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Rant This business is in the saturation stage

Oleg

Avatar: 98357 2011-07-31 00:47:25 -0400
4

[And The Banned Pla-
yed On
]

Level 18 Hacker

INVINCIBLE POSTER

Little time ago, something shocking happened in Forumwarz world: One of best RPers that site has seen in recent days called it quits. It made me realize that it will be impossible for me to ever get long-awaited consultship deal with Forumwarz Inc. So why not share my immense knowledge with other victims of downfall?

First of all, I find it crucial to define core of problem that makes “Flamebate” a place you do not want to spend much time on. Answer according to many interesting people is viciousness and sabotaging of RP activities by so-called “not-RP-compliant posters”. I must DISAGREE.

Central problem of “Forumwarz.com” is different: it is simply lack of amount of replies and communication. Forum is meant to serve for discussion between people, it only works if people interact. If you post in forum and interaction does not take place (average thread has 5-6 posts), it is no fun to use forum. Because you could also use WORDPAD instead.

Now you will say: Hold on, it is not possible to blame community for lack of active community because it must have been caused by PROBLEM. Unfortunately, my dear friends, it is not so easy. Now I could make detailed analysis of decline reasons, but it’s not so important. Also it is completely normal for “old people” to leave website after some time (it’s only that new members must be replacement). Now you will say: no new members because of lack of “clean RP” – unfortunatoly, it is not true, because it is not secret that “new members” are usually not excellently interesting posters in the beginning. But bad posters want to have reason to stick around, e.g. people who interact with them (in a not necessarily nice way). Keep in mind that even in time with lot of annoying aspects on “Flamebate”, it had still enough attractivity to attract many interesting people to interact with other interesting people.

So what does this all mean? It means it is not community’s fault. Simply time of entertaining and funny Flamebate is over, and it is not possible for it to come back. Yes, quality of “Forumwarz.com” has played role in it, but not much you can do about game that started out as 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1 and became <someothernumbercombination>. It’s okay. Communism was not forever, this game website will not be either and we all will not be either, too.

“Civil RP” will not help community. It would only be almost-dead place with people thinking they must be top-notch community members because they are mastering art of ‘staying in character’. If you want to be big savior, all you must do is use forum with POTENTIAL. Interact and give people reason to interact. Whether you interact as ”<super-intense role-playing>” or “This thread is not a good thread” is not as relevant as you pretend it would be to have someone to blame. But all in all, nothing can be done about it, so it might be better strategy to simply look up old threads and enjoy them.


So, knowing Mr. Ward has found employee job (he is much better on that side of business world), what was the deal? Let me sum up quickly to avoid length of post to exceed decency: He did not manage to create enough incentive for player who finished game to continue (except for said “Flamebate). Domination is not appealing to many people because of several obvious reasons, creativity-driven games are not appealing to many people because of several obvious reasons, INCIT became unsuccessful because of several, some obvious, some not-so-obvious reasons.

Major hint for Mr. Ward: It would have actually been great business opportunity to start awarding 1 BP for every INCIT win when changing BP value. You decided not to give out super-valuable currency in relation to USD, you have less than 5 players on INCIT. (No, it is not about funniest people who are only interested in perfect quality of submissions. If you give incentive, people will find ways to show good quality without having name “Orb)

In particular, no real reason to care about equipment, moar files and such: no competitive element about it. With game concept like this, losing players is inevitable. Unfortunatoly, moment came when game does not attract enough new players. Now all hope is lost.

Other business aspect is Customer Relationship Management. I will make it simple: I will not claim “oh, only hardcore users should be interesting for Mr. Ward”, knowing that purchase of Episodes makes up high amount of money. Yet it is obvious that there was big decline of money spent on pranks, alts, and so on already BEFORE amount of active posters degressed rapidly. Think back in time: There always used to be “show” going on in community, you had like soap opera. Today, you do not even have real relationship network.

For instance, he did not provide enough possibility to use BP in a way that relates to interaction between users (despite fact that many ideas existed). In general, aspect of Brownie Points should have been exploited much further after change of BP value (which should have been much earlier) because many people have super-high general aversion against spending money on internet game and will prefer to do anything for it instead (including taking off bra). Making use of this in clever way to increase quality of creativity- and community-related aspects would have given competitive edge. Now competition is over, all what is left is some people whining about “Flamebate = ****” and others whining about people saying “Flamebate = ****”.

Do not worry, Mr. Ward, it is not all your fault though. Most obviously, break even point was reached, so it’s okay. But if you do next internet game, please make it more like FarmVille.

Oleg edited this message on 03/09/2010 5:51PM

Sarcasm Inc

Avatar: 124937 2010-01-24 16:34:47 -0500
22

[pizza party]

Level 69 Hacker

Not needed anymore now that we have the SarcMark

Log in to see images!

Adapt

Avatar: 58104 2015-06-13 23:16:37 -0400
16

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 48 Camwhore

Celerysteve is better than me in everyway imaginable

ug at least read it if you are going to try to have an opinion on it

Sarcasm Inc

Avatar: 124937 2010-01-24 16:34:47 -0500
22

[pizza party]

Level 69 Hacker

Not needed anymore now that we have the SarcMark

Adapt Posted:

ug at least read it if you are going to try to have an opinion on it

I did.

Adapt

Avatar: 58104 2015-06-13 23:16:37 -0400
16

[Grey Goose Mafiosi]

Level 48 Camwhore

Celerysteve is better than me in everyway imaginable

So I guess it wasn’t too long to read.

Mathew Jonson

Avatar: 96817 2010-03-01 18:20:48 -0500
2

[Fire Robin Ward In-
itiative
]

Level 61 Emo Kid

“Final Cut Pro”

Thanks to my amazing reading and comprehension abilities, I am able to come up with a short summary of the highly accurate post above:

– the real problem isn’t the RP bashing, but the lack of activity

– a forum demands interaction to be appealing, but people don’t really interact with each other anymore

– there is no real relationship network anymore, no “soap opera”

– the lack of activity is not the community’s fault, it’s not because Flamebate was too “troll-crowded” or anything: there were times with lots of **** on Flamebate (draginz, and much much more), still it worked well

– the lack of activity appeared because, for most players, Forumwarz isn’t very attractive on long terms, so they eventually leave (which is normal), but too few new players are ready to replace them (-> ‘lack of relationship network’...)

– there is no incentive to improve your character further (e.g. items, .moar files, ...) as there is no competition in this regard (character strength isn’t that relevant for Dom)

– Domination and the buildrs aren’t interesting for many people due to various obvious reasons

– INCIT turned ****, but it might have been better if ET started rewarding each winner with 1 BP (and no, it wouldn’t result in too many noobs ruining it, the rewards would have made them put effort into it – and there wouldn’t have been anything wrong about giving BP to players, it does not automatically mean that ET would have made less money)

– in general, ET did not work hard enough on establishing a real BP “culture” because he did not implement additional BP features, especially ones that are based on interaction like pranks (he also suffered from the disappearing relationship network mentioned above)

– furthermore, he could have used BP incentives to improve creativity- and community-relevant aspects of Forumwarz, which he didn’t except of a few contests

– what is left is some people whining about “Flamebate = ****” and others whining about people saying “Flamebate = ****”

– it isn’t possible to change anything about it, it’s already too late (but if you want to do what you can, just interact more actively)


Log in to see images! Mathew Jonson edited this message on 03/09/2010 9:52PM

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