The Mana World Forums

This topic goes through my mind very often because I think monetary incentives are crucial to making quality content for TMW, and for people to have more time to contribute.

Foreword to those who play TMW: I am not proposing that you get charged to play! TMW would have to compete a lot harder before ever being in a position to ask you to pay for access. Rather, this post probes ways that you could get paid for contributing when you ask.

This article argues that reward doesn't motivate people, but we shouldn't be looking for mere "reward", devoting time and effort costs. Some of us, especially the more skilled, cannot ignore the costs of taking time from other things to work on TMW.

Commissions, bounties, Street Performer Protocol, donations, ads, and "Summer of Code" are some methods you might see an open source project using for paid development.

A commission is when someone pays you to create something, like a new monster. It can be an upfront payment or you might only get paid when it is finished exactly how the recipient would like. A bounty on the other hand is when one or more people put a substantial amount of money together and offer it to whoever can succeed in implementing the wanted feature.

SPP is more complicated. The Wikipedia article describes a system that individuals don't have the means to try through the 'net. It would require a goal meter and a way to reimburse the people who pledged. I think it would work well for people in the recording industry who want to make a lot of money before releasing a song to the internet for free download as described here

There's also the controversial method of letting people buy special gears that will give them bonuses or do some trick. It would have to be considered carefully, if at all. Being able to pay for an advantage would spoil other player's fun.

Depending on what TMW's community is like at the time, you could develop a monster or something. Do all the work alone without posting WIP, try to have it scripted and drop-in ready, and then post an example of the finished work. I think it would be best to post the full sprite sheet with watermarks and scaled down a little, have the first frame show in full quality though. Show enough of it to prove you've done the work, and then say that you will give the community the full version when you receive a certain amount of money. If no one pays you, just release the damn thing on xmas to the Awesome Stuff Box.

But can people trust that you will keep your word and release it when paid? This can present a problem if the community isn't prepared. Being banned doesn't hurt as much as being ripped off, but I guess such dealings can only be conducted at the participants own risk unless someone has more to say about how to ensure the promise is fulfilled.

Whether or not you can make money here depends strongly on what the community is like at the time. The amount of people, their ability to offer money, and if they think it is worth it.

The casual contributor might benefit from putting a 'donate' button in his sigblock and wiki user page.

Other things I've found truly worth reading:

• John's Guide to earning an income from a Free and Open Source project
• The Magic Cauldron and other such books by Eric Raymond.
• Micropayments are likely to make it much easier for open source to thrive. The easier and quicker sending and receiving money becomes, the more opportunity there is to devote time.
• There are other books and articles about open source economics. You should post them in a comment if they are worth reading.

bcs86 wrote:There's also the controversial method of letting people buy special gears that will give them bonuses or do some trick. It would have to be considered carefully, if at all. Being able to pay for an advantage would spoil other player's fun.

As long as the current GHP remains the GHP, that will never happen. Players can still do it between themselves, of course, but we will never do it officially.

bcs86 wrote:But can people trust that you will keep your word and release it when paid? This can present a problem if the community isn't prepared. Being banned doesn't hurt as much as being ripped off, but I guess such dealings can only be conducted at the participants own risk unless someone has more to say about how to ensure the promise is fulfilled.

Which is why in SPP, you tend to have a third party hold the money in escrow until the job is complete. If it isn't, they return it to the payers.

Whether or not you can make money here depends strongly on what the community is like at the time. The amount of people, their ability to offer money, and if they think it is worth it.

There aren't so many people in this game compared to other games. Also I think there are many who are playing games like this BECAUSE they can play it for free.
Of course donations would be cool but in this community i don't think it would work so well. I would donate a bit if I could, but I can't. Others maybe could but won't because "it's my right to play this without paying" even if that is a stupid reason...

But I think a button for donations on the mainpage wouldn't be bad. Announcing that donations can be made. And making a List with a cool name ("Hall of honor" or so) where people who donate will appear with their nickname.

Leela wrote:Of course donations would be cool but in this community i don't think it would work so well.

It worked pretty well when Platyna needed to buy new hardware.

Leela wrote:But I think a button for donations on the mainpage wouldn't be bad. Announcing that donations can be made. And making a List with a cool name ("Hall of honor" or so) where people who donate will appear with their nickname.

But who decides how the donations are distributed among the contributors?

I could, and I think would, probably donate a small amount but it would be very, very little, and as Crush said: who would actually get the money?

wait until a certain amount is reached then share it fair between those who put so much time in this... Not everyone who made a grafik should get some but everyone who is working on this so much.... for example project leaders or so...

bcs86 wrote:Depending on what TMW's community is like at the time, you could develop a monster or something. Do all the work alone without posting WIP, try to have it scripted and drop-in ready, and then post an example of the finished work. I think it would be best to post the full sprite sheet with watermarks and scaled down a little, have the first frame show in full quality though. Show enough of it to prove you've done the work, and then say that you will give the community the full version when you receive a certain amount of money.

