I think most of you are familiar with Steam and it's trends. One of the general trend of the last years - oldschool indie games. The more hardore - the better. And, imo, CF is fitting Steam community perfectly.

Yes, it won't provide thousands of players at once, but it will generate a solid, regular flow of the newbies.

How to do it?

Test idea on Greenlight. You don't need to do ANY code at all. All that you need to provide is:

1. 4 pictures/screenshots;
2. Gameplay video;
3. Text description.

And that's it.

If Greenlight would show people's interest, then it's not a problem to provide a MUD client with built-in CF address. There are open-source clients that may be integrated with Steam SDK easily. For instance, in our projects, we made a basic integration in 3-4 days, and more serious integration with cards and achievements will take about one more week.

Cheers.

kudos, now git er done

We've discussed this in the past. The tl;dr version is that we simply haven't had someone with the combination of time, interest, and know-how decide to work on it.

It's something that's on my short list, but as a predominantly non-Windows user and someone who doesn't play "video games" at all, going through the hoops of Steam and trying to develop and test what would ultimately be a Windows MUD client with some kind of integration with Steam just isn't interesting to me.

And that's really the crux of it. We have a lot of wonderful ideas and insights that could/would/should be beneficial to CF, but at the end of the day we work on the projects that are interesting to us because that's how you approach hobbies, which is what CF is.

As an aside (and I haven't discussed this with the rest of the staff), but this would be an ideal project for us to farm out. Besides filling out some forms using a @carrionfields.com email address and perhaps relying on the staff for some basic instruction, this is something that a person with zero special access to CF's code or other IP could accomplish, and best of all, it wouldn't require as much or more of a staff member's time as it would theirs, which tends to be case when people volunteer to help. Food for thought.

Seriously.

lots of cool ideas people could implement, without any involvement or time waste
from the IMMs. But I don't have the time to write full state machines that deal with
*text* from the server correctly (and also figure out all the text specifics I'd have to use to trigger transitions, I have more than a gigabyte of CF logs but it's still a ####ty job).

Throw MSDP in there, you might get me (and others) interested enough to work on cool stuff gratis.

If you don't have such person, let's find and hire one. If you don't have money, let's crowdfund money on Kickstarter.

How much development of the basic client would cost? I don't think it would exceed 10k. 10k isn't much at all. With current CF community it's easy to fundraise (about 5k may be gained byCF players, plus I'd think 5k more would ge gained by organics).

See, I've been running my own campaign (raised 30k out of 100k, though) and I'm co-founder of crowdfunding consulting company. I have plenty of experience here, as well as connections with press. I think I could help you to get you that sum, should immstaff be interested and ready to evolve CF into something modern.

Yes, it will take more time while the campaign is active. Yes, finding a good coder who may do a good client require some effort. But I'm sure it's worth it, and I'm sure you'll get a lot of support from players. Including those who left, but for such cause they may return or at least participate in that quest.

Well, part of the problem is that I don't know what's involved and don't have the time/desire to find out. Again, time is our biggest deficit upstairs.

If taking an open source MUD client (e.g., MUSHClient) and using an SDK/API to make it aware of Steam (but add no additional functionality) is a weekend project for someone who knows about that stuff, then great. If it means essentially creating a brand new MUD client in the form of the Steam app, then that probably isn't practical. It could be a trivial evening's worth of work or a pretty serious endeavor, we simply haven't taken the time to investigate.

Again, I haven't talked to the rest of the staff, but I doubt we'd be interested in crowdfunding. At the end of the day that would result in a huge responsibility to a lot of paying "customers" that I don't imagine any of us want. God forbid a key person or two fall ill or simply lose interest and then we have to deal with the fallout of having to break expectations. Besides, a CF Kickstarter is probably just past the line I'd refuse to cross with regards to the DIKU license. That said, we have money. Not enough to make it rain, but we have money. Even so, it takes a non-trivial amount of time to spend it wisely (in the form of research, project management, etc.), not that we have a great track record of using that resource at all, mind you.

Nope, you don't need to do everything from a scratch. Actually, you'll only use Steam API, and for MUD client, I think there is a minimal work required. Perhaps you just take a look at what is required to publish client on Steam? There is a possibility that it will nearly nothing. Integration with Steam achievements and badges goes through API, and really it's easiest thing in the world.

About kickstarter - I understand, that's a valid point.

Unfortunately, CF staff have more than a hobby to deal with. We all have CF as a hobby. But staff have a stewardship.

What I'm saying is, you have some responsibilities. Somehow, this game's tanked. The people with the keys to the clubhouse have a duty to save it, even if it means taking on some scut work. Saying you haven't even bothered to investigate this Steam thing, which may be the easiest way to draw a new playerbase, just because it's uninteresting--that's not good stewardship.

Sorry to be a jerk, but it had to be said.

As a compromise move, expand the staff strategically. I.e., post up a "position opening" on the main CF page and advertise that you're looking for someone willing to do this. In exchange, that person would get the privileges of the other people who support the game. It's only fair. It's what it means to be a MUD imm: give and take.

Is this your way of volunteering your time to do the job? If so, cool. If not, then try to be helpful instead of hurtful.

What Umiron said is that staff is willing to provide reasonable resources to the person who wishes to volunteer and undertake this project. As he does not have to become an IMM in order to do so.

I'm not a coder, but I can do the job with the Steam (provide an LLC for registration, access to SDK, create profile, do a basic marketing via my contacts. But I'll need someone who may take care of the code for client-side, and later we'll need someone who could take care of integration on CF server-side.

I think they might need to have imms be on standby for the beginning, to help the influx of newbies. Even should they be super helpful, I think we'd still have a manageable retention rate of players.

I like this idea, though. More players is always better.

nt

As long as this is a good idea thread, how about we make t-shirts with the goddamn CF skull available?

You can easily order it online at any t-shirt printing service ;)

But I'd rather have some of that money go towards CF.

I suppose I could grab the skull, edit out all the crap, order it, and then buy some PBFs, but I'd rather just go to the CF store and order one.

Plus, to make it cost effective sometimes you have to order a bunch.

I'm already stuck with 998 "Susubienko Belongs On The Pillar" bumper stickers.

On the front just the words "By what name do you wish to be mourned?"

And the skull taking up the back of the shirt. I would like that money to go towards CF as well.

I'm kinda not sure server would cope with the player swarm though considering free nature of a game. You'll have to put a lid on it pretty quickly.

I'll do some math, based on my experience with Steam. It may be not be correct at all, though, but I think my estimation won't be too far from the reality.

First people would come from Greenlight. I believe conversion rate would be about 5% maximum, more likely it's about 3% of all incoming traffic. If I'm correct, Greenlight would bring just about 100-150 players in the scenario (players would go play via freeware MUD clients, installing them manually).

When released (if client would be made) number of the new players would likely be about 4-5k at the first days. That would be the maximum, gained in a week or so. So, per day it would be 5000/7=714 players per day, or about 50 players per hour at daytime, 10 players per hour at night time. It's not something modern game servers are afraid of.

Out of those 4-5k of newbies, only a small percent will survive. I don't have CF stats, but same as above, I think it's about 5% maximum. So, all total, Greenlight + release would provide about 250-500 new players (but those will be persistent, regular players).

But, if there are sudden viral effect, and instead on 5k installs CF would get 50k, and servers wouldn't manage to handle it (doubtful), there are always ways to place new players into queue.