(01-27-2020, 02:09 AM)Ry Vor Wrote: I expected as much.
So, Lords of Alamaze, we are trying to address this population issue. Just getting clicks is not the answer. Nick is going to be a vital resource and he is determined. Check out the videos if you haven't: this is a major jump.
And credo to our main community members, who volunteer to mentor, and post. Hey, no one has ever said, as far as I know, Alamaze is not a great game. We just need to know how to populate it. And the most serious effort we have done since the Dragon Magazine review is what Nick is doing with his efforts.
Word of mouth is obviously the most effective. If everyone got one more player.....
If someone has an idea beyond what I have done, don't keep it secret. But keep in mind, its all kind of volunteer labor, relatively speaking.
Actually, I'm a bit taken back when I read Rick's reply that having a few videos on YouTube is thought to be the most serious effort that was done for Alamaze since the Dragon magazine article.
A couple of years ago, I tried a major advertising effort to get new players interested in the game. I didn't just create a few sample videos and hoped that people would view them but instead, I actually got personally involved and interacted with people to get them to know the game.
I sent out a major email campaign to specific groups that would be interested in pbm like college sci-fi/fantasy gaming groups, online gaming hubs, and even boardgame groups from Meetup. I posted a bunch of bulletins in Meetup (of those that allowed it because I had to ask permission first) and tried to convince people to try out Alamaze as a "boardgame" where players would get together and play an entire session of Alamaze thru their ipads (to receive their turns). A paper printout of the map would be used for tabletop miniatures to place their kingdom's forces which I hoped would appeal to tabletop war gamers to get them involved.
There were also plans of visiting local library tournaments (D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics, tabletop war games, etc.) to pass out flyers about Alamaze. Even better was to visit nearby conventions and I encouraged Rick to do the same in Texas. I even provided a list of upcoming sci-fi conventions near his location to see if he could make them but there was no interest.
At that time, I also created the Alamaze tutorial game with instructions which fully explains to new players what to do when initially participating in a game and what kinds of common actions to take as one's strategy. The YouTube videos are just a copy of some of what I did in the tutorial game. I guess it's ok to have another example of what to do for new players but again, its just a copy of what we already have available for them with the tutorial and welcome email that is sent to all new accounts.
I thought getting in touch with college gaming groups was our best bet in getting new players (and I still do) but after receiving feedback from some of the above, I found out that the reason why my advertising campaign wasn't successful was because of the
forum requirement of the game.
People didn't want to create a forum account. They just wanted to jump into a game and start playing to see if they liked it. I mentioned this to Rick back then but he didn't want to change things because the forum allowed him to control the situation however, the forum requirement for starting Alamaze games is the bottleneck for new players. They don't want to be involved with the forum.
Not being interested in the forum is something that I understand and I'm the same way. Whenever I play a new pc game, I just want to start playing it. I don't want to be bothered in creating a forum account or anything else like that. If a new pc game said that to play their game, I would have to create a forum account, I would laugh at them and move on.
As far as I know, Alamaze is the only game that has a forum requirement of what games will be created by the community. No other game is like that. New players are not used to being told to do something like that and they are not interested at all.
That's why the 4 new players who signed up for this game in the Game Queue didn't create a forum account. No one wants to be bothered by a silly requirement like creating a forum account to start playing the game. It's a ridiculous requirement and I mentioned this back when I developed the Game Queue in that the forum will become a bottleneck to automating games.
About the current situation of creating a few YouTube videos that duplicate our tutorial, we're seeing that won't be the solution for attaining new players because providing further instruction with videos isn't the way to go about this problem. The real solution is to no longer make the forum a requirement for new players. I designed the Game Queue to work like Fall of Rome and other automated games but such isn't being used as intended due to the forum requirement.
And we're seeing the exact same response and feedback from what I did with my advertising campaign a couple of years ago. There are a ton of bogus accounts that are created from people that are just screwing around. Some are named like 2fishy or fuckthisshit. Others are hackers trying to access our system to do damage. Others don't provide a valid email address and are just numbers or other weird stuff.
Out of about 40 bogus accounts that were created recently, only 4-6 seemed legit and actually logged in to try our tutorial and signed up for a game. Those 4-6 new players are those that joined this newbie game about a month ago. I asked Rick to send a personal email to each of them (which would be nice to receive a personal thank you from the owner of the game) but was turned down. Time passed and now about a month or so later, we lost those potential "real" players. But keep in mind, none of those 4-6 players created a forum account so I don't know if they would have lasted anyway due to the forum requirement of creating additional games.
So even though creating a few YouTube videos which duplicate our current tutorial or welcome message sent to accounts may be something new, they won't solve the problem that Alamaze has for attaining new players. It's the forum requirement and until that changes (as in allowing games to be created in the queue at will like Fall of Rome and other games), I'm not expecting a lot of new players. Sure we'll get a ton of bogus account like we did years ago but nothing for real and that is exactly what is happening now.
This may sound disappointing but it's realistic and is based on actual statistics of previous advertising efforts. I know from personal experience and by reading the feedback from new accounts (the few that actually respond). The way to bring in new players is to eliminate the forum requirement and instead, players check the game queue to join up for games, post messages in the chat window (instead of the forum) and start playing right away like a normal automated game. If that means that we also need an automated billing system then that's something that Rick needs to consider as well.
Buddy/Ignore List
