To all Wolfenstein players. (Analysis of our community and proposals)

[AcidParadox]

Well, this thread was made because of a discussion we had among forum users.

The purpose of this thread is to provide general information of the current status of the online community of the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

Before starting, I want to clarify that this by no means should be taken as a proven hypothesis since there is not enough evidence to find the cause of this social phenomenon (oh yes, I am using fancy words.)

Let’s go:

I have been checking the flow of players online since I came back from my inactivity period. For the last five months the average amount of most players online has been at 650.

 

This number registers frequently between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM (GMT -06:00 Central Time)

 

 

To further analyze this, I did a sampling of the last ten days that registered 650 players online to find out which days of the week are people mostly playing:

 

September 13, 2015: Tuesday
September 20, 2015: Sunday 

September 27, 2015: Sunday 

October 18, 2015: Sunday 

October 25, 2015: Sunday 

November 01, 2015: Sunday

November 08, 2015: Sunday 

November 29, 2015: Sunday 

December 06, 2015: Sunday 

December 20, 2015: Sunday 

This confirms that the day that most players are online is at 5:00 PM Central time in Sundays.

With these numbers, I also want to state my hypothesis that we are NOT having new incoming players to the game and that these players consist mostly of people that are loyal to this product.

Now that I mentioned that word, let’s look at this game as what it really is, a product. Every product has a cycle and the information suggests that this game is at the decline stage:



Once a product reaches this state, we marketers suggest the company to let the product end its cycle and move on with the development of a new product, because when companies try to extend the life of a product, it will always return to the decline state no matter what. Making the budget spent on this pointless, instead of spending it on the new product.


To support this, let’s take a look at this case:

 

Quake III was a game developed in December 2, 1999 by Id Software, it was considered a success selling 50,000 copies on the first three days of release and reaching over 610,000 units sold by the end of the month.  When the game reached its decline stage, Id software went with a product extension strategy. In August 6, 2010 Quake Live was released, a web version of the popular game with a new business model that offered players a subscription membership to gain exclusive benefits. The purpose of this strategy was to introduce the game to a new audience while maintaining the old community satisfied. The product reached the decline stage again and this time it was faster. Even though that this phenomenon suggested that it was time to move on to a new product, Id software insisted on making a product extension strategy on an already extended product.  On September 20, Quake live was incorporated to steam with the same objective as before.

 

The information states that the highest amount of players online was on the first days on release but if you see the graph below, it says that the product went to decline stage in less than two months:

I said that this strategy MOST of the times doesn't work, but let’s do some benchmarking and briefly mention a successful product extension strategy with one of their competitors:

Counter strike 1.6 – Counter Strike Source – Counter Strike Global Offensive

 

If you check the hyper-links you will see that all the games are populated way more than quake live and quake III.

My hypothesis on why this is happening is:
 

• Each Counter strike game offers a graphic redesign, making it appealing to current audiences while maintaining the core of the game intact and offering tweaks to improve gameplay experience. Quake Live didn’t offer any noticeable redesign and it often changed core mechanics of the game that resulted in disproval of players.

 

• The business model was accepted by audiences, making them required to pay to play the game. Quake live benefits of their premium membership didn’t appeal to everybody, making profits low.

 

 

 

Now, I know that some of you are saying “What does this has do to with our Wolf Et community?”


Well, with this I want to respectfully say that no matter how heavily we advertise this game on the whole Internet, we are not going to get good results because of the following:

 

• The product is in decline stage.

 

• We are not offering a new value proposition to attract new audiences. (No redesign to any aspect of the game, current markets offers better games for these audiences.

 

 

• The developer company has no interest on this game anymore since this product has a business model that doesn't generate any profit for them. That's why I agree, this game is still alive because it's free, but it's also why it's hard to extend their life cycle. Imagine if wolfenstein et had the same strategy as CS 1.6? Maybe this thread wouldn't exist.

Once again I want to say that this is not a fact, so this doesn't means that we should stop advertising, just don't depend 100% on it.

 

To conclude, here are my list of recommendations of which strategies to follow:
 

• Make FA gamedays on Sundays around 5:00 PM Central Time.

