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Monetization


Pudim
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Has the staff considered ways to monetize the game?
As for example google adsense in the game and in the site / forum ... add avatars and customization option, free and premiuns?
I believe that a little money can help the sustainable growth of the game.

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21 minutes ago, Pudim said:

I believe that a little money can help the sustainable growth of the game.

WFG should already have ~28k. But people are always more useful for a FOSS project than money. What really is needed for sustainability is new people replacing those retiring or leaving. Else, the project would slowly come to a standstill.

Edited by Guest
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WFG once tried raising money and it was a disaster. Does that make raising money a bad idea? Or could that be that the process was just poorly managed? If so, how about trying to find someone more competent at raising money for the game before dismissing the idea entirely?

You wouldn't dismiss the idea of improving the pathfinder based on the fact that last time someone tried he wasn't very successful. I can see WFG inviting new artists and programmers to join the team all the time, so perhaps it's time to start looking for good fundraising managers too.

I've seen the fundraising question being dismissed many times. I've never seen the specific reasons for it. No one disagrees with the statement that WFG needs good programmers. And I guarantee that you can get good programmers if you pay them well. We should really stop asking if WFG needs money and we should instead discuss how to get them. It could help if someone can describe the problems with the previous fundraising. That could put us on the right track with the discussion.

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1 hour ago, Boudica said:

It could help if someone can describe the problems with the previous fundraising.

The problem is that WFG is a group of modders and programmers, not fundraisers and venture capitalists.

It's true that some lessons from last time could be learned. But before that's all rehashed analyzed and a fundraiser planned, you have to have a specific goal in mind for that potential future fundraiser. For what purpose are you raising the money? It seems to me that right now WFG has all the money it needs for its current goals. More than enough, actually. Something like $25,000+ currently in its vaults. It may be that WFG already has enough money for whatever "goal" or project you have in mind.

Edited by wowgetoffyourcellphone
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2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The problem is that WFG is a group of modders and programmers, not fundraisers and venture capitalists.

It's true that some lessons from last time could be learned. But before that's all rehashed analyzed and a fundraiser planned, you have to have a specific goal in mind for that potential future fundraiser. For what purpose are you raising the money? It seems to me that right now WFG has all the money it needs for its current goals. More than enough, actually. Something like $25,000+ currently in its vaults. It may be that WFG already has enough money for whatever "goal" or project you have in mind.

any advertising or marketing planning?

marketing-planning-process.jpg?mtime=20150418110013

Resultado de imagen para marketing planning

vXZcHFf.jpg

kisspng-brand-media-planning-advertising-marketing-plan-ma-5b1a9232ba16a4.9400314715284680187622.png

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9 hours ago, Pudim said:

The idea of having a constant source of resources, so can increase the development team and let the game each see better, improve the disclosure so that more people can know to play and have fun.

Nobody is getting paid so it would not attract more developers whether you have 25k or 160k in the bank. 

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On 3/7/2019 at 2:12 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It seems to me that right now WFG has all the money it needs for its current goals. More than enough, actually. Something like $25,000+ currently in its vaults. It may be that WFG already has enough money for whatever "goal" or project you have in mind. 

What are the current goals though? The funding campaign from 2013 at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/support-0-a-d-an-open-source-strategy-game#/ specified 40k for a new pathfinder, somewhere like 80k or whatnot for the singleplayer campaign if I recall correctly. 25k may get you to any single goal, but after that the funding is gone.

The numbers are public https://spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/, since Wildfire Games is a member of the non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest as mentioned.

Notice that Wildfire Games has running costs, of maybe USD 1000 for the servers and few hundred USD for travel costs. Also notice of the 33k from the campaign, 5k went towards merchandise. In 2018 WFG received about USD 3000 in donations and about USD 1000 server costs. What to do with that money noone figured out yet, and so it is kept in reserves (at least that's what's been happening so far). If nothing changes, it's at least good to know that one can afford server costs for the decades to come.

On 3/7/2019 at 1:00 AM, Boudica said:

I guarantee that you can get good programmers if you pay them well

How can you guarantee that?

On 3/5/2019 at 1:00 AM, Pudim said:

but if you can have 2 or 3 programmers / artists full time, it would be very good

25k USD / (10 USD/h) = 2500 hours. With 25 hours per week that's 100 weeks, i.e. 2 years for one contributor, excluding server cost. So indeed it  would need more funding.

I expect Wildfire Games will not be able to raise sufficient money to hire even one contributor fulltime in the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean one can't try to improve the situation. I can pull something out of the hat later, but I haven't finished the IRS documents, and they are just as dull as GDPR.

Edited by elexis
s/day/week
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2 hours ago, elexis said:

I expect Wildfire Games will not be able to raise sufficient money to hire even one contributor fulltime in the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean one can't try to improve the situation. I can pull something out of the hat later, but I haven't finished the IRS documents, and they are just as dull as GDPR.

What are you trying to pull off with the IRS documents ?

