Game & Forum Discussion => Game Discussion => Game Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Rizzla on March 18, 2018, 06:22:31 pm
Title: Advertising
Post by: Rizzla on March 18, 2018, 06:22:31 pm
This thread is not meant to be offensive or accusational in any way. Also, if this belongs in a different board feel free to move it.
I have some questions, as well as ideas on the subject of getting more people on FH. People complain all the time that the game is dying, and yes, compared to how it used to be, it is. My question is, back when the game first got started, how did the staff at the time draw people in? Was all of it just people from Impressive Title who wanted to play a similar game? I know not everyone here got to play IT at all, so that can't be entirely true. Word of mouth, perhaps? Yes, that may have worked back then, but is it entirely reliable now, with all the false information that goes around about this game? I don't think so.
What I'm saying is, if some of you think this game is dying/has a declining playerbase, do you want to try to help it in some way?
The one thing I can propose that I haven't heard said before is advertising. Not paid advertising, just like word of mouth, but more official and targeted at different communities and audiences. Here's a (bad) example, a big journal made on dA about FH shared to animal art groups aside from the FH group itself. It can be done, can it not? It's not like this game isn't progressing, even if we don't have the source code the staff are still finding ways to update the game... so maybe it's time to try updating the community a little too? Some people just don't see the game from all angles, and people from different corners of the internet would have zero biases.
(https://i.imgur.com/xh3XKxf.gif)
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Valar.Morghulis on March 18, 2018, 07:10:31 pm
One great form of advertising for the game before were YouTube videos. People now still make FH YouTube videos, but they're all 30 seconds long.. I find that very annoying though. Also, the reason why there isn't many people in game is because most of them don't know how to register and they don't know when the registration is going to be open. There are still thousands of people trying to join the game, they just either don't read about the registration and don't know that It's open at random times or they are not very good at reading English so they pretty much can't do anything.
And If you or someone else wants, they can of course advertise the game! And maybe tell people that registration opens every few hours and the best way to register is just to set a reminder every one hour 'till they catch the registration open.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Warriorstrike on March 18, 2018, 10:15:14 pm
You bring up a good topic, and I'll try to address some of your questions. c:
My question is, back when the game first got started, how did the staff at the time draw people in? Was all of it just people from Impressive Title who wanted to play a similar game? I know not everyone here got to play IT at all, so that can't be entirely true. Word of mouth, perhaps?
I'll only be speaking off what I know, as I did not join Feral Heart during its birthing year of 2011 (or 2010, if we refer to its first release) nor play Impressive Title before joining FH (I joined a year later). There will certainly be others whom did actively play one or both games during that time who could probably provide you with a better answer, but I'll do my best to offer what I know. A large part of Feral Heart's initial playerbase consisted of those whom already played Impressive Title; as KovuLKD's new animal game and official replacement of IT, naturally people were intrigued and wanted to know what all the hype was about. So, part of FH's popularity in its initial official release was determined by a pre-established following of LKD's projects (namely, IT). Many of the staff that FH first employed were staff on Impressive Title--there was a rollover effect in more ways than one from IT to FH, although the games themselves are two separate games.
Another significant factor of attention to the game was generated through YouTube videos. Valar mentioned this above, so I'll reiterate that this was a big part of advertising. I discovered FH on a different forum, but YouTube videos were what offered me a physical glimpse at what the game looked like. For those of you whom have used YouTube for viewing videos over the past few years, you may notice that the dynamic has changed quite a bit. That dynamic changes how people would respond to a video advertising FeralHeart, especially how effective it would be compared to five years ago, but it would still be a way to get the word out there. Staff have entertained the idea of a YouTube channel for a while, but it all comes down to how and when staff would go about it.
The one thing I can propose that I haven't heard said before is advertising. Not paid advertising, just like word of mouth, but more official and targeted at different communities and audiences. Here's a (bad) example, a big journal made on dA about FH shared to animal art groups aside from the FH group itself.
