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Game Advertising and Referrals


admin

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In an effort to try to increase the player base in Cyber Nations I'm currently testing some new ad campaigns on Google and Facebook and a couple of other sites. Now, I've advertised heavily in the past, but over time I started to see fewer and fewer players actually stick around after clicking on an ad. I feel like the changes that I've made in the game over the past couple of months are exciting and I've even seen some long retired players say that the recent changes are worth them coming back for. So I decided that maybe it's time to revisit those ad campaigns and see what kind of results they produce today.

While I'm working on advertising I'd also like to see more use of the in-game referral system, and so I have doubled the rewards that are offered there. The total number of referrals in Cyber Nations as of right now is 399. I'm going to check back in a few weeks and see if this number has increased. If you'd like to help spread the word, and get a bonus for your efforts, we'll see if we can pick things up around here.

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I was going to offer to make a portuguese translation for the game and expand the horizons, but then I remembered that Brazilian players normally ruins online games, so I gave up the idea.

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I was going to offer to make a portuguese translation for the game and expand the horizons, but then I remembered that Brazilian players normally ruins online games, so I gave up the idea.

HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

rawr

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Dont you think some of these new additions are way too late?

Actually no they aren't. The player base is still sufficiently large that alliance politics is still interesting and very active, so that entropy is not an issue.

What's needed are new players and a selection of older returning players to pump up our numbers somewhat so that things stay interesting.

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I don't know that we need anything more than the actual active alliances to keep this working. Sheer numbers of players do not add anything to the dynamic tbh, there is still only X amount of people driving the game. Some of these people are newer and a lot are older but merely adding another thousand players wont significantly change anything unless actual dynamic players arrive.

We have plenty of passengers, and the numbers as they have dropped off have been mostly passengers. We have certainly lost some good players, more than a few, but we need quality not quantity to make it work. Admin of course has a different slant on this as players = opportunity for support, but the actual functionality of what is a fairly simple mechanic is not the game anyway.

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so lets go back to referrals and talk about banners.. we need more referral banners for this game.. as the current ones are from 06.. time for things to get updated.....

on top of that the entire layout of the game needs a total overhaul and a facelift into the new era of web design.

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I've been trying to think up a youtube promotional vid or even just an animated gif or two that encapsulates the essence of the game without creating false expectations... and I can't do it. Except for hilariously over acted close up shots of a finger hitting a mouse button in movie-action-style. It's a "spreadsheet" game for spreadsheet nerds. Like us. There's nothing else quite like it, and I still love it, but how to give it that new modern visual twist???

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I didn't come back because of the new features (I was banned for awhile, but I digress), I came back for the interaction on the forums, aa forums, etcetc.

Like most people, I find the game mechanics secondary, because they're easy to learn, from guides, and joining an alliance. What makes this game better than most, that i've tried, is the community interaction, be it passengers, or dynamic people. I consider myself passively somewhere in the middle.

We need the player/game support to be larger for this game to work, the less, and less people you have to trade/buy from it becomes harder, and harder for the people already here to enjoy the game. That's why I love the new resource addition.

We need to supplement our population with new players, and have aspects of the game that keep them here, so the new additions to gameplay are great, but we shouldn't just be content with new ones every few years, maybe a small new addition every few months. So it feels like a new game every few months.

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Retention is indeed the main issue; the trouble is working out why we are losing members. As jerdge said, if that can be worked out, player number issue will start to solve itself.

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I've been trying to think up a youtube promotional vid or even just an animated gif or two that encapsulates the essence of the game without creating false expectations... and I can't do it. Except for hilariously over acted close up shots of a finger hitting a mouse button in movie-action-style. It's a "spreadsheet" game for spreadsheet nerds. Like us. There's nothing else quite like it, and I still love it, but how to give it that new modern visual twist???

Is that what you're looking for?

scat.gif

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In order of biggest to smallest effect:

Ad campaigns on gaming/general media, like what you did here years ago (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/1217-The-League-of-Cyber-Nations), as well as continuously adding new/updating features (for old and new players) and a spiffy new interface (that doesn't look like it's something from the last decade 2000s), will go a long way.

1 out of 3. We have hope.

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Admin, I'm so happy to see you actively addressing the retention and player base issue. If CN is to become a thing again we gotta get some momentum going. I think it would also be worth exploring the current CN forum structure as I think there are places as a community we are not fully utilizing to its potential.

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Many new players don't stay. Find the reason and you'll likely have a solution.

I have three reasons:

1. Gameplay is annoyingly repetitive.

2. A lot of older players are arrogant

3. There are few alliances that actually make the effort to engage new players.

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And you're solution is?

With regards to the gameplay, the only thing I can say is that admin should add new features more frequently. The last two I can't really say anything about, because it comes down to the older players.

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