• Posts: 344
  • Tag points: 5

Topic: Growing the player base

What, that elusive freak Stefan asking the users something directly? Madness!

Anyway, as you know, there have been a lot of changes recently, some of them causing issues, some of them not being exactly universally approved of.

The one - and only - reason for these changes was, to put it blunt, to make the game possible to promote to new people. The previous look may have been preferable to some, and the new one is surely not perfect - but it is at least presentable. A new player would previously most likely just leave after seeing the actual game, if the player even got that far. They still might, but not because they thought someone had just forgot to turn off the server in 2001.

So a lot of work has gone in to make the game something that can be promoted. Many things remain, but that is not what this thread is for. It is also not for arguing about the changes.

The next step is to promote the game and to grow the player base back to a sustainable level. Currently the number of players is too low to sustain itself. Without action, the game will surely die.

The mod team and I have some ideas, and there already is a little bit of promotion taking place, but nothing fantastic that is likely to have any great effect.

So I would like your input/help with this. How to attract new players, preferably in droves, and quickly?

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 3,083
  • Tag points: 378

Re: Growing the player base

Google adds maybe? I know they cost money, might not be a feasible option. Word of mouth might be an option, but for it to work better we would need a lot more players now. Let's see what everyone else comes up with smile

Insanity and genius are closely related!
*** Eltie for mod! ***
Failing Lemming of Teachings and Australian Cop Orgies: Gwynedd

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 1,647
  • Tag points: 141

Re: Growing the player base

http://www.mpogd.com/games/game.asp?ID=566       Update with the new logo , new layout and text

and have a link for the small playerbase in a GE orso to vote again ( at the end of a round )

~" Peace can only grow where blood flows "~

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 1,647
  • Tag points: 141

Re: Growing the player base

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm          Add us here

~" Peace can only grow where blood flows "~

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

5 Reply by Orbit (edited by Gwynedd 30-Jul-2013 10:19:16)

  • Posts: 1,599

Re: Growing the player base

[Off topic]

"It's very quiet on the political arena. I wish someone would stir up some trouble!"

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 1,000
  • Tag points: 43

Re: Growing the player base

Right now you should be worrying more about the large number of players who plan to quit after this round is over due to the game being unplayable on most mobile phones than gaining new players.

You have now been infected with Bird flu. Good day.


~Testudinae~

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 6,734
  • Tag points: 34

Re: Growing the player base

I can't believe I'm going to agree with Josh.


The update was a great step in the right direction, but it's got to be finished before you step towards increasing player count. You don't want to get people headed this way, just to see how bad it is. They won't come back. You need to get them here, and then keep them here.

Modestus Experitus

Arby: A very strict mod, reminds me of a fat redneck who drives a truck around all day with a beer in one hand. I hated this guy at the start, however, I played a round in PW with him where he went as an anonymous player. Our fam got smashed up and everyone pretty much left. Arby stayed around and helped out the remaining family. At the end of the round he revealed himself.... My views on him have changed since. Your a good guy.....

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 1,000
  • Tag points: 43

Re: Growing the player base

I also want to just mention that the last email that was sent out prior to the one announcing SN ending, did bring in a lot of returning players but it was also full of lies about new features that aren't there and player numbers that haven't been here in a decade along with the new look being half assed just caused most of them to go inactive after rejoining.  Could have hurt the chances of future emails working with those people.

You have now been infected with Bird flu. Good day.


~Testudinae~

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 344
  • Tag points: 5

Re: Growing the player base

The game is not unplayable on "most" phones. On some, yes, but far from the majority. It works well on iOS for starters, which is around 30% of all. The Android devices I have tested it on it works also. On smaller screens it does not work well. Desktop remains our main target platform, though these things will be eventually be fixed.

However, this thread was about ideas on how to grow the player base - now. Please refrain from polluting it with your point of view on what have or should have been done. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but this is not the place.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • mung
  • Player
  • Offline
  • Posts: 303
  • Tag points: 50

Re: Growing the player base

Stefan I love you, I've always loved you.

Thanks for the many, many, MANY hours of entertainment this game has provided me and countless others.

"I will **** him, and **** your family unless you help me **** him." - Einstein venting his sexual frustration. Obviously another "Satisfied Mung Customer"!

