{Copied over from the previous thread.}

"FarmVille doesn't have 72,015,037 active users. That's not what it really has. What FarmVille really has is 72,015,037 Facebook Friends." -- SilverScotch

So not even 72 million people actively (such as it is) playing the game... just 72 million people who became aware of it at some point, clicked on the pretty button, and have since forgotten about it?

.

.

But Izzea's right, so I'll stop {in tGtBatU}.

As a player of some of those gimmicky Facebook games, I'll chime in.

>>So not even 72 million people actively (such as it is) playing the game... just 72 million people who became aware of it at some point, clicked on the pretty button, and have since forgotten about it?

FarmVille claims the following on their page:

Users:

73,425,514 monthly active users.

The game is 100% free, with the option of buying FarmVille Cash (FV cash). The cash allows you to buy a bunch of things out of their market, most of it aesthetic and nothing more.

Regardless, FV and other Zynga games are a completely different business model from GS. What works there would not work for GS. The average length of time a FV player sticks around is 4 months, according to a thread on their forums.

As for the friends request and whole guerrilla buzz marketing, I doubt it would gather many new players. Word of mouth marketing is one of the best forms of free marketing. But, overall, it is one of the worst forms of marketing as a whole. I deleted my Myspace page because of the spam I was getting. And then Facebook started doing the same shortly after. I have the majority of things blocked, with just a small handful of apps to make it to my feeds.

Social networking isn't a bad step for GS, but it would need to be done differently than what many of the larger games do.

_______________

* Mario just posted!

http://www.GSGuide.net

~@~ This post brought to you by a Pocket Dhask and the letters M.P. ~@~

They have ads and upgrades. Buying upgrades costs money, but you don't need to do it to play, just to advance faster. And yes, they're making money, but they have an entirely different business model than GS. It just doesn't apply.

Yup, totally different model. But...

Simu is a business, and it's the rare (and probably unwise) business that overlooks a potential source of income merely because it's different.

While the existing games wouldn't fit nicely into Facebook, perhaps a modified game, or a new game, would. Money is money. GS is undeniably old school in a brand new world. Increasing GS's population would be grand, but I (and definitely Simutronics) would "settle" for getting a new income source outside of the existing games.

I personally am confident that Simu will continue to operate GS as long as Simutronics stays in business (just look at all the other games besides GS/DR they still run.) The incremental cost to keep a server running is minimal, and GMs can get paid based upon the game income. So as long as the office overhead can be paid for, GS should continue to run. Any new source of income therefore helps keep "our" game going.

Still, I remember Elonka discussing advertising back at the 2001 Simucon. Their experience with advertising had been pretty poor, with little to show for their money. Using a 'free' and popular medium such as Facebook to spread the word would likely produce a very, very, low rate of new signups -- but considering the huge size of the social networks, even a minuscule sign up rate could be huge.

>>The average length of time a FV player sticks around is 4 months


Has anybody ever tried to figured that statistic for Simutronics games? I know I've played for years (almost decades), and have no plans to leave any time soon. And we all know that I'm a newbie compared to some others.


Clunk

(Buy your swords at CBD weapons in Zul Logoth.)
Toadstool News and reminders at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/zullogoth/

Two or three months ago marked 16 years for me, so that's 48x the duration of one of those players.
(And, you know, Gremlynn & Geoff were both here before me... <grin>)

(Then again, my "average daily play" probably works out to about the same as three or four mouse-clicks, so I'm a bad yardstick to use. :)

I started 3 weeks before the jump to the we in 1997 :(

---

The auctioneer calls out, "Belnia bids 200000000 silvers! New bids must be at least -209496729 silvers."

Alright I would like to repost this anyways because I was just teasing Karkii a little bit with my last post about the cute girl on facebook thing. But seriously, Facebook does have a great system for marketing things with. And that's what games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars use to market their games. Whether they are free or not. And as I mentioned before I really do believe that if Gemstone 4 can somehow utilize their request system to promote itself with, than it will have a far more powerful effect than if it doesn't take advantage of their system.

The Facebook request system is what Zynga uses so well. If Zynga can use the system to promote it's games, than so can Gemstone 4. I don't think Gemstone 4 will reach even close to the amount of people that Zynga has reached with it's games (due to the fact that they are mostly free), but I do believe that Gemstone can reach an enormous amount of people by using the same request system that Zynga did.

