BLOG EXCLUSIVE: Message From The Owner Of Naughty Machinima

Yesterday, we received a note from Muze, the owner of Naughty Machinima. It's great to get some insight from him into what's been happening at NM and how he's been trying to make the site not lose money and improve it at the same time.

He also responded to several comments on the blog.

Here's Muze's whole note:




First off, it was never my intention to prevent members from viewing their own content. More on that later.

DJQuad: I never received any PMs from you regarding advertising or I most certainly would have responded. Perhaps something went wrong with the PM system but I have no shortage of complaints about this one or that one in my inbox so I think it's working. I even checked the backend database and there are no messages from you. Did you use DJQuad to contact me?

I'm sorry for the broken contact form. It came to my attention reading a comment here and I fixed it immediately. It was working about a month ago and I simply wasn't aware.

How did it break? Well I hired a programmer to help with making changes to the site. My goal was to:

1. Add improvements, fix bugs.
2. Convert to limited free/pay site, or close the site.

This programmer is no longer responding after months of working on the site. Unfortunately many of the changes he made broke. The original outline for the pay site was to absolutely allow users to still edit/view/delete/etc their own videos, respond/delete comments. That didn't get implemented.

Now if you are concerned about not being able to watch your own videos, just don't try to login. The guest user is unlimited, because it was also not implemented correctly. This will change, but first I want to allow free members to still login and view their own content. When that's resolved, guest users will be limited, and will have to create an account, which can be free (with monthly limits).

I have another programmer who I will have take over the project.

I have no desire to close it down and I thank those who are helping to support the site. If it were to shut down everyone would get REFUNDS. I would hope that was obvious but someone suggested otherwise.

"Naughty Machinima can easily survive by providing links to paid for content sites. It just takes some work to do this. "

Please don't claim to know how to financially support my site through ads. That's how I've been making a living for over a decade. My other site, which is free, succeeds because it's relatively low bandwidth - the complete opposite of a streaming video site - and users visit it looking for adult games and similar, and a certain percentage is ready to spend some money. They aren't looking to watch videos or upload large files.

Someone did contact me several times through several methods about advertising something in SL. I responded every time with a yes and the appropriate info and wouldn't hear back every time or for several months, so that situation was too unreliable. That's the grand total of requests for advertising I've received, so don't act like I'm turning down advertisers at every turn.

I don't want to ONLY support the site (although I will; if it breaks even I can live with that). I have to profit as well. This is how I make a living. For years the site has just bled money. It was always my intention to profit, and I hoped ads would serve that purpose. Perhaps better targeting would help, but it's unlikely.

One IP address per user is for security reasons.

Finally, perhaps the restrictions will change, when I find other ways to add value to paying members, while loosening the limits.