So the way i kind of see it, is if your a small community (their slogan) then you will probably loose alot of money now, and probably wont be able to stay up for much longer.+
Quote:
Originally Posted by matrixmark
for you
Forcing ads is lame... I blacklist any I come across.
If the server is good etc I donate to them but not via forced ads.
(derail again, sorry!) not only that the ads are helping the server stay up, they help the owner give back, by either expanding, or have some sort of contests to give the money back. just because your forced to watch a 5-10 second clip, which may be irrelevant to you, dosent mean the server is trying to feed off your soul, and that you should black list a server for doing so.
So the way i kind of see it, is if your a small community (their slogan) then you will probably loose alot of money now, and probably wont be able to stay up for much longer.+
(derail again, sorry!) not only that the ads are helping the server stay up, they help the owner give back, by either expanding, or have some sort of contests to give the money back. just because your forced to watch a 5-10 second clip, which may be irrelevant to you, dosent mean the server is trying to feed off your soul, and that you should black list a server for doing so.
Well, people are entitled to their own opinion on different matter. I think players are there to play a game and not be a part of monetizing scheme.
I would tend to agree, but the server has to be paid for somehow. Ads are a good non-intrusive way to pay for servers.
exactly - a few seconds prior to playing the game doesn't hurt nothing. Now for the upcoming changes adding a few more seconds to finish the video won't hurt anything either but kinda curious on other changes and I don't care for the 60 day payment but I can deal with that.
I would tend to agree, but the server has to be paid for somehow. Ads are a good non-intrusive way to pay for servers.
You have to remember other communities got big without using adverts and people are happy to donate. Years before pinion even came out, some communities were getting plenty of income.
I saw some people complaining ages about the TF2 quickplay not working one time. Saying their communities will die off over night if they cant get the traffic. Do they have any regulars or just relying on random traffic all the time? Thats not how to get a server populated and keep it that way. Again before TF2 quickplay, other communities managed fine.
Of course pinion was helpful in covering costs but now the rules have changed.
Last edited by Nolongerinthegame; 12-08-2012 at 07:06.
You have to remember other communities got big without using adverts and people are happy to donate. Years before pinion even came out, some communities were getting plenty of income.
I saw some people complaining ages about the TF2 quickplay not working one time. Saying their communities will die off over night if they cant get the traffic. Do they have any regulars or just relying on random traffic all the time? Thats not how to get a server populated and keep it that way. Again before TF2 quickplay, other communities managed fine.
Of course pinion was helpful in covering costs but now the rules have changed.
The landscape is a little different now. A lot of communities got a huge leg up on communities created before and after Quickplay. Now there are a lot of servers in general. I'd guess a lot of that happened when TF2 went F2P and the demand for more servers went up. I'm just saying, you can't compare what it was like to obtain players before the Quickplay system when there were fewer servers and today with so many communities players can latch on to after discovering them via Quickplay.
The method to getting a popular server now is grabbing their attention the first time they join your server through Quickplay so that they favorite you and come back. A lot of players I'm betting are content on just slapping that Quickplay button each time they load up. If you want to be a community that brings players back you have to do something unique. Otherwise you just risk being another Valve server that players continually pass through.
You have to remember other communities got big without using adverts and people are happy to donate. Years before pinion even came out, some communities were getting plenty of income.
I saw some people complaining ages about the TF2 quickplay not working one time. Saying their communities will die off over night if they cant get the traffic. Do they have any regulars or just relying on random traffic all the time? Thats not how to get a server populated and keep it that way. Again before TF2 quickplay, other communities managed fine.
Of course pinion was helpful in covering costs but now the rules have changed.
After the income generated by Pinion, communities were able to afford better quality servers. Before I started using ads, my servers were running on cheap VPS's that lagged a lot. Donors were able to cover this.
Using the income generated by Pinion allowed me to get a dedicated server. There's no way donors to my small community will be able to cover that.
You have to remember other communities got big without using adverts and people are happy to donate. Years before pinion even came out, some communities were getting plenty of income.
