You have to understand that I was posting that for the folks who have no clue about GR and such. You are one of the few people who knows some of the inside stuff with Scott Kevill while the majority are in the dark, only to have like shed upon them by the assumptions that they make.
Anyone without a clue of GameRanger probably wouldn't know about these forums.
I have very little information that most everybody here would have if they bothered to listen (read) and ask an occasional question instead of an accusation like I hear so often.
Okay... Is this general knowledge that was posted somewhere on this forum? If so, then great, show us! You have to understand that I asked if
we know how much money he makes from advertisements. I never asked if Bucc knew.
The point is that his financial situation is not general knowledge and that we should not even begin to assume that the reason why Scott Kevill implements GR in the way he does is solely based on profit margins.
Yes, it's been posted in this very forum more than once. You just need to go bak and read through all those threads that whine about paying for GR.
Or, you could just ask the guy. That's how I found out.
Bucc, show me these facts that everyone seems to know but me. Does anyone else other than Bucc have access to all the facts that we know? What I posted were the facts that I know of, but I don?t see anywhere on this forum where Scott Kevill disclosed financial matters of this nature that the readers here seem to be so inquisitive about.
And why would he disclose them on these forums? 1) These aren't his forums, and 2) I haven't seen anyone ask. I've heard lots of people make assumptions, that's about it.
As for why do I and others know, because I've listened to him on GameRanger. I've talked to him there. Asked him how things were going. You know, treated him like another human being, not like he was Bill Gates. That's probably why I get a bit steamed about this topic, people treat him like he's Bill Gates. Like the thought of him actually trying to make a profit at all makes him the devil himself.
I?m not sure what you?re getting at here? Maybe it was the part where the non-premium (non-supportive) freeloader should be blamed. If you offer it, don?t blame people for abusing it. It?s like the free samples at a super market. You know very well people take advantage of that stuff just like they do with GR and demo games. I?m just saying that some of the people on this forum are blatantly blaming non-premium users because they are ?taking advantage? of GR because they do not support it. I don?t agree with freeloading, but welcome to the year 2004 where freeloading is practically the motto in which some live by.
What I was getting to was that I think you were 100% wrong there.
You said he can't put his company in the hands of kids with monetary limits, I say he can, because the game companies, for one example, already do. If it didn't work, we wouldn't have the game industry.
You gave a bad analogy, I gave one that fit more closely.
Now you are saying not to blame people for taking advantage of it. I say, why shouldn't I (we)? Just because taking advantage of it seems to be more normal than not, doesn't make it right. Same with stealing music from the internet. Just because it's easy, and so many are doing it, doesn't make it right. With that kind of attitude, being a pedophile in black robes and white collar would be alright. Hey, all the other priests are doing it, why shouldn't I? Mob mentality never justifies a crime, or, in this case, an abuse. And before you say something about the abuse of little boys being different, look at what it's called. Abuse. It's called that for a reason.
You twisted that part, Bucc. When I was stating some Premium users put the blame on all non-premiums, and this is of course unfair. Yes, many of the kids out there have no monetary limits. Hell, they?re on their own Macintosh usually!
But, you have to admit that there are some people who can?t get Premium service because their parents won?t pay for it, regardless if they bought the game. Come on Bucc, how many parents do you know that would willingly send $50 to some strange guy named Evill who lives in Australia just because their kids said they wanted Premium, and probably for reasons like having their name in bold, hosting chat rooms, and in game voice communication with complete strangers halfway across the world?
I didn't twist it at all.
If a game company, like say Aspyr, saw everyone playing GhR DEMO for a year, but only had 5% of those (or less) actually pay for the game, how long do you think they'd stay in business? How long do you think that they would continue to offer free demos? Think about it.
How many parents? Id say as many parents as pay for xbox online, or any of those other pay services. Seems like there are a lot of them, aren't there? If kids with platforms can get their parents to pay for it, why wouldn't kids with Macs? It's not like the kids with the xbox are smarter, is it?
And don't treat GameRanger like it's just some thing in some guy's garage in Australia. It is a company, after all.
I complete agree with you here. My biggest issue is really with the non-cross platform compatibility, which has more to do with the block against IP joining. I have just as many friends who play on PCs as the ones with Macs, and it?s fun to have them go against each other head on head via GR.
This is a bad idea on so many levels.
1) this is a community of Mac players, many of us like it that way.
2) a good many spoke up against IP joiners (seems like you missed a whole lot of that in my last post.
3) look at all the game incompatibilities between PC and Mac. All the different versions. It's a mess.
4) for games like MOH, RTCW, etc, you can always use GR to make it easier to find games and your friends on PC servers, can't you? Or have you never discovered the server folders and how to use them?
