Waiting screen before game - FAQ

[sourisdudesert]

Is it allright for you when you will lose 50% of non-paying players and gain 20% paying players?

Obviously not, as the main reason of this website is to promote board games to a large audience.

[yoyote]

Hi,
I'm a paying-user.

Reasons
1° no ads (I wanna help the model).
2° to reward for the service (I spend a lot of time on bga).
3° transparency.
4° 24€ by year is not changing my life style.
And of course the number and quality of the games, and all the rest.

When anyone understand that this service can't live for a long time without gifts, and can eat every day without any problem, I don't understand why not to pay? 24€/$... Are there any other reasons than "if I can not pay for quite same thing than paying, why should I do" ?

PS : I'm not 'rich'

[Romain672]

Ce serait bien que la fréquence/durée des messages dépende de la durée théorique? des parties.

[Espina]

Hi,
I'm a paying-user.

Reasons
1° no ads (I wanna help the model).
2° to reward for the service (I spend a lot of time on bga).
3° transparency.
4° 24€ by year is not changing my life style.
And of course the number and quality of the games, and all the rest.

When anyone understand that this service can't live for a long time without gifts, and can eat every day without any problem, I don't understand why not to pay? 24€/$... Are there any other reasons than "if I can not pay for quite same thing than paying, why should I do" ?

PS : I'm not 'rich'

Hi,

I'm a member as well, and I absolutely love this site, and I love the fact that there are no ads. That being said, economies are not the same worldwide, and there may be people on here for whom 24€/$ per year *is* a lot. I've played with players from India, Mexico, Romania, Bulgaria, for whom I imagine $25 makes more of a difference than for me. I have not encountered anyone from Africa, but I suppose that it is even worse for them.

[Jest Phulin]

I think you can join two long standing discussions with the same answer :
You should give trophies and rewards to members only.
Some players want to be on the top of the list (even with cheating) : OK, then help the site. Become member and your name will be on the list!
Play freely as much as you want with no banner, no delay but no one except your friends will know you are one of the best player in the world! !!!
my2p

I like this idea. While taking away free ELO would cause massive problems, ELO knowledge doesn't need to be removed in order to do this. Simply remove non-members from the list of top players.

They can still get to know that they are a top player by comparing their ELO to the players on the list.
They can still try to brag about being the top rated.
Nobody else will know, because other people aren't going to take the time to go to a player profile, see the ELO of more than 1 game, then check the leaderboards of those games to see where the person ranked, and then check it against everyone else claiming the same thing. People who care more about ELO than having fun also tend to be people who need others to know that they are "the best in the world."
They also can't have any trophies or awards shown on their profile page. They may actually be the best at the game, with more games played than anyone else on the site. All their profile would show is "ELO XXX, yyy games played." It doesn't matter what the XXX and yyy are, most people will kind of just glance at those values and mentally move on.


Disclosure statement: I am a member who pays because I want to support the site because I have fun here. Making the site annoying to others who like to have fun restricts the chances I will find an opponent who is playing for fun.

[N_Faker]

That sounds like the best way to not only alienate regular users, but premium users as well.
What use is a ranking system if it doesn't include everyone?

[yoyote]

Suggestion pour que les gens s'inscrivent : faire une news sur le sujet de la non viabilité actuelle de bga et sur la nécessité que certains deviennent membres. Comme le rythme des news officielles est très modéré, ça renforcera l'impact.
On pourrait même imaginer une sorte de crowfunding, avec des engagements spéciaux de votre part si un certain montant de dons est atteint.

Je rejoins la quasi-totalité des commentaires précédents pour dire que la solution du wait screen n'est pas bonne. Là, les gens ont l'impression qu'on leur enlève un dû. Vous pouvez dire que sans avoir essayé on ne saura pas, mais le risque de perte d'image est à mon avis trop élevé.

[Espina]

Out of curiosity, have you guys considered what I am going to call (for want of a better name) the New York Time model of revenue generation?

NYT has the following policy: Every month you can read 10 news articles for free. If you want to read more you have to get their subscription.

By analogy, you could allow non-subscribing players to play 30 (or some number of) games free every month. For greater access, people could subscribe. You could even make it multi-tiered with different levels of subscription.

Just a thought. I don't know whether it will make people more or less angry than they already are about the waiting screens.

[Shaq Jenkins]

Out of curiosity, have you guys considered what I am going to call (for want of a better name) the New York Time model of revenue generation?

NYT has the following policy: Every month you can read 10 news articles for free. If you want to read more you have to get their subscription.

By analogy, you could allow non-subscribing players to play 30 (or some number of) games free every month. For greater access, people could subscribe. You could even make it multi-tiered with different levels of subscription.

Just a thought. I don't know whether it will make people more or less angry than they already are about the waiting screens.

Adapting this policy would completely kill BGA. Limiting the number of games people can play is a great way to alienate non-subscribing members. Another gaming site that I was a member of adapted that policy and their memberships plummeted (I think they shut down recently).

I'm okay with the wait screen, but I don't think it will make subscriptions increase. These wait screens were probably designed for people like me who play often but don't pay. I have enough gift points to buy a 1 month membership - maybe I'll cash those in.

[Espina]

Out of curiosity, have you guys considered what I am going to call (for want of a better name) the New York Time model of revenue generation?

NYT has the following policy: Every month you can read 10 news articles for free. If you want to read more you have to get their subscription.

By analogy, you could allow non-subscribing players to play 30 (or some number of) games free every month. For greater access, people could subscribe. You could even make it multi-tiered with different levels of subscription.

Just a thought. I don't know whether it will make people more or less angry than they already are about the waiting screens.

Adapting this policy would completely kill BGA. Limiting the number of games people can play is a great way to alienate non-subscribing members. Another gaming site that I was a member of adapted that policy and their memberships plummeted (I think they shut down recently).

I'm okay with the wait screen, but I don't think it will make subscriptions increase. These wait screens were probably designed for people like me who play often but don't pay. I have enough gift points to buy a 1 month membership - maybe I'll cash those in.

The thing is, not generating enough revenue will (eventually) completely kill them as well. Although it may not be apparent to the end user, it costs money to keep a site like this up and running.