A gaia rep had the nerve to say that gaia isn't money hungry

[Doctorate Pepper]

Calelith

Doctorate Pepper

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

I'd like to see this statement made by a "Gaia Rep."

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

Sure. Let me go dig up my ticket. Will a screenshot suffice or do you want me to forward you the email?

[Calelith]

Doctorate Pepper

Calelith

Doctorate Pepper

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

I'd like to see this statement made by a "Gaia Rep."

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

Sure. Let me go dig up my ticket. Will a screenshot suffice or do you want me to forward you the email?

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

An unedited screenshot would be nice.

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

[Zandy]

I myself do feel that Gaia is rather money honey. I'd see otherwise if we actually got some more appropriate large updates that weren't revolving around earning more money for the site.

There's a difference between a site that is money hungry (like Gaia), and a site that is mutually profitable, that is, the user base profits from the money earned from the site. With the huge increase in the number of sales Gaia has comparatively to past years, you'd expect Gaia would have came out with many new features at a faster rate and higher quality. I have yet to see that from Gaia :/.

[illumi zaoldyek]

Doctorate Pepper

I lolled hard at the part where you say what you'd rather do to your hard earned money, instead of giving it to Gaia rofl
Thank you for teaching me a new amazing English expression emotion_kirakira
On topic: I agree!

[MeMyselfAndEye]

Mage The Red

Doctorate Pepper

Keep projecting, lady. You're showing me awful hard. lol

All those letters you purchased over the years wasn't enough to keep Gaia out of the red. zOMG!, HOC, and many other features still costed money to make. Hosting this site and paying employees still requires money. Hell, making new features requires money. Just because you disagree with their current business tactics doesn't make this any less of a fact.

Honestly, I don't always agree with their business ideas, either. But I'm not ignorant to the fact that they are making quite the pretty penny, still.

If they didn't throw away their projects like candy wrappers maybe they wouldn't have problems making a profit. It's kind of ridiculous thinking that this amount of marketing is because they "just want to make a profit for once" when they very well could have done so with zOMG, HoC, Monster Galaxy, Soul Crash, Summer Springs, and the myriad of game partnerships they had and blew because of their track record. I'm all for them pocketing a bit of cash but this kind of marketing doesn't do well long term especially when looking for partnerships with other companies. Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

[Twisted Lady]

I would also like to see a source on this. Although it's pretty much company policy everywhere to not openly insult your workplace in front of customers, so I'm not really sure what answer you were expecting to get. "Oh yes, this site is a bunch of greedy whores and it's all garbage! Thank you so much for telling me, an unconnected staff member who has absolutely no control over my company's decisions!"

[Calelith]

MeMyselfAndEye

Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

Got proof to back that claim?

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

[Euphonious Cantabile]

MeMyselfAndEye

Mage The Red

Doctorate Pepper

Keep projecting, lady. You're showing me awful hard. lol

All those letters you purchased over the years wasn't enough to keep Gaia out of the red. zOMG!, HOC, and many other features still costed money to make. Hosting this site and paying employees still requires money. Hell, making new features requires money. Just because you disagree with their current business tactics doesn't make this any less of a fact.

Honestly, I don't always agree with their business ideas, either. But I'm not ignorant to the fact that they are making quite the pretty penny, still.

If they didn't throw away their projects like candy wrappers maybe they wouldn't have problems making a profit. It's kind of ridiculous thinking that this amount of marketing is because they "just want to make a profit for once" when they very well could have done so with zOMG, HoC, Monster Galaxy, Soul Crash, Summer Springs, and the myriad of game partnerships they had and blew because of their track record. I'm all for them pocketing a bit of cash but this kind of marketing doesn't do well long term especially when looking for partnerships with other companies. Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

Thing is, HoC, Monster Galaxy, Soul Crash, Summer Springs, and other game partnerships Gaia had didn't do well because the former management (i.e., under the former Facebook-savvy CEO) made poor business decisions, which put Gaia into the red. With the exception of HoC, the rest of the games were only playable on Facebook, and I recall non-Facebook users around that time criticizing Gaia for not making those games available on the Gaia website, so part of the userbase was alienated. Not updating the guilds at the same time as the forums was another poor decision that former management made, which former dev Uncle Kenny mentioned here (4th paragraph).

