Hey guys,

I'm currently in my third year of a Business and Commerce degree, majoring in marketing. I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert because whilst I understand the theory I have next to no experience. However, just looking over this board is seems like you guys are missing the most cruicial part of marketing: market research.

You guys know nothing about your target market. Who plays CF? What else do they play? Why do they enjoy CF? Why do they enjoy MUDs? How did they first find CF (especially those who more recently started)? etc.

More importantly, you have an eager and willing playerbase to fill out said surveys. Hell, if you wanted could give them an incentive like bonus edge points to any character they choose for filling it out. However you'd have to go one step further and find try and find others who do not play CF or MUDs, but are gamers, and find out why they haven't tried CF, what deters them, etc.

e-marketing is relatively cheap, if we can find a trend among currently players (especially those who've started playing recently) it would not be hard to put little things like banners on certain websites, on facebook profiles that have 'liked' certain groups, etc.

I'm currently doing two units this semester in emarketing and market research methods, and would be happy to write up a survey and analyze the results for you guys, or if you guys want to do it yourself I'd check out www.surveymonkey.com for a free, basic service, or www.qualtricks.com for a cheap, but superior survey site.

FWIW: I started setting up a survey on Survey Monkey, not realizing the ten question limit to free surveys. By the time I figured that out, I had a survey that made no sense so I gave up.

Go ahead and do your thing. I'm not sure if or how what you come up with will get used, but maybe it will reveal some low hanging fruit that "Team Marketing" is capable of taking care of.

If nothing else, it'll be interesting.

I can try and make up the survey myself, but I'd be focusing on what I think you guys want.

Also, massive thanks to all who responded. You've given me a few things to think about.

As I said I'm currently learning the subject it'll be a good method of study and I can go through the process week by week. Also I think I can get a copy of the University's qualtricks license, which is an awesome tool for conducting surveys.

Before I forget as well, I don't think we should have any form of rewards for completing the survey. Edge points, etc, will only encourage people to re-do the survey so that they may get bonus points on multiple characters and skew the data.

So far as I can tell the main issue is a lack of new players. So I'll focus my initial research around why current and ex players first started playing. Depending on its success I may go out and try throw our survey up on other gaming forums, etc, and ask gamers why they won't play CF - it may be obvious, but sometimes you learn something valuable.

Before I can write up the survey though, I need some help from you guys, both the staff and playerbase. Could you please give a brief description of how you first got into mudding and CF, what you were doing with your life at the time (e.g. Uni student, HS student, working full time, etc) and any other information you may feel is relevant.

For example, mine would be: I was around 15-16, at High School. An online friend I had met from another game (Myth 2) introduced to me to CF.

EDIT: Please mention how long you've been playing CF/Mudding for.

Cheers.

I think everyone that plays games wants to play with/against other players. Some of us that wasn't an option, except via Internet.

When I started playing MUDs back in like 1997 or so, and I'm sure most of you are in the same boat, 56kbps modems were the dream, and most of us were still rocking something worse. Graphical online games weren't invented yet, and if they were, the technology couldn't support it.

So.. that left MUDs. It was text-based, but it wasn't that hard to get used to for those of us who were dedicated enough to try. Plus, it was our only option.

And so we played and became addicted. And some of us play to this day.

But kids nowadays? They have WoW, Call of Duty, and about a thousand other possibilities to get this PVP fix in. Plus, look at today's games. Playing a game is like watching a movie. We had Mario and Tetris, so it was easy for us to sacrifice the meager graphics we had for strictly text. But the kids these days are used to life-like realism. Switching to black and white scrolling text is a huge step backwards for them.

Now honestly, I still think that MUDs offer more variety, more options and more fun than MMOs. But can we convince kids who have only ever known modern gaming of that? How many will look at scrolling text for more than a few seconds without glazing over?

In other words, I don't think there's an "answer". I think MUDs will eventually die. MUDs aren't getting new players on a regular basis. So all we can hope to do is attract players from other MUDs, or players who haven't played one in a while, but still have nostalgic feelings.

I think it's a mistake to focus marketing on bringing in new players.. because new players are too busy playing WoW or Call of Duty to give us more than a second look. Instead, let's focus on stealing players from other MUDs. However we do that.. who knows.

I know for a fact I've interacted with some dead set noobs recently on CF, people who've never played a mud before. I understand that there's a lower percentage of people who would try MUDs nowdays than in our past, but there's also been a massive increase in the sheer numbers of online gamers too.

Also, we're not trying to compete with WoW for gaming dominace, we just want what... 200-300 new players? Surely there are people out there who would love CF if they knew about it. It's just a matter of finding them, and if we can identify some common trends among our current playerbase it will certainly make reaching those said gamers a lot easier.

Though I think we have to look at where is the most likely place we can find those new players.

I mean, hell, we could start posting flyers in retirement homes across the world and get a few new players, too. But it's not the most efficient means of our resources.

I think the amount of truly new online gamers that are willing to play MUDs is small, and only going to get smaller.

Honestly, I think the most effective means would be advertising on MUD boards, maybe getting one of the links on ZMud/CMud (seriously.. I've tried out every one of those MUDs. And so have all of you.. those icons there work).

I'm not saying we should abandon going after the next generation of gamer, but at the same time we need to face reality. The vast majority of them want graphics and explosions. We can't offer that.

