How much is PA worth? really!
 

truce? everybody!
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A. If you were a millionaire, how much would you be willing to pay for PA? (To buy all the rights, intellectual & any other incidental property.)

B. Why?

C. If PA were to be incorporated and divided into 1 million common shares, would you buy any? how many (how much)?

D. Why would you want to become an owner? or not...

E. If you became an owner, would you be willing to work for PA?

F. What would you expect in return? (i.e. dividends, credits, nothing, etc)

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

A. I would pay up to £5,000 (USD$10,000).

B. Because while it's fun, it has all the hallmarks of a mediocre product with limited appeal. I'm not confident I could multiply my returns that easily.

C. Well at my buying price each share would be worth a cent, so it'd be worth people investing (assuming I did something progressive with the game, instead of making all the CSS classes pink and letting the site rot as the code becomes outdated). But if someone else put in a much more generous offer for (A), then incorporated, I would be choosing between PA shares and confectionery.

D. The entertainment value on GD.

E. I assume you mean "to make it better". I would have to if I expected to recoup my costs.

F. In return? I'm the owner. By owner do you mean some kind of manager or admin type?

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

yes, work to make it better. And better means anything that ensures further development and ideally dividends.

by "owner willing to work" I mean a person who buys shares and thus becomes a shareholder of PA, an owner of PA. And following basic corporate structure, each share is a vote to elect BoD, BoD elects/supervises executive officers, which in turn manage the employees of the company, who would be the ones maintaining/developing/playing the game. Would you work in any of those capacities?

[now, just to clarify, I don't think incorporating PA is viable, by my estimations (baseless I admit), legal costs would eat the profit of the next 10 years (assuming current #s remain). I just used the corporate image to give u a sense of what it may really be worth]

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Ah I see what you mean, shareholder of course. In return for buying shares I would expect Team PA to pull their fingers out and increase the value of the shares, like any other company. But dividends would be nice too :bunny:

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

if pa gets 2000 planets 1/2 of which pay for their planet over 3 rounds a year + 1 free one .

£11,000 income a year straight off the bat, allowing for server running costs, expenses and hosting but not wages !

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Mist, I am ignorant, I cannot understand what u said. Can u please elaborate?

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

I guess the value of the shares would depend, in large part, on whatever decision the community makes. This would be not a publicly traded company, but a tight (dildos like of nowadays) market. A new market. An unknown market. This is brand new territory in internet law. PA has been revolutionary in many senses, perhaps it is time to keep the tradition up!
(I admit, however, I am drunk, and I have no clue what I am talking about)

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

A: £1000 tops
B: Its a game which is a terminal decline imho. A smart investor never invests in something that will lose money in the long run, so 1000 should be sufficiently small to be covered in a single rounds income followed by as much profit that can be extracted where income > expenses.
C: No
D: See B, in addition to a caustic and abrasive community.
E: to break even

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

That's only the value of potential income though. The actual saleable value of the game can only be the most anyone is prepared to pay for it.

Realistically that is going to be lower, unless the buyer has to bid over the income potential. But they'll only do this in the face of sufficient competition, IF they don't mind running at a loss when they acquire the product.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

When technology companies are valued typically the evaluation is somewhere between 7 and 10 times the annual income minus liabilities (debts). As far as I know PA has no debt so the actual valuation of the game is probably somewhere between $100k-$200k. I know that sounds insane but it's probably true. I know many will mock that number saying the game is terminally ill (see phil above) but I don't believe it is so, it has simply been very poorly managed (no fault of the PA Team) ever since Spinner left. With the right investment into the game and proper management the game could be turned around, the basic appeal of the game is sound. Its business model needs a rethink, but that's not the topic of this thread.

To answer the topic:
A. I've actually thought of buying PA (I'm not a millionaire, at least not yet) I figured if I could buy it for about $20k and put about $30k into it I could make the game profitable.

B. Because I understand what terms like "business plan" and "development path" mean and how to use them to make money.

C. It entirely depends on the management team of PA, with the current trend (the new owners are still an unknown, so I don't factor them in) I would say no.

D. Until someone puts forward a good business plan and dev plan I wouldn't be interested.

E.I work for PA as a non owner, so yes.

F. Currently I get credits, if I was to do serious work I would expect either stock or money just like any real technology company.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

A) If I was a millionaire & was bored enough I'd probably go up to £50k with £50k for investment into the game. That's right now.

