Lowering price does not increase demand, has been proven over and over. Would send them towards closing up shop for good if they did that.

There are business models that are proving online strategy games can be a very profitable business. WIF/HBD follows none of those models.

Clash of Clans if buying time of NFL and MLB broadcasts (from Fox). League of Legends just filled a stadium used to host World Cup matches. The company behind Candy Crush has a market value of about $4 billion.

Let's all agree those companies are fishing in a bigger lake of potential customers than HBD.  I suspect anyone who plays games like those and who plays fantasy baseball, football, etc is a strong candidate to play WIS games. And that's millions of people.

The current problem isn't the size of the pool of potential WIS customers. It's how WIS markets the games (not at all) and how game play is organized (expensive to start, no escalation model, no company engagement in forum / no community, no ads or other revenue models, outdated interface, no upgrades, etc.).

I remain hopefully someone reaches the same conclusions I have.  There is a proven market for both online strategy games and fantasy sports.  There is no chance Fox would fund improvements here if 3 guys in working out of their garage launched a sports simulation company (I'd bet Fox HQ would rather run ads on a booming site and/or app than deal with WIS.)  Fox would make more profit by cutting a deal with those 3 guys on some sort of revenue share and hand them this customer base than continuing to run HBD/WIS.

Until then, this is what we've got.

Posted by MikeT23 on 10/28/2014 6:21:00 PM (view original):
If I were a business, I'd want to know the logic of reducing the price.

As an HBD owner, I think that would kill it.    If I buy something off the dollar menu, it might end up in the trash if I didn't like the first bite.  If I dump $25 on a hamburger, I'm eating it. 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy

just thought I'd point out that there's literally no difference between throwing out a $1 hamburger because you don't like it and throwing out a $25 hamburger (or a $25,000 hamburger for that matter) if you don't like it because of the sunk cost fallacy.  Once you spend the $25, you've lost it whether you eat or don't eat.  Finishing the burger out of spite because your bad investment was larger is both irrational and unnecessary

I'm hungry.  That's why I bought the hamburger in the first place.   So I have to eat and, therefore, buy something else if I throw out either hamburger.

So.....
A)  Your example doesn't apply
B) Do you know how wiki works?

Wikipedia is the undeniable source for all factual knowledge.

Everybody knows you can't put something on the internet if it isn't true.

The sunk cost fallacy is truth (I know, an oxymoron, but the concept itself is true).  However it is only true if you let it affect your decision to do something else.  In other words, spending money on your next meal is not relevant to money spent on your last one.

I think you guys hit the nail on the head on this page in general.  It's all about the (lack of) marketing.

I'll try to re-phrase. 

I've got $8 a month to spend on silly internet games.   Right now I can buy one team.   If it's reduced to where I can buy 4 teams, I might ignore 3 of them for any number of reasons.   tec's being a dick in the world chat in one world, I missed FA re-sign in another world, my team is out of contention is a third world and, finally, I have one team on pace for the 1 seed in the 4th world.   I have limited time due to real life, which world is going to get my attention?   Is that good for the other 3 worlds?

Sunk Cost Theory is both 100% valid in economic theory and at the same time not how most people behave most of the time in the real world.  If you read down a few paragraphs in the link above, even Wikipedia agrees with that.

As Mike points out, cutting the price to play a season and changing nothing else seems likely to solve few issues and create new ones.

Bringing in new customers is a start but I'm still reluctant to believe there are hundreds of thousands of people searching for a sim sports site who haven't found WifS.   Anyone who'd play this game certainly knows how to do a search for "sim sports".    And WifS is right there.    I agree that the homepage looks dated and basic.   Nothing screams "TRY ME!!!"  

Due to past experience, I'm not a big "Update the engine" guy either.   Too many updates have had unintended effects and have driven people away.  But something has to be done to retain current users.   Discounts, credtis and the like won't do that.   As I've said several times, a bell or whistle here or there would work wonders.  Customized logos/colors would have some people peeing in their pants.  On a larger scale, the customized league sizes I mentioned earlier or some of the customizations taz21 laid out.   This is basically the same game they rolled out 8+ years ago.   I had a marriage last half that so that's a long time of the same old, same old.

I don't understand the fear of updates. In other games and other software,updates happen all the time. They are a big part of keeping people engaged and generating sales.

If a change turns out to be a bad idea, it's removed or changed in the next update. Happens all the time.

It's a dynasty game.   Owners build teams based on a certain set of personal guidelines.    They sign, develop and re-sign players for up to 3 real life years.   A drastic change throws a monkey wrench into team building.   What's the better option:  1.  Drop team that is now completely outdated and start over    2.  Play out the contracts you've signed, trash the prospects you drafted/signed and struggle for the next real life year and a half while you rebuild under the new engine

HBD is an amazing game. But it seems the world of gaming has changed in the past 8(?) years while HBD has not.

The next generation baseball simulation will be built with a focus on the humans playing the game, not on the game itself.  HBD focuses on the fake worlds and the fake players, not the humans who play and pay the bills.

If someone finds the website (which sucks, but that's a different problem), they should be able to start playing today. Not is some number of days when/if the world they picked fills. And then on some random day they have no control over, they have 24 hours to set a budget.  If they don't it can screw up an entire season.  And even though it's just a budget, you can't change it without penalty. That model isn't thinking about the customer.

It should be easy for people with similar track records in the game to find each other and form worlds. (Even better if they can be worlds of 8, 12, 16, 24, or 32). Bring our current team with us or start with a new team. Who cares if the team I have in one world is copied into another?  Doesn't change anything in the current world.  If we could quickly and accurately identify GMs and worlds that match our profiles, we could keep the team we've invested time and money in and up the level of play.  (Or lower it if we end up in a world we don't like or want to spend that much time on.)  HBD would sell a lot more seasons.  Right now they lose money every day worlds are waiting to fill.

I think most humans would rather be playing the game than waiting days/weeks/months for a world to fill. Sure, it's cool that while we're waiting we can see who won the MVP award in season 5.  It think it's been proven that forcing all worlds into that model has failed. If a world want to work that way, good for them. But the game shouldn't enforce it.

Every change can create a new problem.   I think that's the first thing that one should ask when contemplating a change in a dynasty game.  

There are a lot of things that could be done to make the game more user friendly.  IMO, varying world sizes would be the very first thing.  It doesn't change gameplay but it would create less of a backlog of worlds needing owners.   That said, I know the first problem that would be created.   The "monster" teams wouldn't be as good.   Say a world decides to go with 20 teams and the players from the 12 contracted teams become free agents.   Supply/demand changes.   That max contract pitcher you signed last year has a doppelganger signing for 14m now because the back end of a rotation can be filled with a #3 from one of the contracted teams.   Everyone would have nine 80+ players on their roster.   And, as has been proven in merged worlds, a lot of owners are attached to winning not the team they built.

>> It's a dynasty game <<  It would be possible to announce changes in advance. For example, they could decide to update the fielding engine so that putting a good hitting C would cost you more on defense.  Would not be hard to announce today that change will go live in April 2015.

Or they could put that in tomorrow. I which case, screw me for trying to game the system.  I might not live it.  It might hurt my team.  But better the game is improved over time than leaving the C in RF, 0 ADV, FA bidding games, etc. in HBD forever.

Anytime anything is changed, somebody's not going to like it.  Companies that want to stay in business have to keep moving forward. As we see in HBD, the existing customer base will eventually die off or leave.  New customers come from marketing and innovation.

I don't think I've put an original thought into this tread.  I'm just paying attention to what's thriving and what's not. I don't think anyone can claim HBD is thriving.