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How to grow community?

Started by Ross Przybylski, July 26, 2009, 07:30:40 AM MT

Ross Przybylski

We are noticing and are appreciative of our devoted fans and want to do everything we can to grow our community so that it won't be necessary to check the lobby every 5 min for an opponent.  What are your thoughts on how we can spread the word about Hero Mages and increase our user base?

We are hoping our showcase at GenCon Indy will bring some serious hits to the site as well as forth-coming Google ad campaign.  We also have a facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/Hero-Mages/126810461284?ref=mf that you can become a fan of!

Your help, suggestions, and ideas are most welcome!
Manager of D20Studios, LLC

Myndjob

I think if we can get the game posted on some of the more popular sites for casual online gaming, we'll definitely start to get more hits. A few of the ones that I frequent when I'm at work or on the road are:
www.bubblebox.com
www.addictinggames.com
www.pogo.com
www.freeonlinegames.com

codymonk

You could try the mmorpg sites, and I'd try kongregate. Also put it on the voting website for mmorpgs, vote once per day and try to get it to number 1

HazMatt

I found this site via a post on boardgamegeek.com.  I think this game would appeal to boargamers, like me ;)  Maybe some more promotion there might help?

diesbudt

I learned of this from my brother and father that came from GENCON, as i wasnt able to attend. I must say its a great game and I love it. Since learning it I have been spreading the word to anyone/everyone I talk to (including the guild I was in when I used to play WoW by posting the site and what it is on their forums)

I would love to see this game get many more members.

Warmage

This is a very good question, I have worked in the game industry for awhile now and have seen from both sides how a community operates. The most important thing is you have a GREAT product that speaks for itself, I find in most small company games word of mouth is the best way to get established, I personally just started playing and have friends that are playing as well and will be telling others. Gen con is how I got introduced to this game so that was obviously a good way to get out there and meet people, so I encourage any game conventions or similar type events that you might be able to attend.

I think it is wise for the company to be active with its players as often as possible for a few reasons. It helps solidify keeping active players, allows them to interact with the developers themselves and that creates an environment that players can get strongly attached to and be very vocal about when it comes to telling friends about a "great new game". The huge corporate games often lack the fan passion that many smaller games have, so I think that's key for a small company to use to its advantage.

Making sure forums don't get out of control in any way so that a pleasant environment is always presented goes a long way to winning parents and younger players over and sets the stage to keep the game self regulated as far as fan behavior.


Ross Przybylski

One thing I will say for sure is that I am VERY passionate about Hero Mages (in case you couldn't tell, lol).  I created this game because I wanted to play it with my friends and share the excitement of my favorite game genres with the world in a game that's easily accessible to everyone.  Now that the game is out- maintaining a strong, positive community is our #1 goal.  We want to keep you guys happy and enjoying the game for years to come and we're committed to communicating with our members on a regular basis- you can count on that!

I agree that managing the forums well is also very important.  As our numbers grow, we will look to the natural leadership of our community and likely enlist moderators to keep conversations clean and positively oriented.

Thanks to everyone for the great suggestions so far!
Manager of D20Studios, LLC

Ross Przybylski

If you are a game store owner or journalist, it would be awesome to get some pics of Hero Mages being played in your store, reviews written about us, etc.  In return- we'll post a link back to your site so that our userbase can also check out what you have to offer the community- its a win-win!  Let me know your usernames for a game session with the creator!
Manager of D20Studios, LLC

Ross Przybylski

BBGSite has put out a little survey for top browser game release of the month.  Show your support for our game and community by voting for Hero Mages!