I have to agree that MUD's have a small pool to draw from for the reason you mentioned, the presence of more gaphical/less challenging games. I imagine a lot of gamers view it as Why do I want to invest in CF when I can buy an xbox game, put it in, and essentially break the game mechanics in 2 hours or look up cheat codes and play in god mode? People hate losing. Gamers especially. They want to win, and they want to be almost assured they can win. CF has no winning in the long run- your char will always die. To me that's the allure. It's like golf, I play it to play it, not to win it. It's also why I hate most other online games. If my main competition is AI, it's not difficult. Games like Halo become very repetetive after death match # 32542. And most fantasy non-rpg games ultimately just end up being button mashing pointlessness. Might look pretty on the screen, but there is really not the same satisfaction as you get when you land a tough PK or kill a tough mob like an Ancient - or dare I say it, Tiamat. I played the dragon age games, I liked them. I got the second one. I didn't even bother finishing it cause it just bored the hell out of me. I came back to CF instead.

There are a very distinct group of gamers that play games for the sake of the enjoyment they get just from playing, not playing to win.

I started playing 3 years ago. But I also liked reading fantasy books and the like when I was younger - Azure Bonds kicked ass!. I've played countless RPGs and such. I've tried a few of the big online games, though never WOW cause that just is something I would never bother with. I have never seen any game that really ofers what CF does. I saw a friend playing it, and I knew I had to try it. Have not stopped playing since.

So far, I can honestly say there is not a single game I have played more in my life than CF. And I played Halo 3 non stop when that came out.

I think the biggest problem for CF is generally it seems more intimidating than it really is. I think after a bit of playing, you read the wall of text as it goes by, but you certainly do not see CF in text terms. You visualize things.

When I read those R.A. Salvatore books, I didn't see words, I saw the images he created. The same thing happens when I play CF. Which is a testament to the Imms who coded and wrote the areas for this game. The enviroments and depth that it offers are amazing. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading a really good book when I play CF. (And then I get Pk'd cause I forgot to pay attention to my surroundings )

I truly believe the biggest untapped source of players is tied into the market for people who chronically read fantasy novels. Because they have no problem with reading text, they actually enjoy it. They enjoy these types of environments. And most people wish they could wander around them or be like some of their favorite characters. CF offers that very thing.

Any person that reads a choose your own adventure book (Do they still even make those?) that got introduced to CF I can almost guarantee would be hooked, if they got over that maybe few hour intial learning the basics hump. Not all would, but the vast majority I'd say would try out playing a character, if they have the time. (And yes Cf does take a fair bit of time- but that's a different discussion)

If I knew a 15 year old liked playing fantasy games, I could give him a few classic fantasy books, and if he read them, I'd bet he'd be willing to give CF a shot.

Just a theory. Mass Marketing won't help. Targetted marketing would. Cf offers something that a lot of people want, but don't know exist. I KNOW I would have been mudding in 2000 or earlier if I knew it existed. I didn't, I'd never heard of MUDs. When I did learn, I've been playing ever since. I really think most people don't even know this gaming option exists.

Imagine R.A. Salvatore's book had inside the cover an advertsiement for CF (not saying this is realistic or anything). That would probably make a lot of the readers curious enough to try it out because these are the sort of things those people enjoy.

Of course, attracting players is one thing, keeping players is different. You don't want to lose people, so CF has to consistently offer something new. Race class combos/ cabals- there is cutomization- but after three years I want that next challenge which is not always there, and not always easy to create for yourself as a player.

If reading books dies out (arguably this is a real concern), MUD's will. Until then, there will always, I think at least, be a market for MUDs. Some will die. The best ones will endure. I'd like to think CF is one of those that will endure.

I've got to say, I'm pretty young, 19 years old, and even though there are so many games with better graphics, there is no game with visuals like CF. I will never be able to get into another game, just because of what CF has to offer each individual player.

I've read just about all of R.A. Salvatore's books, and with each one, I fel the same as you, I could see everything, see the action, hear the clang of steel of each sword fight, and the same is true in CF. I tend to think of it like one big book. If anything, our target should probably be avid fantasy readers. I know there are alot of people out there who read fantasy and love it, but have never even heard of CF, who might love it, as well.

And I think the reason every other game is boring, is because it's always the same, like you said. CF is a game full of so much variety, it's basically a different game with each character. Honestly, I play Star Wars Galaxies as well as CF, and I usually end up logging off for CF when I play, just because nothing will ever be the same as the kind of feeling I get here.

I think another thing is, you can always dream big in CF, I mean, Ravon did, Cabdru did. There's always a chance to be immortalized, I think appeals to a few of the players, and me a bit, I'll admit, but it's mostly the challenging and ever changing atmosphere.

As long as there are people going into computer science with interest in computer languages any anything to do with them, there will always be a chance to attract people to play MUDs. Computer science people and rpg stuff kinda go hand in hand. It's not a stereotype for no reason.

There's a reason I still play this game more than any other game, despite being halfway into the "newer" generation of gamer.

I can enjoy the newer games and still play CF for what those games, however nice, do not and cannot offer.

And there's also the random Legobelt, who's 13 or something. Could be an exception to the rule, but I think that shows you can attract SOME small fraction of the younger crowd, which is an investment.

I think the biggest issue is making the game known to them. The game is likely to but doesn't necessarily have to die off until someone pulls the plug, the potential is always there and the people who will enjoy it will always exist.

Start Age: 14
Current Age:29
Start Rig: 24k Modem/Hewlett-Packard P1/15inch CRT
Current Rig(s):i7 Laptop/Core2duo Laptop/i5 Laptop/Core2Duo Desktop
How I started: Lived in a college town in FL- Friends friend was playing and was older/ Was reading The Wheel of Time like Crack- said CF was fun as hell and come stomp the noobs.

n/t

nt