Productive Discussion on Population

[Xog]

Over the past few years we've seen a steady and powerful decline in the population of this game, not just Trench Wars. Every zone has been hit hard. In this thread I'd like to theorize and discuss the theories about why you think the population has been going down. There can be many factors here and I'd like you to take your time assessing and brainstorming about this.

Please keep in mind that this thread is not for ideas about how to increase the population - what we want to figure out is every possible reason as to why people have been fleeing from the servers.

Important question of the thread:

But for those who started in this crucial period, how did you find Subspace, and why did you stay playing it? (Year 2001-2004)

Answers:

1) Xog: I first played this game in 1999 on the name "SuperFighter" but it really must haven't been very long at all, maybe 3 or 4 months. I came back in late 2001 or early 2002 on the name Murlin and discovered Trench Wars. I came back to the game because I found out a friend of mine in 7th grade (i think?) played as well. He played in another zone that I don't even remember, and I wound up losing contact with the friend and never spoke to him again. The only name I can sort of remember him using when I was at his house was Liger Something, and Aero something. No idea what zone he played in but I'm led to believe it was Extreme Games. Anyways, I kept playing Trench Wars in hopes of finding him again but I got pretty involved with the Lasertag arena with the name Xog. We had our own little community and I still keep in touch with some of the older members (hi setboy, nike g u r l 637, La-La 56, MeL, megaman.exe, fadark, picano, funkmastaD, nemis, noc-, etc.). I stopped playing for about 4-5 months after the server move. I had over 20,000 kills in that arena and it was erased! I came back in late 2003 or early 2004 and got involved with TWD, ever since then I've kinda been hooked. I think it was the friends I made in the lasertag arena that really kept me playing from around 2002 onward. We had such a blast. We played together every day for about a year straight in that arena. You can type ?sheep in the arena and see we left a mark with our squad Empyreal


-Edit-
General collaboration of responses so far:
1) Over the past several years there have been countless other games the players here have decided to choose over this one.

2) The graphics are old and outdated. The advances in technology in this day and age have left Continuum in the dust. [as compared to "behind" in 1999/2000] [referring to 1]

3) Constant player harassment could discourage some players to stop playing. Such behavior is ultimately a factor in real life and not just the game - in fact some players may be harassed outside the game and come to here to get away from it, only to be harassed even more. [see 6]

4) The game was most popular between 1999-2004 (keep in mind that's 11 years - 6 years ago) and mainly grabbed the attention of people in their teens. However since then we have all grown over the years and more important things in life have taken over such as family, life tragedies, jobs, school and careers.

5) Learning curve is too high, lack of tutorial, nobody to show the new players what to do, how things work and what the game's all about [without them asking]

6) The people that will never grow up and amount to anything plague the game and discourage newbies from starting. [vague]

7) Way too much staff emphasis on all the wrong things (More stupid events/maps, stupid rules [racism, teamkilling, etc]) [vague]

8) Not enough emphasis on more productive things (TWL Offseasons, pubs, marketing, etc) [some more discussion could be given on this]

9) Server instability. Its an old game, but we don't have to stay ancient. Swallow your pride and upgrade to ASSS already. If you don't want to do all the work, contract some of it out to your player base. I don't know shit about coding, but there is plenty of technically savvy people in TW that could work to fix this zone.

10) Not enough squad activity [some more discussion could be given on this]

11) Lack of motivation [vague, what is making you lack motivation?]

12) Lack of updated features to the game itself

[Xog]

To get the obvious theories out of the way:

1) Over the past several years there have been countless other games the players here have decided to prefer rather than this one.

2) The graphics are old and outdated. The advances in technology in this day and age have left Continuum in the dust.

3) Constant player harassment could discourage some players to stop playing. Such behavior is ultimately a factor in real life and not just the game - in fact some players may be harassed outside the game and come to here to get away from it, only to be harassed even more.

4) The game was most popular between 1999-2004 (keep in mind that's 11 years - 6 years ago) and mainly grabbed the attention of people in their teens. However since then we have all grown over the years and more important things in life have taken over such as family, life tragedies, jobs, school and careers.

[Dutch_]

The old players are slowly stopping, because they get older. And there arent any new players. Noone starts playing this game. Not with all these other online games. Playstation 3 online, xbox 360 online, wow, diablo, starcraft, cs, battlefield, call of duty.

Continuum is an old Arcade like game. The learning curve is way too high, and the controls and commands make it too difficult. Youngsters these days are spoiled with all these easy online games where "everyone is a winner". Games like halo 3 or battlefield give points when u kill someone, they dont even show ure kill/death ratio, unless u really look for it.