[MeMyselfAndEye]

Calelith

MeMyselfAndEye

Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

Got proof to back that claim?

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

Or how about you explain to me the logic of being able to spend millions in R&D and maintenance while "in the red" for at least 6 small games and by their own admission two of their "largest undertakings ever"? ( Estimation of millions based on their own admittance of the development costs on zOMG and HoC alone, I'm not even sure how much the facebook fiasco set them back. I have no intention of digging through that depressing sight of zOMG and HoC shut down justifications for the ump-teenth time to find out the exact numbers again). You don't pull money like that out of your a** even as a semi-large company. I don't work for Gaia so I'm not privy to their finances but logic dictates the money came from somewhere, and their expensive "failures" didn't put them under. Not many other options for where the money came from. Pretending that this site could run for 10 years in the red doesn't seem especially realistic to me either since it had to have been paid for some how and it was only growing the whole time. Maybe for the first few years hell, maybe even first 3-5 years it was strictly a labor of love, but after I would expect them to at least start getting very close to or hitting a break even point. And with the introduction of the Cash Shop, no doubt remains they've been making a profit because they were getting paid to do exactly what they did before, make pixels to be purchased just this time for usable real world currency.

[Calelith]

MeMyselfAndEye

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

How about instead of trying to shift the goalposts, you provide the proof to back your claims.

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

[MeMyselfAndEye]

Teabo Milk Tea

MeMyselfAndEye

Mage The Red

Doctorate Pepper

Keep projecting, lady. You're showing me awful hard. lol

All those letters you purchased over the years wasn't enough to keep Gaia out of the red. zOMG!, HOC, and many other features still costed money to make. Hosting this site and paying employees still requires money. Hell, making new features requires money. Just because you disagree with their current business tactics doesn't make this any less of a fact.

Honestly, I don't always agree with their business ideas, either. But I'm not ignorant to the fact that they are making quite the pretty penny, still.

If they didn't throw away their projects like candy wrappers maybe they wouldn't have problems making a profit. It's kind of ridiculous thinking that this amount of marketing is because they "just want to make a profit for once" when they very well could have done so with zOMG, HoC, Monster Galaxy, Soul Crash, Summer Springs, and the myriad of game partnerships they had and blew because of their track record. I'm all for them pocketing a bit of cash but this kind of marketing doesn't do well long term especially when looking for partnerships with other companies. Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

Thing is, HoC, Monster Galaxy, Soul Crash, Summer Springs, and other game partnerships Gaia had didn't do well because the former management (i.e., under the former Facebook-savvy CEO) made poor business decisions, which put Gaia into the red. With the exception of HoC, the rest of the games were only playable on Facebook, and I recall non-Facebook users around that time criticizing Gaia for not making those games available on the Gaia website, so part of the userbase was alienated. Not updating the guilds at the same time as the forums was another poor decision that former management made, which former dev Uncle Kenny mentioned here (4th paragraph).

I can understand them hurting now, it's why I didn't mind the advertisements and initial pickup for cash item pushes at first. Hell I supported it since I knew they had to make it back somehow and it wasn't going to be what they used the money for. But the money initially had to come from somewhere, so it doesn't make sense to say they spent millions in development while in the red and did so 5-7 times and aren't out of business. Hell some big companies did it once and are out of business for it today. It just isn't logical to me to say that before this all started they weren't even breaking even. That's all. Now-a-days it's hard to tell if they've made it back or just alienated too many of the users (then and now) to have hit that point or if they really are just being absolute greedy brats after seeing what they could be making off the current userbase.

