View Full Version : BlueYonder Games to close.
The fine people running BY Games, those who used to run Wireplay have been dealt another blow. Telewest has announced that they are pulling the plug on BYG.
If any of the BY community wants to migrate back to Wireplay they are more than welcome. I hope the Wireplay community will be supportive and welcoming to them.
Details on this thread:
http://www.bygames.com/community/forums/ForumThread.jsp?forum_id=53&topic_id=57536
Urrrm...not that I want to make things worse; but what guarantee is that this won't happen to us either in the near future?
Even so...
/me goes to post in the BY jka forum offering a wireplay welcome. :)
p.s. --> can we get the ping issues sorted out soon please? :|
mr_grumpy_man
08-10-2003, 19:06
WP is still in it's "just been bought out by yet another company so there's 6 months before they realise it's losing them money" 6mths grace period, so we're alright for now ;)
hehe
ignorance is bliss, no..even if it's forced ignorance. :P
hmm... are we onto a valid business practice? Just get bought lots of times to sustain life? I'll have to look into that :D
But no, we haven't been bought. Firstnet was bought by GXN. And both are changing their names with Pipex if the board ratifies it.
Pings will hopefully be sorted "soon", when GXN's network is implemented. It will provide us with a massive boost to our network, peering and routing.
/me waves
sad day indeed :bigcry: :bigcry: :bigcry:
Was coming for a while, sad to see it happen though. The bygames staff and volunteers are/were amongst the best around.
Truly a downer for staff and community a like.
These are strange days indeed for Online Gaming :{
Hi all
I am one of the affected BY gamers who will now be looking for a new home, possibily here, so i thought i'd pop in and say Hi to all. I have just one question. Will wireplay be adding RTCW and ET to their list of supported games and hence servers. i ask because BY have a large RTCW and ET contingent who will be looking for a new home.
many thanks and hi to all
Devosse
We will be adding an ET server very soon.
/me goes to hastle piggy
Blood_God
09-10-2003, 01:34
It is a sad day indeed, and it reflects upon the state of gaming in the UK in general.
No-one wants to pay for what they can get free, meaning that gaming servers run at a loss, and eventually they shut down, leaving the community to split and spread around :(
I hope that something can be done to change this trend of 2 year GISP cycling.
I feel that the games developers, liek epic and valve, need to take some of the resposibility as they make all the money from the sales of the games but then dont give any finacial or otherwise help to the GISP's to support their games when people want to play it. How many software houses release their games with their own servers? i know of only 1 which is splash damage, that is, that you dont have to pay to play on......I dont know, i just feel that companys leik bygames get shafted by software houses, as they expect them to support their games with out supporting the GISP's......just doesnt make sense to me?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Devosse
Originally posted by Nor
Was coming for a while, sad to see it happen though. The bygames staff and volunteers are/were amongst the best around.
Thanks for the kind words towards us volunteer admins we all appreciate comments like that. Makes us know we did well but it was also down to the players there as well as without them it wouldnt have worked as well as it did.
SCM
(until bygames dies a UT Public admin and league admin...afterwards no idea where im going yet)
ScoRp1ouS
10-10-2003, 11:55
by going down, thats a big ouch :S
papyrus (part of the sierra group) run gaming servers for their nascar 2003 game but its the only developer i know that does it...
as an aside do you all think that the GSP in general has a future? With the ever increasing internet speeds available to home users will it not eventually be effective for home users to host their own game servers? what level of bandwidth would it take, for instance , to host a 12 player counterstrike server with acceptable pings/pl ?
just a thought really `cos i can`t see people shelling out money to support ailing GSP`s when we already shell out a small fortune for our broadband access....
just a thought really `cos i can`t see people shelling out money to support ailing GSP`s when we already shell out a small fortune for our broadband access....
but we were all happy to shell out £500 a quarter on phone bills when we were on 56k and penny a minute?!?!
and £20 a month for 512k always on is suddenly a small fortune!!
