Alamaze Reunion

[Calidor]

I mentioned this in the past but I think Alamaze is the perfect candidate for a Kickstarter campaign. Alamaze has 2 glaring issues in my mind and that is population and funding (and I believe those are closely intertwined)

A Kickstarter could solve both issues.  It would be free publicity and it would raise money for the development of all the online tools that could take the game to a new level.  Call it Alamaze:The New Age or something. Set a reasonable goal ($10k? 25k?) and stretch goals.  Include unlimited playtime in the current version as a donation perk. My assumption is that there is not much added cost to run extra games so why not?

Showcase the best parts of the game. Highlight full text battle reports, Agents, Wizards, unique Kingdoms…
Be realistic about what could be accomplished with $10k, 25k.. more. Come up with a sustainable cost model for The New Age…

There are board games that Kickstart and raise crazy money.  I think the record was almost $13 million.  Go after that market.  Advertise on the many DnD and Virtual Tabletop sites and Discords.  Highlight the RPG aspect on some sites and the Wargame aspect on others…

Imagine Alamaze with a pool of a thousand players…
Imagine having 20 games forming at a time…

Why not?


PS: just to add some features for the potential update: Player created MAPS! Player defined Game size, length and win conditions. True anonymous communication in game. Multiple "Tiers" of game complexity (Basic, Normal and Master). Even better maps. Upgraded Order Entry Tool (maybe with integrated turn results and maps)

PPS: Heck maybe the Kickstarter would be for Kingdoms of Arcania! And allow donors to access Alamaze for free

[admin]

Crowdfunding was mentioned long ago, with Rick Loomis' crowdfunding successes specifically highlighted.

[Calidor]

Crowdfunding was mentioned long ago, with Rick Loomis' crowdfunding successes specifically highlighted.

Sorry. Search didn't show anything for Kickstarter more recent than my last post on it in 2019 and the one before in 2017. I just toss it out every few years and see if theres ever any interest.

[admin]

Crowdfunding was mentioned long ago, with Rick Loomis' crowdfunding successes specifically highlighted.

Sorry.  Search didn't show anything for Kickstarter more recent than my last post on it in 2019 and the one before in 2017.  I just toss it out every few years and see if theres ever any interest.

I've mentioned it in e-mails, before. That's been a while.

[admin]

A lot of old e-mails I no longer have. September of 2017 was when I mentioned the Rick Loomis success with Kickstarters.

[Calidor]

A lot of old e-mails I no longer have. September of 2017 was when I mentioned the Rick Loomis success with Kickstarters.

https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...=kickstart

Great minds think alike

But I really do think Alamaze (Or Kingdoms of Arcania) is the perfect target for such a campaign. Stay away from physical goods like T-Shirts, let people who donate at certain levels have free access to the current game, and set goals based on what can realistically be achieved with the money. I think the eyeballs alone would have a huge impact on the game population. Especially if you can keep getting the site organized and present a good first impression.

[admin]

https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...=kickstart

Great minds think alike

But I really do think Alamaze (Or Kingdoms of Arcania) is the perfect target for such a campaign. Stay away from physical goods like T-Shirts, let people who donate at certain levels have free access to the current game, and set goals based on what can realistically be achieved with the money.   I think the eyeballs alone would have a huge impact on the game population.  Especially if you can keep getting the site organized and present a good first impression.

A lot of people come up with ideas for Kickstarters or other crowd funding platforms, yet who then fail to achieve success. I went in and checked my account on Kickstarter, just now, and not counting the 159 projects which I backed that succeeded, 124 projects that I backed did not succeed. All of my pledges were really small pledges, so the amount that I backed them with was not an impressive amount of money. That was back when I was trying to get a better feel for Kickstarter, specifically, and crowd funding, generally. I would often make pledges for a dollar. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I was testing some theories that I had about Kickstarters.

If Rick had tried doing a Kickstarter and it failed, then Alamaze would be no better off. Plus, too, a Kickstarter can become a fairly involved project, one which can command a sizable portion of one's time and energy. It is, in essence, a trade off. But without ever trying it, how does one know what the outcome would be? In a nutshell, you can't.

The funding goal that one sets, initially, can either help you to reach your funding goal early, or it can become an anchor around a crowd funding project's neck, effectively killing the project before it even starts.

