Bomb Pop
Hi Lanzer~ n wn <33
Lately, though it may just be in the GCD forum, I'm hearing more and more complaints of how Gaia is becoming a sellout due to the increasing advertisements and sponsorships and stuff we're seeing around the site.
I'm just kind of curious as to what you may think about that~
If I can be so bold to ask, do you think Gaia is struggling for the money? Or do you think these are just fun sponsorships, and that some users are just overreacting to change, as usual?
Sorry if it's a dumb question. :B
heart Thank you for asking this question. In a way Gaia has many different moving pieces, each have their own goals. For example, we have a team working on the site re-design, one team on battle system, another on new features, and so forth.
A team that's part of Gaia is a team that handles sponsorship events. Like Gaia features, items, and events, not everything from that team is a home-run for pleasing our members. All that we can gaurantee is that we tried our best.
Today Gaia as a company is not earning money, it actually takes more to develop new features than what we make. Though that has no dependency on whether or not we work with sponsors. We believe that sponsorships can be interesting and fun, that's why we're doing it. It's been a few months since we've worked with our first sponsor, and I hope that we can get a flavor of how to make events that are fun, or otherwise we'll need to re-think our approach towards sponsorships.
The strategy towards sponsorships are very simple - it's optional, non-intrusive, and entertaining for those who choose to participate. On the plus side, it allows us to hire more engineers to work on the site.
There is, however, a huge connotation that if we work with any other brands, that we're now a sell-out. There's nothing much we can do about that. We can choose to stay at the same size, and develop at the same rate as we were a year ago. However, we've decided to grow even bigger, and look towards getting more money so we can build more at the same time. This in many people's definition is selling out. And that I can't argue against.
Gaia now has more people building new featuers than before. Aside from everything that we do, somehow we're supporting a team of 18 working on the battle system, as well as a team of 6 working on the user interface. These teams are build within the past few months, and none of these would be possible if not for the extra money that we make.
Dunno if that answer your question clearly, but we're definitely doing everything that we can to grow. And I understand that some choices we make are not the choices that everyone would agree on, but I truly believe that in time, we'll have a lot of really great features to share when we look back.
Have a good night everyone!
-Lanzer