beta for how long

[frestyle29]

i was just wondering a general ballpark on how long will the online game stay in beta? will it just be until 95% of the kinks are worked out? is there a deadline of any sorts?

also how much will the online game cost?
will current beta leagues be deleted when it is turned to subscription?

thanks alot, im a curious fellow:cool:

[James Grove]

We are aiming to have the beta test end around Labor Day. At that time the Beta users will be asked whether they want to continue to play, and if so, they will be asked for their credit card information.

We will NOT automatically assume that people want to subscribe, because that would not be nice.

Yes, the existing leagues will continue as long as some of the players in the league want to keep going.

Our projected pricing is $4.99 for 1 league, $9.99 for 3, and $14.99 for 10.

Beta testers will receive a discount.

We'll post an official announcement when everything is finalized.

Cheers,
James

[Hyped31]

Couldnt you keep the current leaues free and jsut create new leagfues that cost money. I am sure that there will still be problems in the game and users wil be unhappy that they are paying for a game with flaws. I understand u want to make some profit but i think you should keep it free to the users who dont have the time or money to register again. "PLease keep the current leagues free."

[pbrain]

yea, you should at least keep it free until all bugs have been fixed and improvements added.

[frestyle29]

all i know is that there are way too many bugs right now to be acceptable for a labor day starting time.

[marc]

Is that 4.99 per season?

[John]

Isn't there some other way to pay for this online gaming? Maybe you can somehow only let people in that have the CD. You could have some kind of code that comes with the Cd like The Sims. I don't know how this would work but it would increase the "fan loyalty" to the game. This would be the difference between "Pay TV" and "Normal Broadcast." :D

[takaplan]

If they kept the current Beta leagues free, they would have hundreds (and possible the majority) of leagues not generating any revenue at all. It just doesn't make sense.

As for me, I'm not sure if I would pay that much for an online league with no in-league communication board.

[iansmith]

The problem with free leagues as takaplan pointed out, is that we would not make any money on them.

Writing the CD game and producing CD's costs money, so we charge for it. Writing the online version and providing computers and internet bandwidth costs money too.

The pricing is going to be monthly, as it would be a billing nightmare to try and bill people with multiple leages that run at diffrent sim speeds. Makes my head hurt.

Inner-league communications are coming.. after custom leagues are operational which should be soon.

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[SeferKoheleth]

I think the pricings a bit steep. One of the things I like about the CD game is the price-- at $30, it's something I can afford on a student budget. For the on-line game, I might be willing to spring for $3 bucks a month (at $36 a year, about what the CD game costs) but not more.

Remember Revenue=Quantity * Price. My bet is that you'll get significantly more people willing to shell out $3 than $5, $10, or $15

Jacob

[iansmith]

That is true, but there is also a lower limit to price.

Revenue = (Quantity-Overhead) * Price

It's obvious that at $100 a month we could make a profit.
It's obvious that at $0.01 a month we will loose money.

Somewhere in there is the right price that people are willing to pay, and that gives us enough money to feed our children. (Or cats in my case:)

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[frestyle29]

what if people only want to join leagues where they get to be a large market team?

It would be horrible if there was any computer managed teams in a pay league. The AI just isn't close to a human.

[Varjak]

The pricing seems a tad steep to me, as well. I have always tended to be suspicious of huge discounts for bulk. In this case, I'm assuming that you won't be losing money for the Ten Teams for $14.99 deal--though I find it hard to believe many people could keep up with, and keep straight, ten teams. But that aside, that works out to a buck fifty for each team for a month--and you must be turing a profit at that, or else you wouldn't offer it--whereas the one-team deal is five dollars for a single team for the same period of time.

Now, I don't have a clear idea of how much bandwidth for something like this costs, but somehow I don't picture it going quite that high. Unlimited internet access costs my family in the $20/month range, and going half that again to keep the three teams I already have is a bit off-putting.

