Barrybank

[old.Azoic]

Ummmm. I dont like the sound of it. Are we going to start to have to pay to play on BW servers??

/me turns and runs to jolt .....

 

[Summo]

Can I have my salary paid into there? Do I get a debit card? Well? Do I?

 

[old.Kez]

everyone's heading back to pay to play.

heh.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Aye tis pay to live britain in this day and age, and it's only going to get worse. Cheers Tony

 

[old.Azoic]

I'm correct in thinking that BW are now endorsed by some large computers games/electronics company arent I? Sure with this kind of endorsment we shouldnt have to pay play the FREE mod wich is Counter-strike? Coulnt some agreement come about where by BW and others alike talk to Sierra and get cuts from them to keep servers up and running playinbg THEIR games ... after all if its playing their gam sure thats advertising isnt it? And any respectable advertiser always recieves money from the compnay it is advertising, not the peole who are viewing the advert?

 

[DAN200]

well its obviously coming soon as they've chaned the picture o the Barrybank Demo page from the old one of a credit card type thing to one of a smiley in a suit.

Just look at it, its horrible!

 

[Trebz]

OI!, don't slag off my gfx skills!

/me walks off weeping to himself...

 

[old.Kez]

Originally posted by Azoic
I'm correct in thinking that BW are now endorsed by some large computers games/electronics company arent I? Sure with this kind of endorsment we shouldnt have to pay play the FREE mod wich is Counter-strike? Coulnt some agreement come about where by BW and others alike talk to Sierra and get cuts from them to keep servers up and running playinbg THEIR games ...

lololol :/

It still takes server power & bandwidth to run the servers (and counter strike, being one of most used, will be quite a few machines) which isn't cheap.

Oh, and counterstrike can be sold (and has been, countless times, no doubt) which kind of stops it being just free.

"One rule for CS lamers, another for everyone else" ?

heh.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

CS is gay

But hey so's having about 20 different subscription charges a month

I might be able to live with the idea if all the major gaming services all got together and charged a standard fee, not a seperate charge for every service, eg barrys, jolt, wireplay, nguk, all charging 10 quid a month ect....

 

[Summo]

Yeah, but BW almost went under as a result of insufficient funds, so now Electronics Boutique has dragged them out of the shit, surely they're gonna want BW to make a profit, or at least cover their costs.

If this is the way to keep it alive then its got to be done.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

If they Bring in a Pay per play, imho they can f-ck right off.

There's no way in hell i would use that. Subs rates while i don't realy like the idea, unless it's a bonded rate with all the other major server runners, i would spose id have to pay up. Pay per play/view isn't choice, it's a bleeding rip off, it's no different to paying a by the minute phone bill (we all remember them) Anyone wana go back to shelling out 200 quid a month? We all knew at the time that we being ripped off then, pay per play would be no different here

 

[old.[NC]Sturty]

Originally posted by Kurt_Angle
If they Bring in a Pay per play, imho they can f-ck right off.

There's no way in hell i would use that. Subs rates while i don't realy like the idea, unless it's a bonded rate with all the other major server runners, i would spose id have to pay up. Pay per play/view isn't choice, it's a bleeding rip off, it's no different to paying a by the minute phone bill (we all remember them) Anyone wana go back to shelling out 200 quid a month? We all knew at the time that we being ripped off then, pay per play would be no different here

Pay or don't you're no great loss ...

 

[Sir Frizz]

thats not very nice!

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

HO-HUM

You forgot to cut the 'i spose i would have to pay up'

 

[DAN200]

Originally posted by Trebz
OI!, don't slag off my gfx skills!

/me walks off weeping to himself...

You do the BW graphics?

respect.

 

[old.Azoic]

Wow ive started a binger here. Thanks to every1 for replying, i for one am a person that likes other peoples views on my ideas, and constructive critisimsm. A interesting point was raised ie: EB want BW to cover their cost .. yeah thats great... i coulnd t agree more .. but .....

1) When BW were going under there was the poll.... "who would be willing to pay £xx for x hours of play. The rates that were suggested then were a little harsh and need some addjustment imho. Also, the majority of the CS gaming nation ARE children, most not even old enough to work and so couldntpossibly pay the rates that BW would demand. No point saying "Their tough shit" becasue that would be cutting out the main consumer, a bad business move in any1's book.

