The Twin Galaxies new pricing policy, and how it relates to me, and Kong

[homerwannabee]

I got word on my Donkey Kong Junior submission.  They want to charge me $60 for it.  So it is $60 for over 2 hours, just to let everyone know.  I told the person to hold off on reviewing it because financially I am not in the best position at the moment.

[ChrisP]

Oh dear.

So it's $25 for any submission *UP TO* two hours, and goes into the next tier if it goes over 2 hours?

This model is not going to work. People will be fine playing for live submissions at the 1up or whatever, but few will be willing to pay the price for a taped submission.

If the "these aren't all the best scores, not everyone submits to TG" problem was big before, it's huge now.

TG's relevance as a scorekeeping entity is officially in big trouble.

[Fast Eddie]

im quite shocked by that, i assumed it would be $25 as it was originally announced as $15 regardless of length...

[ChrisP]

They really just need to let the community referee recorded submissions, and put the responsibility for uploading/storing the recording on the submitter (with a stipulation that it has to be up for a minimum of six months or whatever to give everybody who wants to look at it time to look at it). No expense to them, no fee to the players.

If someone contests/disputes the score, THEN they can call in a referee.

If someone wants their submission private, they can pay the fee.

This seems simple, obvious, and very workable.

[stella_blue]

Oh dear.

So it's $25 for any submission *UP TO* two hours, and goes into the next tier if it goes over 2 hours?

This model is not going to work. People will be fine playing for live submissions at the 1up or whatever, but few will be willing to pay the price for a taped submission.

If the "these aren't all the best scores, not everyone submits to TG" problem was big before, it's huge now.

TG's relevance as a scorekeeping entity is officially in big trouble.

Back in November 2012, I posted a comment anonymously over at Donkey Blog.

A portion of that comment appears below:

At this point, I can summarize my thoughts on the "new" Twin Galaxies in 3 words:

Dismal failure imminent.

[JNugent]

TG's relevance as a scorekeeping entity is officially in big trouble.

Agreed.   

[danman123456]

Its very hard to say you are the "Authority" on Video Game scores when you will not get hardly ANY people to submit scores now. $60 for one game that is 3 hours is quite simply outrageous. Perhaps they need to open up a "If its a Top 10 or Top 5 score then it is FREE otherwise it cost to submit". I read the site and it sure souns like ONE game is $25 or 2 hours worth of games is $25. Oh well. I have 1 score up there and submitted 3 back in the day c'est la vie.....

[hooch66]

Agreed. The problem is the thing (Twin Galaxies) has been monetized. They are now looking to make back the money they paid.

I wonder if they'd be better off with $5 a submission. Is is better to have a bunch of $5 submissions or very few $25 or $60 submissions?

At $60, there better be a guaranteed time frame for score verification. Like, score will be verified within a month or money back.

They really just need to let the community referee recorded submissions, and put the responsibility for uploading/storing the recording on the submitter (with a stipulation that it has to be up for a minimum of six months or whatever to give everybody who wants to look at it time to look at it). No expense to them, no fee to the players.

If someone contests/disputes the score, THEN they can call in a referee.

If someone wants their submission private, they can pay the fee.

This seems simple, obvious, and very workable.

[ChrisP]

Agreed. The problem is the thing (Twin Galaxies) has been monetized. They are now looking to make back the money they paid.

Jourdan was saying at the Kong Off 2 that the score verifications were actually a break-even proposition, if that. And I believe it. If you have to pay somebody by the hour to review a recording (and as as a for-profit company, they're not allowed to use unpaid labor), along with all the other overhead on the score stuff in general, $12.50 an hour can't possibly be profitable.

Having to pay refs is one of several problems with treating TG as a business, and how they're trapping themselves into unworkable situations by doing so.

The only way through this particular hurdle that I can see is to turn the verification/referree process over to the community, and get through the "no unpaid labor" problem using the loophole that it's "entertainment" or whatever. Nothing wrong with that, empires are built based solely on the unpaid labor of others. YouTube, for example. It's all user-generated.

The other (bigger), fundamental issue with a for-profit TG is that the market for whatever it is they ARE hoping to profit from (it's not gonna be submissions) is incredibly small.

The competitive classic gaming community, which is really the only sub-community in gaming that gives a flip about Twin Galaxies at all, is not anywhere near large enough to sustain even the smallest of businesses.