OMFG wot bollix
lets look at some figures,
back in 1999 Unreal on wireplay was costing me £400-500 a quarter using penny a minute dial up ( until the anytime dial ups came along )
in 2003 playing UT2003 on a phat 2mb Nildram ADSL line its costing me £58 (£174 per quarter)
given that 512k adsl is more 'standard' call it £20 per month.
gamers today need a slap in the face to realise how lucky they are, and if supporting a gsp by chipping in a monthly sub of £5 would help then its a bloody TINY price to pay for a decent community with good servers and support.
I got BY BB installed 2 months ago and signed up to the gaming service straight away cause I wanted to use thier facilities.
Tis a shame it has to come down to the fact peope don't want to pay a monthly sub of £2 (£3 for the non-subscribers).
It's cheaper than a PC mag ffs. :(
guyver.. you may be willing to pay extra to play on these servers but i am not... my BB costs me 25 quid a month and tbh i cant justify paying extra just to play games when theres things like mortgages,insurances,food bills, childrens clothes etc to buy first.
Online gaming is an entertaining past time but not one thats worth paying extra money for.
But thats just my opinion, your opinion is clearly different and i respect that, but please don`t slate me for saying what i believe when i am clearly entitled to do so.
Guv thats cos there is a new breed of gamers and basically they are spankers.
I did pay for the gaming bygaming service wife didnt like it but i paid. Even if it had been £5 still wouldnt have been enough to keep bygames going.
SCM
I pay about £25 a month for broadband. I used to get £300 phone bills when I used to play on Wireplay originally.
But thats just my opinion, your opinion is clearly different and i respect that, but please don`t slate me for saying what i believe when i am clearly entitled to do so.
i was slating that "we should get everything for free" standpoint, it wasnt directed at you directly, just you mentioned it so i commented. no offence meant, and my bad if i did offend.
Im just sick of this "oh im a poor gamer, i DEMAND that i get EVERYTHING online for free, coa i cant be arsed to pay for anything coz i've grown up in the early days of the internet where most everything else is free or i can warez it"
the days of free services on the net are comming to an end, the golden age is slowly closing, and before long the internet will be a very different place.
"is there a place for GSP's in a world where home bandwidth is increasding?"
absoulutely, simply because a home user has a nice phat 8mb SDSL line, doesnt mean sqaut tbh.
he wont have dedicated server racks with the software to run a decent service. he also wont have the rescources to run something that could enable a 'community' to grow out of it.
GSP's provide a meeting place, a social 'virtual' club where you can share thoughts, ideas, advice, playing tips, outlooks on life, opinions, arguemnts.
you dont get that from someones 1 server run off a ****ty cable connection with total w4nk server settings like 32 player lov grav quad jump instagib ctf........
Sooner or later ppl will quite rapidly HAVE to come to the realisation that gaming CANT survive if its a freebee.
Tens of thousands of ppl pay a monthly subscription to play games like everquest, DAOC, Star Wars Galaxies etc. Why shouldnt 'normal' games like first person shooters etc be any different??
If it means a stable business model that can actually make a profit, and it would ensure a stable, happy community then i think if your well into your online gaming then you shouldnt mind supporting your community/GSP with a meagre monthly sub.
we all used to give our money directly to BT in the old days via our phone bill, wouldn't you rahter see wireplay get al least a little instead to help it become successful instead of dying away like another blueyonder??
well to be honest guyver i personally would probably give up online gaming if it came to the point of having to pay as i dont use the service enough to warrant paying for it. several years ago i`d have gladly paid but things do change and not always for the better. to me, gaming was at its most fun back in the days of quakeword on wireplay, paying a penny a minute on the wpdirect dialup.. i was happy to pay wireplay 50 quid a month back then, but that was before NTL decided to charge for its net access and before my g/f decided it would be nice for us to have a baby. things change... i pay 25 quid a month for net access now and sometimes it can be hard to justify even that......
As for the future of online gaming i really do think that the major ISP`s should offer gaming services but the demise of BY seems to nail the lid on the coffin of that idea....
If any of the BY community wants to migrate back to Wireplay they are more than welcome. I hope the Wireplay community will be supportive and welcoming to them.
rofl at that message tbh, Dash.
It worked well before, you paid for what you used. Just by paying while connected.
The future of gaming providers has yet to be decided, but the industry will probably see some major changes over the next few years.