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

11 Reply by Gwynedd (edited by Gwynedd 30-Jul-2013 11:16:00)

  • Posts: 3,083
  • Tag points: 378

Re: Growing the player base

[Topic is re-opened, kindly keep it on topic people]

Insanity and genius are closely related!
*** Eltie for mod! ***
Failing Lemming of Teachings and Australian Cop Orgies: Gwynedd

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • BNRG
  • BNRG
  • Player
  • Offline
  • Posts: 628
  • Tag points: 17

Re: Growing the player base

Stefan, what kind of new players do you want? (aka what demographic) 5 year olds? 15 year olds? 50 year olds? Males and/or females? American, European, third world countries players?

Retired.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 2,753
  • Tag points: 8

Re: Growing the player base

rednecks smile and some canadians eh smile

Rchie

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 3,007
  • Tag points: 425

Re: Growing the player base

stefan.

I am going to post something serious for once because i want this game to live.

i am going to be candid with this post.  i realize that running this game is not your career and you're not making any decent money off of it. The community should be grateful to you, as i am, for keeping it alive this long.  The community that is still left with a few exceptions are people that have been playing since the early days and the main reason we stay is because of our friends/allies/nemeses that we have met along the way in the past 10 plus years.  As such, we feel like this game is ours as well even though we did not create it.  We would not have such active idea/bug threads with the same people if that was not the case.

I agree we should not turn this thread into a trolling one or regress about past decisions entirely but in order to approve anything in one's life, including my own, we all have to be able to accept constructive criticism.

Orbit, josh, arby were being honest with you.  They said the reasons why this game has declined.  I think holding an open live chat with the community rather than speaking to a remote few who dont necessarily represent all would be a better way to progress.

Your absence in the chatrooms naturally turns us into thinking that you are better than all of us who come back and pay for VIPS but constantly feel that we are unheard.  This obviously turns this game into one where players rebel/argue/harass the moderators who volunteer their time to run this.  Granted, there will be animosity in most games between players and overseers but this game is different.  I think of this game more like a very large fantasy football league since most of us know each other and are friends outside of the game unlike the monster games like WoW etc etc. 

I think even if you held a once a week open time with the community in a chat room that would quash a lot of criticism because we would actually believe the people who kept this game alive were heard.  Emails, posts are the worst way of communication because things can be read and understood the wrong way.  A live communication method is better to convey feelings.

I hope this message does not get edited or removed.  I mean this with respect and with my intention to help this game and more importantly the community live on.

So I told the cop, "No YOU'RE driving under the influence... of being a JERK!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

10 Tag Points

  • Posts: 3,083
  • Tag points: 378

Re: Growing the player base

So to summarise your idea Pengy you suggest more interaction regularly with the community to retain the current player base and assist in growing the player base?

Insanity and genius are closely related!
*** Eltie for mod! ***
Failing Lemming of Teachings and Australian Cop Orgies: Gwynedd

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 4,031
  • Tag points: 671

Re: Growing the player base

nude pictures of mila kunis would attract many a new player!
you should look into that.

in addition to that you could create (or have someone with mad skillz create it for you) a template for an advertisement poster. i am sure many people would be willing to print the poster at their home printer/work/school and hang it somewhere. its cheap and it will get your name known in the places where, obviously, the right demographic of players hang around (universities, high schools, libraries)

NEE NAW NEE NAW

Primo

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 5,199
  • Tag points: 19

Re: Growing the player base

I don't know Primo, most people at my university do not take games like these seriously, with so much time investment involved and such outdated graphics and themes. Placing a poster in my university would only act to ridicule the game, sadly.

A game such as imperial conflict will have to continue relying heavily on its playerbase of old. New players are disappointed by dated graphics (even with the new update, yes, I mean just look at the forums...), complicated gameplay with discrepancies between the guide & faq and the actual gameplay, a community that is on one hand so tightly nit together that it might form an obstacle for new players who feel uncomfortable conforming to already existing relations between other players, and on the other hand is so critical of itself and self-destructive, with players attacking others on personal levels or ruining gameplay for others by taking away weeks of work in a single farmfest.

The only way I see to extend the player base is bringing friends to the game ourselves. Showing them the game and helping them out first hand, on a personal level, rather than throwing them into the game and letting them see for themselves. When I first started out, I was introduced to the game together with a few of my classmates, who had first come to know this game through the brother of one of those classmates. This has been relatively recently (2010?) and I see it as one of the few succesful attempts at gaining new players, even though I am now the only one remaining of that group of friends.

Maar doodslaan deed hij niet, want tussen droom en daad,
Staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren,
En ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren,
En die des avonds komt, wanneer men slapen gaat.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

18 Reply by Undeath (edited by Undeath 03-Aug-2013 17:09:28)

  • Posts: 4,743
  • Tag points: 85

Re: Growing the player base

(Technically this is off topic, I acknowledge this.  Saying that, I think this topic is the wrong topic to be discussing at this time.  We should be focusing on making this game a product that will keep the people we currently have playing rather than finding new people.)

