Posted by pkoopman on 7/14/2017 8:57:00 PM (view original):
Posted by poncho0091 on 7/14/2017 8:20:00 PM (view original):
Posted by pkoopman on 7/14/2017 6:29:00 PM (view original):
Sure it will help, but not as much as some assume. It's a specialty game with a niche audience. There are probably some for whom this is the game they never knew they wanted, but for the most part, Mike is right - people who want to play sports management sims know how to search for them.
As for "code" being an impediment to attracting or retaining players, I'm not sure there's a coherent argument here. What "code" specifically? The considering list glitch? Not prominent enough in gameplay to make much of a dent. The issues with the potential to have a real and significant effect on retention (job changes, reducing downtime between seasons) aren't code problems.
They didn't have issues filling the game for the first few years which is why they made new worlds, so the niche argument is somewhat flat. There has been virtually zero advertising for this game since I've been around (almost 10 years). Honestly, FOX taking over feels like the turning point. Many expected FOX to be this boon, but the game has been in decline with no effort to fix to bring in new users. I feel as though they just though word of mouth would keep the game running and now it feels more like it's dying.
FarmVille did pretty well for a while, too. Do you think it's steep decline is due to lack of advertising? Hardly. This game was a race to the plum D1 positions for the first few years. Then attrition set in. The people who didn't resign themselves for settling for lower divisions simply left, and advertising had nothing to do with that. I agree that FOX's acquisition was a net negative for the user base. A niche game like this, marketing to a limited and specific base, is always going to be best served by a smaller, passionate, and dedicated developer.
And yes, this is a niche game. If you don't understand that, you won't grasp the natural limits to its growth potential. Not everyone is going to like it, and that needs to be ok. That's why these discussions, about population and advertising, etc, are just speculative BS. The only people with a knowledge of and interest in the bottom line expectations and long term targets of this game are FOX employees. We aren't shareholders, were customers.
I wasn't trying to say this wasn't a niche game, but mamxet hit it on the head. How big is the niche? It was big enough to be filled before and the potential user base more or less should have grown. You are failing if your rate of decline is faster than your new acquisitions. The exception being if you've truly peaked, but even those games keep some level user base, just not at the peak levels.
Here is the difference between this game and a game like Farmville. I can only harvest fruits and animals for so long before I get tired of it. There's no real social aspect other than giving "gifts" to your neighbors/friends. At some point it is just the same thing over and over with no end in sight other than to keep building. This game does have the same repetitiveness over and over, but there is the competitive and social factors added in. There is a finite end to each season and the rebuild process allows you to move onto new things and new results. You are still going to lose people who get tired of the same thing over and over, but then you have people who just enjoy the occasional banter with other coaches and the competitive nature that they want to win. Guys who are good at this game probably take a little pride in that (LIFE GOALS!!!!!!). Others have some pride and want to prove they can compete. Case in point, I was planning on quitting this game about 4 years ago, but I liked my conference and didn't want to let it go. To this day we still have about half of those conference mates.
It's not perfect, and the population that would enjoy this game is not like it is for normal fantasy sports (which most play for free), but there is enough population to keep the current worlds at least half full, but they've never made the effort to do that.