In that other thread that you provided a link to, Rick asked a couple of good questions. These were:

Should I work on Kickstarter, or repatriating former players, or working on Maelstrom, or the Alamaze Tutorial?

What I would ask is everyone active knows an inactive player.  Get them back active.

That thread, though, doesn't show where you bothered to answer his questions. The correct answer at that time would have been that he should do all of them.

After all, they were all of importance. Getting those former players back was a worthy objective. After all, those don't even have to be retrained on how to play the game, in many instances, certainly. Their return would have been an immediate godsend. Repatriating them, if successful, would grow the community, plus it would also bode well for his ability to repatriate future players who leave, at some point.

The Alamaze tutorial was important, also, because players would be more likely to stay longer, if they actually understood how to play the game. That cannot be truly and truthfully said to not be an objective of importance. Of course, if you create a tutorial, that is not necessarily the same thing as creating a tutorial that is effective. Plus, too, a tutorial can only be effective, if newcomers to the game actually use it - which all won't. This is why it is imperative to create a game interface that is intuitive as possible.

Kickstarters, as you well realized as evidenced by your first posting in that Kickstarter thread that you created, aren't just and only about obtaining what is frequently perceived as "free money." They also can be useful, at times though not always, in developing a following - a following that is separate and apart from whatever following that one has already developed outside of Kickstarter channels.

To launch a Kickstarter that is more likely to be successful, and especially one for a game, visuals are enormously important. However, Alamaze doesn't really have very much in the way of visual assets. Visuals are a form of eye candy. They are useful for crafting something known as visual temptation. But if you don't invest in that, or if you don't create that (because some are talented enough to create visual assets without having to purchase them), then your chances for achieving a successful Kickstarter, or a Kickstarter with tremendous results, diminish noticeably.

Here's a link to a Kickstarter that Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo did:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...ts/3206908

It raised $125,440 via 1,638 backers. 

Compare that with what was probably Rick Loomis' first attempt to use Kickstarter to crowd fund a project:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

That early effort only netted a grand total of just 17 backers, and it failed to reach its funding goal of $8,000.

What a turnaround for Rick Loomis, huh? So, clearly, just creating a Kickstarter is no guarantee of either obtaining any actual funding, nor any following of size. Rick Loomis didn't give up, and in fact, he enjoyed success with multiple different Kickstarter efforts. Out of his 9 Kickstarter projects, I think that 8 of them proved to be successful.

886 backers pledged $31,904 to help bring this project to life. 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

363 backers pledged $10,834 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

562 backers pledged $19,459 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

269 backers pledged $4,782 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

1,388 backers pledged $156,696 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

99 backers pledged $5,931 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

1,638 backers pledged $125,440 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

395 backers pledged $34,284 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

Funding Unsuccessful
The project's funding goal was not reached on Wed, March 28 2012 11:56 PM EDT
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

If I added right in my calculator, Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo fame, the man who "invented" commercial PBM gaming, managed to raise a total of $389,330 dollars spread across eight different Kickstarters (for non-PBM game purposes). And this was after his initial attempt at trying to figure out Kickstarter failed. He managed to achieve two Kickstarters that reached over a hundred grand, each.

Figuring it out, figuring out how to succeed at using Kickstarter as a crowd funding mechanism of importance, is key. After all, anybody can use a Kickstarter to fail to raise money, or fail to reach their funding goal.

[admin]

Should I work on Kickstarter, or repatriating former players, or working on Maelstrom, or the Alamaze Tutorial?

What I would ask is everyone active knows an inactive player.  Get them back active.

Pardon me, as I borrow this old quote from Rick McDowell, above.

Three days ago, I use the mail system of the forum to invite players and former player to this thread via e-mail. In essence, an attempt to "get them back active," as Rick put it a few years aback. Just right after I sent that e-mail out, former player DIWS showed back up here. A few others may have, as well, but for the most part, most haven't not showed back up, as of yet. I suspect that some may no longer use the same e-mail address that is on file in the forum, here. Some may have even passed away. And of course, some likely haven't even checked their e-mail, yet.

More recently, two days ago, I sent an onsite PM to every registered forum user who has 75 or more forum messages to their credit, and who hadn't visited the forum in a while (at least, going only by the forum statistics, and not counting anyone who may have visited, without logging in) inquiring as to why they had quit playing. Thus far (and it is still way early, yet), not a single person has responded to that PM inquiry.

