sorry to complain...

**eachann** · Joined: 09 May 2006 Posts: 1340 Location: Michigan

I hate to bitch about this because i'm not really a major cheapskate, but i'm going to anyway. You're asking people to spend $17 just to display their guitar hero songs passed/songs 5*'ed stats in a signature. That's insane. I saw somebody's score posted in a signature and that's what originally brought me to this site... so by limiting the people using that you are limiting the number of people who will discover the site. In another post somewhere you said the site costed an average of $140 a month or something like that. Well at $17 each, I think you're asking for a heck of a lot more than the $140 in donations. I do understand you spend time and energy on the site, but when you make a fan site it's usually driven by passion for the subject, not by the desire to make money.

When I first saw the cost for points, I thought it would be like 1 or two points to display your stats in your sig... was shocked when i saw 20 freaking points. Look at other gaming sites that support games requiring a hell of a lot more database activity than this does and their membership fees are like $5/month or something... www.allakhazam.com for example.... and you're asking people to spend $17?

Maybe the fee you're asking is a one time payment and not recurring which would not be as bad, but then is it really going to help your costs? Unless you continue to get new people buying in month after month you're only going to get a month or two of relief.

I'm sure i'll get some flames for complaining, but I dont' really care. I'll just write my own stats in my signature... keeping all my scores here is somewhat of a pain, it's not any harder just to update my signature myself.
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**SkepticalMario** · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 310 Location: Minneapolis, MN

To clarify, buying contribution points is a one-time thing.
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**eachann** · Joined: 09 May 2006 Posts: 1340 Location: Michigan

Ok.. I wasn't too clear about that. That makes it a lot less bad, but in that case it seems like unless you are able to get people to repeat donations or get a continuous flow of new people to the site it's not going to help long term...
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**Matt** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 3780 Location: Bethel, Vermont

You also get to earn points through narrowing cutoffs and proving notecounts.

**HylianHero** · Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 4673 Location: Santa Cruz, CA

Yeah, so you don't really need to buy all of them.

Just go ahead and narrow some stuff down by a lot.
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**JCirri** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 4576

**MaximusDM** · Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 8:52 pm Post subject:

Oh snap. JCirri layed down the law.
But I do think that the points you get from donating should come out to a bit more in contribution points.
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**quackadilly** · Joined: 11 Feb 2006 Posts: 1078 Location: Colorado

can I get enough contribution points to still display the score box from unlocking graveyard shift??

**dd3mon** · Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 68

eachann's post was uninformed and out of line, donations are 100% optional, and there are more ways to get contribution points than donating.

Also I view having your scores in your signature as a very small "feature" - totally optional and kinda neat but nothing more. Disabling them for most users sped up this site DRAMATICALLY, and that's why he did it - not to generate donations (although it's done a bit of both).

There was a thread on here about disabling the graphics and it was overwhelmingly approved because it sped up the site so much, and that was before he offered any way to get your own image back via contribution points.

Personally, if I was JCirri, I would be doing things alot different financially. Guitar Hero is rapidly gaining popularity, and he's really sitting on a goldmine here in terms of ad possibilities that could pay for this site and likely show a nice profit with a little marketing work. Instead he's chosen to go the "fan site route" and offer his website that easily required hundreds and hundreds of hours of work totally free.

He opened up a donations section simply because his costs are starting to get very high ($140/mo for anyone is alot, especially someone with no real income). He's made very little effort to encourage people to donate, the decesion to disable the images was NOT made to generate income.
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**Matt** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 3780 Location: Bethel, Vermont

I think small, relevant ads would be a nice addition to the site (no flashing or moving adds, no invasive ads, probably redoctane or other GH related ads).

Oh, and no popups....

For those of you who use Firefox and hate flash ads, there is a nice addon for your browser that makes it so you have to click the play button on any flash unit before it plays ro displays anything. Combine that with popup blocking and blocking stratic images from ad sites, and I see maybe 1% of advertising on the internet.

**krimsunmunkeys** · Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:40 pm Post subject:

**Matt** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 3780 Location: Bethel, Vermont

which part?

http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ to download flash blocker.

**HylianHero** · Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 4673 Location: Santa Cruz, CA

**MaximusDM** · Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:09 am Post subject:

And I hate those ads that came right after the I think it was last E3 where they revealed the PS3, or maybe it was the TGS, but like a little while after that they had/still have those ads that you play a simple, always winnable game to win a free PS3.

And I am thinking to myself, how they hell am I going to get a free PS3 when the damn thing doesn't come out for more than a year.
I want to just call them up and ask how many free PS3's they have in stock because I won their punch out Osama game and want to claim my prize in person at the warehouse.
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**trofl** · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1297 Location: Ames, IA

Our DDR club here at school has an ad on our website where you can click to go to the Red Octane website and we get a kickback of 10% of whatever you buy on there. I would check into that and encourage anyone that needs a new SG controller or whatever to use the link they give you to help out ScoreHero.
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