The fact that Gemstone 4 costs money I don't think will negate the fact that it could reach far more people than perhaps it has ever been able to reach in it's history. Even with it's days on AOL and when it was free. I don't believe that there was ever an AOL game that was able to tap into over 70,000,000 players like Zynga has been able to do with FarmVille on Facebook.

Someone mentioned before about trying to promote through some of the old magazines or whatever that Gemstone 4 used to promote through. I don't think that will work as well as it would with some of these newer companies like Facebook and Myspace, because of the simple fact that you can reach a huge amount of more people through them with less effort put into the process. The magazine idea should not be counted out though, and it wouldn't hurt to use that as well, but I believe that as with anything that method is slowly becoming obsolete compared to what you can do with online applications these days. Doing both though is better than doing one or the other.

As for Tsoran's idea, I mentioned in the other thread that I thought it was amazing. The only problem I see with it is I'm not sure that you can just start coding an interface for Facebook without first getting Facebook's permission. If Facebook would allow Gemstone 4 to do such a thing, it might just be the smartest tactic that Gemstone 4 has ever used before. But even if Facebook doesn't allow for Gemstone to do that, than there is still the option of utilizing the Request System without ever having to get permission to do so. And in that case, Gemstone 4 wouldn't have to pay a red penny for doing that. And it would still gain the benefits from it.

Someone also mentioned that Gemstone 4 currently already has a Facebook and Myspace page. Well that's nice to hear, but guess what, so do I, so do probably most of all of you. It's not having the Myspace or Facebook page that matters as much as how you use it. I don't have a game to promote (although I do what I can for Gemstone 4 through my own personal page), but SIMU and Gemstone does have a game to promote. They would have to use the request system on both of those companies in the same or at least a similar way that Zynga does with it's Mafia Wars and FarmVille applications. If it can do that, it can reach many many many many people. As of right now, I doubt that Gemstone 4 sends out friend requests to people at all, probably due to the fact that they want to look as professional as possible in their opinion, and would rather have people come to their pages and join them instead. This is where the problem comes in, because sitting back and waiting for people to join your page - and in turn sign up to play your game, is not how Zynga has been so successful with it's games. Zynga has been successful because of the fact that it has been proactively going out and gathering it's userbase, by utlizing the request systems that both Myspace and Facebook have in common, and which Zynga's games are designed to take full advantage of.

Very good point Ponzz. Now if Gemstone can just figure out how to get people on Facebook to send promotional specials and other things related to Gemstone 4 back and forth with eachother like they do with those games, than Bingo.

Ha. =)~

<< (And, you know, Gremlynn & Geoff were both here before me... <grin>)

I believe that Grem is our one remaining GS2 player -- even none of the GMs currently on staff have been around that long. Though there are at least one or two other GS2 era players that still poke their noses in from time to time, I think.

-Grendeg

My first foray into GS3 was in the spring of '94 on GEnie. I re-entered it full-time in November or so of that year. Had a looooong break from '99 to '06, but am glad this is in my life.


Fight my brute: http://taeghan.mybrute.com

Now if she'd stop giving him bird food for supper every night. =P


Keith/Kithus... Hiding

Keith's Emoticons:
;) Joke or sarcasm
=P Just razzin you a little
>=( Grr, I'm all fake mad
=,( You made me pretend sad
0=) Expecting an e-mail from Izzea

I'd like to ask this question directly to the staff of Gemstone 4. Perhaps one of the staff members can comment on it?

I'm just asking because I am curious. Do you (as the staff) feel that it is unprofessional to be pro-active with your Facebook page as it currently stands, which I have not visited yet, Unless it is the Gemstone group one that I have seen before, which only has like what was it 600 friends last time I checked? But anyways, what I was wondering is do you as the Gemstone staff feel that it is unprofessional to pay some of your staff members to do nothing but send out friend requests that link to your page? And if so, don't you feel that sitting back and waiting for people to join your page (which is going to take forever if you expect for that to translate into more players trying out the game) would not be nearly as effective as pumping out friend requests daily that would alert people of promotional deals that you guys could run, etc.?

And also, I'm not sure if you are aware of the fact that there is no law or anything that would stop you from being able to send out as many friend requests per day as you are allowed to (just keep it under 7 per 2 hours or so - could make it 3 just to be on the safe side so you don't overtstep the boundries of the current security features of facebook), but it isn't a "sin" to do such a thing and the bird doesn't get the worm unless it actually dives for it eh?

Alright so that question I pose towards the staff. Because I am very interested to see their answer. And if the answer is that you guys feel that it is unprofessional to do so, then could you also please explain how you would ever gain full benefit of Facebook's request system without ever doing so?

