As was brought up in the hail mary "new efforts" thread, a lot of game companies are indeed urinating off fans with business models that may not be the best for all parties involved to put it nicely.
I have had my share of rants on this topic as well and they always end with "well, no one here can do anything about it." and I don't believe I have ever stated a worthwhile business model but merely complained about aspects of current models.
This is not a complaint thread, this is a theoretical thread with the purpose to work out the most beneficial model. As in, if a model is "great enough" then it's worth spreading.
Without further ado, I'll add my two cents which people will probably have some big criticisms of but could be a starting block to get this moving.:
Introducing; contingency, by far one of the fairest models, but loathed by some, in a short statement it functions as "if what you make sells, then you get paid for the industry standard labor time necessary to create it" the biggest downside to this method is people want steady pay, or want a salary of some sort defined in a contract before they begin so they are not under-compensated. The other downside is capitalists who will absorb any surplus that should normally be due the worker. The fix of course is moderation.
Why is contingency important to an MMO company? simple there will be down months and up months if there are down months and people are still paid full salaries there will be layoffs, which are worse than 'non-steady pay'.
How to translate this to an MMO company? not so simple;
How do we value what portion of work a person did for something sold as one object? hold polls on game content inside the game? "thankyou for playing the [story arch] please rate it" I think we would get some biased or unfair results or would miss an important part of the demographic who just wish to play and not be bothered rating or commenting on it.
let me get into the nitty-gritty
first we need to prioritize;
the servers costs and upkeep are priority Alpha, nothing comes before it:
In contingency this means if funds are only enough to cover the server then the server gets the money and everyone else gets nothing for that month.
If funds are insufficient to run the server then the server goes down for maintenance until the deficit is resolved. (careful on this, you always want to stay ahead, basically the server's upkeep for the month and it's monthly wear and tare should always be funded in advance of it running, not the opposite where you run it and cover it from funds earned at the end of the month (you may have to do the later from the start if your MMO is new, but switch the model ASAP taking 2x the server costs for a month when first possible to flip it around).
Priority 1: debtors, should be self explanatory, they always need to be paid, if there are funds over the cost of the server costs prepare part of them to pay some of the debt above the interest rate.
Priority 2: surely we're paying the workers now right? half right, if there are funds after previous priorities this is where you cover their livelihood, funding their basic living expenses, cause you need living workers to make content.
Priority 3: Ok now we're paying the workers a profit right? if there are still funds you are taking into account special situations in your workers households including family, children, transportation and debts (with-in valid assumable reason).
Priority 5: Paying the workers including the Administration as one worker each valuing their pay based on the difficulty and necessity of their labor time whilst keeping the rate from being obscene and generating a significant class divide (because that will make your workers hate you).
Priority 6: If there is still funds left over, they become capital not touchable without a business wide agreement on the usage and only for the company's own expansion (more servers, more developers/employees ETC.)
Priority Omega: the End, beyond the last priority; Liability. Stop we need an explanation;
The biggest fault of the current market is Liability being considered before everything else, businesses are so afraid of having their pants sued-off regardless of how many lawyers and precautions they hire/take that they amass huge amounts of Capital and horde it just in-case of a possible suit because Jimmy at computer 514 accidentally something+ed, aka the business need to address the issue in court, they will take the blame, Jimmy may loose his job if they really know it was him, but the company will foot the legal bill.
This is what I call paying people for causing trouble, it's indirect but Jimmy was paid for the work he did when he (Ex; Accidentally included adult imagery as a texture that he downloaded while working, instead of the one he was given to put there, Or Jimmy made a costume piece without comparing it to current heroes trademark appearances and marvel accidentally sued
)
This also increases the threshold of payout for such cases, and increases the desire for one company to continue court proceedings unnecessarily to try and break competition.
Where as (the Marxist way) if the company claims no liability and hands jimmy to the courts, then the possible payout is less, the incentive to continue suits is less and the company does not have to amass large sums of money for the prospect of being sued. The whole thing comes down to "whose bad Idea was this? (check records)" (careful not to go with "who did it?", whose Idea it was is far more important, in business there are always patsies for stupid ideas)
In return for a company not gouging paychecks to store emergency funds, any natural disaster relief should be treated as all employee's (and admin's) responsibility to help cover by an equal percent or a rotating unequal percent if it doesn't divide evenly.
I think I covered it all, discuss?