Awww, your posts have traditionally been so... um... 'provocative' ;)
I see it going any one of three ways
1) GSP's will be seen as value add services to ISPs / shops (NEVER being profitable/big/well staffed, there is currently one exception to that, and it relies on company management staff being incredibly supportive (i believe))
2) Broadcasting companies already doing what they can to exploit existing communities will decide that gaming services are another avenue they can invest in (the bbc?). This could then go the whole whack and even have tv shows/radio shows/LAN competitions. A whole "lifestyle" thing.
3) Companies will build up whole gaming "brands", using a basic underlying concept of gaming/hacking/the film "hackers"/etc. to build up brand labels that can the be used to sell clothing/build nightclubs/radio stations/whatever. A whole thing kinda like "extreme" sports.
I dunno, it'd require alot of "different" thinking to do #3 or #2. And #1 will almost never give you a community or a team of dedicated staff.
Note that none of the ways make a direct profit from running gaming servers.
well the basic fact is that you dont make a profit running game servers unless you can charge for them, in which case people will go and play on the free servers elsewhere, so a pay-to-play service will never make sense whilst there are play-for-free services elsewhere.
Selling advertising banners on the website and forums may raise some funds but nothing like enough to cover the costs of running the service.
I wonder if it would be possible to use the gaming service as a potential way of selling an ISP... With enough financial backing it may make sense for an isp to provide an "exclusive-to-our-members" gaming service, with a wide choice of servers on the best possible connections with a huge (and exlcusive) FTP area. As a way of advertising their existance the company could make a few servers available as "open to all". The costs of running the servers would be met as part of the overall business plan. Using the servers and specialist press to target the gaming industry direct would no doubt be fiancially easier than advertising on daytime TV as aol and freeserve do, so it may be possible for this ISP to run dial-up and DSL offers that are competitive.
For switching to this new company of course, gamers would be rewarded with the best pings, lowest pl and fastest FTP available.
Oh and you wouldnt have to put up with lame foreigners hogging the best servers all the time :D
just a thought, probably ill-founded nonesense but a thought all the same
Renting clan servers is profit making.
You rent servers, and with that income you provide a 'few' free public server to use as a 'show room' to show how good your rentable servers are.
you provide clans with leagues etc to build up the community, plus the free public servers will also hopefully build up a community of the casual gamers.
casual gamers with lots of cash could also rent their own servers so that they can play and provide game settings not catered for by the GSP's own public servers.
getting on board with hardware manufactures to offer prizes for leagues, can then be a very good incentive to charging a 'small' fee to enter that league ( for clan/team leagues it would be a one off payment per clan and not per player in each clan. )
you could also offer 1 months free clan server as a prize to entice clans to try your servers and then get possible custom from these clans by then renting that server after the free month.
there are many ways to make money from running a GSP, BLueyonder died imho because they amongst other things they didnt take advantage of the server rental/clan scene.
Originally posted by guyver1
you could also offer 1 months free clan server as a prize to entice clans to try your servers and then get possible custom from these clans by then renting that server after the free month.
Prize?! How about you give them a server for coming bottom of the league surely thats enough punishment :P
Originally posted by AND1E
Prize?! How about you give them a server for coming bottom of the league surely thats enough punishment :P
How about a wall of shame? :P
Hmmn. Interesting discussion chaps...
FWIW, Wireplay originally started as a 'culture change tool' with no requirement to make money, just change the way people thought about their phone line, to get BT out of the rut of the UK public only making short duration calls to local numbers...
<rant>
Then we tried several ways to make money directly from the gaming community (because the mgt. decided we were part of a profit centre - ha!!), subscriptions, a cut from the penny-a-minute rate, clan server rental, deals with ISPs (BT Internet in particular) - we did the lot. Nothing really worked because of this (rather generalised - so don't argue yet) fact:
gamers (esp. those who play fast action games, shooters, etc.) are young, and have no money.
The only way most gamers get the game software in the first place is by saving up, or 'borrowing' a copy from a friend - additional payment is unlikey. There are players who have disposable income, but not enough to support everyone else - only a few communities built around more involved simulations (eg: Everquest).
