Ways to raise money for BGA

[Liallan]

Design some t-shirts and sell them? (e.g. via teespring)

At its core, that is not a bad idea at all, but I don't know how well that would work in reality. Someone would have to have time to do this, and there would be issues shipping overseas and all that. But, there are people who like t-shirts.

[Morgalad]

Design some t-shirts and sell them? (e.g. via teespring)

At its core, that is not a bad idea at all, but I don't know how well that would work in reality. Someone would have to have time to do this, and there would be issues shipping overseas and all that. But, there are people who like t-shirts.

This is actually not a bad idea, on a online games clan I used to play we uploaded the clan logo to http://www.spreadshirt.com and all the commissions for the sales go for the clan to maintain the website and the teamspeak server (the comission is around 50% of the sale price!!!, so for a 20$ hoodie you'd get 10$) . They do T-shirts, mugs, pencil holders, baseball-stye caps, even phone cases... etc

BGA could upload the logo and they would get the commission for all merchandising.

[turtler7]

Rather than backtracking current ELO/ranking/statistics or even messing with current tournament layouts...

Why not introduce a separate new category designed to allow skilled players to show off? It would be particularly effective if that category had some kind of "season" where it ends and declares the current standings as place winners and then resets everyone and starts again. Monthly or quarterly seasons would probably work best. These could be sources of trophies to encourage play or just a hall of fame with past seasons winners searchable to see who is consistently towards the top. But only BGA members can take part in the standings. I know I would be interested in it for just a hall of fame but some people would get very competitive after a new source of trophies even if they are only modestly better than tournament win trophy counts.

The exact shape of how the rankings would be generated we should discuss and propose options.

Option 1: It could be just a cloned copy of the ELO system where the normal system is unaffected and carries on like normal, but players who are BGA members have a second ELO that resets each season so that the best, active players get recognition.

Option 2: It could be a poker chip style system where everyone starts with the same amount of points at the start of the month and each game they play against another BGA member is a flat transfer of points from loser to winner with a decay for games against the same player. For example, it could be everyone starts with 1000 points with a flat rate of 32 and a falloff of 50% per game with no change after the 6th game against the same opponent. So the first game could end 1032 to 968 and the second could end 1048 to 952 or 1016 to 984 with the largest possible gain against one opponent being 63 points for 5 straight wins. This would encourage the paying community to play a variety of opponents in the game they are trying to get to the top of rather than just subjugating their friends repeatedly. (Moderators might have to attempt spotting players "trading" wins in different games so they each get a boost in the one they care about the most. This shouldn't be hard to spot especially if some players only play a given game against one opponent several times and then never again.)

Option 3: Some type of traditional ladder with time based decay or a way for top players to buffer themselves to encourage them to keep playing while on top.

Given the new simple lobby / matchmaking search, this could just be a special playlist option to match up against someone else who also wants to compete in the season rankings so players do not have the ability to just challenge only friends they think they will beat. Or it could be all normal games with BGA members count towards these ranks played within the time window of a season.

[Shaq Jenkins]

Design some t-shirts and sell them? (e.g. via teespring)

At its core, that is not a bad idea at all, but I don't know how well that would work in reality. Someone would have to have time to do this, and there would be issues shipping overseas and all that. But, there are people who like t-shirts.

This is actually not a bad idea, on a online games clan I used to play we uploaded the clan logo to http://www.spreadshirt.com and all the commissions for the sales go for the clan to maintain the website and the teamspeak server (the comission is around 50% of the sale price!!!, so for a 20$ hoodie you'd get 10$) . They do T-shirts, mugs, pencil holders, baseball-stye caps, even phone cases... etc

BGA could upload the logo and they would get the commission for all merchandising.

I think this is a great idea. It's a wonderful marketing and publicity technique as well. I would definitely buy a t-shirt or coffee mug.

I didn't like most of the suggestions in the other thread because they felt punitive. Selling merchandise doesn't feel that way, though.

[Liallan]

Rather than backtracking current ELO/ranking/statistics or even messing with current tournament layouts...

Why not introduce a separate new category designed to allow skilled players to show off? It would be particularly effective if that category had some kind of "season" where it ends and declares the current standings as place winners and then resets everyone and starts again. Monthly or quarterly seasons would probably work best. These could be sources of trophies to encourage play or just a hall of fame with past seasons winners searchable to see who is consistently towards the top. But only BGA members can take part in the standings. I know I would be interested in it for just a hall of fame but some people would get very competitive after a new source of trophies even if they are only modestly better than tournament win trophy counts.

The exact shape of how the rankings would be generated we should discuss and propose options.

Option 1: It could be just a cloned copy of the ELO system where the normal system is unaffected and carries on like normal, but players who are BGA members have a second ELO that resets each season so that the best, active players get recognition.

Option 2: It could be a poker chip style system where everyone starts with the same amount of points at the start of the month and each game they play against another BGA member is a flat transfer of points from loser to winner with a decay for games against the same player. For example, it could be everyone starts with 1000 points with a flat rate of 32 and a falloff of 50% per game with no change after the 6th game against the same opponent. So the first game could end 1032 to 968 and the second could end 1048 to 952 or 1016 to 984 with the largest possible gain against one opponent being 63 points for 5 straight wins. This would encourage the paying community to play a variety of opponents in the game they are trying to get to the top of rather than just subjugating their friends repeatedly. (Moderators might have to attempt spotting players "trading" wins in different games so they each get a boost in the one they care about the most. This shouldn't be hard to spot especially if some players only play a given game against one opponent several times and then never again.)

Option 3: Some type of traditional ladder with time based decay or a way for top players to buffer themselves to encourage them to keep playing while on top.

The one thing I would say to this is that it would need to be something that either didn't get in anyone's way or that would be opt-in only. What I mean by that is that just because someone is a paying member does not necessarily mean they would want to participate in anything like these and it shouldn't affect them if they don't want it to.

Actually, this idea of having top players for a season has been proposed before, but it wasn't related to fund raising, so it wasn't related to paying member. I think the idea was just having a way to encourage people in the top to keep playing, so that "current" top players was sort of a separate thing from "all time" top players who might not be playing any longer.

[e1q3z9c7]

I have an idea: there's some games we wish to play on BGA, why not "Crowdfunding"? Each wishing game should have a goal sum. If someone donate certain money he should play that game for free forever if it reaches the goal eventually. I think this help BGA to be greater and also makes money

[Victoria_La]

I have the following suggestions

1) Generic Donate button, visible on fist page. I asked them before and they said that they cannot do it in France. Which I find kind of unbelievable.

2) Sell game badges (as form on donation). It has to be a game specific. Have cool tokens from the game, figurines or other stuff (digital form, not a real stuff). Then have a page "Supporters of Game X" where all people who got badges will be shown, sorted by number of badges. Some people really would pay $3 for a badge just to show support and see themselves on that page.

3) As was mentioned earlier - ability pay for a specific game, rather full price of membership (if game is premium)

[Romain672]

And what about put each new game as a prenium game while something like 2 months.
And after, the game become free (except for games who will stay prenium).

[sourisdudesert]

And what about put each new game as a prenium game while something like 2 months.

We did that in the past and will continue to do it BUT it has huge constraints in terms of communication : the launch of a game is critical for its future success on BGA so a launch for premium only has also drawbacks.... so there is a risk to lose the "momentum".

[Romain672]

And limit these games only between prenium member while 1 week...
The momentum sould happen one week after.
But does prenium member wants to wait a lot more for a new game... Perhaps only on game with few players per table.