B) Because with mobile browsing and web 2.0 I think there's a market that can easily be tapped, given investment and sensible improvement

C) Not on my own as I can't afford it. If there was an investment fund that shared my ideas about the game and could buy enough to impact on the game's future path, then yes.

D) To affect how teh game changes.

E) Depends on how much I own. With some decision making power, yes.

F) Dividends & a better game.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Monroe, what definition of "technology company" are you using?

I am pretty sure that spending your combined $50k on writing a new game from scratch would be a much wiser investment, never mind the $100-200k value that you projected.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Monroe, what definition of "technology company" are you using?

I am pretty sure that spending your combined $50k on writing a new game from scratch would be a much wiser investment, never mind the $100-200k value that you projected.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

The one that says software (whether a game or other app) is considered technology.

Not necessarily, one of the things you have to remember is even if I can produce a game that is 5 times better then PA for $50k I still have to market it, build a player base, build up the brand, and many other things that PA already intrinsically has. PA has all the fundamental pieces to being a very popular game in certain circles, any game I could come up with and code (assuming I was a great programmer which I'm not) would still need a lot of things to be successful that PA already has.

Now whether it would make sense to invest $200k into PA is an entirely different story, it would take a lot of work and further investment to make it really worth the effort. But a clever business plan coupled with good product development could at least in theory produce a good product that is very popular.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Some of these large numbers are seriously overvaluing it in my opinion.

There is very little chance of ever recouping the cost of £50k. The playerbase is slowly declining and not increasing! If you buy it and try to change the game so much with improvements which are so badly needed you're still unlikely to please the majority of existing players.

As mentioned by others in this thread, you could probably create a clone within a few months of dedicated work. You'd be better off creating a new game from scratch and taking advantage of more modern aspects of the Internet which could make your game an absolute success if you knew how to market it. Social networking to new games is todays equivalent of Quakenet to Planetarion.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

An eminent planetarion player once made an offer for planetarion, but unfortunately it was turned down. Which is a shame, because he'd probably have put some serious effort into trying to resurrect the playerbase.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Let's say £50k to buy and £50k investment.

There is still interest in browser games: Astro Empires has over 10k participants and Warbook has several tens of thousands iirc. Developed nations are seeing an explosion in mobile browsing (an explosion from ~60m to ~110m in 3G European users from '07 to '08), which is a similar level of technology to when PA's popularity exploded.

Developing nations with a large base of English speakers are growing too; India, for example saw 41% home internet growth in 2006, to 76million. Kenya has grown at an average 200k users per year.


10,000 players at £2 per round, 5 rounds/year = £100k income p/a. If the marginal cost to PA of new players is negligible and operating costs are £20k pa (approx current income?). After 3 years, that's the equivalent of 22% compound annual interest. With an economic profit taken to be 6% annual growth, you'd still have a buffer of £40k/year for extra investment into PA.

These numbers are plausible, though not properly checked.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

If I were the owner.

With the p2p money, I would BUY a coder. To ensure the progress.

The money could be enough for some server bills aswell...?

I might invest to some basic google adverts also.

Also I would steal all ideas from the colonies :P

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Are you seriously expecting a tenfold increase in the number of subscribers of such an old game?

My guess is that you'd have to change the game dramatically to convince people that this is an interesting game which they can play regardless of their situation, I hardly think the game as it currently stands qualifies.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Investment decisions are about looking forward into the prospect of a product. It is not about the current decline in players nor about pleasing the existing players. It is about making it a product attractive to a new group of players.
Monroe was right about the intrinsic value that PA has, hence it could be an interesting investment.
And I think that we all agree that PA needs an overhaul. So that isn't an issue imo. :)
Answer to the questions posed:

A. I would pay the market value, whatever it is.
B. To offer a good game to nice people, BUT with the decent structure behind it that it needs.
C. If I would buy, it would all be mine... Mine... MINE!
D. For my ego. :p
E. Yes, the management side would be mine :cool:
F. I would go for break-even.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Yes, I think this is reasonable.

The game has barely progressed in 10 rounds because there's been no investment; lots of good ideas get ignored (I remember a simple one of mine which required less than a day's coding time but still hasn't been done).