Not that I begrudge you those rates. Heck, if I put the sort of effort into this project that you have, I would probably charge at least that much. And I certainly understand the need to turn a profit, lest MogulSports go belly-up and all this disappear into the ether. But as someone who has neither a lot of money to throw around nor a credit card to be billed, I don't see myself spending a hundred twenty each year to participate in these leagues, especially when the numbers suggest half that would still turn a profit for the company. Maybe at some future date, when I'm doing better financially, but not today. I like these leagues, and wish you the best with them, but for a game, at this point in time, that's a bit steep for my tastes.

[shawnlucas76]

Ah, here it is......great game guys, thanks for all the hard work, love this game, want to keep playing forever. But then the subject of money comes up and all of a sudden nobody wants to pay for the quality that they've been praising all along. This is not a rip at anyone in particular, as I am also kind of torn here. I would most likely sign up for the 3 league deal, as it gives you the most flexibility without having to take care of *10* different payrolls, sim schedules, etc. 9.99 a month doesn't seem like much at first, but if the game is a year round thing, as it seems to be, it would cost 119.88 a year, all for a recreation activity.
That seems extremely steep to me at first. But not outrageous, I suppose. I pay $40 a month for cable that I have little time to watch because of my work and school schedule, $35 for a phone bill that I don't use except to connect to the internet, and $18 for an internet bill that I use most of all. In this perspective, complaining about a measly 9.99 a month seems silly. I do understand that some of you out there are probably not old enough to have a credit card, or maybe you destroyed your credit like I did and the money will have to come out of your bank account via debit card.
Chances are, when all is said and done, I may end up cutting my cable service (since I never watch it) to the most basic, ie network channels only in order to make up the difference because I will be addicted to this game and unable to say no.

Shawn

ps-They also said that beta testers will receive a discount. I guess I'll wait and see just what kind of discount.

[shawnlucas76]

Sorry, but I just thought of something else. Its quite possible that this online game could at some time make the CD game obsolete. I'm not suggesting that this is what would happen, since once you buy the CD game, its yours to do with as you please. But what if it does? Then this will be the only source of revenue, albeit a constant one with steady streams. Shoot, its too late. I'm sure I had a point in there, but lost it somewhere along the line.

Shawn

[marc]

They should charge as much as they can for the product,
What ever amount that can maximize their revenue, Once We know the price, then each of us can decide to make a decesion
if they want to play or not.

Myself, I am willing to spend around $40 a year on Mongul
products, right now I have not bought Mongul 2002 the cd-gamr as I spend my free time on the online version.

I do enjoy the online product, but just as mongul needs to set a fair price, I and everyone else has the right to reject it. For myself, I cant see myself paying $4.99 *12=60, is in the Iffy range, and i proberly will reject it, however , Since we are beta testers, they might lower the price.

[nevets72]

The pricing I think may become a serious issue in light of this. Why would I pay $4.99 a month to play the Royals. I have them in one of the leagues right now and it is extremely frustrating. I can barely support a 200 payroll while still playing about .540 ball. If the pricing is going to remain as such, you almost have to completely even out the markets. I would wait two weeks to get one of the big 5. It is not that I want to "cheat", but I am hard pressed to play for months without the chance of EVER winning.

Just my 2 cents.

[marc]

I am also the Royas, and I know it can be hard. My payroll is at its maximum right now at around 288.

However My record, is quite decent for a small market team,
in my five year history( not counting this season) I have an avg record of 94-68., and two wild card berths.

The royals are a hard team to play with, but they also fun,
It takes a little more planning, but I dont think that should be a reason not to join the game when it comes a pay league.

I for one, would hate playing the Yankees or Boston it would just get boring, playing the Royals is a challlange, which what makes the game fun.

[iansmith]

Originally posted by shawnlucas76
Sorry, but I just thought of something else. Its quite possible that this online game could at some time make the CD game obsolete.

We have no intention of dropping CD development. In fact, we are using the same simulation engine for both products, so the addition of the web game will help the CD product by providing more development funds.