The big Gameplay.com idea (so we were told.. but that's another story) was to operate the on-line community as a martketing tool for the game retail business, thus effectively paying for the on-line service out of the costs of the boxed games. I think this may have worked, but it all got out of hand as the real purpose of the company became clear... ah well.
In todays Broadband climate: profit margins are very low for most ISPs, so there isn't much left to pay for values added services like gaming (it was ever thus!), the boxed games retail market is still healthy, and profits are quite good, but getting pressured to pay for ever larger, more expensive developments (cf: Halflife2), TV companies are still toying with computer game related shows, but there seems to be something missing that prevents such shows becoming mainstream and making money (suggestions on a postcard please!), and probably most importantly, we all still grow out of on-line gaming (expect a few wierdos like me :)) before we have put serious money into it.
</rant>
Phil.
Interesting discussion (RIP bygames!)
Just would like to add one thing tho regarding guyvers comment:
Tens of thousands of ppl pay a monthly subscription to play games like everquest, DAOC, Star Wars Galaxies etc. Why shouldnt 'normal' games like first person shooters etc be any different??
These games get updated monthly (sometimes more) and are a lot more complicated than your average fps.
Though I am more than happy to pay to game (I currently have a Planetside and SWG sub) I can see that the majority aren't interested.
Pop Culture Monkey
13-10-2003, 21:16
It's going to reach a point where the only servers will be run by XBox Live-style subscription companies. Pay an annual fee, and play a load of different games on their servers.
It's going to suck.
Aardvark
13-10-2003, 21:29
Originally posted by Qui
Interesting discussion (RIP bygames!)
Just would like to add one thing tho regarding guyvers comment:
Tens of thousands of ppl pay a monthly subscription to play games like everquest, DAOC, Star Wars Galaxies etc. Why shouldnt 'normal' games like first person shooters etc be any different??
These games get updated monthly (sometimes more) and are a lot more complicated than your average fps.
Though I am more than happy to pay to game (I currently have a Planetside and SWG sub) I can see that the majority aren't interested.
Ah, see now this is the thing. MMORPGS are a captive market, if people want to play them, they have to pay to use the servers. Theres no option of playing for free elsewhere.
Now, with FPS games, theres a pantload of servers that are free to play on. So why are people going to use servers they have to pay for, when they have equally good servers for nothing?
when they have equally good servers for nothing?
the argumen/discussion here tho is that these 'free' servers provided by GSP's arent going to survive much longer.
ppl who run servers off their home adsl/cable connection will NEVER be able to compete with servers run by a GSP esp when u include everything else a gsp can provide.
also, the majority of servers run by these 'home' users are on bizarre server settings with no idea about bandwidth/server settings etc and are on some weird totally screwed 32 player, low grav, instagib, 200% game speed etc.
we are not far from a scenario where most of these 'free' servers will slowly start to dissapear if the gamin gcommunity cant find a sound working and more importnatly 'profitable' business model.
take a look at Jolt, their clan server rental keep them afloat afaik.
BLueYonders refusal to get into the server rental market was no doubt one of the contributing factors to its sad demise.
server rental makes money, thats money can be used to provide a few 'free' servers.
free server bring in ppl, these ppl bring in the community and clans. clans bring in money to rent servers.
its a very difficult area to try and resolve, we have the past against us with regards to fps'ers as they've always been free, and its going to be a VERY difficult mold to break to convince fps'er gamers that paying a small sub to support their community can be a good thing.
as for the age thing, im going to have to disagree totally.
the average age of online gamers is 29. ( theres been a few university studies donr recently that have tried to analyse teh sterotypes revolving around gamers)
go to the multiplay i-series LANs at newbury, take a look at the demographic that attend, you wont find many gamers under 20 tbh ( and most of them are in the CS section )
Age is NOT the issue imho, its our past thats the biggest hurdle. the past was always free ( lol as free as a £500 phone bill every quarter can be free )
its a vicious circle at teh mo.
Gamers demand everything be free, GSP's cant commit to a free service for a long term business model and close down, gamers who are part of that gsp community then shout and cpomplain at the loss of service, even thos its their 'attitude' that has caused ( or been partly responsible ) the gsp to fail in the first place.