Also...this is for the players and staff as well, I have a page running on Facebook right now that I've had for a few months under people search called Gemstone Simutronics. Don't worry I'm not making any money or anything off of the page (obviously) but I just created it to try and bring some traffic to Gemstone and to help you guys raise your player base. If in the people search option you type in Gemstone Simutronics you will see my page come up under people. It is right under the Gemstone Group Page (I'm not sure if that is your official page or not for Facebook), but I currently have over 400 friends, and I am planning to get into the thousands eventually. It would take me alot longer than it would take just 3 of your staff members or so to pump out friend requests per day though, but that's a whole nother subject. Anyways, I hope you guys like my page, I tried to make it as professional looking as possible. It is a work in progress though, but it has gained some attention. I just wish there was a way to see how many people visit it per day. It's publicly viewable by the way, so you don't need a friend request to see anything on it. However if anyone wishes to send me a friend request please feel free to do so.

You're talking about pure and simple spam. Why not send out e-mails rather than friend requests? There's no difference if you don't know the people you're sending them to. And you can always hire a bot-net to send it out to millions for almost nothing. Not to mention that this sort of spam-friending is against Facebook policy and will eventually get you banned (regardless of staying under their automatic security features).

Personally, I think your efforts are highly misdirected and are not helping. Setting up an alternate page for Gemstone is just confusing to interested potential players.

Stop worrying so much about Facebook. It is not the end-all-be-all of marketing like you seem to think. It's something for the staff to think about more, but maximizing friend-requests-per-day is just so misguided, I can't even go on.

- Greminty

"And I don't see anyone else trying to do anything." -- SilverScotch

Mention it to your buddies at work/school; in the gym; at the bar; while picking up pizza.
Getting the word out to people you already know is going to be far more effective--because they already know they can trust or believe you--than random shotgun messages.

Alright well. SIMU, I hate to say it, but if you're relying on me to "spread it at the bar" for your userbase to increase with Gemstone 4 than I figure we have exactly 2 years or so before Gemstone 4 loses another 50-70 players.

And besides, Grem, are you part of the SIMU staff? Those questions were for the SIMU staff.

And besides, Grem, are you part of the SIMU staff? Those questions were for the SIMU staff.

The reason you won't get a response from "staff" here to this question is because 99% of the staff have absolutely nothing to do with marketing -- and those that do probably don't read the board.

The people you think of as staff -- those that players interact with, are GMs -- who are off site contractors, not employees. They have nothing to do with marketing. Marketing is the purview of on-site back office personnel (who never post here, by and large), the game producer (GM Soloman/Simu-Bubba, who rarely posts here), and, perhaps, the Associate Game Producer. The APM (Sirina), while notionally running GS, is also an off-site GM, and doesn't have the same pull with business decisions that on-site employees do. But she's pretty much the only one who reads these boards who potentially could have anything to do with marketing.

You might want to try taking this discussion to the Simutronics board as opposed to the GS board, for two reasons. Firstly, you're more likely to get the attention of the people who actually have some say in marketing. Secondly, everything you're saying about GS applies also to DR, so it might be better to have this discussion in a forum common to both games.

And I will definately try out the SIMU board as well. Is it connected to this board?

Here is a copy of a message I am about to post on the SIMU boards so that hopefully their marketing team can take a look at all of our suggestions I have collected here for bringing up the population of Gemstone 4:

To the SIMU staff:

There is currently a poll going on over at the Players Corner as to why the population of Gemstone 4 is the way that it currently is today. Here's the link to it for those who want to follow it:

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?t=48555

Things people have been saying about the reasons Gemstone 4 is slowly dying:

1. One player has stated:

"I would consider playing again if they started another new server. It would take like a $15 hard drive to do it."

2. Another player has stated:

"I'd say that any game that decides to target being a "niche" game where epics are indeed epics ... they will have an extremely loyal player-base."

3. Another player has stated:

"But I'll tell you this much, If I had only one wish to use on a game right now I would wish it for this one to go back to the way it once was, and to somehow get the thousands of players back that it has lost.

I know this is not a dream and that it could happen. If it's one thing I've learned in life it's that you never count something out just because it's old and forgotten about at the moment. I want Gemstone 4 to be like one of those super freaks on Ripley's believe it or not where the 72 year old lady is using her leg muscles to lift more weight than any of the younger 20-30 year olds competing with her in the gym. I want Gemstone 4 to show the true potential that a game like this deserves. And I really do miss the way the environment of the game was back then.