We added the web version to enable live play against real people. So don't worry, I think there will always be a market for the single player CD version.

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[iansmith]

Originally posted by Varjak
The pricing seems a tad steep to me, as well. I have always tended to be suspicious of huge discounts for bulk. In this case, I'm assuming that you won't be losing money for the Ten Teams for $14.99 deal--though I find it hard to believe many people could keep up with, and keep straight, ten teams. But that aside, that works out to a buck fifty for each team for a month--and you must be turing a profit at that, or else you wouldn't offer it--whereas the one-team deal is five dollars for a single team for the same period of time.


I couldn't keep up with 10 teams either, but we will offer it in case there is someone out there who wants it. Maybe a former Major League team owner will become nostalgic and decide to spend his days playing Mogul online. :-)

The reason we can offer bulk discounts is because no matter how many teams a player may be running, he is only one person with one computer. Only one team will be active at a time.. where three or ten normal accounts can all be accessing diffrent leagues at the same time.



Now, I don't have a clear idea of how much bandwidth for something like this costs, but somehow I don't picture it going quite that high. Unlimited internet access costs my family in the $20/month range, and going half that again to keep the three teams I already have is a bit off-putting.


You would be suprised how much bandwidth can cost a business. If you tried to run a game like Mogul off a $20 home internet connection, you would run out of bandwidth before you could get 10 people on at the same time.

Internet connections for services like this are measured in the thousands per month. My last job had a phone bill of $80,000 a month. And that was a small, regional ISP. Big internet providers have bills that run into the millions.

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[frestyle29]

what is your internet bill?
The need for bandwith will probably decrease once the pay leagues start.

[Waldo]

oh no!!! almost time they start asking for money....guess I must now start making my own game.

[daedalus]

Every action you do on the site uses up bandwidth. Wanna take a look at Piazza's stat? Bandwidth. Wanna find out ratings on Alfonso? Bandwidth. Looking for a free agent? Bandwidth. Switching to shortstop? Bandwidth. What's Rey Sanchez's ratings? Bandwidth. Bidding 2 points on him? Bandwidth. It's kind of frightening how much it costs for sites like this for just bandwidth alone. Brrrr.

As far as pricing goes, I can see the $4.99 per month kind of pricing for the current setup [3 leagues per account]. I'm not sure what to think about $4.99 per month for one league yet.

[Waldo]

this isnt a site that contains video or some streaming element, so I dont think the bandwidth usage is all that high.

disk space is probably more of a problem and those come cheap.

[Varjak]

Originally posted by iansmith

The reason we can offer bulk discounts is because no matter how many teams a player may be running, he is only one person with one computer. Only one team will be active at a time.. where three or ten normal accounts can all be accessing diffrent leagues at the same time.Since I don't know a great deal about bandwidth costs, I'll ask this... I can understand how ten people accessing at once could be costlier than one person accessing for ten times as long. But is the difference THAT profound?



You would be suprised how much bandwidth can cost a business. If you tried to run a game like Mogul off a $20 home internet connection, you would run out of bandwidth before you could get 10 people on at the same time.I don't doubt that. I clearly understand why you can't run the site on a $20/month connection. My point was that, from my standpoint, boosting the amount of money spent on the internet by fifty percent for this site makes me hesitate. Which is actually a compliment to this site, since I've never paid for access to any website before but am actually considering it for this one. (It would help a lot if I were in better shape financially at the moment--I somehow missed the comment about a discount to beta testers, so I'll wait and see about that.) From your standpoint I'm sure the cost is reasonable; from mine, it seems a little less so. I'm a net junkie, and I love this site, so I'll have to see what happens when/if I go into withdrawal.

[TGG]

No daedalus is right, Bandwidth is the TOTAL amount of Kb's down loaded on a page, everything from text an pics. So everytime a page is changed or refreshed what ever it might be, that is bandwidth usage.......... an that is where providers make their money.

