My web company http://www.campusassassins.com was recently featured in the USA Today, but the article is what you might call 'negative.' It warns people not to engage in the activity that my website organizes. Do you think that negative PR is still good?
If some user of your site is mistakenly killed by an over zealous police officer, you may have some liability issues. I'd probably get a lawyer to write up a strong disclaimer at least.
As for the PR -- I'd say it's a win. People who are going to be interested will find out about you and the controversy makes you interesting.
Great site you've built, and that's really great PR for you.
I think a lot of players understand that they let terrorists/fanatics win if they decide to stop playing and having fun because of those crimes. True, people will understandably be more sensitive to this and go through a respectful down-period of mourning. But ultimately, the bad guys can't be allowed to suck the fun and joy out of life forever. They can't be allowed to win, and your site does a good job of preventing that ;)
On the business side of things - $2 does seem a bit steep for college kids. I know a lot of folks that would just do the game by hand rather than pay that much per person. That doesn't mean you have to lower your list-price though. In fact, you shouldn't. What would be more viral and fun (and educational for your pricing) would be to give out discount codes or to have a special discount assassin week. Then you could play with the pricing - $1, $0.50, etc per person and see how much more demand you get at different price levels. The goal of course is to maximize total revenue. That would also be a good way to introduce new users to your system that otherwise would avoid it and also create more viral spreading for your site.
I wouldn't exactly call that negative PR. They didn't blame you, or come out and call you a monster. It was more of a casual reference. If my company was featured that way in a large publication I'd be fairly happy.
As a side note, nice idea for a site. Every game I've been involved in was run by hand. I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay $2 a person to organize it though. Have you considered having an 'unlimited' account or the like for $100 or so?
No we haven't considered it directly. We've had a lot of trouble figuring out how to price things though. An unlimited plan sounds like a pretty good idea.
I think you would be better off charging $20 to host a game of up to 50 people. $2/person just seems really high to me. It's gotta be relatively cheap for the organizer to take money out of the pot and put it towards your site.
edit: Read the article... you seem to be getting a decent amount of business, maybe it's worth charging significantly more for an unlimited option. It's certainly a hard service to price.
Here's the article
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-24-student-assassin-game_N.htm