It?s applies to most of us out here Bucc. Just because you know how the magician pulled that rabbit out of his hat doesn?t mean we all do. You have to admit that you know much more on this topic than most of us combined. That being said, why don?t you post Scott Kevill?s financial status on this forum? Include all of the advertisement fees, how much his servers cost in Australia, how much money he put into his own system, and any educational training he might have received for programming. The point here is that this stuff is not common knowledge. Frankly, it shouldn?t be, and I?m sick of people complaining about it and accusing Kevill of bilking us poor saps out of our hard earned cash. He blocks NF, which is a good business move to promote the new in-game voice communication for Premium users, and everyone screams rape and how they will never be able to talk to people again unless they give in to Kevill?s ?blackmailesque? business strategies.
Noto, I've tried and tried and tried to explain the demo version versus the full version business model.
And Evill's financial situation has absolutely nothing to do with a business model. All it has to do with is why he changed models.
And my knowledge here comes more from an MBA than talking to Evill, this is just study of business models.
But I'll try once more, please pay attention.
Evill's old business model was of having advertisers only pay for GameRanger. They could cover his static costs of bandwidth and hardware, as well as his time for both programming and also administrating (two different jobs, btw) of GameRanger.
With the dotcom crash, that business model has fallen apart for just about everyone.
Now, he went without any income for months and months, plus the number of users kept growing and growing, which increased his costs (GameRanger is not run off a simple T1, and one ad a month can't pay for an average T1).
So, now we get to the business model of the demo versus the full product. So he adds features to the full product. But he has a problem. Since he didn't start with this model, his demo version has too many features, there's just not enough delta v between the two versions.
So, he has to increase the gap between the two. Ok, yes, he adds more features to the premium, but in order to actually make it worth while, he has to prune down the features of the demo. Now this is what most people bitch about. They got this free before but not now. Which is true, but that was under a different business model.
So, to follow the model, the demo / free version should be just enough to make you want more. Just enough to get you into it, to generate interest, but also to leave you disappointed and craving the full version. It's that way for video games, that way for food at the supermarket, and that way for anything using this model.
I?m pointing out the fact that if someone doesn?t want to pay $50, they are not missing out on much, but they are still able to play games.
And I'm pointing out that they could be missing out on everything, if everyone felt that way. I say GR is worth the $50 a year, period. I don't look at the two versions and wonder if it's worth $50 to upgrade from one to another, I just think GR, as a whole, is worth the cash.
Army Ops Tracker offers a tracker, as does America?s Army itself. Even though AA?s is limited, it still tracks that stuff. Honor points anyone?
Army Ops Tracker is a web site. I know, I posted here about it long long ago. It is not a gaming service. It's pretty comparable to the *DAMN site though. And you'll notice that this site has nothing to do with GR, business wise.
As for honor being tracked in games, pfft. That is just part of a game. It has nothing to do with a gaming service. If you want to compare GR versus AA, I will start laughing.
What exactly were you trying to twist? I had already stated that it does not offer a free means of voice communication.
You said it wasn't offered, not that it wasn't a free option. There's no twist there. It is offered, just like leather seats in a car, if you are willing to pay for them.
Unless this was changed recently, I was previously unable to host games if I had another user logged in on my computer. It was to prevent users from running voice apps in the background under a different user. I even spoke with Scott about this and he confirmed that aspect of one of the updates. He said he was thinking about removing that only if you were the one hosting the game, but that was many months ago. I wasn?t able to host only a few weeks ago. Maybe this changed recently, but I know that block was there for a couple of months at the least.
Here, you are flat out wrong.
As a premium users, I can have multiusers logged in and still run games and host games. Yes, he limited this for non-premiums, but not for you us premium users. Yes, it is another option, but if you couldn't do it, it was your issue, because I always have.
And his thinking about removing that when hosting a game took all of one day. Since that did effect MP Servers 1 and 2, we talked to Evill the very night of that update. Hours later, we could host Servers 1 and 2 (non-premium) with multiusers logged into those computers. (this kind of customer service is one of the reasons that I do support Evill)
Those are facts, and I've talked with others about them in the past if you don't believe me.
GR is free, and so are/were many of its features. You have to remember that the people who are going to complain about this are the same people who couldn?t give a rat?s ass about supporting GR.
I felt that you were trying to put some slant against what I said as being some untruth and that I had no clue of what I was talking about. I felt that my post only addressed the facts that the majority of the public was aware of and also some of the concerns/complaints that I have read over and over again on this very forum. I also felt that my post would help to close the ?mouths? of some of the complainers out there who have no clue and only assume they know everything about GR and Scott Kevill.
First, referring to GameRanger as free is part of the problem. Second, it's those people that don't give a rat's ass about supporting it that are getting bad mouthed.
As for the last, your post didn't come off that way at all. It came off as you accusing Evill and GR, not defending it at all. The tone of your post, as I read it, is completely afoul of Evill's current business practices. And since some of the questions you asked have been answered, more in GR (where they belong) than here, yes, I do think you don't know everything you should have to broach the subject.
BTW, Kami wasn't whining about it, he was actually on the same side as I am in this case. And I did read all of it. If he was whining, it was at your post, not mine.