[MeMyselfAndEye]

Calelith

MeMyselfAndEye

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

How about instead of trying to shift the goalposts, you provide the proof to back your claims.

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

1. Never was "shifting the goal post". I simply have a very heavy heart whenever I have to scrub through zOMG and HoC failures since they were two very promising opprotunities that were literally thrown aside because Gaia simply didn't know how to deal with them.

2. After some digging through my old old messages/subscribed threads I found this one for zOMG:

raggedy grrl

I'm unsure how much zOMG! cost Gaia Interactive to create in total.

In 2006, they went for $8.93 M in venture capital (their second)...but I think that covered site infrastructure (including improvements to Towns, the avatar system, servers, and more), but I'd imagine part of that money also included initial feasibility studies for the MMO that would eventually become zOMG!

They followed up with another round of venture capital funding in the summer of 2008 that was reportedly earmarked for zOMG! This enabled Gaia Interactive to finish zOMG! to the initial release state (without the later addition of Deadman's Shadow).

Gaia Interactive laid off 16 full-time employees and 20 contractors the December after zOMG!'s launch despite earlier statements indicating 2008 was expected to be a banner year: "Gaia Online, a youth world with 7 million monthly visitors, sells more than $1 million a month of virtual goods and expects a record month in December, said its chief executive, Craig Sherman" (]from Mercury News as layoffs were being announced...ouch...but the quote could've been from earlier in the year).

In part, this looks like Gaian management planning for survivability in an uncertain economy (remember, Lehman Brothers went under September 15, 2008, and between that mess, the bailout, and more factors, the economic climate was quite chaotic). This was not a great time to miss any performance estimates, especially since by December 2008, Gaia Interactive had ]reportedly received $20.9M in three rounds of venture capital funding.

Other sources, however, pointed to the successful...but not wildly successful...rollout of zOMG! (I think it's worth pointing out that when another round of layoffs happened in 2010 (the one that took MavDoc, among other people), Gaia stated zOMG!'s under-performance was a contributing factor [see last section]).

I want to stress that zOMG! was successful, just not as successful as the investors had hoped, incidentally. Given that Gaia is an unusual website, a hybrid mix of forums and games with an economy that has both site-only and real-world components (Gaia gold as well as Gaia cash), defining the return on investment for adding an MMO was a complete unknown. I suspect the third round of funding probably involved some heady expectations of rewards for the investors' risk. Additionally, I would hazard to say that the VC firms who provided the third round of funding have probably had much to do with pushing Gaia to slow, then cease, zOMG!'s development.

I don't know how much Deadman's Shadow added to the overall price tag for zOMG!. At a low side, I'd estimate $2-3 million (if the base software engineer is around $80K a year) up to $8M with contractors, infrastructure improvements, and maintenance and updates.

Overall, I'm guessing zOMG! has cost Gaia Interactive $14-20M to bring the MMO to its current state (and somehow, that's sounds kinda low). I can't find the post, but I believe I've read in an Ask the Admin that GC sales of zOMG! items like Superchargers, Ghi Amps, and Revives are sufficient to cover the current maintenance mode on a month-to-month basis. At this point, I would guess this primarily means keeping the servers running and minimal tech support.

- continued in next post -

edit: If you cared to read the rest this is the link to the original thread.


all supplied links leading to outside sites (and this is an older post so don't be too surprised if one or two don't work) and is a pretty damn good estimation as to what the low end cost should be for zOMG, but again, not a Gaia employee nor one that would have access to their financials to know 100% concrete numbers. By their own admission (need to still locate where exactly I saw it, so much information from back then) HoC cost them even more than zOMG. That's Those two projects was where I was basing the majority of the money on since I admittedly have little to no idea what the spectrum of facebook and iOS app development costs. I would wager less that zOMG/HoC but more than one million each from start to finish.

