The Worlds of Kaomaris

Is it just my impression, or is the number of active players slightly falling rather than rising? Fewer players and posters and games than there were a year ago, when I started? Even apart from the summer slowdown. I've noticed more players saying they're off than new players joining and staying? Somebody said they'd open a game but weren't sure it would fill. I'd open another game, if allowed, except that it would soak up the pressure for a new game, and leave me with no game to actually PLAY in, as now.

I reckon there are maybe 25-35 people you could call active?

Maybe people don't want it to grow over-much. I remember Donut once posting that he preferred the small, close-knit (!) nature of the community. So, first off, a poll as to whether people WANT it any bigger.

Then I have a couple of suggestions (IF we want more players), but I'll hold off on them, as I don't want to hog the subject, and don't want to make this a long-Han post

So, vote in the poll, and any suggestions?

~ Han

I think that if and when we have automated GMs, with games open all the time, this game is going to attract more people. As it is, IMHO, it is just too slow to accomodate all of the gamers out there just looking for a quickie.

Egbert wrote:I think that if and when we have automated GMs, with games open all the time, this game is going to attract more people. As it is, IMHO, it is just too slow to accomodate all of the gamers out there just looking for a quickie.

Thanks for joining in to promote the debate. Fine point in principle. But only if people are visiting the site to check it out in the first place!......Otherwise there are no candidates there to spot it is now a quickie option....

And, how would any visitor know that it's qicker now than it used to be?

We gotta get more of the right people checking us out, and get them to want to convert a visit into a trial....THEN the faster auto-GM will come into play to retain them........? ie your point is more about satisfaction and retention, which are valid good points as well.

~ Han

I've been trying to argue for the sake of recruitment for years but it is a lonely battle my friend. I'm willing to help you out. Either give me a task or simply by mailing me with ideas you want comments on.

Duke wrote:I've been trying to argue for the sake of recruitment for years but it is a lonely battle my friend. I'm willing to help you out. Either give me a task or simply by mailing me with ideas you want comments on.

Hmmm, see what you mean, Duke. After 5 days, only 2 repliers and 11 votes. And this on an issue that affects whether, extrapolating forwards, there will be ANY players or ANY games to play in in the future! Hey guys, this could fold on curent trends! Over the past year many newbies have come, tried, and gone. Mullog, Validon and I have barely replaced Bryk, Nesty, CoN and others, such that numbers really are down. (Apologies to new members like Nemesis, MelMax, Valicor etc. etc. who MAY stay with us.....).

WOK Species held out the promise of thousands, SOME of whom would migrate to our WOK4 and WOK5, but it was not to be, and that avenue has closed.

I think maybe part of the problem is viewers equating "recruitment" with just trawling your friends for people to put onto the game. That would put ME off! No, there are other things we could do. I'll post a couple of ideas here, if I get ANY encouragement beyond 2 people, and when I have time, but wanted to leave it open to others to join in with suggestions first......

~ Han

Hannibal wrote:WOK Species held out the promise of thousands, SOME of whom would migrate to our WOK4 and WOK5, but it was not to be, and that avenue has closed.

I was away for a little while then...but what happened to wok SP?

Bigger would definately be better. Automated games wouldn't even be worth while without more people. No need for new improved website or anything else without more people.
What to do? I believe there is free advertising to be had on the net. I am also a small investor in a new game coming out soon and will try to bring people from there to Kaomaris as well. This game will be out some time next year and we hope to attract 1000's of players. Maybe I can learn something from that and help use those tactics with Kaomaris. Who knows.... We will see what happens.

Just one small point. Most people don't look in this part of the forum. I know I rarely do, not sure why tbh. If this thread had been started in the general forum I'm betting there would have been more views/posts/votes

LM

Hannibal wrote:(Apologies to new members like Nemesis, MelMax, Valicor etc. etc. who MAY stay with us.....).

Funny to see Nemesis on a list of new players

Anyway, I've posted on www.pbem.com from time to time and tried some free ads and banner exchanges but as far as I can tell without any result.

I've posted on Pbem.com and shook up a few guys to add us to their link sites. Isnt going to make any difference however. Maybe it will add one or two players at best.

If we look around we can soon see that the following countries has a high amount of players but none or few represented in WOK.

Sweden
Germany
Italy
Spain
France
Denmark

I can be in charge of the recruitment in Sweden. Need some help there Fredo, up for it?

We should be able to get at least 20-30 players out of Germany. Right?

Well as has been discussed before, My personal feeling is that it would be difficult to attract much more than maybe 100 people to play these games actively.

