But for most people here, this is indeed just a hobby and they don't hope making money from it. Saying that it's just a hobby isn't an alibi, it's the truth. We've been here for long enough to know about the demographic of most of the users.
You only know the forums here. Actually, you only know the EXTROVERTS here. I've received a few likes from people who have never commented; every community has their silent majority (not intentionally a Trump reference, it's just true). If you feel you know the demographics because of your tenure here, great! But I think you are having a bad "big picture" view here. Think about how active the forums are, now think about how many times RMMV and RMVXA have been downloaded (legally), now think about how many times it was torrented or distributed illegally by
another community/forum. You can't just make the product for the people here. rpgmakerweb.com does not represent the entirety of RM users. So again, you have to know (like really know) who your target audience is. And I have reason to believe that the target audience are storywriters/artists/level designers who are between 13 and 25; not the niche that has comfortably created itself a collective identity on these forums. So a service like this subscription thing is doable, it just needs a better marketing team and approach to sell it.
That's exactly why they will probably not implement a system like the Member+ again, because they do know that the members won't buy it.
Again, we can't speak for a business entity. Businesses chase money. That's what they do. It's how they pay the people who work for the business and it's how they survive. Sadly, RMMV isn't being forced to evolve because people are too scared to make huge dream ideas (I have the 4 that are public and 5 more waiting in moderation - so I'm doing my share). So what happens when you have a product that is the same year over year and version over version? You lose people's attention and you lose relevance (people are giving on RPG making dreams to go do something else - I hear Fire Emblem Heroes and Pokemon Go are pretty popular right now). So that's why RMMV needs to evolve, to build it's clientel and stop only catering to the loyal people here exclusively. After all, as you've stated, most people here aren't going to pay Degica any money, so it only makes sense to find a new target demographic (one with money and higher on the SES) that can pay the $100/year. But reaching out to them would require this "programmers' engine" to evolve to be "anyone can make a game without a team" area; an area that many fear would degrade the quality of games produces by RMMV. But in my opinion, the quality already sucks. Do a search on RPG Maker on Steam and look at what's being made. Now do a search on IOS or Android for JRPG; the competition is fierce, and the engine isn't doing much to keep up with times. That's why Degica needs to take chances; there's money to be made, they just need the right idea to gather a crowd. A bigger crowd than the 3DS game coming out is gathering.
Combining my reply to someone else below since I can't double post:
Hobbiest here o3o/
I personally don't have the cashflow to throw 100-200 bucks out the window every year to support the artists that it would presumably take to kickstart this program. Will I once I finish grad school and get a legitimate salary? Maybe yes maybe no, because my costs will also increase as I'll be looking to get a house and a mortgage and all that good stuff. For now, I'm selective about the resources that I purchase and pay careful attention to the usage agreements of the resources available on the forums.
Your points and attitude feel rather condescending because not every user of the program has the same cashflow you apparently do to put into their projects. Sure, some people here do have money but others don't. It's the question of whether or not there are enough haves than have-nots who would be able to sustain this project. People are telling you that this was attempted previously and it was not possible with the user base that currently exists.
And to this point, I would literally die if every single time that I opened RMMV there was an ad for their ~premium~ service. I bought a piece of software, not a billboard.
There's no intentional condescension, it's just an economic fact; you can't afford the $100 a year and I can, and Degica should be targeting me not you. Businesses chase money, not a loyal community. Think about this, the only reason we
all can't have our way is because Degica is a very small team of developers who don't have enough cash flow to cover everyone's salary to make improvements. If they stopped feeding the community and instead went to the masses, the engine could implement everything that is suggested. In a capitalist world (which we can deny we are in out of favor of socialist ideals we hold about how the world should work but it wouldn't stop the capitalist world from existing) you have to think with capital (money) and not with head counts (existing community). Degica only makes money if people are making games, plain and simple; fewer people making games, fewer people BUYING the software (opposed to torrenting it or getting it some other illegal way). Even sales to drop it to $40 isn't enough to make a person buy the software legally if they can't see the value of a legal copy.
As far as your grad school comment, are you under or around the age of 25? If so, that only proves my point that this product's target audience IS 13 to 25 year olds.
