>
>There are millions of people playing MMO's right now. We only
>want maybe 200 or 300 of them. How many people are playing
>magic cards? D and D? Those are lower tech than CF. Of the
>millions of people doing similar things I'm sure we can
>capture .0001% of them. That's not a real agressive marketing
>goal, and totally achievable given the "niche" quality of CF.
>A bigger challenge is actually taking a company that has mass
>appeal and finding it a niche to thrive in. Niche nich niche,
>you always need a niche. CF already gots one.

This has long been my thought of where to start marketing CF. It's nice to have a presence on something like TMS but it's better to focus outside the MUD community. My goal would be to get new players that existing players would actually want to have, people that are interested in the game and might stick around, but also inclined to judge it on its own merits and not just complain about the ways in which it's *not* like the kind of hobby you're drawing them from.

Basically, pitch the game in some way to people with interests in all these hobbies, ideally in a way specialized to each of them, so you can explain the ways that CF is 'better' than what they're doing, and also cushion the blow on the way things are different. For example, most MMOs (and most MUDs, really, if we were going to till that field) are set up on the mindset that you'll make one character and keep them forever. CF isn't that kind of game. I think you'd get a much better rate of drawing people who would actually stick with the game if you could convey early on that CF is different and some of the implications and benefits of that. Not necessarily that CF's way is better in a general sense, but that it yields different things and works for the kind of game that it is.