I've been thinking about how the PBBG market is currently full of tons of games with small amounts of players. My game is included in this. Its difficult to get new players, as most have bad experiences on other games and give up. Thinking that all games are the same. This is bad for the genre and bad for the good games.
So how do we stop this. Well to start with the voting sites could do more to remove old games that have been obsoleted. I see links to many on the voting sites that take you to landing pages, since they closed down, but no one seems to do this. My voting site deletes sites that have had no votes after 31 days. If the game has players and the owner has a voting page in his game, he should be able to get a least 1 vote every 31 days, even if he is the only voter. I say he, it could be a she too. I also hope to help in this elimination process by reviewing the games and giving people an idea which games are good and which are bad.
Then there are the owners who start a new games, hoping to make tons of cash in a few weeks and don't do anything to the game at all. There have been many of these. Donator status gets you straight to the top in the game and no one has a chance of catching you after only a few weeks, and the owners don't care as they get to spend the donator money. These kind of games also think that its ok to send out players with incentives in the game to recruit your games members by spamming them in mail. They join and send out tons of referal links back to the game. I doubt that this does much to be honest. Most people are far too suspisous of this kind of tactic.
I'm not yet sure if the PBBG market has matured or not. Or if it has just burnt itself out. I have a number of ideas, but with all the dross around is it worth even implementing these ideas anymore? Are people actually waiting for the next big game? The next innovation. Or is it all over now.
Leave a comment, tell me your oppinion. I'd like to hear.
Monday, June 16, 2008
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5 comments:
I completely agree with this, There are many games in the market, and unfortunately, they all boast about having the best setup while most dont. KOR is definately the best text based game I've played/ play, not just because of the setup, but the people that play also.
It's all about standing out from the crowd and unfortunately that's hard to do.
I'm not signing up for your game until you made screenshots and info readily available. As the game is right now, I'm prompted to login on the front page and not allowed to see screenshots. I sign up for a lot of pbbgs and I don't want to waste my time on something unless I want to play. I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way.
I'm developing my own online browser based MMORPG(or PBBG if you want to call it that). And I'd just like to say that developing a game with nothing but money in mind gets you no where. A good game has to be interesting to play, and what the players want.. which only a player can truly understand. The market for PBBG's is getting tougher, but getting up there on the ranks isn't too difficult as long as you have what the players want. Hopefully your new review website will help us to find which games are truly worth it, I've lost all hope in topsites. Thanks,
Daniel, internet technology and online game developer.
In answer to the screenshots. The site is going through a redesign at the moment, as the changes I have on my local server are not the same as the main game I have removed them. Once the update is complete they will be added back.
There are a lot of additional content changes happening on the login page over the next few months, which will open up the game to anyone without an account, these will also become clear as the update proceeds.
KoR was a site long before I got a hold of it, but I had lots of ideas and the original owners had no clue how to implement them. They got hacked a lot, and one day they decided to sell up. That was two years ago. Its a totally different code base now, and soon will be even more so. At the moment, it is just a hobby. I am a professional developer in the Micro Electronics field, using Delphi and Assembly Language for Firmware on Hardware.
The review site I also hope will help people find the good sites from the bad. I just have to start posting some reviews :)
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