This community (TG's market) is literally a few hundred people. That's it. Notice that you see the same few dozen guys everywhere you go, on all the streams, all of TG's scoreboards, the forums, what have you.

They can offer whatever growth model they want, but this community has shown itself, repeatedly, to be resistant to growth, no matter how hard people work to make it bigger, and even when massive opportunities to grow are dropped in its lap.

The King of Kong was this community's shot. There will never be anything else like it. And while it turned out great and achieved massive success, it didn't even double the size of this tiny community, which is a real bad sign of how interesting this hobby is to outsiders. You either get this or you don't, and it looks like most people don't.

I wish them luck, but I just don't see how it's going to work. Flawed as it was, the old organization's structure was at least in line with the economic realities of the hobby, which is that there's no money in it. There really isn't!

[corey.chambers]

Perhaps my response to the new for-profit TG is more emotional, but there has been many arguments made that shows that there are some real intellectual problems as well. I agree, that without some kind of waiver of price for top 10 submissions that some may not even bother posting their scores. The problem with this issue is that people may not care to have a score posted unless it is in the top 10, and then all submissions will have a reduced or waived fee anyways. Another problem which I am just learning about is that not everyone posts to TG. I think that this problem will only get worse, for even those who used to post will cease for various reasons. It wasn't until I got my killscreen that I learned that about 50 other people had already done it. This actually made is less significant which is why I am pressing for 1M, since less people have done it. So much for 9th place on the MAME score board. It doesn't seem to mean anything anymore. Whatever it used to mean to people has been reduced to a "keep it in perspective", there are so many scores and good players out there that don't submit that it is hard to really know how good you really are compared to a TG scoreboard. I am personally leaving my 505,000 point game there and not posting any more even though I have achieved a killscreen. Heck, I may even request to have it removed. Doesn't matter anyways. I never cared about being known. I liked to play and thought it was fun to post my score. I only stream now to talk with other people who like DK. I will not post any score improvements unless there are several good reasons for it, otherwise it makes no sense to me to pay for it or be involved with the scoreboard anymore. I am already connected with the best donkey kong players in the world, and they are the ones that really seem to care about a good score, a scoreboard doesn't really do anything for you. Anyone who really cares about our personal best are those who we already know, those that aren't don't care as much anyways so why broadcast it on a scoreboard that has and is now becoming more obsolete in what it really means. I mean no offense to anyone who may think differently. Just my first impressions and reactions. I am open to other points of view before I come to more solid conclusions. Maybe I am still upset about the whole thing and not giving it a fair and unbiased approach. We shall see in due time.

[John73]

Second, there is no charge to submit scores that were performed live. Richie said so in the past.

I do understand why it's a $0 fee for live events, but that really is giving the big finger to the International part of Twin Galaxies INTERNATIONAL imo

[Fast Eddie]

so should we show em how its done and have a community verified scoreboard here for the DK games?

not (entirely) as a snub to TG, just somewhere for people to freely mix it with the TG scoreboard and to maintain accurate standings...

[Xermon54]

For DK submission, I would say that:"For a score to be legit, it has to be streamed on twitch.tv".

Honestly, streaming on twitch would be the only requirement for recognizing any DK score. I mean... everyone streams/can stream on twitch without any difficulties. We're in 2013, and twitch is the new live thing!

[corey.chambers]

I agree with the idea of having our own DK community verified Scoreboard on this forum. We already have the Donkey Kong timeline and the The Official Unofficial List of DK Killscreeners. We can just put together a free community verified Scoreboard on the DonkeyKongForum. We can make a thread for it.  Have rules such as it must be streamed live on twitch, although it could be hard to ensure that it is live since someone could just playback their best inp file and stream it as if it were live. Someone can post a score and others can reply to verify and then we can have it officially posted. I can compile the info from the twingalaxies site as a start and start a new discussion in the General section. Is anyone in favor of this? Please note new post. If it takes then that is great, if not then we can just delete the thread. What do you guys say to the Donkey Kong High Score List?

[Fast Eddie]

i would envision this being done as a rolling clone of the TG tracks, only with extra scores added...

all TG game/recording rules would apply, twitch tv would just be the alternative to sending your tape...live or pre recorded is fine...

basically THE donkey kong leaderboards, that would exceed TG for credability and officialness of score/rank...