The Press

The Press
This is effectively a large scale printing press and distribution centre, has a town presence in the form of an HQ building somewhere in one of the large cities, and has a distribution network comprised of newsstands manned by an NPC, and possibly also mailbox deliveries to a player's home, should we get this function added to game.

Membership to "The Press" allows a player or group of players to print off their periodicals and have them automatically distributed through the network belonging to "The Press", and members are charged a yearly fee which is paid to the game. Membership gives access to the large printing machines (allowing large runs) and distribution networks - none of these actually carried out by the players but all done behind the scenes, and the membership fee covers this. A player simply sets up the membership, supplies the material regularly as agreed, and their periodical appears on the newsstands (and possibly in the mailboxes of subscribers) regularly until the membership expires.


Newsstands -
These would be little stands with an NPC selling a variety of periodicals, written by players and player organisations. These stands could be in various spots around main towns and cities. The NPC sales menu is accessed as usual (click on NPC), the stand is as usual, a decoration, has various magazines and newspaper type objects on it to indicate the kinds of things being sold by this NPC. Cost of periodical goes back to the game (no profit for players).




Cost of Membership -
This would be a fee in gold paid to the game, paid at the main HQ of "The Press" - The Press HQ building being found in a large city or town. This should be a reasonably high fee, as not everyone makes magazines and newspapers. I expect that guilds and various player organisations will easily be able to cover the cost of this membership by putting their resources together. A membership to The Press lasts one year, is paid in full in advance, and covers the cost of one periodical. Missing the deadline (deadlines being established at the time the new member sets up the frequency of their periodical) for submitting material for your periodical say twice in a row automatically cancels your membership as it's a breech of contract, and to get the periodical published again would require the player/group to join once again (pay another year's membership fee).


Subscriptions -
Should we get mailboxes, players would be able to subscribe to newspapers and magazines and get them sent to their home automatically (through the mail function). They would pay for the cost of the periodical in advance (say for 6 months or a year) at "The Press HQ". If we don't get mailboxes then players would have to buy each magazine etc individually, at the newsstand (there would be no subscriptions).

Any player subscribed to a periodical that does not get published on time where that periodical and membership gets cancelled (as above) gets the remaining amount refunded to them, or returned as credit to use on another magazine/newspaper, as the end user shouldn't be punished for any of that.


Content -
There could be magazines to cover all kinds of interests, guild magazines for example - useful for keeping a guild in the public eye, and another person might want to make a newspaper covering local events and happenings.

The cost of a membership to "The Press" could be offset by taking advertisements from other players (to advertise their shops and trades) and putting these into a newspaper/magazine. Obviously if someone tries to publish a magazine full of only ads it's likely other players won't bother reading them making the cost of advertising in such a magazine worthless to the advertiser, so would be best to have a mix of various content so these ads actually get read. The most popular magazines would be those with actual content. All advertisement fees would be arranged by the players concerned (set by the player magazine owner and charged to the player advertiser), and wouldn't be an official thing at all.

I expect someone will come up with adult rated content and want to publish that on a regular basis, so there might need to be age checks or warnings on those magazines so your little 8 year old playing SotA doesn't stumble across it. Just like in a real newsstand.


Function of "The Press" -
This is a fun activity for the players - will be great for distributing information on a widescale basis, and people could also use these periodicals as ways to advertise the locations of their player shops and so on. And for the game, serves the purpose of a goldsink.

 

I like it!

 

Nice design. Sounds pretty sweet.

 

I absolutely love it!

 

Frankly, I think MMOs could have used this feature a LONG time ago! Well done, lollie!

EDIT - Suddenly had the idea to create a satire/parody of tabloids (Very 'The Onion'-esque) by creating spoof stories about notable Devs/players/events. If this feature is implemented, I will make this happen!

 

I can see it now... Issue #1 of "Novia Enquirer"

- R14 DELAYED! DarkStarr says: "But it's coming!"

- BUSTED! Lord British caught at Wody's Bar with a Chaos tatoo!

- 10 Things You Need to Know about royalsexy (and his Gorgeous Bod!)

- How to add 6 inches to your Height (and still Jump Higher!)

 

Love this idea, i was already trying to convince people to sell me their printing press pledge rewards so i could make a publishing house XD

 

Idea: Since the game would be given direct input to the book/magazines/periodicals that are being printed, would it be possible to create a direct pipeline to an online archive? (So when you add a new issue it, it appears on a website as well as in people's 'mailboxes')

This makes sense for three reasons:

1) Not everyone is going to like the mailbox or Press systems! Shocking, I know, but true. It would be good to show them a little love.

2) We can avoid catasrophe if some jerk decides that he wants to RP a book-burner.

3) While the Devs & community do a solid job of keeping each other up-to-date, their work is already cut out for them. Seems (NOTE: SEEMS) a little easier to simply take the inputted Article and send it off to 2 locations (the in-game books & a website).

If you wanted to get super-efficient about this, it could simply post to a blog so that community members could easily post a RSS feed of new content on their various sites.

 

Great idea, I plan to be both reader and content provider.

 

I'm sorry, I know I already did this once, but I couldn't resist:

Novia Enquirer Headliner:
"Life Expectancy of SotA increases by 20 years after George R.R. Martin agrees to write ending for storyline."

 

He would just kill everybody off and include a graphic sex cut-scene with the oracle

 

I'll grant you that, but without the Novia Enquirer you'd still be waiting several years before you found out that the Oracle was Lum's half-sister and that THEY are the ones that pushed Rustica Dragon off a balcony.

Devs, implement the Press! Novia deserves to know the truth!

 

Love it love it love it.
Great idea great read through.
I think this should get its own stretch goal or guild to help it get in.

Three things though:
A
As is. This will devalue the player economy. There were lots of plans for setting up small scale versions of this.
Please reconsider that this would be handled by behind the scene features only.
B
As is. This devalues the pledge award: printing press.
C
As is. There might be issues for Port if this is seen as done by the game. In that they take an active part in the production of things written by players. If someone writes some really offensive stuff Port would like to be behind a couple of safe guards not to be held as partly responsible.

So two counter proposals to mitigate these issues.
1)
The printing is done by players using either pledge printers or crafted printers, using fibre to make paper etc.
To enable this add features of mass printing if the text is shorter than X letters to such player run printers.
That way it supports the economy and does not devalue pledge awards.
2)
To your newsvendors concept add an NPC that takes in these printed bulk papers and distribute them for a fixed fee and a cut of the profit while the seller set the price level.
So if I hand in 300 newsletters, the NPC will make it available to the newsvendors all over. When sold I get a cut on the price, the rest goes to game for the distribution.
Make such distribution regional unless control points are clear.
If no sale of a paper has happened in 1 week, the remaining papers are removed from newsvendors and placed in the submitters bank. (To remove clutter). Where they can submit it again for the fee.
Since the distribution fee is fixed players will be encouraged to hand in larger volumes and since the cut is on the price it will encourage a price distribution.


Added idea:
If each of these print runs get a GUID if Port gets reports they can pull a whole print run from the game.
Such a GUID could also help in making a second or more print runs as copies of a successful run.

And again, great idea, love your effort and presentation.

 

I'd love to see "Eye of Novia News" and the "New Britannia Press" working together.


http://newbritanniapress.com/