It just sucks too because in many ways Gemstone 4 is way better than Gemstone 3 ever was. And there's less people playing. It just doesn't seem right.

You know I was thinking...why doesn't Gemstone just go back to it's roots? Why not do exactly what it did the first time successfully and see if it works again? Make a contract with AOL so that AOL members who use the chatrooms and stuff can play for free. And I don't know maybe what worked the first time will work again."

4. The same player has stated:

"Just curious, but what if Gemstone 4 was to go ahead and lower it's regular subscription price to say, $10.00 a month? Thats only $120.00 a year. I would pay that.

That might bring some more people to the game. Might help a little bit.

A second option would be to go even further, and lower the normal subscription price from $15.00 to $5.00 a month. Now you're talking. The fact is that there are some really good FREE MUDS springing up all over the place. MUDS themselves will never die. It's just a fact. There will always be people who love to play MUDS. The problem with Gemstone 4, however, is that it's a great MUD, but it charges too much now for it's monthly fees. And the World Wide Recession is not helping things. If it lowered it's basic subscription to $5.00 a month I guarantee you that people will jump on board. More people and in the end the company would probably make the same as they are making now with less people paying more.

The last option, and I don't think it bodes too well for those who get payed By Simutronics for Gemstone 3, is to go ahead and eventually just make Gemstone 4 free of charge. Just like some of the other MUDS like those over at Iron Realms Entertainment. I mean those are great muds over there, and as far as I know they don't charge anything. It was only a matter of time before people started creating MUDS that were just as good as Gemstone 4, so why not just catch up with the times and make it free? That would obviously increase the player base by an enormous amount. I've had people tell me that Gemstone 4 looks really cool, and that they want to play it, but that they don't have the money. I mean is this really what Gemstone 4 is all about at this point? It should be available for all to play. Because it really is a staple of MUDS.

Instead of everyone talking about Gemstone 4 dying, why don't we (those who love the game) talk about different ways of keeping it going? I mean really, there is absolutely NO REASON whatsoever that Gemstone 4 should ever have to go away. Unless computers become obsolete or the power grid gets knocked out by some kind of disaster or something. Other than that, if I was SIMU corp, I would never take it away from those who wish to play it. That would just be a waste.

Currently, there are less and less people playing gemstone 4 every two years or so. Maybe it's dropping at an even faster rate now due to the recession everyone is experiencing. I am not sure, thats for those who run the books for Gemstone 4 to know about.

If 200 more people drop from the game than I don't know how much Gemstone 4 has already made over the years for Simu but I can guarantee that Simu won't be racking in the dough at that point. And, that the game won't be as much fun. The lower the player base, the less fun the game becomes. This is my view anyways. And if the player base is almost non-existant, than that's even worse.

SIMU is not stupid. They know their player base is dropping and dropping. The free option was the very last option I presented. It was last for a reason, it was last because if nothing else works to save Gemstone 4, than thats what needs to be done in my opinion. Starcraft and games like that still have a pretty fairly large player base and thats because the game is free. It never really loses too much because people play it all the time in different countries, etc.

The gemstone 4 player base is NOT expanding at the moment, it is declining, with no end in sight. This does not need to be the fate of the player base. Perhaps the fate of the current pricing, but not the player base. The Gemstone 4 player base I believe could be saved in a number of different ways. 3 of which I listed above.

I believe and know for a fact that $15 every month for people who have no job due to the recession is an expense they can do without. No job means no money. No money means no $15 every month for Gemstone 4. It's easier to scrape together $5 or even $7-10 a month than it is to scrape together $15 every month. Now just exactly how much easier it is is up for debate, but the fact thats it's easier can not be debated.

For kids who don't have any money whatsoever, and who might play gemstone 4 (trust me I seen some of the free games these kids play at the library and Gemstone 4 would be a 100% increase in terms of quality) can't because they don't have a credit card and their parents wouldn't think of getting it for them unless they had already played Gemstone 4 before themselves. Many of the teenagers today are out of work as well. And can't pay for Gemstone 4 either. I saw on the news that what was it like 70% of teens in the United States (The country I live in) are not working. Thats a HUGE amount.

The two biggest things I can see that would increase the user base is 1) more advertising. (I think banner ads on rpg/gaming webcomics with 60 day free trials would help) and 2) more new content. I guarantee you if monks ever come out you'll see a marked increase in old players coming back to try them.