Neither of these are good signs, but given more time, some responses may yet be forthcoming. Even if someone doesn't have a desire to return to playing Alamaze, my thinking was that they might still be willing to tell me why they stopped playing Alamaze, which could be useful insight.

Accordingly, efforts to grow the player base might want to focus the lion's share of such efforts on persuading new layers to the game. I wouldn't write off the former players entirely, but too much time may have already lapsed to bolster one's hand, where efforts to persuade a sizable portion of them to return. Some will likely never return, but a portion of them might could be persuaded. I count myself as neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but rather, I strive to be a realist.

If you have any ideas on how to grow the Alamaze player base, feel free to post those ideas below.

[Calidor]

https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...=kickstart

Great minds think alike

But I really do think Alamaze (Or Kingdoms of Arcania) is the perfect target for such a campaign. Stay away from physical goods like T-Shirts, let people who donate at certain levels have free access to the current game, and set goals based on what can realistically be achieved with the money.   I think the eyeballs alone would have a huge impact on the game population.  Especially if you can keep getting the site organized and present a good first impression.

A lot of people come up with ideas for Kickstarters or other crowd funding platforms, yet who then fail to achieve success. I went in and checked my account on Kickstarter, just now, and not counting the 159 projects which I backed that succeeded, 124 projects that I backed did not succeed. All of my pledges were really small pledges, so the amount that I backed them with was not an impressive amount of money. That was back when I was trying to get a better feel for Kickstarter, specifically, and crowd funding, generally. I would often make pledges for a dollar. Not all of them, but a lot of them. I was testing some theories that I had about Kickstarters.

If Rick had tried doing a Kickstarter and it failed, then Alamaze would be no better off. Plus, too, a Kickstarter can become a fairly involved project, one which can command a sizable portion of one's time and energy. It is, in essence, a trade off. But without ever trying it, how does one know what the outcome would be? In a nutshell, you can't.

The funding goal that one sets, initially, can either help you to reach your funding goal early, or it can become an anchor around a crowd funding project's neck, effectively killing the project before it even starts.

In that other thread that you provided a link to, Rick asked a couple of good questions. These were:

Should I work on Kickstarter, or repatriating former players, or working on Maelstrom, or the Alamaze Tutorial?

What I would ask is everyone active knows an inactive player.  Get them back active.

That thread, though, doesn't show where you bothered to answer his questions. The correct answer at that time would have been that he should do all of them.

After all, they were all of importance. Getting those former players back was a worthy objective. After all, those don't even have to be retrained on how to play the game, in many instances, certainly. Their return would have been an immediate godsend. Repatriating them, if successful, would grow the community, plus it would also bode well for his ability to repatriate future players who leave, at some point.

The Alamaze tutorial was important, also, because players would be more likely to stay longer, if they actually understood how to play the game. That cannot be truly and truthfully said to not be an objective of importance. Of course, if you create a tutorial, that is not necessarily the same thing as creating a tutorial that is effective. Plus, too, a tutorial can only be effective, if newcomers to the game actually use it - which all won't. This is why it is imperative to create a game interface that is intuitive as possible.

Kickstarters, as you well realized as evidenced by your first posting in that Kickstarter thread that you created, aren't just and only about obtaining what is frequently perceived as "free money." They also can be useful, at times though not always, in developing a following - a following that is separate and apart from whatever following that one has already developed outside of Kickstarter channels.

To launch a Kickstarter that is more likely to be successful, and especially one for a game, visuals are enormously important. However, Alamaze doesn't really have very much in the way of visual assets. Visuals are a form of eye candy. They are useful for crafting something known as visual temptation. But if you don't invest in that, or if you don't create that (because some are talented enough to create visual assets without having to purchase them), then your chances for achieving a successful Kickstarter, or a Kickstarter with tremendous results, diminish noticeably.

Here's a link to a Kickstarter that Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo did:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...ts/3206908

It raised $125,440 via 1,638 backers. 

Compare that with what was probably Rick Loomis' first attempt to use Kickstarter to crowd fund a project:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

That early effort only netted a grand total of just 17 backers, and it failed to reach its funding goal of $8,000.

What a turnaround for Rick Loomis, huh? So, clearly, just creating a Kickstarter is no guarantee of either obtaining any actual funding, nor any following of size. Rick Loomis didn't give up, and in fact, he enjoyed success with multiple different Kickstarter efforts. Out of his 9 Kickstarter projects, I think that 8 of them proved to be successful.