I saw some people complaining ages about the TF2 quickplay not working one time. Saying their communities will die off over night if they cant get the traffic. Do they have any regulars or just relying on random traffic all the time? Thats not how to get a server populated and keep it that way. Again before TF2 quickplay, other communities managed fine.
Of course pinion was helpful in covering costs but now the rules have changed.
A community cant get big without a player base... Ad's cant be watched with out that said player base also. Your argument about getting income is partially invalid. The ads help boost the servers to expand, and some people get just enough traffic to where they get a check the next month that says: "your server bills have been paid!" and allows them to run a server with out digging into their pocket.
Just think of the alternatives of pinion... you can sell advantages to the players whom donate. (speed, more damage, faster attack rates, etc.) and get a few bucks outta that, then soon fail to keep the player base you once had.
Pinion just sent out a second email. It obvious they are worried many people will drop their service, as they should be.
Spoiler
Dear communities,
We announced some pretty radical changes in our last email, and since then we've heard from a lot of people with questions
around why things are changing. Hopefully we can clear some of that up.
Pinion started with a bold vision to make running a gaming community possible without outside funding - something nobody
before or since has managed to achieve, let alone sharing that recipe for success with any and all communities. Although
every business starts off unprofitable, we were confident that as advertisers learned more about the unique value of what
we could offer, our revenues would lift to the point where we, too, could exist without outside funding.
However, as we've learned, the advertising world is slow to adjust. In the world of video advertising the only thing that
matters is completion rate. No matter what we say, as soon as they hear the word "video" it's like "great, what's your
completion rate?" Bad completion rate means we don't get paid much for the ads we show, means we need to change
the model to one which works.
We're not going down without a fight, and we're hoping that you'll come and fight by our side. We just need to get those
completion rates up to the point where advertisers are paying us what the space is worth. Once we get to the other side
of this, we’ll all be better for it. These changes will enable us to pay more money to those of you that get higher
completion rates. We love seeing our partner communities thrive, but we can’t keep making that happen unless we make
this change.
We've already been working hard on initiatives (such as the Pot o' Gold and the new MOTD layout) to raise completions.
But we need to do more, and that's where the forced completion comes in.
Some of you are concerned about the effect that forcing an 85% completion will have on player numbers. So are we.
Some of you are worried that you won't be able to keep completions up any other way. We're right there with you. Pinion
was built for you guys, the communities, and you're still the foundation of what we do. We can't win this without you.
So we'd like to invite any interested communities to join us in creating a Pinion Community Council. This isn't a glamorous
job, nobody's getting any fancy cars or being flown anywhere in a helicopter, but stepping up for this role means a
chance to help guide us to do right by our communities in this critical time, and importantly also to lead your fellow
communities by finding ways to make the best of the completion-obsessed landscape we now find ourselves in.
If you're interested, drop a reply to this email telling us why your community should be on the council. We're not sure exactly
how many we're looking for at this stage, but if we get too many we'll have an election to keep it fair.
This has been a challenging year for us, but from where we're sitting things can only get better. We have a great team
working here, a great group of companies behind us who love the idea of what communities do, and want to provide
quality media in your servers. We've got great technology ready to take the advertising world by storm.
Pinion has gathered the support of hundreds of communities, Valve themselves, GSP's across the globe, Microsoft, incredible
investors, fortune 500 companies wanting to advertise and countless volunteers for this initiative. With your help, surely we
can get gamers worldwide to appreciate the effort and financial weight of making community infrastructure available to
support them. In exchange, we are asking that they support us with a few seconds of patience.
Some players will winge, some always do. We would appreciate everyone uniting together to respond to anyone complaining
on forums, to let them know why we (Pinion and communities) need to do what we're doing. On another note, we're upping
the ante on Pot o Gold, and have been working hard on a partnership with Razer, which will see tonnes of awesome hardware
going to gamers each month after they watch an ad.
Hybrid Mode