Having Feral Heart being advertised on other forums, games, etc., would likey be an effective way. I found FH through a thread on WolfQuest's forum. Sharing through word of mouth can be a very effective way to gather buzz about a game. However, this isn't something that has to be done by staff, alone--users can take this into their own paws, as well. Tossing out the name of a game on a forum (a game, a Discord server, etc.) you regularly visit can bring attention to a game that people might not have been aware of prior. Depending on the platform you wish to advertise on, you may run into the complex of a dislike for advertising on their site, so as long as you are mindful of this and respect the views of other peoples' platforms, I would encourage anyone willing to do so.
Staff has been considering ways to advertise the game, and while our focus at the moment is dedicated to release of the next patch, any thoughts/suggestions are welcomed. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us, as they may hopefully have an impact on how the word of FH is spread around.~
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Jango_Fett on March 19, 2018, 05:16:12 am
honestly if someone with decent editing skills put in effort someone could whip up an actually decent trailer for the game or some form of advert.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: WolfQueen on March 19, 2018, 06:25:53 pm
to be honest, i think pretty much everyone who might be interested already knows about feralheart and advertising will overbear it's welcome. i believe the decreasing amount of online players has a lot to do with the registration cycle. having to wait until a specific hour in a day to register kind of turned people off from the game after a while. as less and less new people come in to replace the old ones, the population decreases. in order to make feralheart as popular as it was years ago the registration system needs to be open 24/7 again, but i don't think that'll help much at this point.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Valar.Morghulis on March 19, 2018, 06:48:58 pm
to be honest, i think pretty much everyone who might be interested already knows about feralheart and advertising will overbear it's welcome. i believe the decreasing amount of online players has a lot to do with the registration cycle. having to wait until a specific hour in a day to register kind of turned people off from the game after a while. as less and less new people come in to replace the old ones, the population decreases. in order to make feralheart as popular as it was years ago the registration system needs to be open 24/7 again, but i don't think that'll help much at this point.
Yep, I kind off agree with the registration thing. But I'd like to add, if you look at the analytics, you will see that "Average registrations per day:86.78" which means that around 87 people catch the registration and register every day. Now imagine if the registration was open. There would be too many people registering every day, and unfortunately out server can't handle that.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Wyldercat on March 19, 2018, 09:19:16 pm
I'm not going to restate what other players have already said, but I strongly agree that this game could use some TLC in the advertising department. I know sites such as Flight Rising or Im.vu (is imvu even still around?) have very frequent appearances in sidebar ads from my memory. Perhaps some kind of good publicity as well to get rid of our bad associations in the furry mmo community. I know we have a fairly small userbase, but with so many talented people, perhaps some streams or raffles whether for charity or to pay for better advertising certainly couldn't hurt. (Assuming we could put that together. This is just a suggestion and I understand it may be improbable.) Also, I partly agree with registration. It's good to keep in mind that a website calculated algorithm may not be entirely accurate. While the average is pretty high for a single day's registration number, keep in mind outliers, such as the days of past updates or the game's launch would have had a very high amount of registrations. However, I don't pay much attention to the site traffic, so I can't really say whether or not this would be true. I don't see harm, however, in increasing the frequency of open registration time. I believe it is open at 2 times a day for 2 hour periods (correct me if I'm wrong), but perhaps increasing it to 4 or 6 hour periods or more frequent intervals open could turn away less potential users without overloading the servers. I know it exists for a reason and all, but I honestly think we could get rid of the login page at this point. Unless there's more to it than security measures, it's been quite some time since the attacks on the game (to my knowledge). If possible we could have an easier alternative or an automatic pop up window with the login page or something of the sort. If possible.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Valar.Morghulis on March 19, 2018, 09:21:47 pm