 

• If this is the time when most players online, that means that it is also the best time for recruiters to find new prospects to ask them to join the clan.

 

• We should ask players when they started playing the game to confirm if the game is actually receiving new players. We can do this by adding this question on our apply form.

 

• Speaking of apply, we should move the “Join F|A community” to the very top of the thread index, because I often hear players asking me on servers “where do I post my apply?” making me think they get lost on the forums looking for the apply form. I have another idea for this, but I will save it when the time is good.
•  
• Like I have said before, we need to move on ET and expand our clan to new games. I know we have not been successful establishing the clan on valve games (CS:S, CS:GO, TF2, L4D2) and I am pretty sure most new members don’t even know we used to had battlefield 2 members.  I think the reason we have failed on this is because the audience of these games have a different perspective of clans, there is no identity value of having a tag anymore.Players keep renaming themselves pretty much each day, making it hard to keep track of regulars. To make things worse, this new trend of matchmaking system makes it really hard to establish our server, it's like the typical family that has to move to a new city every two months, you always meet new people, but you don't have time to  develop those relationships. I need more time to find a solution for this, because I will need to propose a redesign of our recruiting strategy. But what can we do now is to check new upcoming games that can fit our criteria of our clan. Games where you see people talk on servers to have fun and meet new players.

So yeah, I probably spend three hours making this thread and don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to be negative. I love Wolfenstein with all my heart, but I love this clan even more and I want the best for it.

Cheers.

[Alphaleader]

Well Thank's Acid to start the thread, i think it's a great idea as making some movement is always good for a clan

 

Make FA gamedays on Sundays around 5:00 PM Central Time. <== + 1 Be a part of an event attract some guys on the server. Better if it's weekly

 

If this is the time when most players online, that means that it is also the best time for recruiters to find new prospects to ask them to join the clan.

<== +1

We should ask players when they started playing the game to confirm if the game is actually receiving new players. We can do this by adding this question on our apply form.

<= +1 For me i played ET 6 years ago and i came back only this year so i'm not "new player". As i often replied to introduce yourself new subject i can see that a lot of people "came back" as they played in the past.

Perhaps it's time to make some advertisement ?

 

But what can we do now is to check new upcoming games that can fit our criteria of our clan. <= ok but i think need a survey to see how many people will be on the "new" game as a big part of the community will stay on ET. I mean no need to invest in server if there's no one in, so we must be sure before.

 

I know I'm just a regular but i think every point of view is interesting.  As a former admin of website (not in gaming) i know how a site can move from the Top to the bottom if nothing is do.

Thank's for reading my reply

[AcidParadox]

 

 

<= +1 For me i played ET 6 years ago and i came back only this year so i'm not "new player". As i often replied to introduce yourself new subject i can see that a lot of people "came back" as they played in the past.

Perhaps it's time to make some advertisement ?

 

 

 

Yes, I think the clan should focus on recruiting players who have been playing for a long time instead of new players, since these are the ones that keeps the game alive and by joining a clan, the game will have more value to them and will keep playing. 

[Bean]

Wow, fantastic analysis!

[Aniky]

Nerd

[Platonic]

+1 for making acid leader of the nerd team.

 

Great thread. I second everything you typed. And the great thing is that it doesn't take me 3 hours.

[AcidParadox]

Nerd

 

Oh really?

 

 

 

Nerd 

[SiD]

You do realize COD4 is in the same state of decline? That the latter-half of your thread pertains to the whole clan and the problems we all face? The title should be addressing all players and not just ET players. This is a large scale problem.

I also think that this probably best belongs in the members section as this is an important issue that we all need to be discussing.

 

 

 

I agree with many points on helping the clan grow. To look for new games and to change the recruitment strategy. But much of it is easier said than done. I would love to expand my thoughts, but my post would double, if not triple the amount of text you have up there, and I'm not sure I have the patience for that today.

