COMMERCIALIZATION

By Bravecat

It seems Furcadia is becoming more and more commercialized. It started with the introduction of wings in the last months of 1999. Some furres couldn't resist buying wings for $20.00 and it wasn't long before wings were everywhere. But hey, we were supporting Furcadia right?... or so was the message being passed around Furcadia.

Now things are a bit different. There are programs and guilds now devoted to raising funds for Furcadia (I was the webmaster of the first of these). Also there are Dragons... ok, cool... but 50 dollars? Aren't we getting a tad greedy? I'm not totally sure what all this money is going towards. I've heard claims that it is for a new server but I also know Felorin would like to bring in enough money to live off of from Furcadia. Most of us agree that this is fair enough but the recent update has taken the next step still. Now buttons to operate a character's wings and dragon abilities are embedded into the interface. Simply put, those of us that aren't Dragons or don't have wings are forced to use a screen suited for those that do. Sure it might be helpful for dragons and wing bearers but it is also a way to get the rest of us to buy them. By clicking on the buttons some of us get a message saying we don't have wings or we aren't a dragon and they tell us how to get them. Messages and buttons like these are what is making Furcadia more and more commercialized. I understand the need for the creators of Furcadia to have some income but I'm afraid that it is quickly becoming a problem. How long will it be before we have to pay to log on? Or did you not know about Felorin's plan?

When asked in an interview 'How do you expect Furcadia to compete with other, massively funded Online RPG's?' Felorin said, "So, how I would try to "achieve comparable success"... The first goal is to try to just get massively funded ourselves. (grin) Having a partially finished version of a product improves your chances of getting funding immensely, especially if you can show that it's popular. Where I do hope to see some significant money spent is in marketing. I've learned from long experience that no matter how good a game is, it really needs first rate marketing to reach its full sales potential. So I want to make sure we team up with a company that's excited about the game and is good at letting the public know that it's available to come try. We'll probably always keep a small section of the game available for free so people can check it out and see whether they want to spend money on it. Unlike some massive CD games, too, we won't have any problems keeping the demo version small enough to download. We want to give discounted or free access to people who contribute the most popular work to the environment, and eventually, years from now, if the game's big enough and commercially successful enough, maybe we could even pay people royalties if their stuff was wildly popular."

Perhaps some of you may think twice before giving Furcadia your money. I did not write this to deter those of you that can afford to support Furcadia from doing so... but to merely think about what your doing. Help Furcadia buy a new server? What could this mean in the long run?

Furcadian Banner Exchange