EMC Income and Outgoings

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by kilmannan, Mar 6, 2012.

?

Would you like to see Running Cost and Raised So Far so you know if EMC needs a hand?

Yes 16 vote(s) 84.2%
No 3 vote(s) 15.8%
  1. Going back to a previous request, I think that taking into light the new costs, it'd be a good idea on the Rupees page to have two new columns:

    EMC Running Costs per month:

    and

    Raised so far:

    This would allow us to see how EMC is doing and more importantly, if it looks like it's falling short, the Community would be aware of it and be able to potentially donate a few spare pennies towards the cause by buying some Rupees.

    I'd expect running costs to include the server charges and any associated recurring monthly costs (Aspirin for JustinGuy for example!) and I would also imagine it to be a static figure, so no need for any coding there.

    It would also be really interesting to have another set of figures, showing a quick reference of how many Iron, Gold and Diamond Supporters there are and the projected monthly income from that.

    Thoughts?
    konglooey84 likes this.
  2. I think this is a Great idea :D
  3. I didn't vote, 'cause my opinion is between yes and no^^

    I think the running costs, and the income through supporters should be visible, but not the total raised funds.
    This could put alot of pressure on some players, if the funds are not already higher than the costs. But donating should be something you do to help the server/admin keeping up with the costs, no matter how it's going right now.

    At the beginning of the quarter everyone would be like "oh sh**, theres not enough money!" donating like crazy(good), putting requestthreads in the forums up(bad) and so on... After the funds are higher than the costs, many people would be like "ah no problem, he got the money together already, no need for donations <.<"(very bad)

    If it ever comes to the point, where the community won't be able to pay the bills at the end of the quarter, I hope Justin will give us a hint in the forums that he needs a bit more money.

    Edit: Well maybe I'm thinking a little to far here... I personally would donate what I think is good and right for me, completely independent of the funds.
  4. That's a good counter-argument and one that had crossed my mind.

    Personally, I don't think it would spiral out of control with threads, etc, like you say, but it certainly opens a can of worms in how it may affect the thinking of some players.

    I ran a gaming Community website many moons ago for a very popular war sim and we were incredibly successful and entirely self-funded. We had to do a couple of donation drives to help us deal with the increased costs of the site (dedicated file servers, etc) and I found that the first three times, you could ask for help. After that, it started to grate on people.
    Whilst the scenario is very different here, I'd like to think that EMC would never have to make a plea for financial support to its player-base, and a figure in the corner of a page somewhere might go a way towards that never happening.

    I should mention that ideally this would all be very discreet. Not big showy numbers, etc, just a factual portrayal of the situation as it stands.
  5. To be honest, I am not sure how I feel about this. I see the value and can also think of some negatives. As far as pledge drives and begging for money goes, we don't do this. People can play for free and it is reasonably easy to find the donation area and supporter upgrades. I can't stand servers that spam chat with bots "Purchase a shiny new rank today", "Donate or the server will close", etc. As a community we run this service, and if we are doing it right the money will come, if we aren't bringing in enough then something is wrong and needs to be corrected. So far the money has kept up with the pace, and even allowed some improvements. When we first started I paid for everything, but honestly I haven't paid for anything in the last few months. I put out a little for the new servers, originally I was going to do that in another month or so anyways, I just had to put out money because it came faster that predicted.

    At the end of the day I just don't want EMC to feel like some annoying political campaign always begging for a buck. I also don't want it to feel like some cold corporate machine. I just want to keep what we have, and AWESOME community that enjoys it so we invest in it :) And I expect you all to keep me on check about that ;)
  6. This is why EMC is so awesome, and why we are approaching 20,000 members (as stated on the front page of the forum)
  7. And thats how a good community should be :D

    Btw justin you never answered me on the other post (about server upgrades) does your wife play minecraft?
  8. Sorry I prob missed it. No she does not, I tried but she thinks it is a ghetto looking game, all square and ugly lol. She has never been much of a gamer but will play sims or something every now and then.
    sagem4tt likes this.
  9. Think its time for a remarriage ;)
    Squizzel_Boy likes this.
  10. Great idea JustinGuy
  11. Justin, how many of each supporter level do u have atm? (if u even wanna answer that)
  12. I would have to count them up, I was thinking of adding a section to the members for it.
    BloodDisciple likes this.
  13. Yeah after that post i went looking for the support pages with no luck lol. And I, as u dont, do not want to count 20k members haha so that would be nice!
  14. If what comes in is keeping pace, then that's superb news, but for me personally, a small figure somewhere would've been a nice-to-have and certainly for me, when there's a visual aid for numbers going up, I always feel encouraged to add a bit more to help it out.

    Of course, it's that fine line as rightly mentioned by JustinGuy.

    :)
    Yukon1200 likes this.
  15. brb spamming chat with these
  16. Thats not nice :( but worth a like
  17. At the moment :)
    Michael_Nolan likes this.
  18. thx also any news on the vote for the wilderness reset
  19. My wife calls me a nerd. Tells me the game looks like something from the 60's. I always respond with "Silly woman! Video games weren't around in the 60's! Can I have a sandwich?"