A Very Important Subject...

[Altoids]

Referring to what Ninja said at the very top, I'd agree. We're the original community of AoS before it came out for Pay2Play. We've tested all of Ben's ideas and have given positive/negative feedback on the forums, so basically all of us, not including the people who join after 1.0, should receive a free copy of the game.

[Paratrooper]

I think it's a bad business decision to give the game for free. After all, We are the only ones who play the game. Who's left to sell it to?

That is unless Ben starts advertising the game to other sites.

[KevinLancaster]

Maybe allow free access to the members who have posted recently and have a join date before the release of 1.0? I mean, it would work since the game will eventually have us login with our forum accounts.

[Altoids]

I think it's a bad business decision to give the game for free. After all, We are the only ones who play the game. Who's left to sell it to?

That is unless Ben starts advertising the game to other sites.

@Paratrooper: Exactly how he'll get money.
@KevinLancaster: Refer to what I posted above

[Fett316]

I heard somewhere that if you were on the old forums, the ones that are now archived, you would get the game for free. Could someone please verify this for me?

I remember something about this... I'll look into it.

EDIT: Related thread

http://forumarchive.spadille.net/topic. ... post-52305

[MegaDeuce]

Aw, I miss the OldForums. Back when Kaede and AdolfHitler and Reuben were running around raising hell, and nobody was sure if Lexsym was a girl or not :(

[ReubenMcHawk]

Aw, I miss the OldForums. Back when Kaede and AdolfHitler and Reuben were running around raising hell, and nobody was sure if Lexsym was a girl or not :(

I'm still raising hell, man.

[TheOperator]

And most people still don't know who I am, even with being one of the first modders ever...

[demo123]

Well if it is pay-pal than i wouldnt be able to pay it. I dont have a credit card. I would need to wait 4 years to get a credit card. So no.

[DoomSplitter]

I think Ben needs something for all the hard work he's done...

Id pay for this game.

^This^
It makes me sad how many people say that they wouldn't pay. If you've enjoyed this game, you should support it by buying it. It probably won't cost that much, so I don't see the issue.

[Howl]

I actually don't think making the game Pay to Play would be a very good idea. The game is free right now, and while popular, it's not blazingly popular. It's not Minecraft-popular. And it's a lot harder to bring in new players when a game costs money. Even if it cost only 50 cents. Just having to pay for it at all is a barrier for many people.

And look what it's competing with. Team Fortress 2 is free to play. League of Legends is free to play. Tribes Ascend is free to play. Need for Speed World is free to play. The list goes on and on.

These are games developed by huge teams of people working for big-name companies.

Of course, I do think the developers should get some money for their efforts. But the game is young, and charging money would stunt the growth of the player base. Instead, I think a different business model would work better:

• Donations. A nice big "please donate" when you go to download the game. There's a pretty well-developed community here (although, as stated, many are young), so I think at least a few would donate. Maybe a nag screen in-game too, that goes away once you donate. I like this game; I would donate.
• Pay for special features. The free game Soldat does this; if you pay, you can change the color of your jets in game, and a few other things. Team Fortress has hats you can buy. Of course, it shouldn't be anything game-changing--no bigger ammo clips or anything like that, since people tend to loathe pay-to-win models. Since there's been talk of a registration system, a good one would be paying gets you stats tracking. Or paying protects your in-game name. Maybe you get something special on the forums, too.
• Ads on the website seems easy enough. In-game ads? Maybe, although those can get messy, and your game experience becomes a slave to the whims of the ad-server.

My two cents.

[Dash]

Honestly, this game needs much more development and a bigger community if SoCa were to even bring taking the F2P title away from this. If you were part of the community before, whoopdy-do, have about you get a gold star? Damn hipsters.

If it was to become a P2P:
If you really want something, get a forum badge, because that's the only thing the devs can give you if they decide to make you pay for it. Yes, your feedback was appreciative and great, but giving this game to you, for free, is not a valid reason and SoCa would be at a major loss.

[Danqazmlp]

What the game really needs is donations and a spread of the word. I haven't seen the game on any major websites at all, and simply talking to some of them may get it covered. If push comes to shove, we could always consider Kickstarter.

[Tigershield]

I'm 21 years old. So paying for Ace of Spades isn't a problem. But I never bought something over the internet. I'm just not into all the Internet banking. For younger people It's even worst, They have to deal whit parents.

Only thing I can say is, Let the people that joined the Forums/IRC at beginning stage of the game develoment play for free. And new players that join pay for the game.

But even before Ben can ask money for Ace of Spades.Ben will need to add allot of content. Cause at this moment. It feels like the game is still trying to find it's core element(s).

Another very important thing.

The Minecraft developer will release the source-code for Minecraft when sales are dying. So Ben kinda needs to hurry if he wants to profit from AOS. Cause when the it will go open-source ecpect allot of aos shooter clones.

The future Direct copy of the minecraft website.

I plan on developing Minecraft until it's a finished complete game, with a downloadable client (with fullscreen mode), custom key re mappings and possibly modding support.
For as long as people enjoy and purchase the game, I will develop extensions after the game is done.
Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.

Source. http://www.minecraft.net/game

[FNSaver]

I don't think I would pay for a pay-to-play game. Sure, Ben, go ahead and take ads, I wouldn't really mind. But as far as I know the people that run this game are the bloody community. I think people like Mat and Sham and Homps deserve equal amount of credit as Ben. Let's say that Ben provides us with a piece of rock. Although it's a very versatile tool, it's not very much fun to play with it. People like Mat and Sham cut it and make it a diamond. They make it shine. And players like Hannah, TGM, Tank - they are the real values of this game.