No not an article examining the ethics on genetically modified food production, instead a post taking a look at the people who use gamemaker and their collective commerical value.
The GMC is valuable. 48,183 members are valuable – sure this is far from the biggest forum on the Internet but for a company wanting to target around 50,000 and countless unregistered young, predominately male and computer literate consumers there is certainly a high value attached.
What prompted me to write about the Game Maker market was a couple of things, firstly a Game Maker related project I am currently in the very early stages of planning, and secondly a post on the GMC by Jake Ruston of darksoft.co.uk offering Game Maker users a 15% discount on their domain names for sale at $12 a pop. For anyone considering – don’t buy them. Even with the discount they are $10.20, Hostigation are currently at $8.95 for new .com registrations and there are discount codes available on top of that.
Parahosting.net are another organisation who have attempted to target the Game Maker market – however with limited success. A post on their blog appears to suggest that the vast majority of people are choosing their free service instead of upgrading so they are actually loosing money.
Take YoYo. A relatively untouched organisation so far by Game Maker Blog, not sure how that has been the case when there has been so-much criticism elsewhere. An albeit small company barging into the collection of file hosting and review sites, think gamemakergames, 64digits and fighting to the top by, as it appears, buying gamemaker. Of course there is nothing wrong or illegal about this, however many people may see it as immoral and may disagree with Mark’s decision.
How long, I ask you, do you think it will be before YoYo start putting adverts on their site? No adverts at first to soften the blow, and then once everyone has started using them up the ads will go.
I returned to using Game maker a little late in the YoYo Saga to know the full story. Ideally YoYo would present the story on their website, – but then I’m not in their Public Relations department.
Just as a clarification, I’m pretty sure that YoYo didn’t ‘buy gamemaker’, it was more that YoYo was a startup company founded by the man himself, Mark Overmars, and his kronies.
I was attempting to exploit the GM market,…..
I was promoting my ref link 😛
*evil* 😛
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Robin
If they told us what they were doing, that would spoil the surprise.
“So, shall we start work on GM 8?”
“No. No. That’s what they’re expecting us to do…”
Lolz xD
They moved the GMC over to their own server. I believe.
I just wonder what they are going to do in the future – they haven’t really given us any info on their plans.
I don’t think their server fee’s would be that much. I mean I have 360GB and 3.6TB for 6.50 US a month. That would last for YoYo for a while. And when they need more they can simply contact the host for more. I do believe they probably went with a more expensive host. Their servers for YoYo Games are pretty slow so you’d at least hope they didn’t spend too much for them.
Oh and another important thng I should add. Back before YoYo was around I contacted Mark regarding something to do with advertising something. Not sure what it was. But he got back to me stating that he was not allowed to put ads on the Game Maker Site as it was hosted on the universities server. So if they are still using the universities server (I doubt it) they are not allowed to advertise on the site.
Phil, btw, the GMC is still at their original server.. only the subdomain changed.
Mark actually said that.. somewhere.
There are probably quite a few registered users, however most of the ‘pro’ members will have upgraded with version 5 or 6. For a company with around 5 employees (as I believe YoYo are), even though only one person is fulltime, there are obviously extra costs that were not there when Mark was independent. As they have not chosen to up the registration fee they obviously need to generate extra income from somewhere to cover their server fees and wages.
Well said Jassinc. If Yoyogames puts ads on their site, who cares? It’s just ads, MOST sites have ads. I’ll be fine with it as long as they’re not pop-ups, as well as it would be making YoyoGames generate more money, as I’m sure they pay people to extend GM cause I really doubt it’s free.
I’m certainly not trying to say that YoYo are greedy – as you say they haven’t put the price up.
And your point about people spending money is valid, people moan about the $20 upgrade to the pro version.
It’s a good point you bring up. But there is a problem, 90% of the users whinge about the cost of Game Maker, therefore they are not likely going to pay for much. So advertising is limited.
I don’t think YoYo Games will put advertising on the site unless they reach a point where their income is to the minimum. You’ve criticised YoYo as has the vast majority of the Game Maker Community. But have a look what they are providing… They haven’t put the price of Game Maker up, they are providing free game hosting for all users, all of which comes at a cost. The Game Maker Showcase had a whinge because they were going to take the forums down (which never happened – The database somehow got wiped, myself and snabela are unsure of why it has happened. I host GM Showcase incase you were wondering…) But lets face it, anybody that knew that forum will know that it destined for doom as some of the moderators had become corrupt and they were flaming all the n00bs.
Starting a company is hard work and expensive. They need to be given some slack. As for ads if they do it – I believe it will be because they finacially need the extra money to keep the company going. I don’t think YoYo is greedy at all – at this stage anyway.
Lets face it. Yoyo haven’t really done anything wrong. It’s Marks company so I don’t see why people are so “oh no! Intruders!” about it.
That’s my point of view anyway.
Ofourse its nothing to do with YoYo being greedy.. its just that they will need to put ads on there so they would make profit.. like any other company.
I can’t help it but think they’re losing money now, with all the servers and stuff, and only few (opinion) registrations.
Your own hosting organization: the new black.