I'm not sure that I've ever agreed with Dpenguins before, but.... this time I do.  I've never been a fan of how the overseer system in IC is so secretive, and it feels like part of it is that the basic community is completely closed off from our main developer.  Now to be fair and practical, if there were any kind of open forum in chat it would need to be very strictly moderated or it would just turn into 12 people throwing out questions at the same time.

Open the door, update the players on what is going on.  There are loads of ideas in the forum that were acknowledged as good, discussed in greater detail, and then as far as we know have completely disappeared.  Why shouldn't the player base be updated frequently on what is currently being developed?  Personally I think the voting feature in the forums is very underused as a means of seeing what players think needs to be done.  A LOT of the practical problems with the new layout and Supernova (is it sill being used in a Virgoish type thing...cuz that's about the dumbest idea I've ever heard of.  Let's bring players into a team based game...make them learn by playing alone which takes the forum, aiding, allies, etc. completely out of the learning equation and do the best we can to set them up for failure once they join a family) could have been fixed before it came out by simply updating the players on what was going on.  One of the biggest problems the game currently has is that the people making most of the decisions don't really understand the game and how the changes that they are making are actually going to effect play.  Taking player input into account more (whether you like the player or not, their were multiple times when I was moderating that I brought in suggestions from Josh....and they weren't implemented or even discussed for the soul reason that other moderators did not like him), could go a long way towards keeping this around. 

Open the door.  Most successful online games have some kind of update to the players bi-weekly or monthly letting them know what is being developed, some use videos, some use official announcements, but for a game with our small community size a simple forum post ever 2 weeks would suffice.  If there are no updates...then the post is even easier to make!

/end ramble

<KT|Away> I am the Trump of IC

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

3 Tag Points

  • Posts: 14,366
  • Tag points: 68

Re: Growing the player base

dpenguins and I are Americans. So we have that viewpoint.

You want to pack them in, get on FB and have people earn Farmville cash to sign up.  Print CDs with the game guide and Faqs and IE explorer and hand those out at stores and concerts.  Rent a boat for an ImperialConflict.com Fiesta and have a spectacular fire and rescue in the harbor of your capital city.  Get Bono to make a donation to the rain forest if you get enough likes on Facebook. Get arrested for getting too close to Bono.  Have Prince Harry get photographed naked in your hotel room.

You can pack them in like cattle.
You want them to stay here, the game has to be fairly bug-free.

It's a different game.  I can't memorize combos. I can't stay up all night and score harder faster on my own.  I have to join a team, almost certainly not as a leader, get chores assigned and trust other people.  The pieces move while I'm away.  I need social skills and XP is measured in real relationships not a number.  That all means internal word of mouth is very important.  That is how you win - people are happy about how well they interacted overnight and around the world to beat other teams of people.  You can't let the game mechanics be the reason people lose.  They will complain and it will lose the newbies.

You want to attract AND RETAIN new players, get out of beta.

The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 3,007
  • Tag points: 425

Re: Growing the player base

dont derail chris.

stefan, if you are serious about this thread then please read and reflect on nick's and my posts

So I told the cop, "No YOU'RE driving under the influence... of being a JERK!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFjjO_lhf9c

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 4,743
  • Tag points: 85

Re: Growing the player base

dpenguins, Josh, and I are all in agreement

I don't know about you guys, but personally I'm stocking up for the apocalypse.

<KT|Away> I am the Trump of IC

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 1,599

Re: Growing the player base

Agree with Dp, I practically said the same thing but got forum banned for it.  To hell with this game!

"It's very quiet on the political arena. I wish someone would stir up some trouble!"

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Babe
  • Babe
  • Player
  • Offline
  • Posts: 3,292
  • Tag points: 9

Re: Growing the player base

use the free channels to promote the game, facebook for starters.

i joined this game called vega conflict awhile back becouse i got loads of invites through facebook from friends and it looked cool.

i played for 3 days, the game was rubish..but during those 3 days i spent aprox 50 dollars on coins to make things go faster in game. Now VEGA are advertising through facebook + u can play it through facebook.

im just saying..FB got me into the game + made me spend money on it..all becous of some fancy grafics and facebook.

Airwing

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 2,753
  • Tag points: 8

Re: Growing the player base

loser big_smile

Rchie

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 4,330

Re: Growing the player base

I think removing players like H4eva is the start to a new player database!

Haters gonna hate!

0 Dislike 0 Post Points