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Ah yes, my friends ...
As the title of this note suggests, I feel it is again time to kick the
grass-roots promotion machine back into gear. We've got one year until it
is time for our 25th Anniversary celebration, and I feel that with this
time in-between we should all make every effort to grow the game as we are
each personally able.
Yesterday, I completed (finally!) the implementation of a robust survey
developed with the assistance of some experts in the fields of psychology
and marketing (thank's Gorboth's wife, and Hektor!) This survey will give
players the *option* to let us know some important things about themselves
right before they create their character. Information gathered includes:
- Age range of the player
- Gender of the player
- City of the player
- Country of the player
- For this, I used 2-digit country codes for the top 50 most
internet-connected nations in the world as ranked by various
sources.
- Whether or not the player is truly new to Genesis
- If a returning player, info gathered on how long since they
last visited us
- How they learned about the game
- Options include from friend/colleague, whose Genesis character
can then be named and given credit for the promotion
- Options also include from a web banner, promting the player
to enter the name of the website from which it was seen.
- Options also include from a promotional poster, prompting
the player to name the location in which the poster was seen.
- Also prompted here is feedback on how well they liked
the appearance of the promotional materials.
This is actually pretty huge. What this allows us to do is know
whether certain promotional efforts are working, and to give credit where
credit is due. Let's say that Laurel wants to go plaster her town with
posters RL, and then would like to know if it worked. All she needs to do
is tell me the name of her RL town, and then I can provide reports to her
about how many players name that town in the survey as the place they are
from. Laurel gets to know how well her efforts paid off! Or, lets say that
Bromen wants to see how many of his co-workers he can get to try the game,
so he puts signs all over the workplace, and sends out emails to all his
buddies in the office with the instructions, "Tell 'em Bromen sent ya!"
Well, I can then track how many new players named "Bromen" as the character
who recruited them. Who knows, if there are certain players who suddenly
start getting all sorts of survey reports as the responsible recruiter,
I might just feel a sudden urge to hand out some meaningful rewards!
(I'm serious ...)
So ... now that the survey is in place, we have a tool to measure the
effectiveness of our efforts. Getting people to *try* the game is the
first step. Once they are in, our friendliness on the newbie line and our
willingness to help new players feel welcomed and appreciated is the
next. From there it is up to the game itself to be appealing and fun for
those players who enjoy it enough to stay.
It is time again to start rolling out that first step as much as we are
able!
So, to remind people of our methods:
https://www.genesismud.org/pages/promotion
And, I think it would be nice if we can go ahead and post reports about
our efforts on this thread:
https://www.genesismud.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1749
Lets go, folks! Get out there and do your thing! To be sure to set the
example properly, I'm about to go post my own testimonial on the above
thread. I spent the morning peppering my old Alma Mater with posters.
Onwards and upwards!
G.