This is so far the proposal which makes the most sense to me. It has the highest amount of transparency because players know exactly who receives their donation and for what work.

But when I would work under this premise I would still post WIPs early because 1. this is my style and 2. it would allow me to make deals with donors to make specific changes during development in exchange for additional donations (like give me 5 € and I incorporate an NPC which is named an looks like your girlfriend).

A lot of ideas comes to my mind when money is involved, as a contributor I even donated once to keep the domain name active, I think the donors are us, the contributors.

Getting money somehow from donors (players) in exchange for monsters/items/goods, will corrupt the actual system, pop up a lot sudden big contributors (looking just profit), get attention from people that has never even played the game (that can be good and bad), some big wallet boy will twist the game at will because they can pay for it.

Also is unfair that a Graphic contributor will have better chances than a code developer because nobody wants to pay to fix a client code or a server code, they want something they can use in the game.

AxlTrozz wrote:A lot of ideas comes to my mind when money is involved, as a contributor I even donated once to keep the domain name active, I think the donors are us, the contributors.

Getting money somehow from donors (players) in exchange for monsters/items/goods, will corrupt the actual system, pop up a lot sudden big contributors (looking just profit), get attention from people that has never even played the game (that can be good and bad), some big wallet boy will twist the game at will because they can pay for it.

Also is unfair that a Graphic contributor will have better chances than a code developer because nobody wants to pay to fix a client code or a server code, they want something they can use in the game.

Please do not do the donors for monsters things. That is soo misguided, it would ruin the game.

To be honest. If it looked like this game had a goal. I would easily donate a 50 euro PER ACCOUNT. Hell I would even pay for my friends to have one.

But you have to actually get it together. You can not have an admin, that is in college, shows up when she feels like it, gives away items on a whim and dissapears.

You have to have a structure for scheduled releases. You have to get volunteer to help with game play concepts and testing.

The current problem is that the game is a dead man walking. Everyone is waiting for the next server. The stuff that gets release is a "good old boy's club" only.

To be honest, if you want to make money. It is really easily, I help run 3 non-profits. You have to make it look like you are doing something. You have to show the people, these are the things that we are going to try to do. Here is how you can help.

Then when someone says, I can try to help, how can I help. You do not say, we are ok. We do not need help.

The society offered several times to several people to help with the last release. And we where told to go get bent.

You want money, that is fine. But you have to produce. Right now, there is no production, I know you are going to say, look at the forums. If you look at the forums, it is soo cryptic that it slips into the realms of narcissistic behavior.

When you have a person that has only has money to give, you probably do want to show them around.

I do not tell anyone that walks into the gay resource center looking to help, "take a look around and find where you fit in." I give them a list of what needs to be done. I tell them how to do it. And they do it.

This is pointless, I am talking to myself.

I will only say this, every week, I send out a newsletter. The news letter clearly states what the current goals are, where we want to be by next week, what you have missed, and where we need to improve.

Every week I ask someone, where do we stand in this game. And I get, ask jax, ask freeyorp, idk, and ask dayve, (which is a mystery be he seems have a little more then the rest).

If you want to get people behind you, you have to communicate that. I have repetitively said this.

YOU HAVE ZERO,ZIP, NADA COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE GROUP HOLDING POWER AND THE COMMUNITY. ZERO.

As long as that continues, you will not get donations and people will continue to leave.

I am sorry but this is the truth.

If you want everyone to back you up, they have to know where you are to stand behind you. Each month someone needs to email everyone in the group/developing. Find out what is going to happen for the next month. Not solid dates/times/events, but general.

You need someone to step up. But when someone does, you just blow them off. There are some really big power issues in this group, when you fail to deliver, you fail to entice donations. The only way not to fail is to talk. Everyone that develops this game or/and has power in decisions refuses to talk.

To prove my point I will try to do this. I will pm everyone that develops/holds power and see where they stand currently.

And yes it is space to make you mad mr I, just for you.

Dark water.

If you collect money give it to those contributors that invest money in tmw - like our borg queen for the server, the guy who pays the domain and me for my internet connection fees.

Matt wrote:If you collect money give it to those contributors that invest money in tmw - like our borg queen for the server,

Agree, keeping the servers requires good money.

Matt wrote:the guy who pays the domain.

A better idea is to pay for the future expenses in domain names. What is done is done.

Matt wrote:and me for my internet connection fees.

No agree, hehe, but nice try

I agree with DarkWater on the "let people help you thing".

