet bust, but because advertisers realised that internet ads are not very successful. This is why payoffs for banner ads and the like have dramatically decreased. They were momentarily high because it was a new area and companies had not figured out the actual benefit.

Fact 3) Planetarion was not making money either way (free or p2p), and never has really been able to sustain itself, it is frankly a dying beast.

[Qdeathstar]

50k players would be a lot better than we have now.

Anyway, i know that going free with advertisers isnt a long-term solution.

You obviously did not read (get) what i was saying. I was saying that we need to go free again temporarily and then increases prices slowly.

No, internet advertising wont pay for pa. Thats not what i was saying. Im saying that in order to make a profit in the future, PA will have to run at a loss for some time until they can convince people that their game is worth 10.

IT is possible. My thread is about how the PA creators began at a price of 10 dollars. That was too high for starting out they needed to ease players in, so that they would be like oh, 2 bucks isnt that buck, oh, 3 dollars now, well its only one more. 5bucks for three months. I can do that, so on until it gets to ten like you want/need.

Some have made claims that its too costly to make a interent purchase under 10 bucks for the company when clearly that isnt the case. Other internet games/stores sell plunty under 10.

This thread was not about how advert revenue could keep PA free, we all know that wont work. This thread is about how PA could make its self profitalble and attract more players.

IF you had some banners on the portal as revenue links, that the few who click would click then thats still revenue. Im not saying its the answer, im saying that while your running PA free for 1 or 2 rounds, then you can use revenue from advertising to supplement losses.

Helix, i know the quoting made you angry, sry, but please read the top of the thread. its not about making PA free, its about making PA profitable. As it stands right now, PA is not profitable..

Thank you

[Qdeathstar]

Quote Helix

"Fact 3) Planetarion was not making money either way (free or p2p), and never has really been able to sustain itself, it is frankly a dying beast."

And if we dont change something you will be right. This is a way for us to grow again.

[Helix]

No it isn't, because you will never make up the losses of going free again, and even assuming that the 10 dollar fee covers expenses, which I dont believe it did in the first p2p rounds, under your plan it will take 2-3 years to get up to a price that high. As was stated earlier JOLT is not microsoft. I hate to be a doombringer or a negative nancy, etc... but PA is dead, nothing can be done to save it, players who enjoy this type of game will have to constantly switch from one game to another, because new ones are always starting and old ones are always dieing. This type of game is simply not sustainable because there is not enough demand of people who are willing to pay for its product, whether that paying be actual monetary funds or the time required to click on banners.

PA has seen many copies come and go, and has by far been one of, if not the longest lasting game of its kind, but it will fall within a few more rounds, how many? That depends how long JOLT is willing to work with it, if for some reason a lot of people decide to pay for it, fine, but that will never happen with the current alliance situation....that is the big problem, not economics.

[KoeN]

why did jolt buy pa?
i wonder.

[Qdeathstar]

", whether that paying be actual monetary funds or the time required to click on banners."

No, right now, people wont spend ten bucks a game, but they will eventually. Forced clicks wich ARE legal and ARE used in combination with 30 second timers would allow PA to bring in some revenue while it was free. The problem is that people are not foward looking enough. Sure, there may be alliance problems. But when you get 20k more players comming in because its free, and then stayign because the price only went up slowly, alliances will be by far outnumbers. Thats one of the reasons their are heavy-set alliances. THe lack of new players.

"That depends how long JOLT is willing to work with it,"

I jolt wants to make the game profitable, then they have to run it at a loss for at least 2 -3 rounds to get interest back up, then they can increase prices gradualy. that is the only way to fix the problem.

If you fix the alliance problems, the bug problems, ect, that will only keep players. We need to increase the people playing and then paying over time.

A month to month payment process might not be that bad.

But, you have to do somethign, and sitting with your thumb up your ass looking the away from a tidal wave, is not the way to solve your problems. SO, fixing alliance, bug, ect will not be enough to bring to players in. WHen the game is free, peopel will join just because its free, and when pa charges again, at a low 1.99-2.99 price, people will join because they like the game and its only three bucks. The next round 5 dollars, hm, only 2 or 3 more dollars. But, you have to increase in gradually.

An add campain might not be so important if the game ran free for a round or two. Your could even shorten those rounds to 6 or 8 weeks. like 2. 9.5 rounds instead of a regular round.

[Qdeathstar]

And as for Jolt not being microsoft. No S.

But, this game doesnt take more than 500k in three months to opperate. Its prolly a lot less than that, <--i dont know about this as much. BUt if it was costing more that that PA would already be done.

Jolt is a faily large company. ITs not a small group of freinds saying hay look we have servers, lets use them. IT was Launched in October 1999, jolt.co.uk is Europe's largest and most popular independent online gaming network - with in excess of 700 game servers online. it have plunty of give room to run pa at a loss for a bit . PA is running at a loss right now. Why not increase the loss now, to make profits later.

[Qdeathstar]

I think that jolt bought PA because spinner was a great salesman.