I'm not going to restate what other players have already said, but I strongly agree that this game could use some TLC in the advertising department. I know sites such as Flight Rising or Im.vu (is imvu even still around?) have very frequent appearances in sidebar ads from my memory. Perhaps some kind of good publicity as well to get rid of our bad associations in the furry mmo community. I know we have a fairly small userbase, but with so many talented people, perhaps some streams or raffles whether for charity or to pay for better advertising certainly couldn't hurt. (Assuming we could put that together. This is just a suggestion and I understand it may be improbable.) Also, I partly agree with registration. It's good to keep in mind that a website calculated algorithm may not be entirely accurate. While the average is pretty high for a single day's registration number, keep in mind outliers, such as the days of past updates or the game's launch would have had a very high amount of registrations. However, I don't pay much attention to the site traffic, so I can't really say whether or not this would be true. I don't see harm, however, in increasing the frequency of open registration time. I believe it is open at 2 times a day for 2 hour periods (correct me if I'm wrong), but perhaps increasing it to 4 or 6 hour periods or more frequent intervals open could turn away less potential users without overloading the servers. I know it exists for a reason and all, but I honestly think we could get rid of the login page at this point. Unless there's more to it than security measures, it's been quite some time since the attacks on the game (to my knowledge). If possible we could have an easier alternative or an automatic pop up window with the login page or something of the sort. If possible.
It's open around every 12 hours as far as I know. And It's one hour long. c:
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Wyldercat on March 19, 2018, 09:29:45 pm
Yep, I kind off agree with the registration thing. But I'd like to add, if you look at the analytics, you will see that "Average registrations per day:86.78" which means that around 87 people catch the registration and register every day. Now imagine if the registration was open. There would be too many people registering every day, and unfortunately out server can't handle that.
High demand + limited supply = more value Limited supply + more value = high demand If the registration is open 24/7, the server won't break in the long run. Slowly starting to open the registration more often will reduce overfilling the server. I think making the registration cycle like Flight Rising would be desirable, which opens once a week every month. This gives enough time for people to register and won't fill the server in a day.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Insoholic on March 20, 2018, 04:44:37 pm
Yep, I kind off agree with the registration thing. But I'd like to add, if you look at the analytics, you will see that "Average registrations per day:86.78" which means that around 87 people catch the registration and register every day. Now imagine if the registration was open. There would be too many people registering every day, and unfortunately out server can't handle that.
I don't think we can really rely on the Statistics Center. It also shows that the average posts on the forum per day are 331.91. But I don't see 300 new posts every day. Do you? ;D
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Lucius on March 20, 2018, 07:23:04 pm
Yep, I kind off agree with the registration thing. But I'd like to add, if you look at the analytics, you will see that "Average registrations per day:86.78" which means that around 87 people catch the registration and register every day. Now imagine if the registration was open. There would be too many people registering every day, and unfortunately out server can't handle that.
I don't think we can really rely on the Statistics Center. It also shows that the average posts on the forum per day are 331.91. But I don't see 300 new posts every day. Do you? ;D
I don't want to risk this turning into another "bring back registration" topic, so I'll put my opinion on that in a spoiler.
I have a feeling that the statistics center might be a bit broken.
(https://i.imgur.com/XiAsU3Y.png)
If you look at the "New Members" column, the forum doesn't seem to register anyone who made an account after June 2016 (or October 2016 if you count that 22).
However, I assume that the way the forum calculates the average posts per day is by adding up all of the posts since 2011 and divides that by the total amount of days that have passed since the forum was made.
I did the same thing. I added up all the days from 2011 to 2017, while assuming that each year had 365 days. That came up to 2555. I then added up the total number of posts from 2011 to 2017, which was 867,658. I divided the post count by the day count and got 339.59. Obviously that's not a very effective way of representing the average posts per day, as it assumes that there's an equal number of posts every day, which isn't true.
This means that the average registration per day is calculated the same way; by adding up all of the members who registered since 2011 and dividing by the number of days since then. I also assume that the number is skewed because of the forum's apparent problem with recognizing new members since 2016.
