Its a crowdfunded indie game, the graphics are getting better all the time but it's more about gameplay than graphics, people have enjoyed playing it for hours every day so yes while it doesn't look like a million dollar AAA studio game a bunch of people have found it fun. Half of them even upgraded to a higher crowdfunding level. Don't forget that no million dollar games studio is contrbuting to the bitcoin ecosystem either
I understand people make choices based on graphics, it's human nature. I ignored minecraft for months too. Bear in mind it's a pure HTML game, no plugins - no installs. It will always be 2D probably but it will get better as we pay artists and swap out the art, (I found it hard to find suitable artists for btc - anyone interested?)
On micropayments, we could have made it free and nickel and dimed everyone, but that makes for sucky games and we wanted to make it enjoyable. It's a very conscious decision.
Fascinating. I love looking at this stuff. Wouldn't the obvious choice of funding be to charge a transaction fee rather than limit audience with an upfront fee? I mean - you have a kind of BitMit system built in the marketplace - and I like that BTC is just an alternate choice of currency. Wondering what made you decide to go with an upfront fee with a recurring subscription? Generally, you get some type of 7 or 14 day trial for free, at least.
Is GP tradeable for BTC? Are all items tradeable for GP/BTC, or are there "no-drops"? The turn system is concerning. Are you planning on selling turns? What made you decide to have a turn system on a subscription game?
The "Mystery" object is also a first for MMORPGs, I believe. It can literally contain money, meaning there's a chance the developers will be paying you directly for playing. It's both pay-to-play and (directly!) pay-for-play.
The upfront fee is more for the game content than the trading - you can fully play without trading or buying anything with bitcoin at all. We had a few direct player to player item trades in the closed period but the game is not designed to force you to use bitcoin at all. So you are paying for the game, the trading is "free" (at least for 1 year).
GP is not currently tradeable directly for BTC but it's in the list of proposed features.
Yes the Mysteries can literally contain bitcoin, you can win a whole bitcoin as well as smaller prizes (we accidentally left a bitcoin prize in during the closed beta and someone won back his entry fee within the first few days!), it's one of the other reasons there's no free trial, people might try spamming accounts
Cheers!
p.s hopefully have someone to do the video now..
https://www.bitfantasy.com/screenies/escrowBuy.jpg