No substantial increase in planets ....

[Xerxes]

I know the round has barely started, but I think it's enough to draw the conclution that even though this round is free, there will be no substantial increase in planets. Contrary to what happened when r9.5 were made free. And as far as I know, neither r9.5 nor this round has been helped by any advertising. So the increase in r9.5 were probably mainly because of people returning to PA when the rumour about a free round spread. ( and of course multi-planets ). But the question is, why hasn't alot of people returned to PA for this round ?

I think that loads of the elderly PA players have grown tired of the game, and also I think that the alliance limit has played a role in this, mainly because I have some of friends of mine who were forced out of their alliance and therefore quit, rather then to look for a new home. But to reach out to fresh blod, I think a thorough advertising campaign is needed. What do you think ?

[Hesekiel]

ive never seen a proper PA ad campaign. i wonder when theyll want to do it.

[Slowfinger]

They want us to do it (mpogd)

[Kargool]

I told Appocomaster in PM that if Jolt could put up a donation site where the players could donate money for ad banners alot of players would donate money to get thoose banners running. But it clearly seems like either the PA crew didnt like the idea or that Jolt didnt want the extra hazzle about putting up something like that. Saddens me really.

[Tomkat]

PA should advertise in gaming magazines. Advertising on the net is all well and good, but most people don't bother clicking on the links.

[Xerxes]

I agree, but I suppose it's up to the Jolt people when it comes to advertising. And advertising in papers are way more expensive, while an ad-campaign on the other Jolt game-servers, forums etc could be quite effective, although, of course not as good as ads in papers, but then again, that's more expensive.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

PA should advertise in gaming magazines. Advertising on the net is all well and good, but most people don't bother clicking on the links.

do people still buy gaming magazines? you can read most of the articles on the net and get all of the free software on the net...

[Cannon_Fodder]

oh god.

[Heartless]

I fail to understand why people are surprised by this. Currently I think even advertising PA wouldn't help much, the game is simply totally outdated. The UI is boring as hell and the game mechanics are too repetitive. It's somewhat like snake or pong - those were great games when they came out, but who plays it actively nowadays? Hardly anyone, if anyone at all - simply because there are more interesting games which offer more value in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.
PA will need a major revamp before it can rely on growing significantly.

[Rocko]

thus im assuming the NEW PA comming next round will be this revamp that is needed,... ???? best advertise for THAT

[Pinkerton]

Originally Posted by Heartless

I fail to understand why people are surprised by this. Currently I think even advertising PA wouldn't help much, the game is simply totally outdated. The UI is boring as hell and the game mechanics are too repetitive. It's somewhat like snake or pong - those were great games when they came out, but who plays it actively nowadays? Hardly anyone, if anyone at all - simply because there are more interesting games which offer more value in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.
PA will need a major revamp before it can rely on growing significantly.

I think PA still has an appeal simply through its simplicity. Anyway I'm sure you could still capture a portion of the thousands who played it before if they knew about it. It was in the papers as some European phenomenon. Buy and add in the London times or whatever announcing PA IS BACK!!! and you sjould get a bunch of players who played while at Uni backin the day.

[pig]

The game is dying, has been since it was bought. Jolt are loving it atm, milking a dead cow until it dries up. They get a decent £10,000 every 3 months for running a game that doesnt take much. Once there are few players left and jolt are starting to make a loss the game will disappear. I hate to be so bloody pesimistic but its true.

I have faith in the people who code/run this game, but no faith in jolt atm.

Its funny we were chatting the other day in 1up about what does the game want to attract, pro players or casual players. Fact of the matter is its catch 22 situation.

I would say a good 500 people play this game "pro" the rest are casual players. In reality games these days arent designed so you spend your time staying up till 5am each night and being woken up at weird times.

Instead they are designed to allow players to play when they want how they want, yet allow those who wish to play pro to continue to do so. The parallel im grabbing at is WoW.

In WoW you have those who sit there all day/nite messing around, and then thoes who play on a saturday. Both groups of players the "pro" player and the "casual" player are kept happy.

In my opinion the challenge to pa is to try and cater for both groups of players without watering down the options to either players.

[Anonymous Hero]

Every game has its limits on the numbers of players it can ever achieve.

Those who played the game ages ago and got bored are unlikely to return. Those who didn't want to pay for the game will probably never return, even for a free round. Anyone who was genuinely interested in such a great new game is usually only likely to tell other people near the start.

Planetarion had its moment when there were very few clones around, it was among the best and had little competition. The best opportunity of increasing the playerbase was during this time, however paid accounts ruined it - even if it was necessary. Spinner and the rest of Fifth Season came up with a fairly new idea at the right time and got lucky, they didn't need to spend anything on advertising.

Any money spent on advertising now won't give a significant increase in subscriber numbers to justify it.