The restricted registration was imposed at the end of September 2012. I'll calculate the average number of newly registered members from 2013 to 2015 (inclusively), to give you a better picture of the actual statistics. 365 * 3 = 1095. 23,937 + 26,173 + 26,935 = 77,045. 77, 045/1095 = 70.36.
If we assume the trend has continued like that since 2015, then we can say that we have an average of 70 new members every day (if the registration was open every day and the exact same number of people registered each time).
Thing is, this was done to minimize the server load. The average number of registrations per day for the year of 2011 was around 209.36. Now, that's practically three times as many members as we get today.
How about implementing a different system? Instead of randomly opening the registration, why not make the registration a free for all at the beginning of every month? Put a hard cap of 2000-3000 new members and then close the registration until the next month. At least then people will know when to expect it opening up.
What I'm saying is, if some of you think this game is dying/has a declining playerbase, do you want to try to help it in some way?
The one thing I can propose that I haven't heard said before is advertising. Not paid advertising, just like word of mouth, but more official and targeted at different communities and audiences. Here's a (bad) example, a big journal made on dA about FH shared to animal art groups aside from the FH group itself. It can be done, can it not? It's not like this game isn't progressing, even if we don't have the source code the staff are still finding ways to update the game... so maybe it's time to try updating the community a little too? Some people just don't see the game from all angles, and people from different corners of the internet would have zero biases.
I'm all for new members. Honestly, I would love to come into the game and see a bunch of excited new people running around. Thing is, this game is targeted to a pretty niche audience. The thing that Wolf Quest has going for it, is that it's an educational game, so schools and parents are more inclined to introduce the game to their children.
Maybe try pushing the character customization, as well as map-building and preset-making aspect of it. Give it a familiar catchphrase; something like "The world is what you make it" kind of thing. A catchy slogan might draw some people in.
Perhaps exposing this game towards more artistic communities might help. Bring back the Preset Contest, maybe make a "Draw The Staff" Contest (draw anything FH-related, really) or introduce a Map-Making Contest. I thought the Fanfiction Contest was a good idea, so maybe bring some of that back, along with a new Mesh/Item Contest.
As a reward for these, you could get the chance that your mesh, map, and/or item will be featured in an official Staff Update. As for the drawing and writing contests, we could get those featured on the forums, with a link to the artist's DA, Tumblr, and whatever other website they have. And of course, the artwork and DA points were also good incentives.
Title: Re: Advertising
Post by: Insoholic on March 20, 2018, 10:27:32 pm
I'm all for new members. Honestly, I would love to come into the game and see a bunch of excited new people running around. Thing is, this game is targeted to a pretty niche audience. The thing that Wolf Quest has going for it, is that it's an educational game, so schools and parents are more inclined to introduce the game to their children.
Maybe try pushing the character customization, as well as map-building and preset-making aspect of it. Give it a familiar catchphrase; something like "The world is what you make it" kind of thing. A catchy slogan might draw some people in.
Perhaps exposing this game towards more artistic communities might help. Bring back the Preset Contest, maybe make a "Draw The Staff" Contest (draw anything FH-related, really) or introduce a Map-Making Contest. I thought the Fanfiction Contest was a good idea, so maybe bring some of that back, along with a new Mesh/Item Contest.
As a reward for these, you could get the chance that your mesh, map, and/or item will be featured in an official Staff Update. As for the drawing and writing contests, we could get those featured on the forums, with a link to the artist's DA, Tumblr, and whatever other website they have. And of course, the artwork and DA points were also good incentives.
I also very much support this. Involving the community in the updates would probably bring back some old members as well as new. Personally what drew me so much into the game and community was how the staff were players as much as they were administrators. People were chosen from the community for their contributions. Maybe the same kind of system with mesh or animation makers for the game can create another sense of that unity.