As for paying...........

errrrrrrrr...........

ummmmmmmmm

How about giving a really big discount to people that live in Mass ????
:)

lol

J/K

[Waldo]

i know every access takes bandwidth, but I'm sure Sportsmogul pays a flat rate and I doubt they use much. Pictures and text are very small.

[takaplan]

Waldo,
Being a web developer/systems administrator, not to be rude, but you couldn't be more wrong ;-) Like TGG said, every single page view takes up bandwidth, and we are talking thousands of users visiting every few days, some even every few hours. It's not cheap, and frankly, the price definitely is not that bad.

[marc]

I was taking a browswe at the only other online baseball game
that I know about, (purebaseball.com) It is a differnt setup
then Mongul baseball.

But in terms of price, they charge 9.95 per month.

[kohut]

I dont see any problem with what they are doing. These guys are not running a simulation league as a hobby. Its a business, a source of income. Its what puts the food on the table. If you are so passionate about a league like this purchase a copy of the program and run a league of your own. This beta period was designed for us to get a better than demo game idea of the program and what it has to offer. Paying $1-4 assuming a 20% discount for beta testers will not make any of us poor. Users pay in the range of $20-50 for unlimited internet and there are providers who offer free internet. So if you enjoy the program and appreciate the free league you are in purchase a copy.

[marc]

I Dont think the online version is for sale.

[Waldo]

I still dont see how the bandwidth would cost all that much.
How many registered players are there? how many are active?
most likely not as many as you think.

what should be done is make an application (that can be downloaded and installed) that would allow the CD version to
be multiplayer. No online charge, but the purchase of the CD version.

[Imo]

I would much rather pay for the online game than have to purchase the CD, as I am a Mac user and I believe the CD version is PC only - The online version is the only one I can play!

Imo.

[muchomaas]

I feel the cost of $5/month for one team also seems a little steep. I think, since, as Ian mentions the marginal costs are not that much more for multiple leagues (since they would not significantly increase the cost of bandwith), the baseline should be for multiple teams, not one. I could see paying $50-60 a year for the chance to handle 3 teams. I couldn't see that for just one team. Nor could I really imagine spending $100-$120. But then I'm not particularly rich.

My problem with the "one" team is multi-fold. Mainly it concerns the inequities among cities. I haven't played a lot of different seasons, but my experience in the longest running leagues (fast sim) that I've been involved with, is that it is painstakingly slow to turn around a clubs' fortunes, and could quite easily put you in the red due to the rather inelastic quality of fan interest. Playing Chicago and having the best record in baseball has not allowed me to raise my ticket prices without repercussions. I'm drawing signifcantly less than last year (about 20%), (did have a 30% ticket increase, but then I made it to the AL Championship) (while admittedly, Boston this season had at least a 20% ticket increase which the fans apparently took in stride because they still sell out).

Considering how hard it is to get one of the Big 5 markets and the ENORMOUS difference in their drawing ability, it seems a lot of patience is required to make a smaller market (and as someone noted, is Chicago REALLY a smaller market?). Now, I'm not really sure I want to spend $30 just to get to a place where my team might have enough attendance to be able to take on a decent payroll (and compete to a large extent - here the simulation of baseball's economic engine is a bit too good), which doesn't even seem to assure that there will be decent players to spend it on.

The Free Agency AI doesn't help - computer and big payroll teams have signed most of the best (young) players to multi-year contracts after the first season, and the rest of the good players apparently committed suicide when they couldn't get the money they wanted. On top of this, you apparently are penalized for quitting teams, when it appears to me that if I were paying for this, I would have quit several of my teams, now wallowing in red ink and unable to increase their draws (particularly on the normal speed sims this is akin to chinese bamboo finger torture).

If you were unable to get the team you wanted, would you still pay while you waited for a team to open up? What if someone creates a league - then bilks the computer on trades - as I've seen done; I wouldn't necessarily want to join such a league. But then again, nor would I want to compete against all computer teams. Why spend the money for an online league, I'll just buy the CD. And what interest is there to rehabilitate a Fck'd team? Tampa Bay in my fast sim has signed 700 of payroll and now has run up more than 300 of debt. This team effectively will never be a decent team (once the long term contracts run out).