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On 3/4/2019 at 9:32 PM, Pudim said:

Has the staff considered ways to monetize the game?
As for example google adsense in the game and in the site / forum ... add avatars and customization option, free and premiuns?
I believe that a little money can help the sustainable growth of the game.

google adsense on site with 0 traffic

NICE IDEA PUDIM !!! XDDDD

HAHA

 

for google adsense you need thousands of visitors daily and even then profit is minimal

 

 

ads in game will kill the game

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What WFG wants is cosmetics and other non pay2win features. every serious game does it and does great.

usually, in games cosmetics are things like:

- exotic haircut

- tattoos

- face accessory, likeeye glassess

- muscles,

- character skin

-character clothes

 

that may be hard to implement in 0A.D because characters are small af.

but its still possible, give your knights rich look and people will buy it

 

every game that goes for pay2win model dies with time (usually chinese MM0RPGS !!)

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5 hours ago, thankforpie said:

What WFG wants is cosmetics and other non pay2win features. every serious game does it and does great.

usually, in games cosmetics are things like:

- exotic haircut

- tattoos

- face accessory, likeeye glassess

- muscles,

- character skin

-character clothes

 

that may be hard to implement in 0A.D because characters are small af.

but its still possible, give your knights rich look and people will buy it

 

every game that goes for pay2win model dies with time (usually chinese MM0RPGS !!)

Diablo Immortal?

WAoz8ym.jpg

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On 09/03/2019 at 16:03, thankforpie said:

google adsense no site com 0 tráfego

NICE IDEA PUDIM !!! XDDDD

HAHA

 

para o google adsense você precisa de milhares de visitantes diariamente e, mesmo assim, o lucro é mínimo

 

 

anúncios no jogo vão matar o jogo

google adsense is not just for website, it can be used in games and could be placed in the lobby and the room where it creates matches, and even while waiting to synchronize players

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The purpose of Wildfire Games is to create free software. From what I can tell 0 A.D. is one of the highest quality free video games and probably the most qualitative free RTS videogame. It seems silly to depart from that unique position to become a lower tier proprietary RTS.

Doing free software means that one can't sell licensed copies of code or artfiles like thankforpie proposed if one wants to remain an organization operating exclusively to produce free software (because free software grants everyone the right to make free copies).

That doesn't mean that one can't use crowdfunding to further 0 A.D. And the fact that free software is a charitable cause gives WFG and donors tax-exemption at least.

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35 minutes ago, fabio said:

Selling code or art should be possible, STK does just that (as well as Red Hat and other commercial free software companies): https://supertuxkart.net/Donate 

Just because one organization does it too doesn't mean that it's ethical or legal.

The key point is one needs a legal entity in order to receive money and explain it to the tax people.

I had asked stk once how they are organized with that regard and it seems all money goes to one specific contributor. The natural person is the legal entity who is part of the contract of PayPal and has or would have to pay taxes.

Wildfire Games is in a different situation, we are a member project of Software in the Public Interest. They are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, hold Wildfire Games funds and accept donations. An organization is only then a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization if they are run exclusively for charitable purposes.

Notice that this doesn't make Wildfire Games a non-profit organization, but surely everything that goes through SPI (most notably the SPI PayPal account) must be exclusively for charitable purposes.

So that doesn't stop individual Wildfire Games members from using their natural person as a for-profit legal entity. But once the payments exceed "reasonable compensation" and the charitable purpose / free software status of 0 A.D. would be in question, then the IRS would also have to reconsider whether SPI is operated exclusively for charitable purposes.

I just wonder whether Wildfire Games would actually have to sell licenses, or whether offering services to achieve charitable purposes against reasonable compensation isn't already sufficient. If people want a new pathfinder and if a new pathfinder costs much more than we have in the account, and if we know someone who can actually do one, then do we really need artists to create some custom player models instead of going for a new pathfinder campaign?

11 hours ago, elexis said:

The purpose of Wildfire Games is to create free software. From what I can tell 0 A.D. is one of the highest quality free video games and probably the most qualitative free RTS videogame. It seems silly to depart from that unique position to become a lower tier proprietary RTS.

Also need to mention that historically 0 A.D. was created specifically for that reason that people were unhappy with proprietary Age of Empires 2 and wanted to have free software that gives them the freedom to change every aspect of the game. So it's not only a unique position and a charitable cause to give up, but creating proprietary content also gives up on the historic reason for 0 A.D. being free software:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080711014849/http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=1492

Quote

We were continually banging our heads against the wall trying to work around the limitations imposed on us by modding the AoK game. Members were frustrated.

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So you redact your expressed donor intent that I acted upon for 4 weeks?

I guess everyone posting here only wants to play with less lag and doesn't really mind whether it's achieved by threading or by writing a new pathfinder, so perhaps one can satisfy that demand already with the existing but unfinished pathfinder threading patch.

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Hi, i care about 0 ad.

Doing something again and again  is the deffinition of insanity.

If 0 ad or wfg doesnt change i see no future here.

Break paradigms, change is the only unevitable law in the universe.

Donations for me are like begging for coins in the street.

People work different if they do it for free.

LET THERE BE 0AD!!!

9days till tendon

flies away

Spoiler


 

AE05C1C5-4066-40B5-8028-7A98F1D44FCB.thumb.JPG.3315dbd6472f8c472db99ff965e71175.JPG

 

 

Edited by elexis
Added spoiler
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1 hour ago, itrelles said:

Donations for me are like begging for coins in the street. 

Yes, donations are done without return value consideration. But that's not everything that 501(c)(3) is.

1 hour ago, itrelles said:

Break paradigms

-> Hat

11 minutes ago, itrelles said:

elexis come play lms we miss u sad face 

1 hour ago, itrelles said:

Doing something again and again  is the deffinition of insanity. 

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