How to get new players

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Areyekuwe
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2015 3:16 pm

How to get new players

Post by Areyekuwe »

One of the points that everyone agrees upon:

-Need of much higher population.

In EIN time we were able to login and launch game from a webpage on "Web Launch" or something like that, completely bypassing lobby.

Today, if we could have a web launch page with a big nice button "Log In with your Facebook account" you are likely to have an avalanche of new people logging in...
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Wei
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 9:56 pm

Re: How to get new players

Post by Wei »

I agree; this place could use a breath of life, and I think it can be done.

Although I disagree that you'll see an "avalanche of players" pouring in over logging in through facebook. Yes, you should make it easy to log in, but doing that isn't going to do much for the population on it's own.

If you want to build the population, the obvious answer is to advertise. You can make it easier to log in, and you can create new and interesting content, but if nobody knows this is here, they're not going to be able to take advantage of those things. You can cook as much food as you want. Steak, lobster, Caesar Salad, shrimp, BBQ Ribs, delicious burgers. You can book bands, and magicians, you can buy as much booze as you want, but if you don't invite people to your party, you're going to be pretty lonely.

So, what I would suggest is a 3-prong approach. Those prongs being:
  • Prepare
    • This entails things like Areyekuwe mentions above to modernize the shard within reason to make it as easy as possible to log in. Fix any of those bugs that have been on the back burner, get any new content the staff has in the works finished and implemented, get all wheels greased and all ducks in a row. Plan out and code anything planned for step 3, as well. What you're preparing for is a large and sudden influx of players.
  • Advertise
    • You need an advertising blitz This, for whatever reason, never gets mentioned in older games that I've visited over the years who are looking for ways to expand their playerbase. Gamers have a bad habit of thinking that if you implement this cool thing, or fix that broken thing, that population is going to suddenly blossom and magically people are going to start playing. If you want people to log in to your game, they first have to know your game exists, and then you have to peak their interest. This is an older game and obviously advertising typically costs money. This will obviously fall on the staff, but there's plenty of ways to pool money. In game raffles and auctions can be held for special items. Players can donate specifically to an advertising fund. Etc.

      Aside from the usual paid advertising, there's also the methods of Stealth Advertising, and Guerrilla advertising. This can be done on the plethora of gaming sites out there. You can gather guild contacts from various forums to send out personalized emails and PMs. Players can visit various gaming sites with nice fliers/graphical advertisements (yes, this can be done tastefully), and of course, friendly reminders and emails can be sent out to your current playerbase to remind them that you're here, and invite them to pop their heads in, and say hello to some old friends.

      Make some attractive web fliers, and plaster them all over the internet. This can be done through stealth marketing, guerrilla marketing, social media marketing, etc. The point is simply to advertise.
  • Engage/Retain
    • This is important. You've spent all of this time and money preparing and advertising, so you want to make sure the people you advertise to don't log in, poke around a little bit, and immediately log out. My biggest suggestion in this regard would be to get all of those people that you're advertising to to log in as close to the same time as you can. This will be done by including a specific date and time for players to log in on your ad-campaign. Make it a day of rolling out new content and events for both new and returning players.

      From there, I would plan on a couple month(?) long event. Get them logged in, get them good and juiced up on the first day, and then keep them engaged and busy for a solid month. Let them get comfortable
This will obviously take more than just Brad and Mars if it's going to be finished in any reasonable amount of time, and it obviously isn't going to return this shard to all of it's glory, but this game does have a lot of charm to it, and is genuinely enjoyable, so if done properly, I think something like this could actually be pretty effective.

I may (or may not) still have some connections at places like Penny Arcade and other gaming sites and would be more than willing to help out on a project like this if it happens to pick up any steam, and I'm sure others would as well.

(i apologize is this post is kind of messy. It's first draft posted straight to the boards. If anyone is interested in helping with a project like this, please say so in this thread.)

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