Quite frankly, I would be very hesitant to put down money when a lot of these questions seem far from answered.

[TGG]

What your saying is something that I have brought up myself.
Now I DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF A POINT CAP That just leads to a very boring time after awhile an to much balance sucks.


Here is a cut an paste of one of my posts from before about this idea:

One real idea :

I few of my teams that I play are small market team, Pittsburgh, Montreal. ( In RL I do not believe in doing this, but for here I really must bring it up ) Revenue sharing

I have tried different combinations, to keep "cash" coming in an "fans" in the seats, an both these two teams have had to trade away good talent to make sure that they could make "payroll" for that year an the next. I could quickly lose interest in a game that I can never get ahead in. ( I knew what I was getting into when I pick those two teams to begin with)


Maybe at the end of each year, each team puts a % of thier over all income into a league pot/bank, That way during the next season, if a team is in the red they can burrow money out of this pot ( which would have to be payed back in a set amount of time, an with a interest rate applied to it , kinda like the sim city idea)
This would also help out those other owners who desided to be dopes an rack up -1k or more.

Now in RL this makes for one of the better debates in baseball ( revenue sharing) but here for this game, I can see managers bailing on teams pretty fast because of lack of money, an if something is not done about it ,it will only be a on going problem.

****************************************************

If something is not done about these teams, when this does open up to the "real" market, all the better teams will be taken right away, Yanks,Redsox, ect........ just do the the fact that they draw an make so much more money then the other teams. after a player gets his/her small market team into dept after a while they will leave, letting the good market teams pick the computer teams apart for the talent. This will make the leagues very unbalanced an would lead me to want to quit myself after a while.

[James Grove]

Hi, Guys -

Since a number of posts have been added to this thread that inquire about the BMO marginal costs, I thought I'd offer a few interesting tidbits about the costs of running the game.

Ian has been spending a lot of time over the past two weeks optimizing our systems, because we have begun to max things out already.

You may recall about a month ago when we lost a few teams because we ran out of hard drive space and the server crashed.

We have had to incorporate even more space saving measures since the Headlines and news stories were taking up more an more our our hard drive space. But despite our best efforts, we can only go so long without getting another server, because we are about to start hitting the processor and RAM limits of the server.

And we will soon max out our company T-1 line with the traffic from the game. Our traffic increased tenfold from June to July, and so far in August we have already surpassed the traffic we had in July.

The T-1 costs about $1000 per month, and I believe that the server leases are on the same order of magnitude.

The management team has been handling our customer service, but that only scales so far. We will need to hire a customer support rep soon.

So as you can see - there are definite incremental costs to adding new players and leagues.

And of course, those incremental costs do not address the fixed costs of employee salaries, rent, etc.

So while I don't think you want to hear a full financial financial analysis of Sports Mogul (nor do I feel like posting one on the Internet :D ) it does cost money to keep the lights on here.

Bear in mind that the monthly game fees I mentioned in the previous posting are the proposed prices, and that we are still listening to you all to see if you have thoughts on how we can improve the pricing plans.

Thanks for your support,
James Grove

[marc]

On a related note with the game going to fee.

How will Mongul handle owners who take over a team,
and increase their payload, in order to win the league and
then leave with the team in debt.

This type of action effects everyone. It effects the other team owners who cant compete that season, and it effects who ever takes over the team that had it payload increased to silly levels and a very high debt.

I for one would not want to be in a league, where an owner
does this type of action.

[TGG]

***Raises hand***


Hey !!!!

I'll work for ya over there.......


:)

[faulk28]

the slower sim speeds should be lower priced as it will take a long time to make it through just one season. Therefore you probably won't get many people signing up for the slow speed sims. I myself like the slow sims, but at the same price i would not want a slow speed sim. Also how about charging less (or free) for small market teams such as Minnesota. Or just make it even for everybody with a salary cap or revenue sharing.