With correct marketing to the web 2.0, mobile browsing & developing nations markets, 10,000 is a perfectly reasonable number.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Ha, good answer. That's a sufficiently broad definition to let PA qualify :D

Yes, this is all true. But let's not simply assume that shoring up PA's decaying form is going to be less effort and less cost. You very rightly highlighted the importance of business plans and development paths, and part of that implementation would be making jolly well sure that we are investing our $50k outlay and $50k playing about money in the right strategy.
I have programmed entire applications before and I can honestly say that writing a new specification is much easier than inheriting a mess like PA and having to figure out what is wrong before you can start thinking about the fixes or developments. On the other hand, the advertising and building of a player base would be - as you suggest - a lot of work.

The way I see it is that if you are starting a new project from scratch, you are not limited by the legacy of PA. IOW, you are investing 200k into a product with a bigger potential audience.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Well your assuming that if I bought PA and was going to improve it I would necessarily be buying the game for the game code. I would be buying PA for the brand far more then for the code. It would be conceivable that after having "my programmer" look at the existing code we would determine that it isn't worth salvaging and would build a new game from the ground up like has already been done once in PA (r10) and has been talked about being done again several times. The value of PA is the brand far more then it is the code or even the player base, and in the world of mobile gaming, especially on phones, there is huge potential for older browser based games to have significant appeal as several others have already pointed out.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

That is all certainly true. I think where we really differ on this is in how strong we perceive the brand to be.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

my point was that no company would sell anything under its projected yearly income, to do so unless the seller knew something you dont would be giving money away, and no company does that.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

How do you value the brand name of Planetarion?

My best guess is that it's only really that worthwhile to either existing players or past players, anyone else is more than likely to say they've never heard of it or they're not that bothered. Current players are obvious, they're most likely to stay with the game. However would any ex-players come back even if the game was improved dramatically? I'm not too sure. Most people may have some fond memories of the game, but they've probably moved on and realise that either real life or other games are better than playing this game.

It's not like it's a Google or anything with a great reputation.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

To make planetarion seriously profitable you have to go mass market. This would mean significant changes.

The real challenge would be to keep current gamers whilst appealing to new players.

The brand is valuable, but not extremely so.

The job therefore would be very difficult. In order to completely overhaul the game you are looking at a minimum spend of £100k. I am a relatively new player and I dont have the love of the game like experienced players and some areas such as IRC need significant improvements.

Once that is sorted you would need at least £200k to adequately market the product.

However the game can continue in its current form as a game indefinitely.

I would therefore value the game realistically in commercial terms between £10,000 ($20000) and £20,000 ($40000) which is essentially just for the Brand.

however you would need at least £300k ($600k) to turn make any significant money on that investment.

If I was a millionaire with only 1 million I would stay clear. However for a private equity fund it could be a good investment.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Well this is the million dollar question....
The brand is worth something, if only as a marketing prop (planetarion as one of the first browser based MMO which has had hundreds of thousands of players).
I regularly run into players who have come back to the game after being gone a long time, a marketing campaign that got the name back out there might stir up interest among that old player base, enough to bring in a significant number of old players. But in terms of what it is really worth dollar wise? I don't really know, I'd have to go and do some market analysis, business planning, and strategic development to really have a clue. Anyone who is throwing a number out there right now as to what it's worth is really just making a wild guess.

The number I threw out was purely based on revenue, and is a typical method for evaluating software companies, but is by no means the only way to do it. The fact is no one knows what PA is worth because no one has ever executed (or probably even come up with) a business plan to make PA a successful company. Clearly there are some folks who would love to try, but unless the new owners get excited about it and work it out, or hire someone who understands how to run a software business we may never know.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Lol.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

I'm sorry. I have kinda stopped posting, but this thread is simply FAR too amusing!

