Feedback on the payment system.

As some of you have already noticed, we've launched a payment system for your developers.

If you're interested in it, please check it out and remember to give us feedback if there's anything you can think of that should work differently, or if you're missing any features etc. We're really interested in hearing what you guys think of it.

haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet, but the concept is wonderful.
♥^∞

As a game player, I'm completely against it. Obviously, I don't want to have to pay for anything.

As a developer, I'm not sure how I feel. I certainly don't feel comfortable with the idea of charging my players money to play my game. However, I might include a donation option, but I doubt anyone would donate to lil' ol' me :P


Overall, I don't think the quality of games on nonoba is near high enough to warrant this. If most games coming out of here were professional-level stuff I don't think I would have any problem with it.


Anyway, that's just my two cents, take it or leave it.

Yep, I know what you mean.

Donations would be the best solution for me too. It's not that I have to cover server costs etc so its not really justified (unless your game is super awesome, but also in this case I would prefer to be paid by a sponsor).
However, I might try it our if the content I'm selling to the players is really worth the money.

I disagree for that feature since that might make people bet for it.

i think a couple of key aspects that everyone is missing are:

being afraid of developers who charge too much for silly things is pointless. if the things are silly users won't pay for them, that's all. if they can't make money at it, either they'll stop trying to gouge players or they won't. if they don't they'll probably not get very far with their games, if they do stop, they might re-evaluate their cost model and the value their offering players and subsequently redevelop their games to be better.

re: quality of games not worthy of payments. what better way to entice better developers to join nonoba, than offering them a integrated way to earn money to continue doing what they're good at, as well as enable developers with budding skill by helping offset the cost of their time.

it's also good to recognize that this will seek it's own level. players who are willing to pay or donate will pay or donate, especially if they get better offerings from it. those who aren't won't. likewise developers who feel it's beneficial to them to charge will, those who don't won't.

a lot of the criticism seems to be focused on "i won't pay to play games!" but i think it's a little straw mannish, since no one is saying that now that there is a payment api all games will be charged to play. it's still entirely individualistic in nature.

i think there are also a ton of unexplored possibilities for this. paying for bonus features, say extra storage space for items, or extra avatar choices, etc. a developer could create a way to make private rooms in a multi player environment, but only offer it to paid users, or offer tiered service levels.

this really just opens the door for individual developers to operate their own business in any way they see fit, even it's modeled after a large structure that previously wasn't possible for an individual to easily acquire.

the possibilities are endless and open to all interpretations, and i for one am quite excited by it.

now if only i had some free time to start developing games!

♥∞

"this really just opens the door for individual developers to operate their own business in any way they see fit, even it's modeled after a large structure that previously wasn't possible for an individual to easily acquire. "

thats actually a very good point. Just to have the possibility to earn money this way is in principle a good thing.

I just hope that this doesn't spawn dozens of games who try to sell you their stupid little extra features.. Apart from that I don't think that better games will be created because of the possibility to earn money. Just look at all the games using mochi-ads... the majority of them are crap :/ If you develop games to earn money, a lot of your time will be spent on just spamming you newly developed game around :p That sort of kills the spirit imo.

"If you develop games to earn money, a lot of your time will be spent on just spamming you newly developed game around"

yes, but if you can make money to support your passion, with minimal effort, it enables you to spend less time spamming and more time developing your skills and abilities.

Heh heh, then I eagerly await the Nonoba Spambot API!

Oh my god!

As a player, I think that only specific items should be allowed to be sold. Not the game. Or do it like some people do I.E darkorbit.com (free game, but sell various advantages like +10000 gold every day.)

As a developer, I think that this would be an advantage for me. I can already see all of nonoba wanting money for their games, leaving me as one of the only developers making free games, so the ratings for my games will probably rise into the endless areas of 5 stars.

You can probably see the conflict between "Make nonoba a great place for everyone" and "Wanna play? Ok, Gimme money."

That is completely up to the developer to choose what he or she thinks is best for his games. There are already a lot of games on the internet that cost money to play (past the beginner levels), and that are also worth it, so why should we not allow that model here?

Well, this really could turn into a community where you need to pay to play a game. No money, no games. I don't really want that to happen. I'll stay with "Remove the API before it's too late."

The main problem is that there isn't only people here who might not want to pay, but maybe there is people who are UNDER the age of 18, don't have a credit card, and DON'T HAVE PARENTS THAT PAY FOR ONLINE GAMES. See the problem?

Let's say we have a new member, 13 years old. Wev'e had the API for a few months and it is eventually very hard to find a FREE game. The meber will delete the account and leave. We already have a lot of inactive accounts. If it IS hard 5to find a free game, or it is even near the border of impossible, some of our oldest users might leave, especially players.

It is always said that nonba should be a great place for everyone. If their parent, for example, don't allow them to pay for a game or specific upgrades, it WON'T be a great place for everyone, but rather a great place for developers to make money. But if the amount of users goes down, the developers might not be earning anything.

So if the API actually makes nonoba members leave, this could actually be nonoba's end. I will now set up my website to take all the members who want a replacement for nonoba. It's sad nonba had to end this way. But there is only one way to prevent that end from happening. I'd remove the API to save nonoba. It's not so good for money-seeking developers. But sometimes the simplest answers are the best. Remove the API. That's all I can say.

I'm actually kind of angry this had to happen. But it did. I can't do anything against it.