Question for the Dev team (about money)

[Thump]

With a significant donation or consistent income: What could the Dev team accomplish? Are there possibly applications or software unavailable via lack of funding? Are there any goodies Armagetron could get their hands on ? I for one much appreciate what the Dev team has been able to accomplish with almost no income. ( http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtop ... 11&t=23096 ) "but it's been a bit of a dry spell with only one donation in the last year ". If Dev team has been this productive off no $$$, I must wonder what they could do with an abundance?

[Bytes]

I don't think donations go towards development at all as far as I know, just on server and site hosting.

[Z-Man]

Realistically, covering server costs is all we can hope for. I can only speak for myself, but the only way for me to put more time into development would be if it gave a a big and reliable enough salary so I could quit/downscale my day job.

Or, and I think I made that joke before, send over Word to babysit

[Word]

If all your descendants sell their souls and join pru by the time they're 13 and play ladles instead of learning for their final exams, sure.

[ElmosWorld]

Realistically, covering server costs is all we can hope for. I can only speak for myself, but the only way for me to put more time into development would be if it gave a a big and reliable enough salary so I could quit/downscale my day job.

I think that's what he means. If you were able to do this as a job, what could be accomplished?

[sinewav]

...what could be accomplished?

For starters, there are all these blueprints on launchpad.

It's the same old story. One way to get full time development is to create a way for investors to make money through the game somehow. Another way is to sell the game for a small price, but then you would need many, many players to buy it. I imagine there are plenty of other ways to generate revenue for the game, but there needs to be a team dedicated to doing it, a team who has experience with the appropriate business model.

[RoterBaron1337]

^kickstarters!

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[Ratchet]

If the game were to cost, as Sine suggested, wouldn't the game also need to be closed source? Unless your @forums account contained some bit of information that indicated you paid for the game and you were required to log in to @forums to play the game.

Even then, it wouldn't be hard to find an older source without that requirement or program/bypass it yourself. The amount of work that would be required to make this game cost is ridiculous -- at least I imagine so.

Additionally, by close-sourcing, things like the ct-sty patch wouldn't happen because players wouldn't be free to tinker with the game/servers.

The only thing that could be gained is money, and not nearly enough to make it worthwhile.

[Lucifer]

People can buy an open source game, no problem.

For me, I'd need a year's commitment to paying me somewhere in the neighborhood of $35-$40k. But I'd spend that year both developing the game and working on turning it into something that supports itself and hopefully continues to employ me and eventually growing to the point where it could employ other developers.

[Z-Man]

People can buy an open source game, no problem.

Yes, but there are additional problems for multiplayer games. For starters, all our infrastructure is GPL; it would be very hard to change that, so anything any non-paying customers want to do with it, they can. So let's be realistic here. If we restrict playing online to paying customers, the freeloaders would just create their own master server, and the free version would be vastly more popular than the payed version, so the threat "If you don't pay us, you can't play with the other paying customers" is not a very compelling one. It would rather turn itself around.

We need to keep the free players in the system, that is what makes F2P games work. The only thing we can sell at this point is "Premium Service". Integrated voice chat could be something. Cycle customization visible to others. Real global stats. Cloud storage of your preferences. Cross-server chat with your friends. Do not lock anything of the game away. Some of this requires server cooperation, so simply ban cheat servers.

On that note, semi on-topic: Someone mailed me asking for permission to do an Ouya/Android port. I said yes, no other choice, really. See GPL.

[RoterBaron1337]

well, in Tron you could add something like Spectate Ladle games or participate in ladle games or in any other tournament they would like to see / play ?

[delinquent]

Starting with Z-Man, if you are willing to say, what is your day job? I'm sure that something could perhaps be done in order to give you an extra two or three hours a week free, perhaps something could be worked out. Besides, I've just started a new job that will give me some spare cash, I'd be very willing to contribute.

[Z-Man]

Starting with Z-Man, if you are willing to say, what is your day job?

I'm the only (Well, technically, the only one apart from the boss) C++ developer in a small company producing specialized CAD software for elevators and escalators. I do work a lot with .NET, too.

I'm sure that something could perhaps be done in order to give you an extra two or three hours a week free

Well, the bit about Word babysitting was only half a joke. It is unlikely that I would be able to negotiate regular additional time off from work (though, unpaid vacation time is a possibility) and even if, I'd still be at home and expected to care for the girl every now and then, and what really is killing dev work are constant, unexpected interruptions. I do have free time, but it comes in tiny morsels and I have to expect to be called away any time. Especially if I open the Laptop while Z-Girl is watching. A babysitter could give us enough breathing room so I could retreat to the PC pit for a while. Dunno. We never had a babysitter.

[Word]

I could ask some friends if you want/draw a big poster that'll get you tons of applicants if I hang it up at the University.

[Thump]

Thank you for all the replies! I really liked the bit about "custom options where others could see/Integrated Chat and such" -partial quote.

Well, the reason I brought this up, though I realize Real Life comes 1st, I was just curious what gains COULD possibly be made to improve Arma if it were finances preventing growth. Also, I wanted to throw this out there: Suppose all those who play arma who were ABLE to make voluntary monthly donations? For instance: Iv spent $7.99 a month on Hulu Plus for a while.. I could easily Dedicate something similar to a Voluntary subscription. In this case, im 99.5% sure the money would be going to improving something we all love and enjoy as well as giving back to the time and efforts of the DEV team. Im not sure how many could, however, If everyone able were to dedicate $10+/- monthly that $amount$ might just be enough to help out. My only request would be that enough people agree to do this, otherwise my measly $5-$10 a month will do very little. That is why I asked though, what gains COULD be made, maybe if the community has something tangible to justify their $$ they might just do it.