SquintGnome wrote:

Because of this, dedicating a 1,000 per month is not a remote possibility, maybe $1,000 per year.

I was thinking more along the lines of $1000 every 3 months.  Using my boards as a reference, and the progressive system I proposed, that comes in at ~$50 a year, enough to pay my yearly premium membership fee and buy a few beers.

At $1000 every six months, it doesn't even pay for my premium membership, but these are ball park numbers.   Make the progressives system more aggressive, and I think it could work. 

My understanding is that tom is amenable to the idea. At this point, we have no idea what kind of budget he has in mind, so we're just throwing numbers around.  At the very least, we're giving him ideas.

I guess I read "Board Payment System" very differently than what everyone else did. For some reason I read into it some sort of micro-economy similar to what ToS did, but hopefully very different! (I'm with Risky on not draining tom at all, or at least very little.)

Along those lines, I was very interested in Kjeld's idea:

"I think it would be interesting if such a system allowed site members to commission boards. They could offer a commission for a board designed with around a specific theme and/or conforming to specified game play parameters, and then designers could bid on it. Would be pretty cool."

Ozyman wrote:

I don't think a bounty system needs to be integrated into the site.  It just takes a forum post and paypal for two people to work it out between themselves. 

Good point. Perhaps the site could encourage a culture of board commission. Maybe we have a simple protocol like "put a request in the mapmaker forum with 'board commission' in the title". And then mention that in the FAQ or elsewhere.

Hugh wrote:

I guess I read "Board Payment System" very differently than what everyone else did. For some reason I read into it some sort of micro-economy similar to what ToS did, 

With the tos system, players shelled out money to buy board time, but that's money that could have been put in the owners' pockets had they elected not to let some of the money go to the designer.  When I look at it with this perspective, I don't see as much difference between the two systems.

The difference is that the tos free market model is based on perceived value,  whereas the less arbitrary 'pay designers based on the value of their boards model' is based on the premise that volume of play is an indicator of value.

If you wanted to dispute the validity of the latter premise, an alternative way to structure the payment might be to count the number of unique users, bringing it closer to the tos model in terms of what determines where the money is coming from.

A more tos-like system is somewhat out of the question because a play any board pretty much all you want model is already in place, and it would be very unpopular to take that away.

I don't see cultivating a culture of commissioning working out; the existing competitions are pretty much filling that role, and in a more equitable way imo. but I've been wrong before ..and I'm sure I'll be wrong in the future.

Hugh wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

I don't think a bounty system needs to be integrated into the site.  It just takes a forum post and paypal for two people to work it out between themselves. 

Good point. Perhaps the site could encourage a culture of board commission. Maybe we have a simple protocol like "put a request in the mapmaker forum with 'board commission' in the title". And then mention that in the FAQ or elsewhere.

This sounds like the current mapmaking competition format. Users choose the theme.

4146 games played on WGWF so far this month.*2 because the month is only half over. *.07 = $580.44

Assuming Tom does have the money, and that you find a good workable solution to a pay-per-play system, ask yourself this: 

"Does $50/month, (or /quarter or /year) actually create an incentive to make better maps?"

I mean, I can push out a plain old Risk style map overnight, and spend a couple of weekends polishing it. For $50/month passive income, I would probably do this quite a few times. For $50/quarter, it's just a novelty.

-IMO I think it creates an incentive to make more maps. 

I am also strongly of the opinion that paying for something that people do for free takes the value away from it.  -There is a term for this but I can't think of it just now-

A commission system is nice, because the commisioner and the consignee are entering an agreement of both their voluntary free will, therefore their motivations don't matter. And if the quality sucks, that's up to the review board and the man with the dollar bills. 

A pay per play system is a trade of money for incentive, but it actually cheapens the experience because it created entitled expectation with the designer, so it's not producing incentive. 

Don't get me wrong, getting paid for the hours and hours of time spent would be awesome. I think, however, it'll take more than a couple of dollars to create a real incentive. 