Back when Wireplay was in its golden age ( for me it was 1999, with the old Unreal1 community ) you only played UK ppl, you had the powerplay servers which were always full, and the openplay which were nearly always empty. the wireplay client was 99% UK ppl and wireplay was this tight knit UK community.
Today, there is soo much competition, soo much broadband access that we are now a european community. this demographic explosion means a dilution of the community we once knew.
ppl can rent servers from k-play (germany) that ping on a par with UK servers.
the old models are no longer applicable.
we NEED to move forward and admit we are at least partially responsible for our community. We can no longer go on demanding everything for free, and then 2 yrs later go accusing the GSP company of stabbing us in the back for dropping us.....
we need to change our attitudes.
ADSL is far cheaper than the old penny a munite. the amount most of us save these days compared to the old days is phenomenal.
and yet the idea of a small sub is sacrilage??
it might be me, but i just dont get that way of thinking...
Originally posted by guyver1
it might be me, but i just dont get that way of thinking...
because you`re a narrow minded fool who cannot accept that other people may think differently to yourself
sorry, just couldn`t resist a cheap dig :D
I still disagree with the bulk of your arguments Guyver but i must say that my reasons are purely personal - i dont play FPS games enough to warrant paying subscriptions.
I have to admit though you have it spot on about the 1999 community thing... my god wireplay was one awesome place back then :)
I'm surprised by that average age stat guyver1 - but I'll believe you, my 'evidence' for younger players can usually be found hogging the PC at home playing on OZ Deathmatch ;)
I was wondering if more privately hosted servers might actually encourage a bit more organization in the community, and with it a bit more incentive to form teams/clans like early football clubs... which in turn would improve the ability of the players and make for a more entertaining game - perhaps the start of a 'new sport' (to badly misquote the trailiers for the new TV show - fightbox) which could eventually be funded like other sports? Nah. Silly idea Phil.
P.
We are all used to getting things for free. You can get whatever you want off the Intnernet for free, and a lot of us do get things that we shouldn't free from time-to-time.
I wouldn't pay for a subscription to play Counter-Strike. I don't play it enough to warrent it. I would pay for a quality set of servers for all sorts of games which were idiot free. The problem is, there are a lot of idiots, and they are the people who fill out the servers.
I won't be paying for empty servers.
ScoRp1ouS
17-10-2003, 09:22
DAMN THEM IDIOTS DAMN THEM ALL!
I won't be paying for empty servers.
ppl who pay for something generally tend to USE what they paid for. i doubt you'd have empty servers.
I think Dash's point is that that service will need to improve dramatically while it's free. That's if WP ever intend or hope that people would be willing to pay for something that you could get free a lot of other places.
Aye. We need to be able to give people a reason to pay to play when they can do it for free elsewhere.
Pipex is teh w1n, that makes WP > everything else (apprt from uk2 laggy servers that is)
pOlariss
31-10-2003, 16:52
I've moved over from bygames. It seems half the people will be slating wp, slating whoever as a sign of showing there anger. But I believe many other people have done the same, you've got all the blueyonder immigrants including myself now playing on the wp servers which can only be good I spose :)
pOlariss
31-10-2003, 16:57
I'd be tempted to pay for counter-strike, although it depends on the payment methods and of course the actual cost. As for steam on lan, iGames have already pulled out of all CS activities, as have the LAN centres across the country. Only we can hope that several other big companies that play parts in LAN centres do the same, and revolt therefore making valve change their minds about it all. Hopefully soon they'll realise they've made enough money from it already, without selling it alot more over the net at whatever price that may be.
I don't think people care to much about the price if it's low, of course there will be some who won't pay even if it's 1p. But it's the fact that we have already bought the game, and it's like buying the game again each month which people don't seem to take to kindly to that fact.
[JEDI]Synbios
07-11-2003, 20:46
Originally posted by FzX
Pipex is teh w1n, that makes WP > everything else (apprt from uk2 laggy servers that is)
PIPEX being part of WORLDCOM doesn't worry you? ;)
Nah, I'm sure PIPEX are fine.
Pipex use the Worldcom network, they aren't the same company anymore :)
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