2) BW Could be making their money in so many other ways. For example, Jolt offer Jolt Broadband, which they charge for, they actually offer plan ports for £50 per 1/12 (BW dont seem bothered about clan ports any more as they always say the offer is down or somthing to that effct). Quite francly what i am trying to say is, PLEASE look into the alternatives befor bouncing ahead asking people to buy "Barry Hours" or "Barry Credit" or what ever you decide to call it (Im sure it will be original and amusing).

Surely there is another way forward than to charge us all to play?

OH and the comment about CS not being free ... How comes i can still dowload it for free? And admittedly, if they do charge us for CS 1.3 then my original point stands ... why dont BW and other come to an agreement with Sierra over a cut % of the price to go to them?

Ian

 

[Custy]

I wouldn't mind paying £10 tops a month. As long as most other people did, don't want to buy my first month and find the servers are empty.

 

[old.Kez]

Originally posted by Azoic
2) BW Could be making their money in so many other ways. For example, Jolt offer Jolt Broadband, which they charge for, they actually offer plan ports for £50 per 1/12 (BW dont seem bothered about clan ports any more as they always say the offer is down or somthing to that effct). Quite francly what i am trying to say is, PLEASE look into the alternatives befor bouncing ahead asking people to buy "Barry Hours" or "Barry Credit" or what ever you decide to call it (Im sure it will be original and amusing).

Er, whats the betting they have looked at alternatives? I fail to see why you're all making fuss about no longer getting a free lunch, so to speak.
Afaik, the clan ports were (are?) being revised, hence the delay in them being availible again (my word is by no means gospel however)

Surely there is another way forward than to charge us all to play?

Tell everyone what it is then... :/
BW would not have fallen apart had it not been for the current state of the economy, Gameplay wouldn't have fallen over like they seem to have, GamesInferno wouldn't be unheard of (dead?)
Any GSP that intends to make it in this baby market needs to have a plan, and the only viable plan is to charge. (I can't see the charges for clan ports making any sort of useable money, they'd scrape by at best, probably more likely only to tide itself over)

OH and the comment about CS not being free ... How comes i can still dowload it for free? And admittedly, if they do charge us for CS 1.3 then my original point stands ... why dont BW and other come to an agreement with Sierra over a cut % of the price to go to them?

You can also go out and buy CS, which makes it like every other game, the only difference being its more freely availible to download.

I'd suspect that rather than having different subscriptions for different providers, you're going to end up picking one (and as such, goes back to being split like WP & the net were, only more so now)

I'd also suspect that most people would only play subscription fees, with few prepared to 'pay per play' and such.

This however is only my speculation and reading what little I know into it.

Toodle pip.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Yep i think thats agreed, noone would fancy pay per play. If you seriously think you could keep it under 10 quid a month, well...

 

[old.Kez]

Depends on the size of the user base I'd imagine.

I don't see the BW crew being (complete) money grabbing bastards, I do however see EB being that way.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

I still think that a cross service one payment jobbie would be the way though, that way you wouldn't spilt it, like the old wireplayers. Say 20-25 quid a month, for gnuk, barrys, wireplay, and jolt.

 

[old.Kez]

But then there's no competition, and as such, not much point in them being different companies.

And I don't see them being one company anytime soon.

Prices would stagnate too, which is frequently a bad (or at least, non improving) thing.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

No but a lot of sky multichannels are different companies, but for the greater good they all jump in as one package. It's good for them and as far as i see it good for us too. I see little reason why this would be a bad idea. I don't see things stagnating at all, it's not as if they don't get exelent feedback from there forums on just what we want to see them doing, and in general they listen to it. In all it's all about what best for us, i don't see that being 4-5 different game services, competion yes, good for us though i don't see it, whats a few quid, when what we all want is to be a big happy online community, not seperate outcasts like the old wireplayers were.

 

[Durzel]

I wouldn't mind paying £10 tops a month. As long as most other people did, don't want to buy my first month and find the servers are empty.

Thats a good point actually.

One point (I hope someone is thinking about this - it's been discussed in the past) is that whilst I would be fully prepared to pay a sub to use my favourite servers, I would be most displeased if non-UK players (which I imagine constitute a significant proportion) didn't have to.

I'm still not entirely sure (from a technical standpoint) how you could possibly stop people from using the servers if they haven't paid. My guesses are there are two options - some kind of client-side app that acts as a proxy to the servers you connect to, authenticating you as you connect - OR - some kind of daemon that monitors all of the servers, rcon kick/ban'ing anyone who's IP is not in the "allowed" database.

Naturally a client-side application (not unlike Punkbuster, etc) is an opt-in scheme that entails the usual nightmare of people not knowing how to install it, not knowing where to get it, etc. A bit of an administrative nightmare really.

