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I just re subscribed a few weeks ago. I have been helping noobs. They ask me how many people who are online and i tell my estimate is 30 to 40 and peak 60 to 100. It has been 10+ years
I understand you don't want to advertise. Please tell me so I can answer them.
jb
(I know i have no right to say this but, the game will never be perfect. You make changes every week. it is an online and we know it will never be finished. You guys are amazing ... )
I understand you don't want to advertise. Please tell me so I can answer them.
jb
(I know i have no right to say this but, the game will never be perfect. You make changes every week. it is an online and we know it will never be finished. You guys are amazing ... )
Welcome back :).
We don't have money to advertise. Also, when we have done so in the past, it has been questionable as to whether we made the money back in terms of new users. Even big things, like the Penny Arcade promo, was pretty uncertain as to whether we broke-even.
For the moment, I'm focused on trying to make the most of resources we have with the mailing list and so on, with some more frequent newsletter promos and things.
I am aiming for a 1.9 goal by Q2, and possibly 2.0 by Q4, with major press associated with both. But.. I dunno who will cover it or not. There are so many other games these days.
It'd be great if we had a full-time marketing person, I've wanted one for a decade; but.. we don't, and we can't afford any people.
We don't have money to advertise. Also, when we have done so in the past, it has been questionable as to whether we made the money back in terms of new users. Even big things, like the Penny Arcade promo, was pretty uncertain as to whether we broke-even.
For the moment, I'm focused on trying to make the most of resources we have with the mailing list and so on, with some more frequent newsletter promos and things.
I am aiming for a 1.9 goal by Q2, and possibly 2.0 by Q4, with major press associated with both. But.. I dunno who will cover it or not. There are so many other games these days.
It'd be great if we had a full-time marketing person, I've wanted one for a decade; but.. we don't, and we can't afford any people.
Inc, Q2, Q4 as in 2nd/4th quarter this year?
Yes. We'll see if I have a hope in hell of pulling that off, but it is the goal. I'll announce it all more formally when the plans are more concrete. Right now I'm just trying to find the funds to make it happen.
Any single marketing effort rarely stands on it as own. Marketing generally requires consistent exposure. But that's the problem. We don't advertise because we don't have money to advertise because we don't have the return from advertisements.
A marketing person is the way to go, but the money.... Have we tried reaching out to our community to find a person who might want some good experience on a pro bono basis? You mentioned wanting a pro, but even a newbie putting together a marketing plan and implementing it would be better than no exposure.
A marketing person is the way to go, but the money.... Have we tried reaching out to our community to find a person who might want some good experience on a pro bono basis? You mentioned wanting a pro, but even a newbie putting together a marketing plan and implementing it would be better than no exposure.
I haven't tried finding a pro-bono person, no. There are certainly some cool initiatives and promotions and things that could be run that are relatively "light weight" in their development requirements, but demand more time than I often have available.
But major marketing and interaction with the gaming press, beyond simple promos and messageboard outreach and such.. can be a more delicate challenge. It's sometimes not very hard to make it worse-than-doing-nothing.
But major marketing and interaction with the gaming press, beyond simple promos and messageboard outreach and such.. can be a more delicate challenge. It's sometimes not very hard to make it worse-than-doing-nothing.
"Right now I'm just trying to find the funds to make it happen."
In-house crowd-funding... I will throw money at you! (/derailment)
In-house crowd-funding... I will throw money at you! (/derailment)
I propose:
A) Trying to find a pro-bono resource.
B) Let them develop a social media campaign which utilizes no-cost resources to increase awareness of the game.
C) Let them develop campaign proposals which would require financial resources to implement (example: Advertisements)
D) Publish the proposals from (C) on the forums, similar to Newsletter posts, with a paypal link for the community to fund these efforts.
This leaves gaming press interactions out of scope, and in the hands of Guild. The game potentially gains some exposure, and Guild is not out any more resources than it takes to review and approve/deny/modify the promotional campaign with the resource.
A) Trying to find a pro-bono resource.
B) Let them develop a social media campaign which utilizes no-cost resources to increase awareness of the game.