Of course what do you do once those people start playing to keep them in the game? I'm sure simu has some crazy stats about how the average trial account logs in for half an hour then never returns. I know when there were 1k+ people it was easy to find someone to hang out with and hunt things with. You also had a lot of conflict with people which brings you closer to the game. It's not as easy when there's 350 people on and you rarely see anyone that level. (Of course I'm not sure how the levels are distributed, I picked a lot of sub level 10 boxes whenever I was in the east tower..and this was a couple of months ago)

Community events are nice, but having friends to hang out with whenever you're playing are better. Take a look at wow. See how many people are in guilds and play because they feel needed. I don't particularly feel needed when someone just brings their rogue or empath or whoever in instead of interacting with someone.

I'm not sure GS can attract more people without already having more people. Or maybe if we start playing and not just idling at tables when we're not hunting. Maybe if we looked around and asked others for help instead of relying on our extra accounts for healing, picking, spells, blesses, etc.

The bottom line is that if Simu doesn't figure out a way to market the game to the 8-14 year old range (the next generation of G4 players) then there is probably little hope of a major revival.

That generation will play just about anything if it sparks their interest. And the kids these days are highly intelligent. If SIMU doesn't start going to the places that these kids hang out at online, the websites, message boards, etc., and start making deals with those companies and sites, where if they will place an add that runs everyday on their site for G4 and in return SIMU will pay them a small amount and that if the kids from those sites sign up to play gemstone 4, through those sites, and in return they will receive a free 1 year membership, or a free 6 month membership, or some kind of deal like that, so that the kids can get used to that game for the time period, and that when their membership is up they will no doubt be addicted and come up with ways to pay for the game on their own (like pre-payed credit cards that anyone can get), then there won't ever be a serious revival in my opinion.

The next generation of gamers is always the key. Every major video game corporation knows this, every company in the world knows that they MUST market to the next generation in some way if they expect to be around for a long time.

It's not rocket science. But it HAS to be done if Gemstone 4 is to grow it's userbase exponentially (which benefits SIMU in the long run, because it will generate larger and larger profits instead of the slow trickle down of decreased profits that they must be experiencing at the moment, and have been experiencing for years now).

Thats what needs to be done. It SIMU can't figure out how to do what all other successful companies have done in the past, and are doing in the present, then yes, I fear that it can eventually kiss Gemstone 4 goodbye over time because it would be slowly digging it's own grave."

5. The same player has stated:

"I'm also a realist, and I don't pretend that corporations keep things going purely for the Customer's benefit. This is America, and SIMU is an American company is it not? Money is usually the bottom line. But that's what I'm getting at here. If Gemstone dies, and it very well could, and you and I both know this, then Gemstone no longer becomes profitable. In other words the money tree completely runs out of money. And for the customers, the fun tree stops producing it's fruit as well. So it's a lose/lose situation if that happens.

My point is that Gemstone dying is not a good thing for anybody. Not for SIMU, not for anybody. Not after all the work people have put into it, both staff and player alike. It's also not good for the World, because if the best text best game ever created (in my opinion) dies, then the World will have lost a gem. A gemstone 4. =)

It may not be how SIMU generates most of it's money at the moment, and that's fine. But if Gemstone 3 can die, than the HERO engine can become obsolete as well one day. And that could stop producing money as well. The key is to protect your assets on every level, and to not let a single productive entity slip away from your grasp. That's the way they should be viewing it. I mean I'm not gonna say...."So what if Bobby gives me $5000 a week? Joey gives me $10,000. So Bobby can take his $5,000 and shove it where the Sun don't shine!" Yeah that'll show um. I mean that's just fricken retarted. Who loses in the end on that deal? I do. And this case if Gemstone dies than so does SIMU.

I think we are mostly all already in agreement that it is indeed dying. I mean you know, and that's true thats true. I guess, in some ways, I was just wondering if you know, and everything is sweet in game by the way, but you know, when it comes to the dying, I just thought, you know and I mean I don't know....the wind, the seasons, they change...you know..., but about the dying part, I don't know I mean I just thought maybe somethin could be done about it. :shrug:"

6. The same player has stated:

"An example of a company that has successfully figured out a way to promote itself with the current times is Zynga, the creator of Mafia Wars. Mafia Wars was the 2009 Webby Award People's Voice Winner in the Games category. Mafia Wars is available on Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, Sonico, and Yahoo. To my understanding, the game is free, although there may be some way where players have to pay for certain things to get certain benefits. I'm not sure because I've never played it. Mafia Wars has more than 25.9 million monthly active accounts. The point being that Zynga, which started out with a game that had not been marketed yet, figured out a way to promote through some of the most popular online companies out there today, and they are reaping in the benefits like you wouldn't believe.