10 players per game kinda limits it to some extent, and the speed of the games also has some limiting factors. lets face it this game is a long drag out fight, not checkers. so you have to deal with the fact that we are almost a "niche" game. and finding the players that would enjoy this type of game might be kinda difficult. the people who want to find this type of game will usually find us at some time. advertising would help but I wouldn't even know where to start on that I'm sure Duke has put some thought into it and now I see Hanibal is thinking about it. I think it would be good for the game but I just don't feel that we could make this a community much bigger that maybe 200? players Tops and I'm not sure I would enjoy it as much if it got that big. I could handle maybe 100-150 players which we are not even close to at the moment.

Does anyone know how that HUGE influx we got a couple years ago happened? We seemed to have more beginners than we knew what to do with then, and now we are back to about the way it was when I started. I suspect someone made a BIG recruitment pitch. Maybe it was TBert? As I recall, Appleton was pretty prominent in the influx, but there were others.

OK my 2 scents.

Duke wrote: Need some help there Fredo, up for it?

Just what did you have in mind D?

I would love to see our community grow bigger, but I am worried about the effects it would have.
UD wrote about the HUGE influx of new players that nobody was able to look after, and that is excactly what I am worried about. Getting new players is a good thing, but unless we help them getting into the game most will give up and then we have gained nothing.
So I think we should aim for slow growth and better availability of games (the latter is where I can help hopefully).

Things have been very quiet around here lately btw. Are everyone busy after doing nothing during summer (I am!), or is it something else?

Duke wrote:We should be able to get at least 20-30 players out of Germany. Right?

Now why would we want that????

Mul.... It's in the water... or maybe all the booze... I'll go with water!

I honestly believe that at this point in time we would be able to handle up to 30 more players if they were all to join tomorrow. (Before I go on this rant let me say I speak for noone as I have no idea of everyones daily life)... There are quite a few active GM's at the moment. I am looking forward to opening another game as soon as the Clan Champs are over. I think Nick is debating on opening a game. Trewqh is usually willing to open a game. Val has gotten the hang of running turns. Han seems to be really enjoying being a GM. And I know of a couple of GM's that have mentioned opening... not to mention AF getting it in gear and finally becoming a GM

At this point I don't think the problem is available games, I think it's available players. I don't doubt that anyone would be able to fill a game, but it'd be the same players (Which I also don't mind cause it seems I've started joining every game physically possible; not by my choice of course ).

Duke... if you can come up with a good way to explain this game to new players, let us all in.

Donut

I am short on time here but I will address a few things.

Donut: Explaining this game in a short and easy way is as I see it the biggest obstacle to overcome in terms of the recruitment process.

Fredo: I didnt have anything in mind. That is why I need your help.

Underdog: I dont think we need to be afraid of too many players. If we work with the recruitment I am sure that we will get a slow increase and not a drastic one. Seriously, we arent that good at recruitment.

And that big increase we had was combined people from Appleton and different parts of Ireland. I feel that it is the Irish that has left us at the moment. I see X-wing occasionally but Bicco, Eagle Eyes, Doverish, Rambo etc etc. Where are they?

Underdog wrote:

10 players per game kinda limits it to some extent, and the speed of the games also has some limiting factors. lets face it this game is a long drag out fight, not checkers. so you have to deal with the fact that we are almost a "niche" game. .

Yes, I agree it's very much a niche activity (we must be weird ). But come on, 30-40 players out of, what?, 250 million people who use PC's ? If we were each one-in-a-million there'd be 250 of us! Even the society of enthusiasts for patchwork-quilt-making has many more active members than we do! (No, I'm not a member , it cropped on a TV prog about people finding others with the same interests via the web.....honest). "Niche" should mean hundreds rather than thousands.

At the moment, I think that if 4 or 5 key people found a different interest and left, we'd be in trouble. That's too fragile.

I'm sure that there are people out ther if we:
A) Reach them
B) Get them to check it out
C) Convert a visitor into a triallist
D) Get most triallists to enjoy it and be retained

I'm trying to figure out where in the chain the biggest problem is. No use directing lots of people to the site if 99% of them then can't make head or tail of what they see there, and pass by.

I guess there's no way we know how many non-member visitors we get, and therefore a stab at conversion-to-trial rate?