C) Let them develop campaign proposals which would require financial resources to implement (example: Advertisements)
D) Publish the proposals from (C) on the forums, similar to Newsletter posts, with a paypal link for the community to fund these efforts.
This leaves gaming press interactions out of scope, and in the hands of Guild. The game potentially gains some exposure, and Guild is not out any more resources than it takes to review and approve/deny/modify the promotional campaign with the resource.
I think the more relevant bit of the post is "It's sometimes not very hard to make it worse-than-doing-nothing."
Marketing/astroturfing/whatever is a touchy business, and an amateur/"pro-bono" attempt can do serious harm.
Marketing/astroturfing/whatever is a touchy business, and an amateur/"pro-bono" attempt can do serious harm.
genka, that concern is geared more towards gaming press, and as specified is outside the scope of my proposal.
lol, astroturf :)
Eh, I'm not advocating for astroturf, or anything that would be "pretending" to be a spontaneous "random player" response on a remote forum. But rather for potential promos and even official outreach and people to answer questions and so on.. I dunno. I'm sure there's lots of opportunities for low-cost marketing without misleading anyone.
IndieDB page? I know thousands of people use that site every day and, best part, it's designed for exposing games, especially indies like this one, to the public.
It's free to use, and can be pretty hands off maintenance-wise, needing only regular updates, which you guys already do any way. You've already got a slew of screenshots to put up, and I'm sure people like TheRedSpy and Phaserlight would happily donate their videos.
It's like getting on Steam, but free.
It's free to use, and can be pretty hands off maintenance-wise, needing only regular updates, which you guys already do any way. You've already got a slew of screenshots to put up, and I'm sure people like TheRedSpy and Phaserlight would happily donate their videos.
It's like getting on Steam, but free.
I rarely have time to play, but I think the game is awesome. I've played off and on for several years, and check the forums from time to time to see what is going on. To show support, I have just paid for 24 months of access. If you have a crowd-sourcing event, I'll kick in a bit more.
May I make a suggestion? I don't know your churn rate, but I suspect it is pretty high as it probably is for most games. My suggestion is to allocate some resources to better understand the churn, and how to retain a larger percentage of players for a longer time. Spending scarce resources on advertising/marketing to draw in new players, only to have them leave early, will be frustrating.
While I am in-game, i frequently see new players exclaim how awesome this game is, but these players rarely stick around. Why is that? I don't know, and perhaps you don't know either. Would it be worthwhile to send players who don't re-subscribe an email asking them for feedback? The email could have a link to a on-line poll (I think there are several free or low cost polling sites) where you could explore the reasons people stop playing. Is it the subscription cost that is a problem? Do people just get bored with the game? Does the pirate activity aspect turn people off?
Once you have a better understanding of why people leave, you can make adjustments to game play to improve the retention rate. Only then will advertising and marketing efforts yield true growth in the paying subscriber base.
I'm sure the Guild Software folks know this very well and spend a lot of time thinking and working to reduce churn.
How can the player base help?
May I make a suggestion? I don't know your churn rate, but I suspect it is pretty high as it probably is for most games. My suggestion is to allocate some resources to better understand the churn, and how to retain a larger percentage of players for a longer time. Spending scarce resources on advertising/marketing to draw in new players, only to have them leave early, will be frustrating.
While I am in-game, i frequently see new players exclaim how awesome this game is, but these players rarely stick around. Why is that? I don't know, and perhaps you don't know either. Would it be worthwhile to send players who don't re-subscribe an email asking them for feedback? The email could have a link to a on-line poll (I think there are several free or low cost polling sites) where you could explore the reasons people stop playing. Is it the subscription cost that is a problem? Do people just get bored with the game? Does the pirate activity aspect turn people off?
Once you have a better understanding of why people leave, you can make adjustments to game play to improve the retention rate. Only then will advertising and marketing efforts yield true growth in the paying subscriber base.
I'm sure the Guild Software folks know this very well and spend a lot of time thinking and working to reduce churn.
How can the player base help?
How can the player base help?
The most obvious solution is by going noobing in nation-space.
The most obvious solution is by going noobing in nation-space.