Their player base is so diverse it's not even funny. I can't tell you how many old ladies have sent me a free shotgun on my facebook page. lol. Or how many little kids have asked me to join their mafia family.

But here's the deal. As fun as a game as mafia wars is, I would bet you hands down that Gemstone 4 is more complex, more in depth, more interactive, and more entertaining.

So if the marketing team at SIMU can figure out how to convince a major popular online company to accept a promotional deal with them, they can reap in the benefits just as easily. If it's pop up pictures that gamers want these days (because I think that's what Mafia Wars uses, I'm not 100% sure though) than I'm sure that pop up pictures can be incorporated into the Wizard, and Stormfront, just as easily.

It can be done. Gemstone 4 can be successfully promoted. Somebody just has to take the initiative and put forth the effort. You reap what you sow."

7. The same player has stated:

"I should also add that Zynga is responsible for promoting yet another successful game, FarmVille, which has recently become the most popular game application on Facebook. And as far as I know Facebook is the only company that it is currently being marketed too.

But this is what will blow your mind. FarmVille's active userbase was recorded at 72,015,037 active users on December 11, 2009. You read that right, 72 Million active users. And it's a fairly new game.

Now you can't tell me that collecting different looking farm animals beats gaming in the World of Gemstone 4. I'm sorry, I love animals, but give me a break.

If Gemstone 4 was able to tap into even just 1% of the amount of fanbase that compromises Farmville, it would be a MAJOR accomplishment. Just 1 itty bitty percent."

8. The same player has stated:

"Gemstone's/Simu's staff should use their Facebook and Myspace pages to send out friend requests within the acceptable amount of friend requests per hour limit. So 112 friend requests per day (7 every 3 hours or so - myspace + facebook included) comes to 40,880 friends per year. Make two pages on facebook/myspace, both related to GS, and use the program to promote both of them, and that comes to 81,760 friends per year. There is currently no limit to the amount of accounts/pages you can create on facebook and/or myspace, so of course one could use their imagination for as far as they wanted to go with it. Just make sure to somehow create a secondary program that posts a message on all of your friend's walls/homepages at least once per day. Why not? Mafia Wars gets away with it. I get like 3 posts on my homepage/wall per day relating to that game. I delete them of course. They could just hire 3 people who's sole job is to divide the 112 friend requests/224 friend requests/however many are sent out per day between themselves, and they would reach many many different people."

9. The same player has stated:

"Fact is, no one from SIMU would get in trouble for going behind the scenes and creating pages on facebook/myspace related to Gemstone and if they sent out an enormous amount of friend requests if they did it undercover. In fact I think that's exactly what the Mafia Wars staff does. It can't all be players that harass my page daily with mafia wars requests. Just adding this all up: If SIMU can pay 3 people to set up two different pages each (1 for facebook and 1 for myspace, all relating to Gemstone 4), and the pages can be identicle or slightly different it wouldn't matter, because neither facebook or myspace frown upon having the same exact named pages under people search because it's the same thing as having 100 Bob Johnsons located in New York, New York, but if just 3 people have 2 sites each pumping out 122 friend requests per day, that comes to a total of 732 friend requests per day. Factor out that 85% of the people will accept the requests and you come out with a total of 613 friends per day. 613 friends per day for all 6 pages combined comes out to 223,745 friends per year.

And the beauty of all of this is that it wouldn't take long for Gemstone 4 to see results, because SIMU wouldn't have to change a thing that it's doing at all right now. Because as anyone knows who is familiar with facebook, when you type in any message/comment or update on your profile/wall/photo section/notes/links or any of the other options, it automatically gets sent to all the friends you have on your list. This means that if Simu pays 3 people to set up 6 pages total pumping out those friend requests daily until it reaches that total of 223,745 friends for the year, then one single message relating to the 1 month free trial would reach all 223,745 of those friends in an instant. And I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that Zynga is currently using this exact same strategy with it's two most popular games.

You send out a message relating to the 1 month free trial to 223,745 people all within a few seconds time, and I guarantee you that you will have some traffic headed your direction.

And there is a cherry on the top for all of this as well if SIMU went ahead with this strategy, because I currently have 400 friends on my publicly viewable page on facebook at the moment, and because of the public view status of my page I receive roughly 3-4 friend requests daily from people who want to join my friends list.