The second option would be the best bet imo.

Theres many many obstacles that need to be considered and handled prior to implementing any kind of successful pay-per-play scheme. Whats to stop - for example - a non-paying customer from connecting to a proxy running on a paying customer's computer, and getting access that way?.. etc...

Incidentally, if Euros could play without paying I don't honestly think I would feel happy about paying myself.

 

[old.[MOD]Psycho]

euros paying - if they had to they wouldn't, if they didn't have to, I wouldn't, I'd bugger off on to NGI or some euro GSP or a UK GSP that wasn't charging.

At the end of the day most online gamers are cheap bastards which is why we all moan when we've got to spend money on erm, anything.

I remember the old days of phone bill + subscription + paying for minutes to use the ISP on AOL ages ago, 1 hours gaming a month would cost you about
60p call charges
60p ISP charges
£15 ISP subscription

That was a scary time for all involved, then it went all free, now it's going back to being paid for, we've got used to stuff being free through the industries fault and our own fault.

Only problem now is there's like 5 GSP's in the UK, each on charges you get a major split of interest for gamers. Despite the fact I'm always gonna be a pro barrysworld peon, if all GSP's in the UK started charging, I'd go with netgames, despite not liking them, they support savage and savage runs leagues for every game (namely Q2 in my case).

Either that or I'd move to Euro servers or quit FPS's and go to like Starcraft etc.

 

[Custy]

Excuse me? Quit FPS's? Are you mad?

 

[SAS]

Gah you are all starting to guess what barry bank stands for. As harry enfield would say at this point "OI NO".

I don't know the full details myself, and until there is firm facts no one can say what's going to happen, although surely it's a good sign pay-to-pay plans have not gone straight in within weeks of eb buying BW?

I do know EB and the BW guys (me included although I don't have much say over barry bank) are putting you lot first, hence this long period of BW remaining as it has been for years free for all.

What ever barry bank turns out to be BW will get flamed . At the end of the day noone likes to pay. Society at present gives the view that everything is cheap and free. However it's nice to see some of you who know the full facts on how a GSP, especially on how BW is run will see it has to happen and are willing to spare some cash to help keep BW alive. If Barry was human he'd shake your hand :}

 

[old.Azoic]

TBH, I wouldnt mind paying £10 a month to play on BW servers, but then when Jolt and WP and GI and NGUK dont follow suit and continue to find other alternatives other than pay per play, then BW may loose the race to become the Gaming champs blah blah blah.. game time on a free server

 

[Durzel]

I dont think people will mind paying just as long as they know that:

• There is no other option
• Everyone else has to pay

Unfortunately whoever (I'm assuming BW) implements a "pay to play" service first will be subjected to abuse the likes of which it will never have seen before (almost sounds like the trailer to an action film). If subscriptions had been enforced at the outset of BW (ala Wireplay) there wouldn't be an issue - but I can imagine most uneducated people would simply say "if Ive been playing on BW for free for x months, why do I suddenly have to pay now?".

I would imagine other GSPs would also take the oppurtunity to "lord it over" BW by proudly stating that their services are "still free", etc. So at the very least there's bad publicity to look forward to - "BW, the first GSP to charge gamers for playing games". Note: These aren't my opinions - I'm perfectly happy to pay a sub (see above), Im just thinking objectively at what might/will happen.

Theres a mountain of technical issues to overcome. If its implemented as a client-side program/server-side auth then you know people will try and hack it, and not only that - even if they dont you can only imagine the number of people who will have trouble installing it, trouble using it, etc. Additionally, a client-side auth'ing program also detracts from the whole "pick up and play" ethos of gaming and BW. Suddenly it becomes "pick up, install proprietary authing util, run auth util, play game"... It could of course go in the taskbar... etc..etc.. all technical issues..

Then theres the payment issue. How do you process and handle payments? How (if at all) do you handle payments from people who don't have Switch or credit cards? How do you handle payments from countries other than the UK.. etc..

One thing I personally want to stress is that if you (BW) are going to implement this, you must enforce it globally. Everyone who plays must have to pay somehow - otherwise it wont be fair, and I'd imagine most people (I for one) wont be happy subsidising other Euro/US players.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Soon as Starwars galaxy comes my way i could well say cya to the old fps. Depends on how good it is, same with planetside i spose. I just don't want a situation where im shelling out on about 6-7 different subs a month, though it's prolly gona happen anyway