 

 Quick things of note:

 

Many have suggested we move the application section up. Same ol' answer given. Paraphrased: 'Applicants taking the time to search for it shows better interest in the clan'. Which on one hand I agree strongly. We need more people that put in effort to do anything. On the other hand I think is a lazy ass cop-out, especially with how things are currently being run. There's so much pressure to recruit, recruit, recruit- but no one wants to make it easier for applicants to fill out their applications. Hint: People are lazy. They don't want to search all over the place for the application section.

 

Games: FPS clan gaming is practically dead in the state that we used to know as those who grew up in the oldschool era of FPS gaming.  Thanks to matchmaking and lack of server hosting. Not to mention the expense of many new games these days. (Average COD title is $120 thanks to the new DLC trend).  Branching out to other categories would be beneficial. I.E. ARPG's, MMO's, Strategy. Games that have a strong need for clan presence.

 

Recruitment: Recruiting older players isn't necessarily the best thing either. Some older players, like new players, just care about playing. They couldn't care about joining communities to take part in said community. We need to recruit 'better' and not necessarily 'more'. Either that or bring in tougher, yet better trial testing. Stop just accepting people for 'knowing the rules' or because they managed to recruit. Accept the guys that take initiative and show an active interest in the community- this includes (and should be a stronger factor ) taking part in forum discussion. Can't tell you how many screenshots I've looked through and have to ask "who is that?" because they visit the forum maybe once every 3 months. Or members that don't know how to handle certain situations because they don't bother to read the stickies we have set up for guidance.

 

This is the core of the community no matter what game you're playing. This is the tether keeping everyone together. There should be more focus here.

 

 

There are other factors that would work to strengthen this clan and help us in the future, but this is stuff best discussed in private. Hopefully the new year will bring major changes, or sadly, I can see FA slowly becoming a footnote in ET/COD4's history.

[Aniky]

Oh really?

 

 

 

Nerd 

 

Took me like 5 min to type that

[Platonic]

Those two games are in decline, indeed. If you then see how our servers (at least for what I know about ET servers) are doing, that's still quite impressive. I won't get to the recruitment discussion since that's been chewed on plenty of times now. Let me only say that if we had a bad strategy, our clan would look a lot worse than it does now.

Which doesn't mean we don't have to think about ways to make it better. I still think TF2 is the game that needs more attention. The server is active even if there are no admins. If we play there regularly, I think we will soon find good recruits. Only problem is it's boring when there aren't many admins, and only I, Von Rantala and Panther were ready to camp it last time. Then I got real life popping up and things sort of died.

 

So what I'm saying: it's very good we have some ideas, but if we can't find more people who are enthusiastic about those ideas... If our clan will just stick with ET, we probably be able to maintain the very best servers out there for yet another while and in the end we will fade away together with the game.

 

Next to other games I have been thinking a lot about one other idea. If anyone has suggestions on this, you'd be my hero.
I think enemy terrirory, as a dynamic game that doesn't require good systems and is still free, still does have a future. The only problem is no one hears about it and the game is stuck with an old community. I think if there was a way of refreshing that community, that could be our way out. That means: advertising our events and enemy territory on other places that reach a wider public.

 

One strategy that I could think of that could actually work, is creating/using a facebook page that updates at least once a week, preferable once a day, managed by a team of people rather than one person (I don't know who runs the current facebook page, daredevil?). Twitter is another way to go.

Any other ideas on this?

 

The problem is not with recruitment. The problem is with no new people joining the servers. Once we know the problems, we know where to look for solutions.

 

By the way going to MMO's, strategy games etc... Sounds good, but I'm afraid we don't have the player base to become a successful clan there. I mean, even less than with other shooters.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Platonic

[GenMac]

Well im proud to say that after 7 years of not playing cod4 i came back and also just dl w:et and i live it im here for awhile and i applaud F|A for a fine job

[Alphaleader]

After joining the gameday marathon yesterday i can definitely say that we must do tournament everyweek.

All FA member are gaming on different servers (silent jaymod nq etc...) It will be fun to have 1 day or evening every week with all members.It's more attractive for everyone

1 week NQ , 1 week Silent , 1 jaymod etc

 

Should be the first step to keep ET Alive