As an ex-market-research-director, I market-researched the site a bit, just directing a couple of game-players to the site, and asking what they thought. They couldn't easily see what kind of game it was. Nor where to go on the site to find out. One got as far as list all games, but not as far as pressing on the far-right panel and actually seeing a game in progress, a map and a commentary! There was little clue as to what the game would be like, no example of it to be found easily, no introduction, no welcome, and no "how to join in". You sort of land in the middle, explore a bit, and give up. I know the site is in transition, but we've got to sort that before directing new possibles to the site. Let's assume we won't be recruiting person-to-person. In that case, the site needs to explain, welcome and encourage. I'm also an ex-ad-agency-chief, so I volunteer to draft a page to do this job, looking at it from the new visitor's point of view, if Mull will asap put a prominent tag/link on the homepage, entitled "New visitors look here!". Then we'll think of ways to recruit visitors to convert.

~ Han

OK, how do we find people to direct to the site?

Here's one idea....though I'm more used to having an ad budget in the millions rather than, er, zero.

Targetting. Seems to me that the target populations where we'd get a better strike-rate, better return on budget (er, I mean return on effort), would be:
A) Board-game players
B) Computer-game players (though most would find us slow)
C) Old PBEM players (anyone got lists or old contacts?)
D) Students generally (Strike rate might improve to one-in-five-thousand rather than one in ten million if we broadcast to all population)

Don't worry that 4,999 would be left cold. Just count how many members we'd get if one-in-five-thousand students joined up.

OK, somebody should seek out all the boardgame groups and mail them, with the right attachment.

As for students.......we're coming up to "Fresher's Week" ("Freshman week"? The first week at their new university/college, when new students are looking for new clubs and activities, and they're trawling the Freshers' Fair or such for ideas.....).

Here in the UK, the universities start back over the next 3 weeks or so. Ideal time, when they're actively checking out the "clubs" on offer.

I suggest good, old-fashioned notice-boards. Yes, physical notices on physical notice-boards, like where they post for the drama society, or for an upcoming event.

Now, not just anyone can put notices up. EG., at Oxford, maybe the Oxford contingent could, just for this purpose, "create" an "Oxford University Kaomaris Club", in order to qualify to put notices up in 20 colleges reaching ten thousand students. Surely at least one of TK, Korexus etc. is returning for more after finals? It could be minimal effort. No actual meetings neede, not even a constitution. Just say it's a club, put up notices, which merely direct people to the Kaomaris website.......Easy. Optional whether you go further and get on club/fresher lists, have a stand at the Freshers' Fair, get on the website list of clubs, etc.

So, how many of us have access to universities/colleges where we could put up such a notice?

And what would the notice show/say? I'll try and draft one. IF I get any positive replies.

~ Han

I will overlook the fact that you are watching patchwork-quilt-making programs on the tv 'cos this stuff you've put down is pure music in my ears.

I had this exact thing going with Piggy before he went AWOL when I fired up the marketing department.

Your ideas are great, some of them was discussed by Piggy and me and some was carried out. We had the head of another gaming community check out our site to see what game it was etc. He thought it was fairly easy but that was the old site and he was an old gamer so he had seen his share of gamesites.

We had a few other ideas that was never carried out. Mainly since Piggy went missing and I switched jobs and didnt have a computer. (The laptops in sweden are usually own by the companies).

We wanted one guy who had as a single function to add our site to "link sites" everywhere and to work those sites to give us good positions.

We wanted one guy to single out similar gaming communities. That idea was struggling since me and Piggy didnt see eye to eye there. Piggy wanted to "steal" the players from those communities somehow but I said that I saw a risk in our people leaving for the new game. Piggy said that they wouldnt know what game they came from but I am sure the new players would tell.

We wanted one guy to be taking care of all newbies. Helping them to a clan, showing them around and without recruiting them somewhere.

In Sweden we have a club that covers the whole nation and its members are into role-playing, board games etc. I am sure that these clubs exists in every country (well not Iraq or Libya but you get the point).
We werent sure what to do there but somehow they should be useful in some way.

Another task was Al's old anthem "bring 'em back" which was finding old players and getting them back. Main purpouse however was to ask them why they left and learn from it.

I'm sure I'll remember more stuff and I will post them when I do.

HA!
This sounds great! I will happily put links in both the top and left menus saying "Newbies click here!" or something like that. And I could also make that page the default page for all non-registered visitors, so that the first thing they see is "Welcome to WOK n00b!".

The bring-em-back startegy is also a good one IMO. That is how I returned to WOK. I got a nice email from Duke asking if I wanted to play WOK again, and the invitation came at just the right moment.

Lille studies in Trondheim where the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NUTS ) is, so that would be a good place to attract norwegian players. And my girlfriend is a student here in Bergen, so she could probably put up a poster there. Maybe we can attract a horde of norwegians!

Anyway. If you make an introduction page I can link to it from the main page. And feel free to make more suggestions on how we can make the pages more friendly to both beginners and veterans.