I've had several questions recently about whether we're going to start charging for membership on Pocket-Monkey and, if so, how much it's going to be. Some have said that they've heard that we're going to start charging as soon as we start the tournaments. I thought I should clarify things.
It won't be that soon, but yes, at some point before too long we'll be looking at things we can do to help the site pay for itself. We've always been pretty open about that. We haven't made a decision yet about exactly how we're going to it; there are several different approaches we could take. Regardless of what we do, though, we will always have some kind of free access on Pocket-Monkey. We're committed to that. Pocket-Monkey just wouldn't be Pocket-Monkey anymore if there weren't some kind of free access, even if (and this is just one option) it's more limited than the paid access. We'll make an official announcement about our plans before too long, but don't worry, it'll all be reasonable.
We have a couple of reasons for doing this:
There's a money reason: The site loses more money in server hosting and bandwidth costs every month than it makes from the ads and the store in a year -- and that doesn't include personnel time, which anyone running a business will tell you is usually the biggest cost. So we make up the gap in running costs with money from our "real" jobs.
But more importantly, there's a desire reason: We want to build Pocket-Monkey, we want to improve it. Before this recent update, the site was almost completely static for more than two years. Oh, sure, there was a little new feature every now and then (ignore lists, changing time limits on games, optional better graphics in the DHTML games), but nothing really significant until this update finally went in. How long were people waiting for tournaments? How long have WebTV players been putting up with their games sometimes jumping all over the place or just outright freezing up for a couple of days? (Which still happens, although less so with the update.) We want to build the site much, much more quickly than we have been these past couple of years. We want to add games, add more options, improve accessibility for people with vision issues, improve on-the-go access, and lots of other things. To do that, we have to replace at least some of our "real job" income so we have the time to work on the site. Imagine what we could do with Pocket-Monkey if we had the time to spend. We've got ideas, and we're always getting great ideas from all of our members. We want to act on them! Speaking personally, I'd like nothing better than for Pocket-Monkey to become my full-time job someday, and I think you'd like the results if it were. :-)
Anyway, there'll be an official announcement once we figure out what we're doing. But again, there will always be some level of free account here.
Forum
software by
Crowder Software Pocket-Monkey and the Pocket-Monkey logo are trademarks of T.J. Crowder and Jock Murphy. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