[Zeus]

PA sold itself and it was I who arranged and followed through with the sale to Jolt. Sorry

[Spinner]

Zeus darling, could you throw me an email, I need a word with you (:

[Qdeathstar]

No, Im sure that you did the best that you all could. Im saying that that didnt work, and now we have to find new ways to make PA profitable again.

[wakey]

Qdeathstar could you please clarify your definition of "Forced clicks with timers" please.

And please trust me there is a level where a CC transaction is unprofitable and was $10. Yes there are other ways to take fees below $10 and still make enough to be profitable but to offer direct CC transactions it isnt that simple. And the game does need direct CC transactions simply because its a method open to pretty much any country that has internet access and doesnt have a middleman that you have to trust your details with (such as Paypal, who havent exactly been getting the best of press recently with all the security issues). And yes you could offer differnt payment amounts per each method but then things get pretty confusing and a little unfair and lead to an awful lot more work when it came to taking payment and activating accounts.

As for your comment on Jolt, yes they are a major player in the game Server hosting business however I think your over estimating the finacial capabilities of the company. Running the services they do costs a fair amount and the revenue streams to cover their costs arent overly vast. Certainly from things i've heard Jolt are not flush with cash and while not in any great danager dont have much to throw on a loss making project.

[Qdeathstar]

no i think that different payment levels is stupid, i agree with you there

But, i know that for example certain websites offer cc 3 day trials for 3.99, and paypal would be a desison that is easy to offer with low fees, (like 1 or 2 percent and then 1 dollar for getting the check. so if you make 100000 dollars it would cost 1001 to get the money out.

Also, 1-900 numbers could work, im not sure with the fees associated with them,

anyway, im not saying that PA should stay under 10 for more than 4-6 rounds, just long enough for it to raise is prices slowing

The forced to click with timers is only for the free rounds you would use to bring in ppl.

They consiste of when ever you log on, as part of the logg on process to click on a link. The link is then set so that you have to stay on the web site for atleast 30 seconds. When the timer is up, then another bar (proceed) would happen on the first page, and you could continue to log in to the game.

SO you can see what im talking about (they are links )

www.lonestarclicks.com
www.inboxdollars.com

take a look

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Qdeathstar

no i think that different payment levels is stupid, i agree with you there

But, i know that for example certain websites offer cc 3 day trials for 3.99, and paypal would be a desison that is easy to offer with low fees, (like 1 or 2 percent and then 1 dollar for getting the check. so if you make 100000 dollars it would cost 1001 to get the money out.

Also, 1-900 numbers could work, im not sure with the fees associated with them,

anyway, im not saying that PA should stay under 10 for more than 4-6 rounds, just long enough for it to raise is prices slowing

The forced to click with timers is only for the free rounds you would use to bring in ppl.

They consiste of when ever you log on, as part of the logg on process to click on a link. The link is then set so that you have to stay on the web site for atleast 30 seconds. When the timer is up, then another bar (proceed) would happen on the first page, and you could continue to log in to the game.

SO you can see what im talking about (they are links )

www.lonestarclicks.com
www.inboxdollars.com

take a look

The price of your CC transactions does in alot of cases depend on who you are. While the likes of Amazon who do a huge amount of business can use their size to get the best of deals its the smaller business with no power who get the worst deal. And as a small internet firm you get the worst deal possible. As I've said quite possible Jolt can get a better deal on it than FS could but thats just speculation. Now those sites who offer 3.99 trail accounts could do so because either the 3 days costs can be covered by the small amount they take or quite simply could be loss leaders to get you to signup hoping you then take out a full subscription (much like your idea to have PA free for 2 rounds, just over a period of 3 days rather than 6 months).

As for paypal as ive already said people are a little wary of things like this, it hard enough to get people to hand over payment details direct to the company let alone to another company such as Paypal. Theres simply no way you can use this as the main way of taking credit card payments as a good deal of people would point blank refuse to use it (especially with all the bad press its been getting recently). Paypal is a method which at best is only acceptable as a secondary payment routine.

As for the 1-900 number idea, in the past such methods have been used. The problem with these however is they are generally restricted to a single nation. These means every country you wish to offer this method in requires a differnt one with its own setup and running costs. As such these lines can only really be offered in the countries where theres the most players otherwise its not profitable so again this is a very restrictive way to take payments and certainly isnt one that a viable way to replace the direct credit card payment

As for those forced clicks, I doubt the payment rates are high enough to really makes them viable. Forced click banners in r4 were significantly lower than normal banner ads, so much so that even with 180k players it was not really any more profitable than having only 2% of people clicking banners. The only benifit to this method is its a guarenteed amount so its not the holy grail. Ofc such forced clicks could perhaps be combined with normal banners with the ability to pay to remove them but its still unlikly that this alone would be enough to cover costs.

[Qdeathstar]

yeah, im not saying that forced clicks is the solution to "bring free PA" I for one think that if PA remained free, its quality would suffer. I am for p2p, im saying while it is free, do that to make the loss less.

SS (im not sure about the rules consider posting Gamesite URLS) our advisary seems to have no problem offering ways to pay for less that 5 dollars. You should check that out, and then see about how you can do the same.