This is a huge post, sorry, but I'm trying to answer whatever questions I can before the wife catches me working at night
sms_117b said:
The auto competetion entry, firstly being from the UK would I still be elegible as I'm not for most competitions the site runs and being automaticaly entered would me actually entering myself give me a second chance to win? I'm not hugely fussed, I'm just curious as it's a selling point.
Only for the ones that you'd otherwise be eligible for. We can't change the laws, unfortunately.
sms_117b said:
Will video downloads be playable on BlackBerrys?
I don't know - technically any phone identified as a smartphone should be able to try, but I don't know if BlackBerrys can play these videos. It might even depend on the version you have. I'll check around the office tomorrow to see if anyone has one that we can test on. We tested on several iPhones, an iPad, a Droid, and a Palm Pre (and my Zune HD, but that unfortunately doesn't work
)
D_987 said:
Really, you're now selling custom titles - making those titles earned through winning contests or posting a lot completely pointless...
Custom titles has been one of the most requested features from people on the site, second only to video podcasts. We did the code to add them in a while back, but there is a very high potential for abuse, and we don't want to have to moderate them constantly. People that subscribe are incredibly less likely to set their titles to something inappropriate, so it acts as a built-in filter.
People with special titles (from contests or otherwise) get
both a custom title and the one that's set. These are pretty rare, so you will mostly only see it on staff.
Honestly, I don't think that it counts as one of the major features, but it's a nice little perk, and we wanted to throw in as many things as we could. Same as the badge.
D_987 said:
Wasn't there a user group created for this very purpose that was disbanded? Was it purposefully disbanded to make way for this paid membership group - if not, why was it disbanded if you're simply going to do the same thing?
It was disbanded because it wasn't going to work well in that format, so we killed the idea at that time. We still liked the original concept though, so we brought it back for this - it'll function differently though. Like the titles, this is also a matter of volume - we don't expect the thousands and thousands of people we have on the forums to all join, so slotting this into the member program means we have less traffic to handle in there.
ddq5 said:
Are swear words allowed in titles? Would one be allowed to identify oneself as a "Bad ************"?
Nope, standard common sense rules apply.
Lord Krunk said:
That is a fair point. Are there at least some terms and conditions associated with the forums?
All the same rules apply to everyone. A clarification of the forum guidelines is in the works, but it's completely unrelated to this.
Nerf Ninja said:
I keep getting this horrible feeling that those of us who don't sign up are going to be treated as akin to pirates.
We'd never treat a ninja like a pirate. That's just wrong.
Chicago Ted said:
Just for clarification, will we be able to still watch videos on the site at a lower quality if we don't sign up for the Publisher's Club?
Not a lower quality, at the same quality you've been seeing them at since we upgraded them late last year. We aren't changing anything for non-members.
Chicago Ted said:
And are you planning on increasing the number of ads on the site in the near future?
Nope.
Insanum said:
The forum community, Which probably gives a proportion of the revenue via the advertising & Site traffic to the Escapist, And the Suits, Who want to make as much money as they can from the site.
Here's something you may not know. Forum traffic is, in ad terms, completely worthless. It's a tiny percentage of our total site visitors that view lots of pages but never click on ads. Nobody wants to advertise in them. The forums are also the heaviest load on our servers, and require a dedicated employee and several very gracious volunteer moderators to even attempt to keep in line. As a business, we'd be better off not having most of our forums at all.
I'll leave it to you to decide why the "suits," every one of which who is a long-time dedicated gamer
and has written articles about gaming for our site, keep the forums around. Frankly, as one of them, I find your insinuation pretty offensive.
Insanum said:
My question to the Escapist faculty is Should[/I] we part with our hard earned money?
Here's the thing: As an ad-supported business, there are certain things we can and can't reasonably do. The membership program is a way to do two different things. First, it's a way for people who want to support the site but
not see ads to support us and what we do directly.
Second, it's a way for us to add features that being ad-supported doesn't allow us to do. For example, we couldn't afford the bandwidth to serve the high quality video to everyone. Video podcasts mean people don't need to come to the site or see ads to see the videos. Full-content RSS feeds also keep people away from the site and ads.
If you don't mind seeing the ads, and none of the features sound like something you'd use, then by all means take a pass on this. I personally think that when you add everything up it's a nice set of features, but it's definitely not for everyone.