Vote Here: https://vote.bbgsite.com/

BBGSite's Hero Mages Page: https://games.bbgsite.com/content/2009-09-30/20090930114328268.shtml

If you're a member of other game sites that have voting/reviews for Hero Mages, share them with us here so we can show our gaming pride and get our community booming!
Manager of D20Studios, LLC

Warmage

I voted - was cool to see Heromages with a high score.

cozanostraa

man this game is really perfect i ealy like it in everything is too much enjoyable.I want to play whatever hour i want but still cant find opoment ;/ make something plz !1

Ross Przybylski

Quote from: cozanostraa on May 22, 2010, 11:49:09 PM MT
man this game is really perfect i ealy like it in everything is too much enjoyable.I want to play whatever hour i want but still cant find opoment ;/ make something plz !1

You'll be happy to hear we are in the process of implementing computer opponents: https://heromages.com/forums/index.php?topic=265.0.  To get the latest updates on the game, become of a fan of our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hero-Mages/126810461284

And while you're waiting for the new features, be sure to invite your friends.  See you on the battlefield, cozanostraa!
Manager of D20Studios, LLC

the stoat

Hey Ross, I found this game while playing evony or lord of ultima or something like that -  It was a banner ad on gamespot i think. Those "build a city" games have heaps of downtime, and heaps of players. With so many people having 20 minute increments free, see if you can place target ads to hit them.

Longer term, I think this game complements those other  types perfectly - the smart ones should be buying up super games like this and integrating them, in my opinion. 

Love your work.

Yaemon

This game deserves a bigger community. It is well designed, polished and, being a software engineer myself, I can understand how much work is just for 1 person.

I started to play recently, so I think I can offer a fresh opinion of what I think should be done to lock in more players. Also, I am trying my best to propose easy and simple things. I also want to add that I introduced 4 friends to this game already, so I had a chance to discuss with them and that was useful because, being myself very addicted to tactical fantasy game, it helped me to see things from a different and slightly more casual player point of view.

1) Why the free version app is only available to the Android market and not iOS? If possible, I think it would help to have it on the iOS market as well.

2) The tutorial is awesome! Unfortunately after that the game could potentially lose new players. I had a friend that after it wanted to try a live game, did not find anyone and told me "I don't think anyone play this game". It took me a while to explain that it is better to use the async play (random opponent), to explain him why it is actually better to play in that way (you can still play in real time there, and stop whenever you need to) etc etc Now he is loving the game, but without me explaining things to him... he would just be a quitting player. I think that the game should STRONGLY point new people towards the async play, not the live one. Especially because the community is small at the moment, but big enough to enjoy async games.

3) The game should "look" more populated, appearance is everything. The chat is often empty or few populated, I think it should be replaced with an async chat with a log... like a simple IRC :) That way people can use it to ask for invites etc... Maybe a couple of channels, like General, Help for Noobs and if Ross wants to read it also Support.
For the same reason this forum needs to be re-organized. To come here and see that many sections did not have posts for months it is just a bad first look. The number of sections should be reduced and consolidated. Also add a counter like "Recent games completed:" and query the db with a date range big enough to have a decent number there.

4) There are 2 bugs that should be prioritized. The one that sometimes bought expansions are not correctly added to the account (very bad first impression for new players) and the one that can leave some games in "waiting for null" status (I posted about this in the Bug section). You really want to make sure that newbies have a good experience.

5) Since the community is not very big yet, it happens too often that a newbie is matched against an experienced player in their first games, they got crushed and because of that they got discouraged. This is difficult to solve because probably there are not enough newbies to guarantee a quick match making for them. Maybe they should receive a bonus on their first games and they should be forced to be unranked (that way if they win because of that, it won't drive other players mad), like 5 games or so.


6) We need to gain visibility, I got to know this game while googling something else lol. But this should be done after 1-5 are ready.

I am trying to bring some friends to play and everyone enjoy the game, but only after I spend time to explain them a lot of things and to direct them to enjoy the game in the right way. All of them were going to quit because the game seemed without a player base, but that is not truth. It just appears so, and I think that should be changed.


q666

I agree with everything Yeamon wrote. The In Game Tutorial should lead directly to registration and an online Tutorial. I got here by searching hero quest for android. Make the lobby non optional. Right now u can not be visible except if u 're in the lobby or somebody sees your online game. Asyncron Players are virtually invisible. All logged in players should be visible so they can be befriended and invited to live games. A PM Feature would also go a long way building a community. Also in the player profile one should be able to see the rank not only the rating. Everybody can understand number 20 out of 250, but the meaning of a rating of 985 vs 1034 vs 1076 is much harder to grasp.