[ChubbyChecker]

Round 9.5 was very different to now. Firstly, it was only a couple of years after pay to play started. People playing the game probably still stayed in touch with their friends from back in the Round 3 / 4 days. This meant word of mouth was a much more potent tool at getting people to come back. I doubt whether many people playing the game now still talk to the people who quit the game back when Round 5 started. Or to put it another way, I doubt whether our friends who haven't played since Round 4 remember enough of Planetarion to bother coming back for a free round.
Secondy, (and perhaps more importantly) from Round 5 to Round 9 there were no free planets, only paid. This meant a free round was a big incentive for people who had quit playing when pay to play was introduced. These days anyone can play with a free account. Every round I come across people who have come back to the game after a few years break, people who probably wouldn't do this if the game was paid only.

I personally think that free rounds will do very little to encourage people to play Planetarion. The number of planets playing at the moment pretty much supports me on this. The problem isn't that nobody is trying the game out, it's that they're not sticking around round after round. What I think needs to be done is to increase the importance of cluster alliances and to reduce the number of dead galaxies. I think that reducing the alliance member limit and making buddy packs unable to self exile should in the long run help quit a bit.

[Shyne]

Originally Posted by Heartless

I fail to understand why people are surprised by this. Currently I think even advertising PA wouldn't help much, the game is simply totally outdated. The UI is boring as hell and the game mechanics are too repetitive. It's somewhat like snake or pong - those were great games when they came out, but who plays it actively nowadays? Hardly anyone, if anyone at all - simply because there are more interesting games which offer more value in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.
PA will need a major revamp before it can rely on growing significantly.

Realistically, they need paid coders to produce anything of this standard.

While PA makes (quoted £10,000) a lot of money from pa every round, minus server costs of course, they arent willing to put paid investment into what could be a very profitable game.

Jolt are behind it would seem, https://secure.jolt.co.uk/index.php?page=adsl.htm even their best adsl package is half a meg and its more expensive than 'everyone' else.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Shyne

Realistically, they need paid coders to produce anything of this standard.

While PA makes (quoted £10,000) a lot of money from pa every round, minus server costs of course, they arent willing to put paid investment into what could be a very profitable game.

Jolt are behind it would seem, https://secure.jolt.co.uk/index.php?page=adsl.htm even their best adsl package is half a meg and its more expensive than 'everyone' else.

I would estimate that PA makes approximatly £5000 per round once VAT and CC charges are removed from credits payments. Given that there are 3-4 rounds per year. That gives a maximum income of between £15,000 and £20,000. We then have to remove servers costs (3 servers) and probabaly some more overheads which could leave PA making as little as £10,000 per year rather than £10,000 per round. This is no where near enough to support a full time coder.

(note theese calcultations assume 1500 paid accounts per round, using an average credit cost of £4.0 and VAT+ cc charges coming to 20%)

[wakey]

I know for a fact many players havent yet returned or were late returning simply due to PAteam giving into the demands to change the game schedual. The simple thing is that alot of people, especially the causual players dont keep the greatest of eye out for the latest news, they saw when the round was supposed to start and set their schedual around that.

Also while it was supposed to be a mini round many people decided to take a break and recharge and due to this didnt notice the change which effects the numbers taking part.

I also think the alliance limit has probally driven some people whom play only to play with their friends, if they cant get in the same alliance they just havent bothered playing

[Shyne]

Thanks for some realistic numbers Kal.

Hypothetically, Jolt could pay 2 people £20,000 each to make a thoroughly outstanding game, and recover the cost within 4 years.

I guess Jolt arent willing to risk the money upfront.

[Heartless]

The problem won't be solved with coders alone though. You need to have someone who got a clue about game design, and someone to contribute graphics.

However, what you say, Shyne, should be irrelevant since the financial benefit should appear right from the round where the "new planetarion" starts (or one round after, to allow some mouth-to-mouth-propaganda).

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Heartless

The problem won't be solved with coders alone though. You need to have someone who got a clue about game design, and someone to contribute graphics.

However, what you say, Shyne, should be irrelevant since the financial benefit should appear right from the round where the "new planetarion" starts (or one round after, to allow some mouth-to-mouth-propaganda).

realisitcly though it would probably take a year to design and code a really good game - so there would be substantial risk

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Kal

realisitcly though it would probably take a year to design and code a really good game - so there would be substantial risk

Depends. A browsergame is technically far less challenging, as your "engine" is already written in terms of database management systems for data management and the browser as graphics engine.

6 months should be very doable, including testing - webpages are determined for efficient unit tests which should, assuming a clean specification of the requirements, lead to a rapid development cycle.

[Alessio]

Add mini games.. Yay..

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Alessio

Add mini games.. Yay..

No, but add interesting stuff which allows a more flexible gameplay. And a user interface which doesn't remind you on excel spreadsheets all the time.