Animated panels or no, I wouldn't say boo to updating panels, such as for your Relto. I'm sure it would be an absolute minge to have it display a one to one depiction of each island for everyone, but perhaps just a yes/no in regards to what pages you have activated, and certain indicators of the passage of time.

As for loading screen ad placement, it could work (maybe) and it's more equal, more fair than buyables because every player is exposed to the ads equally and it doesn't cost players anything, but it does raise money for Cyan Worlds.

Cyan Worlds could hand-filter what ads are shown to ensure that they're not obscene, illegal, etc. Basically it'd be ads for adventure games, puzzle games, MMOs, whatever's relevant that Myst fans might respond to. Cyan Worlds can also advertise their own paid games in-game - RealMyst, Myst V, Riven, etc.

Look at it this way: Uru has 15,000 logins per day, each of which typically is a player traveling between a bunch of different ages during the login span - let's say 7 ages loaded per player per login - that's 105,000 ad impressions per day in Uru (if) Cyan Worlds were to allow ads during loading screens.

Look at TV ad rates - a 30-second ad spot on network TV generally costs about $1 for every 50 viewers reached - or $0.02 per ad view. If Cyan Worlds were to charge half that for an ad on a loading screen - $0.01 per impression (which seems fair if the ad is a large image and not video) - it'd add up to $1050.00 in income to Cyan Worlds per day at current login levels, or $383,250/year.

Players would also have the opportunity to support Uru financially simply by spending time in-game - even if you don't donate anything (or can't), if you log in, that act of being in the game, moving around in the gameworld from age to age, would raise money for Cyan Worlds.

Think about how many free services are ad-supported. It's probably the most common way for free services to generate income.

I'm not saying I *like* the idea of seeing ads in Uru during loading screens, but it might be a way for Cyan to make more money off the game without charging subscription, selling buyables, etc.

There's not any fun way to do fundraising, IMO, all the methods we can consider will have drawbacks.

Buyables have drawbacks. Ad placement has drawbacks - they're annoying. Subscriptions have drawbacks.

And donations have drawbacks - mainly that they're not turning out to be enough to achieve what we want - development of new official content.

What about Cyan Worlds using MQO income to release new content for Uru?

Drawback: Unless Cyan Worlds releases said content as a buyable, thus recouping the expense, they'll lose money by spending their spare cash on making Uru content. So in that case you're stuck with either buyables - which we're already hesitant about - or Cyan Worlds taking a painful financial loss at a time when they're already struggling.

What's our best option here?

I think ads on the loading screen is the best funding idea I've heard. The only problem is that it needs to be effective before it will get buyers. My thoughts:

Charge a monthly ad-placement fee, based on the average number of monthly logins. I don't remember what the going rate is for Web sites, but this ought to be similar. Google it, it's out there. It goes by the number of page views, so we'll go by number of loading screen views.

You gotta give people the option to click the ads, or you probably won't get many takers. So change the loading screen so that it loads, and then stops with a continue button. You can click the ad, or you can continue to your Age.

That might get annoying, but I'll click a continue button if it makes it possible for Cyan to create new content.

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Cosmic Osmo for iOS is a must!

I would very strongly prefer text ads over image ads. Immersion is very very important to the Myst franchise, and a modern-style image/video ad would completely pull me out. Linking right now is a mostly black screen -- the dark void of the Link -- and I feel strongly that it should remain that way.

I think I would favor one-line text ads (say, 140 characters?) during Linking, with a $10 buyable to turn them off.


And yet...

A quick googling suggests that $2-3 CPM (2 to 3 tenths of a cent per impression) might be typical for text ads. With your math, that makes about $300-500 in ad revenue per day.

Is that enough to run a server on? It doesn't sound like much -- maybe the salary for one or two programmers, rather.


Right now, with $0 ad revenue, we're at CAVCON 4. I'd like to see if text ads could push us over the threshhold to C5. Were I in charge, I think I would reserve image ads as an emergency resort, to be implemented if we ever drop down to C2.

I wonder how the introduction of ads would affect the rate of donations.

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Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

Well, $300 per day is about $9,000 per month. That's $108,000 per year. For one text ad. If they were text ads and they displayed three... Hm.

Problem is, the more ads you run, the lower in value your ad space goes.

I wonder if we could compare ads in Uru to ads in a magazine, in answering the question about ads affecting donations. Magazine subscribers keep paying, even though they have to look at ads.

I don't know. I suppose it's all up to Cyan.

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Cosmic Osmo for iOS is a must!

Simple idea others have come up with: make a deal with a soft-drink company and re-texture the bottles used throughout Uru with their brand. Doesn't break immersion, easy to do.

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-Whilyam

Some extra things worth considering:

-- Mini-games. They add to the atmosphere and provide a long-term interest to encourage the player to get involved in other things after they solved the Ages.
-- More ways of Explorers to collect together other than through Bevin. I'd like to be able to invite someone to my Relto directly through an invite, eg. by KI.
-- More Relto Pages, perhaps even expanding on the original Relto, because, frankly, it's just too darn small!
-- More Ages, obviously.
-- Monthly/Weekly treasure hunts for the MOUL community, perhaps a reward for the lucky finder.
-- An arena Age (similar idea to Jalak Dador) but for Olympic, athletic or skill events.
-- Also new Ages that are targeted for getting many many people involved (perhaps the whole community) to solve as a once off.
-- An attainable KI upgrade for finishing the GZM missions.
-- More Bahro activity - let us know that they're there. Make 'em steal a pencil, go island hopping on my Relto, mess around in my Ages and so on instead of just playing the looped SFX of a Bahro scream.

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If I told you that, I'd have to bill you...

Whilyam wrote:

Simple idea others have come up with: make a deal with a soft-drink company and re-texture the bottles used throughout Uru with their brand. Doesn't break immersion, easy to do.

What about billboards in the city? Seems like something the DRC would do.... Would keep it in game.

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Phat Jimmy
KI# 01657164

mr_jimmy wrote:

Whilyam wrote:

Simple idea others have come up with: make a deal with a soft-drink company and re-texture the bottles used throughout Uru with their brand. Doesn't break immersion, easy to do.

What about billboards in the city? Seems like something the DRC would do.... Would keep it in game.

I'd first have the DRC ask the Explorers what they thought about it as a form of funding for the restoration effort, but that's pure style.

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Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

I would like to have the watchers pub (behind the door) to be working, Please.

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MO:UL Again
KI # 151241

I'd like a cable car ride like in Riven. Please, pretty please....

As for advertising, fix up the Kahlo pub, get some benches we can sit on and put up advertising posters on the walls - clickable perhaps?

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Everything tastes better with chocolate....

Supreme: or, they could, yanno, just put my fan age up, if they give us source to the plugin, allow fan ages, give us a way to test, and I convert it to moul-format. =P

EDIT: oh, sorry, missed the advertising bit =P ... nevermind...

personally, I would like for the invisible walls and floors (the ones that automatically link you to relto) removed so that you can get on top of buildings without having to use glitches.