[frestyle29]

i think the best way is to just equalize the cities. This solves a load of problems. Revenue sharing is way too messy, and a salary cap is very frustrating.

[iansmith]

Originally posted by marc
How will Mongul handle owners who take over a team,
and increase their payload, in order to win the league and
then leave with the team in debt.

I for one would not want to be in a league, where an owner
does this type of action.

The pay game will be keeping track of how many seasons you play before quitting a league.

There will be leagues that you can join that only allow people with high season to quit ratios and a few other options we are considering so people with the same managing style can find others to play with.

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[GFunk911]

There needs to be some kind of modification to the quit rating. I've quit 4 leagues, but I'm not a "quitter". These quits occured when i joned a league for 15 minutes to look around right at the beginning, and immediatly left. Also, I'm working on a 3rd straight WS win with Boston in FastSim 8, and I'm thinking about quitting because things are too easy. I'd be leaving my team in amazing shape, yet I'd get a quit

[iansmith]

I'm sure we will always be modifying these things. No matter how complicated we make the rating system, there will always be people who don't fit the curve.

At some point you will be able to look at a league without joining, so that will be one less problem.

And mostly it will not be too strict. It will note players who have quit 27 leagues and only finished 2 seasons.

--
iansmith@sportsmogul.com

[Waldo]

ha! I was right, only one T1 line.

if you wanna save some money, cut back on the staff instead of hiring more. Or maybe just re-asssign duties. :)

I'll work for $100k/yr to re-shape the whole business, I did attend Wharton ;)

[James Grove]

Dear Applicant -

Thank you for your recent letter. Unfortunately we have no openings for a candidate of your background at this time. We will keep your information on file for six months, and will contact you if a position becomes available.

Best wishes in your future endeavors.

-Sports Mogul Human Resources

(Sorry - couldn't resist... ;) )

[GFunk911]

OK, that sounds fair, just one easy Mod would be something like you only get a quit point if you make a transaction, or are in the league for a day, something liek that, great job guys

[Varjak]

Originally posted by James Grove
Dear Applicant -

Thank you for your recent letter. Unfortunately we have no openings for a candidate of your background at this time. We will keep your information on file for six months, and will contact you if a position becomes available.

Best wishes in your future endeavors.

-Sports Mogul Human Resources

(Sorry - couldn't resist... ;) )

Hey, what are the odds? I got the same GFY letter in the mail just two weeks ago from the company I applied to.

[James Grove]

Everyone knows that letter by heart.

At least, everyone who graduated in a recessionary period.

I had a friend who actually received a POSTCARD that said that! Of all the indignity!

-James

[daedalus]

Originally posted by GFunk911
Also, I'm working on a 3rd straight WS win with Boston in FastSim 8, and I'm thinking about quitting because things are too easy. I'd be leaving my team in amazing shape, yet I'd get a quit

If, uhhh, it's any consolation, I'm working pretty hard in NY trying to help cure this problem for you. :)

Can't quite match your lineup but we're hopeful. :)

[kingola]

I realize that for some people the costs listed may really be too much when you don't take into consideration what you may be paying for other luxuries. Do you smoke, drink (alcohol) subscribe to magazines, eat out (restaurants)???
Possibly you could cut back or curtail one or more of those activities to free up the funds you need to pay for playing online.
I'm not trying to judge anyone just making possible helpful suggestions.

In regards to questions and suggestions about small market teams it's a good
thing that the real world owners don't take the stand some of you have suggested or else there would only be five or six teams in total and the majority of us would never have the pleasure of taking our sons and daughters to a live game because we couldn't afford to fly to New York, Boston or Los Angeles etc. to watch a game.

I appreciate what is being done to allow us this opportunity to play for free now and help sort out the problems. This is a very good sim, keep up the good work!