Do the math for yourself: If you work a reasonable job, how much is one hour of your time worth? How many hours have you poured into a board? Not a snowballs chance this site could pay me for my time and create a motivation. 

You need to think about other kinds of motivators for this community. Competition is a good one because all these people come here to win a war.  

Maybe we could have successful maps add to your score in some way. That seems to motivate many. 

Maybe we should start ranking designers against one another... I know being ranked 1000th overall now feels really crappy compared to the 200th I was a few months ago.  I would feel the same way if I dropped from #4 map designer to #15 and I would likely work to correct it.  

 

If someone commissioned a board, it will only create a higher quality more goal focused board if the commission was open to free competition.  The designers should have to bid on a commission or submit a plan or something.  Doing better than others will force the quality of board creation up.

Maybe we could occasionally let players bid on a theme.  Winning bid gets to pick the theme.  Or someone could just declare their own competition and put up their own prize money and their own rules for voting etc.

 

I think a milestone premium membership benefit would be good.  You get a month for getting a map to Go Live, a month for 100 games played, a month for good reviews over a certain amount of reviews given and that such thing.  This would encourage people to continue making maps to gain more months of membership and since we have the review board it should limit people making a ton of crap just for freebies (*cough ???????????*)

I like Risky's idea, although if Tom thinks he is making enough money from wargear to institute some micro-payment trickle-down profit-sharing scheme, that would be fine with me.  This discussion is pretty interesting, but it's all up to Tom in the end, and without knowing the direction he would like to head (i.e. free memberships, vs. cash  & at what levels are available for distribution) it's hard to say how I think it should be structured.

 

Ozyman wrote:

Maybe we could occasionally let players bid on a theme.  Winning bid gets to pick the theme.  Or someone could just declare their own competition and put up their own prize money and their own rules for voting etc.

...

Except for the bidding, how is this any different from the current mapmaking competition?  How much more incentive would this system give to mapmakers than the current competition?

AttilaTheHun wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

Maybe we could occasionally let players bid on a theme.  Winning bid gets to pick the theme.  Or someone could just declare their own competition and put up their own prize money and their own rules for voting etc.

...

Except for the bidding, how is this any different from the current mapmaking competition?  How much more incentive would this system give to mapmakers than the current competition?

They get paid.

Well, currently if you win, you do get paid - $60 for first place.

> Except for the bidding, how is this any different from the current mapmaking competition?

I guess it could be exactly the same except for the bidding.  The difference would be one person would end up getting to choose whatever they want as the theme.

 

Alternatively, if someone put up money for their own contest they could do it however they want.  In one form this would be the same as a bounty.  i.e. the contest is whoever first makes this map wins & gets $PRIZE.

Bidding for boards isn't what I was thinking and I don't think there is a real need to that sort of system.

I think the case could be made that some Designers may put a bit more love into their boards if they get some kickback, but ultimately it's just nice to see someone give monetary value to your board and to get some sort of small return occasionally.

Back to how TOS does it (which, again, I don't think is necessarily the best), but it puts the control in the Player and the Designer's hands (with a small % going to Paypal and TOS) by having the Designer set up if the board can be played for free or must be bought.  Buying them also grants the ability to start Tournaments on them, so there is value in purchasing the board.  I could potentially see something similar working to where a Designer has the ability to set up possible limits (games/tournaments) and once the limit is reached the Player can either stop playing games on the board (for a time or good) or could "buy" the board to completely open the limits or expand the limits.  This could potentially create a new source of income for tom as well if he gets a commission of the sale.

Based on the revenue the site currently generates it wouldn't be economical to pay out an additional incentive to board designers on a monthly basis. I envisaged something similar to ToS with some boards being free to play and others being pay to play. This would be at the designers discretion.

It would only make sense to implement it if it improved the site by attracting more designers and leading to higher quality board designs. Would this be the case? I'm not completely sure, I don't think the level of compensation would ever really justify the time spent designing.