I wanted to help many times. Especially with my old character, that is not playing anymore. What did I learn from my old characters tries. I learned "just don't try it, they don't want your help".
Last time I tried was the fluid magic thing (Content development). Crush told me there are grafics but I could think of a quest. So I did. I thought about what NPC would fit, what are the dialouges, what is needed, who can do it, what if the wrong person wants to do it, blabla. I also asked how to script it, but suddenly, when there is a good idea (yes I say my idea is good) noone is answering anymore, no hints are coming for people who try (in grafic dev there are actually some good helps).

I mean look, you need help. No matter if you wanna hear it or not. You need much more quests, you need more maps and monsters and NPC's but everytime I see a good idea of anyone, there is no answer, there is noone who says, "ok how exactly are we going to do this, let's try". What more does one have to do? I myself ran out of ideas.

Also I agree with DarkWater on the transparency.
People who could donate want to know what's happening. And looking in the forum is not an option because in the forum it is confusing and you have to search for everything. Someone you expect to donate should at least get clear information in an easy way. News on the mainpage at least every two weeks or a newsletter or a regular meeting ingame where one of the devs shows up and tells people what happened lately. Why is it so important to keep everything a secret? People would be much more excited and would like to stay in the game if they knew that there is something new coming up especially if they knew what...
I don't think, writing an information for everyone, makes so much work compared to all the scripting, pixeling, working on sounds, organizing the team...

Also I keep on what I said in the last post here. I would donate some money if I could. Of course if I know where it goes to, why there, and what is happening...

cu ingame
Leela

Leela wrote:Also I keep on what I said in the last post here. I would donate some money if I could. Of course if I know where it goes to, why there, and what is happening...

Hugs, thank you for stepping forward, you have shown more backbone then 99% of all the players in this game, you need to be congratulated.

It is not about money. The power that be has only one goal, to stay in power. Today, I will contact all the members of that group that I know on this server. I will personally ask them what is going on and specifically what can be done to help in to endeavor.

90% of them will not answer back, about 5% will tell me to go get bent, and about 4% will get really nasty with me.

I know the break down pretty good, so I will not be surprise.

This is not about the game. This is about power and control. They love their position too much to have a serous conversation about the game.

I will quote katze

katze wrote: All past GMs with (different) high ambitions have failed (in different ways) and are no longer GMs. And you seem do have high ambitions - which is not a bad thing as such. But they don't work out.

...I simply do think your ambitions are too high. Period.

She is 100% correct in that statement. If you come to this game wanting to make it better, they view it as ambitious. This ambition threatens the control of the current group holding power has. They have two real options, stop you before you gain any power, or drive you away if you have any. So instead of giving you a chance to make real change, they will always step up, and stop you. They always will. Leela, you have to understand that.

So we are faced with this. A community that loves this game. A group holding power that loves the power more then the game. The age old problem. How do we get the people with power to listen to the community they have power over?

That, leela, is time and love.

1.) We must not quit. Quitting is what they want, Quitting is what they predict we will do. We have a duty to this game, that we love, to make sure we fight to the bitter end to make it better.
2.) I will start a thread after I contact them, I will hope I can get feed back on what we need to do and how. This has to be an open process, in which everyone has a seat at the table. To pay back room deals and good old boy tatics, is dishonorable. We will show everyone we have honor and respect for them.
3.) If they do not want to create change for this game in an way that involves the community, then we will have do it as a community. We will band together. In the real world, countries are build not by labors but by dreamers.

I understand that the above statements will only end in me falling down and getting beat up. But I love this game. I will just have to get back up, dust myself off, and go back at it. Anyone that knows me, knows I am not a quitter.

Consistent and persistent pressure is what is needed, and we will do our best.

In the words of Douglas MacArthur

General Douglas MacArthur wrote:Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

A common way is to put together a foundation to hold the intellectual property (mostly: logo, name) of your project. If you do it correctly, you can receive donations tax free (and in some tax systems the donations companies make for you are tax deductible). Then the aforementioned foundation can give money to whatever their rules allow (mostly: development of the said project). They can even legally hire people.

Apart from that it'd be nice to see manasource register for the next Google Summer of Code. Unfortunately they do not accept pixel art as a worthy subject for that.

Collecting 30k+ (USD/EUR) and hiring one professional pixel artist for a year would indeed be a tempting idea given the capital. Also for pixel art aspirants giving 1k-2k (USD/EUR) per major assignment (set of spritesets, tileset) would boost contribution.

Daydreaming is fun, isn't it?

To answer the actual topic line of this conversation: in open source you make money on services, not content or products.

Rotonen wrote:To answer the actual topic line of this conversation: in open source you make money on services, not content or products.

The article from the Damn Small Linux guys says they make most of their income from advertising and donations.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/income-gu ... ctive.html