How to keep Dreamcast free yet raise money for server/development costs

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tripletopper
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How to keep Dreamcast free yet raise money for server/development costs

Post#1 » Sat May 11, 2019 10:45 pm

I noticed something. First SegaNet was a separate dialup service, but you can use others. If you want, you can find another ISP. I chose Earthlink in 2000, becuase it’s the only ISP that’s guaranteed compatible with both Macintosh and Dreamcast. Net Zero Wasn’t, AOL wasn’t, Prodgy wasn’t, Compuserve wasn’t. None of those played Dreamcast. SegaNet, which played Dreamcast, wasn't Macintosh incompatible.

Then Seganet became an online service. You provided your own compatible ISP, and Sega charged $10 a month to play online games. Then AT&T got in the Dreamcast Dialup business.

Then near the end, SgeaNet was still the online game service, but it was free, and was a unifying ID name for gamers.

And the amazing thing is it went from (as fart as Sega was conserned) from free, to premium members-only, and back to free.

But My Chu Chu Rocket remained the same and there were no such things as online updates yet.

So some code was changedd at the server level.

Now I see Dreamcast enthusiats groups who run the servers toda, add a game-specific message about themselves.

Why don’t we harness this power into a way to raise evenue for the great folks who maintian the netowrk now, but still keep it free.

RIght now you currently accept donations from $1 a month or more in units of $1/month. Why don’t you giuy give someone something for $1.

Before I expect you to dig outmoney for swag, this when implemented will only cost significantly less than $1’s worth of work a month.

Maybe you can sell advertising on the SegaNet servers.

There’s probalby soem Dreamcast-related businesses that like to advertise, like Dreamcast repair ships, Dreampi sales, Retrobrewer Dreamcast game makers, heck maybe if the game comapanies ask for some form of payment, maybe you can give them ad space advertising new games, but using the Dreamcast as the ad medium.

First of all Dremcaast can only go 33 Kb/s so all you need is a text ad wiht a short desription, and a website to visit. Second, because gaming is the main thing, these ads are pure text ads with no hyperlinks. Third, it's all done in the server code, so games remain unaffected, Fourth, each time you go to the lobby, a new ad could be played, so heavier users would be exposed to more ads. it’s a proportional system.

Let's say 100 people pay a$1 a month for the ads. Let’s assume it’s equal. For that month, any time an inviduual person plays an online game they have a 1/100 chance of seeing a particular ad, they can either be random, in a per-user sequence, everyone’s first ad is sponsor A, everyone’s second ad is sponsor B, or in global sequence so the first player sees ad 1, the next player sees ad 2, etc..

And all the server people have to do once a month is collect ad text from the donors and insert in the data base. On the first of the month is new ad day.

Maybe more people will be willing to financially donate to the Dreamcast server if they get something in return. And just copying and pasting to a random ad data base is easy. You just need a spot for a random ad, a data base to store corresponding numbers and ad texts.and a code that will show one ad.

Some more generous, enterprising, and social people may pay more than $1/month. If they buy 5 ads a month, they can have 5 different ads, or maybe 5 of the same, increasing odds their message will be seen. That’s a self-regulating way, more $$$ paid equals more weight in the DC ad market. if this works there may be $1000 raised a month consistently, and that’s 1000 ad exposures, then the price to be more likely to be seen goes up, So if global ad revenue goes up from $100/month to $1000/month, to have the same impact, you must increase your ad payment from $1 a month, to $10 a month.

As money will be collected on the day the crowdfunding page collects your payments, and then a day or 2 later, the ads get changed. To be fair to the server maintainers, you’re only allowed to change the ad on charge dat. This is minimal work to give people a gift who give money to the Dreamcast service.

And finally, even freeloading customers pay for the service without dipping into their wallets by seeing text ads.

If someone helps me with the final few tings to getting online, I’ll pay $1 a month, even if there are no ads I get, but If there is, I’ll give the person who helps me my ad for a month to say what they want to say. Pay by giving them more fame in the DC community.

The final few tings have to do with DMZ, WiFiPI, and Sega Swirl Gmail help. I’ll start paying in June if someone helps me get online today.

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Sega1Dream
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Re: How to keep Dreamcast free yet raise money for server/development costs

Post#2 » Sat May 11, 2019 11:01 pm

Sega 2k2 sports have ads. Everytime I play season mode on that game, they want me to buy Ooga Booga :lol:

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mistamontiel
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Re: How to keep Dreamcast free yet raise money for server/development costs

Post#3 » Sat May 11, 2019 11:05 pm

t33h33

tripletopper
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Posts: 133

Re: How to keep Dreamcast free yet raise money for server/development costs

Post#4 » Sat May 11, 2019 11:54 pm

I’m talking about ads that are changeable every month, that pop up on the server, not ones permanently embedded in the game.

Maybe more people will financially support the Dreamcast if they get something for the donation. I costs almost nothing to change the ads once a month. it can even be done by an automated form.

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