Only thing close to being sensible you said.
A brand is built over years, or spawned into existence overnight by a massive viral marketing no one can control (even though many attempt to). And one minor bad decision, which there has been many of in PA's history, has the potential to damage (or destroy) a brand for good. When such a decision is made most companies go bankrupt. Those who make it has to revitalize it's brand completely. The classic cases here are within jeans markets and it's changes through history. Without this massive change the brand will not survive. If you have a lack of the brand you literally have nothing. If no one knows the name of your product, or recognizes it's logo, no one will find your product. The product here is Planetarion. It is a game, one which I have started to enjoy again (scary that I've started to enjoy it again!). Giving up the brand is a huge risk, but the risk goes both ways.
1. Giving up the brand to start a similar game;
You have the potential of losing the die hard fans, the old school returning players. All those who suddenly lose interest in RL and decides to play a round or two again. The potential player base is debatable, but could be somewhere around 100k players (this number is imaginary, not realistic imo). But you can reach out to all gamers, and potential gamers, out there. You can steal playerbases from other games while there is no bad association with the game. It is risky, but that's business.
2. You keep the brand, make investments to improve the game;
All the years of poor management of PA will keep players away. Most people have the "burnt once, shame on you. Burnt twice, shame on me" built in and will leave it at burnt twice, never to try and put their damn hand on the stove again. Here you have two efforts need to be made. First you have to convince the current players that you are different from the previous owners, this requires time and money. You have to improve the game, and please the players. Secondly you will also have to attract new players, AFTER the current disgruntle playerbase is satisfied. If you fail to make the move the right way you will end up getting new players into a playerbase which is very negative towards the game. Which will make them leave rather quickly.

So. The brand Planetarion is life or death. If you want it done correctly you would spend about a month or so (depending on how well staffed you are) researching the costumers and setting up a brand analysis. This alone will cost you at least $10k (for a good analysis of the total market, including competitors games etc)(NB! As I am unfamiliar with the total market (gaming) I am assuming this price, normal analysis like this would run far higher, but I am also assuming the company is not wanting to throw money left and right). Without doing this I would never invest a dime in a company owning PA.

The best possible book to understand the importance of brands today would be "No Logo" by Naomi Klein. It really gives you an interesting perspective.


Sorry I am saying this to you, as several others seems to agree, but these prices are retarded. If someone is selling for these prices it would be, imo, because they want to dump the game and cut their losses. Potential earnings over a 3 year period would be closer to the games price. The realistic value for a game like this is based upon how well you sell and how stupid the buyer is (the last part is the most important one).
Say you own a brand. Let's say a spa. The brand is damaged due to a closure of one of your spa centers. It lost you costumers, but it is still breaking even after this. You would like to sell it, and you value the spa according to your wishes (not always easy to stay objective and realistic). You set the sales price according to potential income, after you have gotten back the lost business. The reason why is because of the brand. Damaged relations needs to be fixed, but it is doable. You take the potential earnings over a time period of at least the time you have ran the spa (say 5 years). This time has been rather troubled. There has been time where you have not broken even and you have gotten into debt etc. Naturally, if you sell, you would like compensation for the time spent, essentially for the job done. You add into the price, in addition to equipment (massage tables, swimming pools, sauna etc) compensation for your time (what you call this cost in a sales pitch is irrelevant (you could call is the cost of brand or some stupid thing like that). The potential income, what you would make regardless of how much time you spend on the company, would also be sensible (from your view) to add to the sales price. So now you have;
Equipment price
+Compensation for time spent on the company
+Potential earnings over the following 3 years (which is reasonable)
=Your sales price

So if someone was to sell PA, without dumping it I would assume the price would be about triple what you guys have guesses here. But that might just be me...I mean; wtf do I know? :D

Who in their right mind would believe that? The only successful marketing that happened for PA in the early days was; word of mouth. And someone had a filthy mouth saying this was a good game to spend time on (if I run into my rl m8t who introduced him to this game I'll ask him to pay for the time wasted :D ).
The only option, imo, is to go viral. You have to create a buzz around the game, and you have to get key people involved. Maybe even get 3-4 old players whom all love to play (even if it means paying them to play, as long as they don't admit to being paid to play you should be fine). Creating a buzz is limited only to your imagination. The less money to spend, the more time consuming it is.
My guess is you would need either a LOT more, or hardly anything at all. I would assume you would need £20k or so here to start with, then to re-evaluate if the marketing was successful or not and what to do from there.
The tech part is far harder, at least for me, to predict. Based upon what I've seen it's very costly to make small changes, so here it comes more down to what type of team you assemble. If you get people who believe in the game you can get away with less, as long as you give them part of the company etc. I assume you can cut corners and make it about £50k. But this is in my assumption, and like I said; I'm clueless on tech and how massive changes needs to be made.