[Jones]

time

[Lizard Fuel]

1) The people who grew up playing this game have grown up and gotten real lives.
2) The people that will never grow up and amount to anything plague the game and discourage newbies from starting.
3) Way too much staff emphasis on all the wrong things (More stupid events/maps, stupid rules [racism, teamkilling, etc])
4) Not enough emphasis on more productive things (TWL Offseasons, pubs, marketing, etc)
5) There needs to be a total reforming of staff, top to bottom. The one we have now obviously isn't working.
6) Lack of a usable introduction into the game, and transition from pub to TWD to TWL. (Not enough squads run by Burnt)
7) Server instability. Its an old game, but we don't have to stay ancient. Swallow your pride and upgrade to ASSS already. If you don't want to do all the work, contract some of it out to your player base. I don't know shit about coding, but there is plenty of technically savvy people in TW that could work to fix this zone. Let us help ourselves, I for one don't need somebody like lilwade or charis, who were both in diapers when I started playing this, telling me whats best for this game.

[Arobas+]

1) The people who grew up playing this game have grown up and gotten real lives.
2) The people that will never grow up and amount to anything plague the game and discourage newbies from starting.
3) Way too much staff emphasis on all the wrong things (More stupid events/maps, stupid rules [racism, teamkilling, etc])
4) Not enough emphasis on more productive things (TWL Offseasons, pubs, marketing, etc)
5) There needs to be a total reforming of staff, top to bottom. The one we have now obviously isn't working.
6) Lack of a usable introduction into the game, and transition from pub to TWD to TWL. (Not enough squads run by Burnt)
7) Server instability. Its an old game, but we don't have to stay ancient. Swallow your pride and upgrade to ASSS already..

All true

[Thorkell]

1) The people who grew up playing this game have grown up and gotten real lives.
2) The people that will never grow up and amount to anything plague the game and discourage newbies from starting.
3) Way too much staff emphasis on all the wrong things (More stupid events/maps, stupid rules [racism, teamkilling, etc])
4) Not enough emphasis on more productive things (TWL Offseasons, pubs, marketing, etc)
5) There needs to be a total reforming of staff, top to bottom. The one we have now obviously isn't working.
6) Lack of a usable introduction into the game, and transition from pub to TWD to TWL. (Not enough squads run by Burnt)
7) Server instability. Its an old game, but we don't have to stay ancient. Swallow your pride and upgrade to ASSS already. If you don't want to do all the work, contract some of it out to your player base. I don't know shit about coding, but there is plenty of technically savvy people in TW that could work to fix this zone. Let us help ourselves, I for one don't need somebody like lilwade or charis, who were both in diapers when I started playing this, telling me whats best for this game.

1. Agreed

2. Yes and No. I myself have grown up and own two businesses and try to help out any new players any chance I get. I do see your point though. There are a lot of "grown" people that still think that swear words and the word Newb is the cool thing to say.

3. Yes and No again. I myself am not an even person but people like them. Nothing wrong with people who are not tech savy running events. I myself think the rules are fine but are to hard to enforce. I will never let any of my kids play this game due to the racism and language. Don't get me wrong, the occasional bad joke is not a big deal but some people are flat our racist.

4. Agreed

5. Mostly agreed. I think there is some good staff still but other staff that was good has just lost interest.

6. Agreed again. To hard to learn the game without someone to help you and there are few people that are willing to help. Bring back the ZH and let the answer questions and maybe run squads that help new players learn what squads are about.

7. Agreed 1 million percent. I quit playing this game for a couple years mainly due to the fact that I could not stand the lag issues.

Other thoughts:

Pub i'm sure is fun and all but Squads are what really make this game. Maybe make more for squads to do, not sure what but maybe just change some maps around like a TWDD with walls and stuff to hide behind or a TWDD/TWJD that is a race instead of an elimination.

The more squads the better. Maybe allow people to double squad and if the game somehow grows and there are 100 squads again then take that ability away.

I know we all love the trees in space. But to someone new to the game it just looks tacky. Get rid of the trees.

[Crescent Seal]

lack of motivation....atleast for me, i started in 2008 and dded tons to get better...even tho im captaining a squad right now...i have no motivation at all to play the game anymore...dont even care if i go negative in dds or anything, rather troll the forums and sign onto tw to talk to a couple of friends

[kthx]

I have said this plenty of times and I will say it one more time. Instead of spending 10 dollars to advertise here and 10 dollars to advertise there on sites and other crap where we don't hit the target audience for people who would be ok to play this game, save up the money and do a huge one month advertisement orgy fest.