So you figure if we apply the same concept to the 223,745 friends that would be on all 6 pages combined, then all 6 pages would get literally thousands of daily automatic friend requests sent to their pages for doing nothing other than having their pages be available for public viewing. I mean it doesn't get much easier than that.

Before you know it, together with the friend requests being sent out and the friend requests that would be coming in both on a daily basis, it wouldn't take long for the 6 sites to reach the point where the friends would total in the millions. And then each time the SIMU staff wants to send comments/updates on those pages then they would reach millions of people in an instant rather than hundreds of thousands. And it really wouldn't take that long for all of this to become a reality either.

The more pages put up, and the more people pumping out requests, the faster the process would complete itself."

10. The same player has stated:

"It would appear to me, at least on the surface, that both Mafia Wars and FarmVille were designed to work almost perfectly for benefiting from myspace and facebook, before they were ever even marketed towards them. Obviously they had their eye on the prize, long before they had ever even sealed the deal.

So whoever created these games, definately knew that facebook and myspace HAD TO BE the kind of companies they marketed to otherwise the games as they are currently designed would be total failures. Luckily they placed their bets right, because it would appear that they ended up getting exactly what they were hoping for.

So either two things happened in this case. Either myspace and facebook both approached Zynga asking it to produce games that would be designed to work well with their applications, or.....Zynga guessed right and had enough foresight to know that both myspace and facebook would sign a conctact with it. It can't be both, so it has to be one or the other.

FarmVille. FarmVille doesn't have 72,015,037 active users. That's not what it really has. What FarmVille really has is 72,015,037 Facebook Friends. This is because it uses the exact same system for increasing it's games player bases that other members of Facebook (such as myself) use to bring friends to their pages as well. The system is identicle in these cases."

11. The same player has stated:

"Facebook does have a great system for marketing things with. And that's what games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars uses to market their games. Whether they are free or not. And as I mentioned before I really do believe that if Gemstone 4 can somehow utilize their request system to promote itself with, than it will have a far more powerful effect than if it doesn't take advantage of their system.

The Facebook request system is what Zynga uses so well. If Zynga can use the system to promote it's games, than so can Gemstone 4. I don't think Gemstone 4 will reach even close to the amount of people that Zynga has reached with it's games (because they are mostly free), but I do believe that Gemstone can reach an enormous amount of people by using the same request system that Zynga did.

The fact that Gemstone 4 costs money I don't think will negate the fact that it could reach far more people than perhaps it has ever been able to reach in it's history. Even with it's days on AOL and when it was free. I don't believe that there was ever an AOL game that was able to tap into over 70,000,000 players like Zynga has been able to do with FarmVille on Facebook.

Someone mentioned before about trying to promote through some of the old magazines or whatever that Gemstone 4 used to promote through. I don't think that will work as well as it would with some of these newer companies like Facebook and Myspace, because of the simple fact that you can reach a huge amount of more people through them with less effort put into the process. The magazine idea should not be counted out though, and it wouldn't hurt to use that as well, but I believe that as with anything that method is slowly becoming obsolete compared to what you can do with online applications these days. Doing both though is better than doing one or the other.

Tsoran had a great idea that he mentioned in the other thread over on the official boards that I thought it was amazing. The only problem I see with it is I'm not sure that you can just start coding an interface for Facebook without first getting Facebook's permission. If Facebook would allow Gemstone 4 to do such a thing, it might just be the smartest tactic that Gemstone 4 has ever used before. But even if Facebook doesn't allow for Gemstone to do that, than there is still the option of utilizing the Request System without ever having to get permission to do so. And in that case, Gemstone 4 wouldn't have to pay a red penny for doing that. And it would still gain the benefits from it.

Someone also mentioned that Gemstone 4 currently already has a Facebook and Myspace page. Well that's nice to hear, but guess what, so do I, so do probably most of all of you. It's not having the Myspace or Facebook page that matters as much as how you use it. I don't have a game to promote (although I do what I can for Gemstone 4 through my own personal page), but SIMU and Gemstone does have a game to promote. They would have to use the request system on both of those companies in the same or at least a similar way that Zynga does with it's Mafia Wars and FarmVille applications. If it can do that, it can reach many many many many people. As of right now, I doubt that Gemstone 4 sends out friend requests to people at all, probably due to the fact that they want to look as professional as possible in their opinion, and would rather have people come to their pages and join them instead. This is where the problem comes in, because sitting back and waiting for people to join your page - and in turn sign up to play your game, is not how Zynga has been so successful with it's games. Zynga has been successful because of the fact that it has been proactively going out and gathering it's userbase, by utlizing the request systems that both Myspace and Facebook have in common, and which Zynga's games are designed to take full advantage of."

