I'd organize a community project. If it turns out to be worth paying for, it could become a commercial venture with all sales going towards supporting TDC?
Those dire times would run out before a suitable project could be finished. And the likelihood that enough sales would be made to bail the entire site out of the hole for a reasonable amount of time is a little slim. It costs something like $80 a month, doesn't it?
I think it would be a lot more profitable if several developers made a game each than everybody uniting to make a single game, specially considering 95% of the community projects I know died before they saw the light of the day.
Deadman Dines' idea FTW. I only read the first and last page, but it's a solid idea.
I'm thinking their are a lot of 'help' on projects and credits is perfect. With TDC as the 'publisher' it'd make it very easy on TDC to go off of percentages or credits for projects.
Although, I've never sold games, not aware of the complications behind it. Ex. Accountant? lol
thinking is like pong, it's easy, but you miss sometimes.
I havnt read this whole thread so I hope this isnt a repeat of somethign that has been said already.
This does sound like a good idea, but the main issue would be how to police what is worthy of being paid for and what isnt. If this was set up, every joe blow submitting a game on TDC will tick the option to enable payment just for the hell of it, I mean what has he got to lose? And most of the games will be crap and not worth the money.
IMO let TDC remain freeware. There are already games portals in place for paid games, let the users who want to make money focus on that instead.
Lol, I've seen only one team project get finished, and even then, the effort of trying to keep them moving burned out the team so much that people dropped out shortly after
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I suppose the core purpose of this thread is discussing ways that will actually help TDC.. it's true, pretty much every group/community project dies here before it becomes anything. So the focus of supporting TDC would be looking at reducing bandwidth and something viable which may return some profit to TDC to assist hosting costs.
I haven't read all this topic but I think if we worked in teams to make an awesome large game with hundreds of features, with lots of people working on it we might be able to sell it and make lots of money for TDC!!
Although I think the community game idea is nice, the problem I see with it are:
1) It'll probably never get finished
2) If it does get finished, it'll probably take more than a year to get it to a decent quality worth selling
3) If it is a decent quality worth selling, the number of people who will buy it will be limited (probably only people who visit DC on a regular basis)
I'm not saying don't go for it - I'm just saying it isn't going to help solve our hosting problems in the short term. We only have enough money to last us until September at the moment.
Then you should start right now. No need to recode but you could cut out a few features already, pick the page views that eat most of the bandwith and comment part of the code out. For example this answer frame.
Then present to the community how much you pay each month for the upkeep and list how much money in donations you need to keep the site running. Move the Donation frame to the top, above the user panel and maybe add three colored light to show if you are good to go for this month. Constantly remind people that they should donate to keep the site running. For example on the download page add a nag screen befire you can submit.
In general add layer ads to the page from another ad vendor.
And finally If people donate give them TDC points for their donation and make an option to purchase TDC points for money. Use the same donation button. I'm sure you can motivate a few people to spend a bit of money on a site they visit regular.
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