[Proletariat Porno]

Doctorate Pepper

BUT 10/10 announcements were all about buying gaia cash and buying from the gaia cash shop. Hmmm... Thirsty for money much? Gaia has gotten so hungry for money they are bombarding us all with PMs and announcements begging us all to buy stuff. Well you know what? I'd rather take my hard earned money and wipe my a** with it than give it to gaia. lol

That's my site feedback. emotion_dealwithit

Calelith

Doctorate Pepper

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

I'd like to see this statement made by a "Gaia Rep."

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

As am I. It only takes a moment to take a screenshot, upload it to imgur, then share the link in the thread. The fact that four hours later it's still not here has me worried.

[Valheita]

MeMyselfAndEye

Calelith

MeMyselfAndEye

Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

Got proof to back that claim?

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

Or how about you explain to me the logic of being able to spend millions in R&D and maintenance while "in the red" for at least 6 small games and by their own admission two of their "largest undertakings ever"? ( Estimation of millions based on their own admittance of the development costs on zOMG and HoC alone, I'm not even sure how much the facebook fiasco set them back. I have no intention of digging through that depressing sight of zOMG and HoC shut down justifications for the ump-teenth time to find out the exact numbers again). You don't pull money like that out of your a** even as a semi-large company. I don't work for Gaia so I'm not privy to their finances but logic dictates the money came from somewhere, and their expensive "failures" didn't put them under. Not many other options for where the money came from. Pretending that this site could run for 10 years in the red doesn't seem especially realistic to me either since it had to have been paid for some how and it was only growing the whole time. Maybe for the first few years hell, maybe even first 3-5 years it was strictly a labor of love, but after I would expect them to at least start getting very close to or hitting a break even point. And with the introduction of the Cash Shop, no doubt remains they've been making a profit because they were getting paid to do exactly what they did before, make pixels to be purchased just this time for usable real world currency.

Venture Capital

Long story short, they got the money to make this from investors. Chances are they're only afloat now because of investors. If we really wanted to speculate, we could even go so far as to say that these changes recently are because said investors want to start seeing a ROI.

[MeMyselfAndEye]

Valheita

MeMyselfAndEye

Calelith

MeMyselfAndEye

Hell, they were making a profit well before majority of the advertising hit or else they wouldn't have had the resources to even do the R&D on all their attempts at gaming.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

Got proof to back that claim?

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagh’nagl fhtagn."

Or how about you explain to me the logic of being able to spend millions in R&D and maintenance while "in the red" for at least 6 small games and by their own admission two of their "largest undertakings ever"? ( Estimation of millions based on their own admittance of the development costs on zOMG and HoC alone, I'm not even sure how much the facebook fiasco set them back. I have no intention of digging through that depressing sight of zOMG and HoC shut down justifications for the ump-teenth time to find out the exact numbers again). You don't pull money like that out of your a** even as a semi-large company. I don't work for Gaia so I'm not privy to their finances but logic dictates the money came from somewhere, and their expensive "failures" didn't put them under. Not many other options for where the money came from. Pretending that this site could run for 10 years in the red doesn't seem especially realistic to me either since it had to have been paid for some how and it was only growing the whole time. Maybe for the first few years hell, maybe even first 3-5 years it was strictly a labor of love, but after I would expect them to at least start getting very close to or hitting a break even point. And with the introduction of the Cash Shop, no doubt remains they've been making a profit because they were getting paid to do exactly what they did before, make pixels to be purchased just this time for usable real world currency.

Venture Capital

Long story short, they got the money to make this from investors. Chances are they're only afloat now because of investors. If we really wanted to speculate, we could even go so far as to say that these changes recently are because said investors want to start seeing a ROI.

I considered that and I'm fairly certain that's how zOMG got some/ a lot of the money for its legs, but who in their right mind would touch them after that and their track record of abandoning projects to back them for HoC?

But no arguments here as far as where the money is coming from now; the air of this marketing stinks of angry investors trying to get their money's worth.