I think a pay to play system would be a hard sell, and might even alienate existing users.  The site is currently billed as an "all boards are free to play" site.  Premium members might be particularly annoyed, even if they get a "discount."

On the designer end. I was never comfortable with the tos system.  Figuring out the right price for a board felt like throwing a dart while blindfolded.  My gut says that actual play should decide the value of a board.

Yes, compensation will never come close to justifying time spent designing.  That's OK.  Any compensation, however small, represents an acknowledgement of the designer's work and skills.

I haven't read through all this yet, but I'm NOT in favor of adding $$ into the equation anywhere when it comes to maps (other than the current map developing incentive); be that pay to play, rewarding most plays, etc.

and when you said commission, the first thing that came to mind was someone paying me to develop their board idea either with game play ideas or image manipulation (like i did for amidon with gunslinger).

...now to go read things.

weathertop wrote:

when you said commission, the first thing that came to mind was someone paying me to develop their board idea either with game play ideas or image manipulation (like i did for amidon with gunslinger).

That was indeed the general idea I was floating. Not sure how I feel about it, but thought I'd put it out there.

Also, I tend to agree with weathertop on the overall distrust of any pay-to-play by board scheme. I make boards because, like Risky, I enjoy the creative outlet. I really like the current competition system, though, since there's challenge mixed with prestige mixed with some prize money for a sweetener. I would like to keep the challenges coming and do more to institutionalize them (perhaps even allowing individual players to host a challenge if they so choose).

weathertop wrote:

...

and when you said commission, the first thing that came to mind was someone paying me to develop their board idea either with game play ideas or image manipulation (like i did for amidon with gunslinger).

...

Ok this sounds like a different beast from what we've been talking.  So a more formal system than two people and a Paypal?

 

For example, if I had a great idea and really wanted a prestigious designer like Edward Nygma or Yama to design it, I would commission a board directly?

AttilaTheHun wrote:

For example, if I had a great idea and really wanted a prestigious designer like Edward Nygma or Yama to design it, I would commission a board directly?

I like this idea because I know I'm a large learning curve away from mapmaking. And I have ideas for maps that I'd like to see on here. And there is a talent pool to draw on.

tom wrote:

It would only make sense to implement it if it improved the site by attracting more designers and leading to higher quality board designs. Would this be the case? I'm not completely sure, I don't think the level of compensation would ever really justify the time spent designing.

I agree that the level of compensation is normally not justify the time spent designing specifically, however, I do think that a monetary kickback to Designers would potentially lead to better quality (although there issue of attempts at quantity), but more importantly could lead to Designers sticking around longer.  I would think Designers would be more apt to revisit the site if they knew they had some $$$ that could be cashed in.  I could potentially see designers like Red Baron and Cumberdale visiting more often and potentially getting pulled back in to design (and thus good maps) if they came back to check their balances.  Some designers did get some nice dinners out of board sales, but this was not necessarily the case (I think I even spent some of my few dollars on buying another board on TOS).

One of my boards on TOS sold the other day, and while I didn't cash in (ha! like that would work anyway) and the $5 in the past two years isn't going to keep the kids fed, I did log in to TOS and poked around some.  Not to mention that TOS got $0.33 on the $2.00 board, so it's an added revenue for the site. 

M57 wrote:

Kjeld wrote:

I think Hugh's referring to the board game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(board_game)

Oh.. I didn't know the game had already been invented!  I was working on a way to make almost the exact game and I gave up because the only way I could think to make it was to have the designer support combinations and even permutations.   It's all but impossible without them.  ..at least the way I wanted to do it. There are just too many ways to get across a board.

I couldn't find the thread where I asked, but I know I asked.

 

Re: Hex - I thought of doing Hex before I did Octagons, but did not because I thought Hex strategy was more or less "solved".  It certainly can be done using the same general set-up that I did for Octagons.