help out your fellow player (this is important)

**Wyzcrak** · 12-01-2005, 01:28 AM

Beyond the typical accolades for those who do, I rarely bother you guys about becoming Supporting Members (SMs), but now is one of those times. Please, take a moment to read this, at the very least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TG_Mateo

Member contributions fund the site, the services that the site provides, and the servers. It's not a for profit. Apophis funnels the money back into the community at every turn.

Membership gives you priority access to [the servers], access to TG hosted blogs, webspace, mail, galleries, etc., and helps keep the lights on.

Is it worth it?

I think so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apophis

A year ago Tactical Gamer and I were back on our own. I felt obligated to keep the community together and sought out a datacenter to use for our web site and gaming servers. Since that point, the community has been operating completely under its own steam. All of the resources of the community are paid for by the supporting members. As our supporting membership base grows, we are able to provide more services to the community.

I figured I'd mention it now in the hopes that some of you who usually can't manage it might be able to manage it as a gift from someone to whom you can convey the therapeutic (no, I'm not kidding) and/or relaxing/entertaining properties of playing here regularly, with friends.

To be blunt: this community costs a hell of a lot of money to run. If you've got cash to spare, and you play here every night, and you're not helping out with a Supporting Membership, I'm saddened.

Each of our servers is leased solely to us... one of the many cost-incurring requirements we operate under to give our players the highest-quality connections any server operator can offer. We have to pay license fees for stuff like the forums. There are fees associated with launching new services. There's squeak's insanely-high admin salary (lol. no.. no.. all admins are purely volunteer and purchase their memberships like everyone else, including Apophis). And there's other stuff, too. Hell, I'm one of the most behind-the-scenes folks around these parts, and even I don't know all of the expenses involved. None of this is possible without SMs.

If you just don't play here that often, I'm not pleading to you. If you play here every night, and you honest to God would be financially irresponsible to spend six to eight dollars per month on something you do all the time, I'm not looking for you to act.

But if you play here regularly, and you can manage, by hook or by crook (read: with your own cash or asking for it as a gift), to become a Tactical Gamer Supporting Member, and, in doing so, generally do even more to help your community grow, please do.

Official Tactical Gamer Information
TG Memberships
In Game Member Benefits
Other Member Benefits

Overlooking the self-serving perks that come with forum membership, it's just a good thing (some would say "the right thing") to do.

This thread comes out of the gates locked. I don't want a discussion about why each of us can or can't (or, worse, won't) manage a supporting membership. If you can, do it, and thank you. If you can't, you're no less welcome here than you've always been.

**Wyzcrak** · 08-31-2006, 12:00 AM

We're a few months shy of a year since I made this thread, and I read tonight that Tactical Gamer is consolidating and shutting down some servers whose costs can't be justified by the insufficient number of Supporting Members who play on them:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apophis

As much as this game fits [us], it requires an entire machine to operate and hasn't been able to draw sufficient supporting memberships to remain in our lineup.

Closures like that don't come with a lot of warning around here. We don't harass people to become SMs, and we don't threaten to shut down servers if they choose not to. Which servers we run and which we don't is very much a reactionary affair. If the SM count for a server stays healthy, it's a non-issue. If they don't, for long enough, the server just goes away.

Strategic frugality is one of the many assets that enables the strength that this community regularly shows (and will continue to show after this pruning).

With today's other server closings, TGNS becomes the only server hosted on its own exclusive box (it doesn't share its hardware with any other game; TGNS consumes the entire box). A cost which typically allows us to host multiple high-performance servers for other games is monthly incurred solely to host TGNS.

This makes Natural Selection, in a way, one of the most expensive titles Tactical Gamer hosts. Meanwhile, it's the least-expensive client in our lineup (free), and so it draws a demographic with comparatively little expendable income. That raises the bar for us, the Natural Selection players, to remain diligent in our efforts to support the costs of our server, and indeed our community, by helping to pay the very real bills when we can.

And consider clicking on that link even if you're already an SM, as there are now two Supporting Membership subscription levels to choose from.

Once again this thread remains locked, so as to not pressure any one person. Just consider what a luxury the server is for us, and please help support its costs when and if you can.

Many thanks!