If I was a millionaire with 1 million I would not even think about buying a game. A lot due to the fact that I think I'd hate to mange it, but mostly because I think this genre is comparable to the old school Nintendo or Sega 16-bit.
If I was invested in a private equity fund and the manager of the fund sent me an e-mail with the prospectus of investing in a game like this. I would reply that I would make my utmost effort to have him fired if he did. Complete insanity to invest in a project like PA with the current status of the market. I am referring to the heavy debt load of the average individual and my belief about global recession prior to turning into a new financial cycle, and not based on the performance (rather lack of) of the global stock market.

However, if my name was John Fredriksen or something of that sort I would probably buy PA for sentimental reasons (as the cost would be less than I spend on a single night at a club)...

But these where just my 2 cents...

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

1st up very good post and I agree with most of it... the main thing I disagree with is the quote, the market being down does not mean that there is no investment just that it needs to be better targeted and targeted at things that should do well in a tighter financial environment. in a world of heavy debt and a global recession a game like planetarion should do well (not saying it will ofc) because 1, its not expensive to play (so it does not add to that debt - unless you get too addicted) and 2, its played over a long period (hopefully providing satisfaction over a long period) making it pretty good value for money for the player rather than something that might be bought and only used for a day

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

I see your point, but I simply disagree with it.
I think it will be some people playing more, had a bunch of finnish guys I played around who did nothing but play due to being unemployed etc.
I think a segment of players might be in those positions, and therefor play. But the majority, when things get serious financially, will watch their work more closely. Unemployment going up, wages stagnate, and due to businesses cutting back I think some people might start to work a bit harder.
This of course is my opinion, and it will hopefully not go this far, but the chance is there. And the risk/reward ratio for investing in a game, rather than investing in commodities and other more useful products which gains you a safer return.
Luxury is always the first that has to be sat on lower priority, and PA is a luxury. Not talking high-end, but rather luxury in the terms of products which meets a felt need not necessary for survival.
I simply do not see it as a good investment in a very volatile market.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

2 cents in U.S. coinage. Unless changes are made to make new players feel like part of the game instead of pawns for the top Alliances.

Unless you can attract paying membership or advertising dollars it has no real incentive to buy into it.

I don't mean totally rework just a few tweaks to allow new players to compete even if it is at their own level. A lone planet player does not have the time to do mass intelligence to figure out any politics. The politics are a bit too secret and hide most of the game. This leaves a lone new player without any feeling of belonging to a community.

It is not needed to totally uncloak the alliances but something to give a new player an indication of what is going on.

OMAC needs to consider all ideas not just those of the elite few (not an insult to those that have made it there). But even the top players should need a challenge of being big fish in a bigger pond. The top players see what has worked but the little guys help keep any game alive.

If I were in charge (rofl) I would work on the basis of 'keep it simple stupid' making some changes that would apply to everyone but cut through some of the fog. I would need to find some way of making the game grow in numbers and have them stick around for a while. This seems to be a mom and pop corner store, it needs something to bring in whatever is needed to expand and be worth purchasing.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

HCs should ask their members how much they'd be willing to pay.
Then as a collective, make an offer to jolt. Mention that if they don't sell, those players are going to boycott the game.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

you mean omac...
Not sure how many of those players would follow through on any boycott mind

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

i don't know what omac means.
i imagine it wouldn't be too hard to get a significant number to boycott the game if people make it clear to members why it's being done. i.e. for the long term interests of the game they enjoy playing.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

This is in part why the entire business model of selling accounts each round needs to be rethought. Part of the reason that PA has not been successful is its business model is extremely limited, and has a very limited appeal. There are business models out there that would make the game free again, but could still find ways to make a profit through subscription services, fees for perks, and other methods. Simply put the game HAS to be free to be successful, people (at least on a large scale) simply will not pay a reoccurring fee to play a browser game. The reason folks who still play PA pay is for the alliances and their friends, not because the in game experience is worth the money. Any business plan for PA that will be successful has to deal with this issue.

How would I deal with this issue? Well no one is paying me to figure it out, so I ain't telling!

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Collective ownership implies collective decision power. What do we know about group intelligence?

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Never underestimate the idiocy of people in large numbers. :D

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

As a game currently, imo, not a lot.

The 'valuable' bit is the name, and the following it has (the community) - problem is, this is dying fast currently due to the lack of developments with the game and stagnation of things.

Re: How much is PA worth? really!
 

Well, if i had much money id give 5000 $ or so and take the game, then put a better team to recode make it better, famous and go even more rich...

Ofc, id keep Fiery ;D