886 backers pledged $31,904 to help bring this project to life. 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

363 backers pledged $10,834 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

562 backers pledged $19,459 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

269 backers pledged $4,782 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

1,388 backers pledged $156,696 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

99 backers pledged $5,931 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

1,638 backers pledged $125,440 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

395 backers pledged $34,284 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

Funding Unsuccessful
The project's funding goal was not reached on Wed, March 28 2012 11:56 PM EDT
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994...le_created

If I added right in my calculator, Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo fame, the man who "invented" commercial PBM gaming, managed to raise a total of $389,330 dollars spread across eight different Kickstarters (for non-PBM game purposes). And this was after his initial attempt at trying to figure out Kickstarter failed. He managed to achieve two Kickstarters that reached over a hundred grand, each.

Figuring it out, figuring out how to succeed at using Kickstarter as a crowd funding mechanism of importance, is key. After all, anybody can use a Kickstarter to fail to raise money, or fail to reach their funding goal.

Some points:

1. Those Kickstarters from Loomis were not for PBM games (as you mention).  Many appear to all be card based games or at least have a component of physical goods.  These are usually anchors on project delivery. 
2. The goal IMHO of the Kickstarter is not just to raise money and fund the project. A secondary (maybe even primary?) is to get eyeballs on the game.  If the Kickstarter misses its funding but 100 people decide to try Alamaze that's a win in my book. It's kind of like going on Sharktank.  Even if you do not get a deal you get a ton of eyeballs on your product and some of the most successful are those that turn down deals.
3. Yes, you cannot just toss up a Kickstarter and expect it to succeed.  It takes planning and strategy.  I think Alamaze is perfectly suited for it because there is already a functional game that can be played.  What can be marketed is a new upgraded version or Kingdoms of Arcania. I would use social media to get it in front of not just PBM players but RPG players, Boardgame players, Wargame players and MMORPG players. I would highlight the various Kingdoms, personas and stuff like spell lists and Unusual Encounters to the Roleplaying Crowd. I would highlight the maps, units and Battle Reports to the Wargaming Crowd. I would actually not push the "PBM" acronym at all.  I would call it an online, turn based, roleplaying game of diplomacy and war.



Regarding part 2:

Focusing on existing players is ultimately a losing proposition.  You certainly do not want to abandon the 20 or so loyal players who have been around for years or even decades, but the result is what you see here. A slow attrition of the player base with one or two new people who happen by every few months.

I have mentioned this ad nauseum over the years, but it's not my call.  However if it was, my attention would not be on adding complexity to the game.  It would be on simplifying the new player experience. It would be on integrating everything game related (rulebook, turn results, maps and even forums) into the Order Tool.  Might want to explore setting up tools for today's gamer, like an official Discord server.  I'm like many here.. older than dirt... but forums are almost (not quite) as out dated as sending turns via post.  I love them and I assume most people here do as well, but they are a fairly foreign concept to players in their 20s.

And, to the best of my knowledge Rick tried all the suggestions except the Kickstarter.  Maybe it's time has finally come?  He would really need to determine what can be done, in what amount of time and what funding it would take. We can help getting the word out and maybe even in proofreading or helping with the materials, but the vision, timeline and budget have to come from the big guy.

[admin]

Might want to explore setting up tools for today's gamer, like an official Discord server.  I'm like many here.. older than dirt... but forums are almost (not quite) as out dated as sending turns via post.  I love them and I assume most people here do as well, but they are a fairly foreign concept to players in their 20s.

This is a spot on point, about Discord. There's no reason why Alamaze shouldn't have its own Discord server. Granted, a Discord server could well draw forum users away from using the forum, here, and Discord can't emulate everything that a forum allows one to potentially do, but they do seem to be popular with the current gaming crowd at large. Even now, though, not everyone uses Discord, but that said and acknowledged, many do.

I recently added an Alamaze channel on the PlayByMail.Net Discord server, but that's not the same thing as a dedicated Discord server. Discord is free, so there's not much of an argument, from my perspective, to not have a Discord server for Alamaze.

I don't know what's going to happen with Alamaze, as far as Rick maybe selling Alamaze is concerned, so if someone else is about to run the show, here, it might be best if they created the Alamaze Discord server, themselves. That way, they would be able to exercise a degree of control over it, if desired.