It seems the recent HBD updates have generated some good discussions and conversations on these boards lately, and I was curious to hear what other people think of the general state of the game right now.

I've been commissioner in one league (potentially soon to be two) for probably 6-7 seasons now, and have heard stories from the "good old days" when recruiting for fewer than 5 openings would take a day on the classifieds board. I would say my league has a great core of 15+ owners, but over my time there we've seen a huge variance in openings, usually around 4 or 6 but sometimes in double digits -- we're not one of the 'healthy' leagues, but at the same time we have never stayed unfilled long enough to discuss a merger or going public.

Still, filling between 4 and 10 openings now takes a TON of effort, and this is anecdotal, but I have NOT seen it get any easier. And it makes me think WIS has a real problem, and I'm curious if people think they are handling it appropriately.

Making the site mobile friendly is a nice move forward, but in and of itself, is not a solution to anything. 

Hopefully, they are planning to use the mobile-friendly format as a first step towards positioning HBD to be more appealing to new users.  But they need to have a strategy to attract new users, or to bring old users who have left back into the fold.

Posted by tecwrg2 on 9/30/2015 1:42:00 PM (view original):
Making the site mobile friendly is a nice move forward, but in and of itself, is not a solution to anything. 

Hopefully, they are planning to use the mobile-friendly format as a first step towards positioning HBD to be more appealing to new users.  But they need to have a strategy to attract new users, or to bring old users who have left back into the fold.

I've had some time to look back on previous seasons in my worlds, and I found a lot of long-time owners have left the game.

Varying league size options RIGHT NOW solves a lot of problems.   It isn't a long-term solution because the worlds with a bunch of openings will likely revert to having openings(not as many but roughly the same percentage) because many owners love winning as opposed to loving their team/world.    If you remove 8 bad teams from a world, team 9 becomes the worst team. 

My view is that until or unless WiS can convince FOX to promote their games during appropriate sports telecasts, the site will continue to wander in the desert.

Imagine how many new HBD users would show up if, at some point during national MLB telecasts on FOX, even a 30-second plug for the site and the game was shown.  Barring that (due to what FOX can get from advertisers for a 30-second spot on a national telecast), suppose they just did it on their state-wide broadcasts?  We have FOX Sports Ohio here, showing the Reds games in my market; I assume there are also FOX Sports Michigan, Fox Sports Florida, Fox Sports Arizona, etc... Imagine how many Tiger/Marlin/Diamondback/etc... fans might come to the site to check it out if such marketing measures were taken.

I don't think that most of the games need much work in terms of game play; unless I am missing something, I don't see anything that can beat them on the web.  I think it is all about the (LACK OF ANY MEANINGFUL) marketing.

Getting people to the site is a good thing.   But that isn't going to make HBD more viable in the short term.    If 120 new owners showed up tomorrow, paid $4.95 and filled all the public openings, how many would stick for season 2?    Retention has to happen.   The learning curve, "throw it away" price and bad worlds isn't going to retain any significant percentage of owners.

Posted by MikeT23 on 9/30/2015 3:01:00 PM (view original):
Getting people to the site is a good thing.   But that isn't going to make HBD more viable in the short term.    If 120 new owners showed up tomorrow, paid $4.95 and filled all the public openings, how many would stick for season 2?    Retention has to happen.   The learning curve, "throw it away" price and bad worlds isn't going to retain any significant percentage of owners.

True enough - but without marketing bringing more people to the site, it almost doesn't matter how good the games are.  I guess I'd view a serious marketing campaign as a necessary but not sufficient condition to get a lot more people to play (and stay).

I don't have a marketing background, but it seems like there's three things that need to happen:

1)  You need to get new users to come to the site,
2)  They need to be sufficiently enticed to try HBD.
3)  The game needs to have enough bells and whistles to retain users beyond their first $4.95 "test drive, kick the tires" season.

HBD is not going to be for everybody.  There are a lot of moving parts, probably too many for the "causal" player.  So in order to build up the new customer base, you really need to go big on #1, getting lots and lots and lots of people to check out the site in the first place, knowing that only a possibly small percentage will get hooked enough to stick around.

As I recall, they asked for marketing ideas several months ago.   I have no idea if they bothered with any of them.    I offered a "cheap" one because I know they're not runnings WifS ads during the World Series. 

Small market, local radio is always looking for "filler".  There are probably close to 100 college football teams in these markets(college towns so to speak).  WifS predicts the scores of every NCAA game every week.   If someone were assigned to set up a "spot" with these stations, they could learn a little about the local/regional team, talk the upcoming game, give out predictions of interest and promote the site for nothing more than the cost of labor.   It doesn't work in NY or LA but it might in Lubbock, TX, Clemson, SC or Auburn, AL.    They'd reach college crowds that have likely never heard of WifS but are looking to hear anything about their teams.

It still seems silly to me that, in a game that depends on 32 owners being present and committed, they have no better way to help struggling leagues than "recruit better" and mergers. Having 75% of your owners returning still means you have 8 openings. I like MikeT's idea about smaller leagues, and I'm sure smarter folks than I could come up with creative ways to combine leagues that are more than half full without wiping the entire history.

As I said, giving league size options of 20, 24, 28, 32 solves some problems right now.    There would still be new problems in 6-9 months(some 24 team leagues would need to reduce to 20 and some 20 would still have trouble filling) but it would get a lot of idle owners playing again.    And having 6-9 months to build a better model for the future buys some time.

IMO, Marketing wise, you plug into fantasy baseball. For those that are serious about fantasy baseball, this site is a godsend for the offseason. I really don't think it affects revenue for fantasy baseball - its not necessarily direct competition - so I think most sites - rotoworld, etc would be all for it as long as they got paid.

I've said this before, I'd think fantasy baseball players with the internet know how to find this site.

It would not hurt to reduce the cost of the game. $24.95 a season is an expensive proposition. Most folks do not receive a credit other than the $10 credit for 5 seasons in the same world. It still costs $105 for 5 seasons. A lot of loot for a product that is stale.

On the flip side, it is definitely noticeable that proactive commissioners do a much better job than those who simply manage the world. Some guys are recruiting potential new owners on message boards or sitemails as their current season is still being played while most wait until the end of the world series, which really destroys the world. People want a quick turnaround, this it vital to world survival.

WIS really needs to contract some of the worlds and create a demand for the product OR allow SIM AI to manage teams like they do in some other dynasty games. Otherwise, HBD in its current state is on life support.

It's something like .27-.28 cents a day before credits.