12. Another player has stated:

"I think the general idea sounds good. Anyone ever bother to send this thread to Simu about advertising on facebook?"

13. Another player has stated:

"Farmville is, indeed, a successful business model. Finding a way to tap into that market would be awesome. That being said, even though I'm not sure how it could be made to work, I think this is the best marketing suggestion I've heard in a long, long time. Seriously.

Here's a 4AM idea (meaning, it's stupid, but just to get the ball rolling): Create a separate GS instance called GemStone Lite. Make the Java front end work on Facebook. The game would be free, but charge $1 or more for some of the stuff you buy in stores (say, weapons or armor made from magical metals.) Lastly, figure out how to keep the GS-Lite server from melting when it has 50,000 players logged in. Ok, maybe, figure that part out first."

14. Another player has stated:

"I would love to see some attempt at marketing for GS even at the level of flyers or some sort of enticement to players to try the game."

15. Another player has stated:

"I also have to say that the low population is probably also contributing to the low population. It just isn't as fun to play with so few people around, which surely has caused a few folks to leave. What should Simu do? I think the basic rate should lowered back to $10. They could also allow three or more characters per account (with only one logged in at a time, so some means of transferring items would be needed) for the $15 they charge now. And a little cheap advertising wouldn't hurt."

16. Another player has stated:

"I have always wondered what simu actually does with the money they get from their player base. They are running a text base game. The hardware costs obviously aren't that expensive. They have a low population, so I can't see the network costs being that expensive either..

They don't pay their staff. They don't do any sort of advertising at all...

Yet they still think they should charge $15 for a text game.

Honestly, one of the main reasons I don't play this game is simu. I feel they are making profit on this, but not doing anything with it. They are slowly letting the game die."

17. Another player has stated:

"I think the single biggest lost marketing opportunity was the failure of the Gemstone AD&D material. Now that said I haven't a clue why that fell through. I just think putting Elanthia into a D&D campaign with mention of the fact that its based off a currently running online game would draw people in."

18. Another player has stated:

"I agree. I remember the "d20 supplement!" announcement and how a bunch of people were interested, but then things fell kind of quiet."

19. Another player has stated:

"The premise of this thread is that Simutronics desperately needs to expand its player base to attain both profitability and future viability for Gemstone IV. This concern is by no means new, but we seem to be reaching a critical mass/point of no return after which it will be time to call it a night and shut er down, or drastically raise fees to play to the point where few would stay. Neither extreme is acceptable."

20. Another player has stated:

"It's off on a tangent, but there is a game with a payment model somewhat similar... Puzzle Pirates, which is a cartoony pirate themed puzzle MMO (yeah, really), has 'Dubloon' servers.

There's 2 in game currencies, dubloons and pieces o' eight - basic items only cost pieces o' eight, and you only earn pieces o' eight as treasure. The good stuff, and badges to do the premium puzzles or captain a ship cost pieces o' eight and dubloons. Dubloons can only be purchased for real cash from the company (in game), or there's a market for trading them between players (also in game)."

It works pretty well for that game.

21. Another player has stated:

"I'd wager that the hourly AOL days and then the unlimited AOL days were the most profitable by Simu. Especially if their legal agreements were rock solid to be paid by AOL hourly regardless of AOL's payment model.

Now, it's a matter of P&L. If they employ $1m worth of overhead a year between real estate, servers, services, and people/benefits. Across all games they need only 3340 players at $24.95 for a year to break even. Entirely reasonable.

Anything above that is complete profit. The beauty of the model is that it's sustainable. They can, at any time, release GMs, scale pay, change incentives, do upsells for a little cash infusion, etc. So at any point in time, if they're not profitable, it's horrible management (or they're investing in things like the HJ engine).

It's really a great case study for an MBA student. It's sustainable, profitable, easily scalable and almost entirely run on the virtue, blood, sweat and tears of volunteers."

22. Another player has stated:

"The biggest thing today is to bring people into our little sandbox so there are people to play with not only today, but in 2, 3, 4, 5, years."

Sorry, but this statement:

>"I would consider playing again if they started another new server. It would take like a $15 hard drive to do it."

...is pretty unenlightened. It costs a helluva lot more to start a server than fifteen dollars.



Fight my brute: http://taeghan.mybrute.com