Advertise on websites where people go to play old games or don't mind playing games with old graphics or think that old graphics are nostalgic.

I can't tell you how many comments I have seen on armorgames and kongregate that people enjoy the old 8bit graphics on the flash games whenever people use them.

SO all you have to do is target people from the golden age of gaming in your advertisements, showing a picture of a cool 3d HD ship flying isn't going to get the right people to play because its false advertisement.

---

1. Heres what you do, zone messages periodically throughout the day telling people were saving up for a huge marketing campaign where we advertise HARD for a month. Ask for donations and ask people to create a banner that explains to our target audience what TW is really about. A small community, free game, old graphics, great leagues, amazingly easy to use chat function etc etc etc you know the stuff that keeps us all playing.

2. Setup an advertisement site that clearly outlines where we are going to advertise to and that 100% of the donated money is going to go towards this advertisement campaign.

3. Try to strike bargains with websites like www.armorgames.com, www.kongregate.com (which is reallly game friendly), and websites like www.romnation.com, basically any website that hosts games and has games for download from the NES/Sega/SNES days where people cared more about the game than the graphics. Offer something like a discount on advertising on their site, or having our game listed as their "special game of the month" in return for having a banner and link for their website mixed into our twsites banner. See if we can't get it a bit cheaper if we do this.

----

So basically the idea is really simple, advertise on websites where people don't play games for amazing graphics, advertise to people who want to play a game with a great community over dealing with doing automated quests given from a NPC 24/7.

On top of this maybe if anyone here runs their own IT firm or works in Management at an IT company you could even offer a job reference to people who are willing to help us write code for our game, they would get some experience and get a job reference from a credible IT firm or manager of one.

Come uo

[kthx]

I mean shit if you have to make us of our games creator when talking to websites about advertisement, tell them this was one of Priitk's pet projects and tell them the history of the game and how he cracked the code and what not. Explain that he went on to code shit like Kazaa and was someone high up in the creation of Skype. Im certain his name still holds some weight and he did create this game technically after all.

[Xog]

Kthx that's what we were planning on doing. L.C. has already agreed to take charge and be responsible for the donation fund and PoLiX also agreed that he would send biller messages once in a blue to do assist advertisement funds. In fact I've already made a post about that kind of advertising however it's nowhere near cheap at all and is extremely pricey. We're still in the works with getting prices together and we're still brainstorming on which sites would be best to fit our needs. If you'd like to discuss that I ask that you send it in a private message or make/find another thread for it.

Thanks for the post Kthx, we've discussed most of this in game already and would like to make a note right here and say that this thread is not about ideas for advertising or ideas on how to increase population. The only purpose for this thread is to come up with any type of idea about why the population is declining because it's not one simple answer. I'd like to hear any type of factor anybody here has.

[Turban]

ANSWER: there's STILL no fucking tutorial arena. and it's a false claim that "no new players joining the game"... several new players join this game, rather this zone, on a daily basis. the problem is that they simply don't stay here long enough (from minutes to hours to days).

reason? no good tutorial arena to teach them how this zone works and why it's so awesome (?!). it's not the stupid racism policy we have, it's the tutorial arena!

sleep. why did i wake up (after 10mins of sleep, rawr. euro online at 6am) to reply anyways.

ps: not sure if that made any sense, but whatever. :wub:

[Xog]

If you read my entire first post, you could have summed that whole post into:

"No tutorial arena"

[Epinephrine]

We need to bring back Philbo! or was that Filbo... either way.

[Fit of Rage]

I have said this plenty of times and I will say it one more time. Instead of spending 10 dollars to advertise here and 10 dollars to advertise there on sites and other crap where we don't hit the target audience for people who would be ok to play this game, save up the money and do a huge one month advertisement orgy fest.

Advertise on websites where people go to play old games or don't mind playing games with old graphics or think that old graphics are nostalgic.

I can't tell you how many comments I have seen on armorgames and kongregate that people enjoy the old 8bit graphics on the flash games whenever people use them.

SO all you have to do is target people from the golden age of gaming in your advertisements, showing a picture of a cool 3d HD ship flying isn't going to get the right people to play because its false advertisement.

---

1. Heres what you do, zone messages periodically throughout the day telling people were saving up for a huge marketing campaign where we advertise HARD for a month. Ask for donations and ask people to create a banner that explains to our target audience what TW is really about. A small community, free game, old graphics, great leagues, amazingly easy to use chat function etc etc etc you know the stuff that keeps us all playing.

2. Setup an advertisement site that clearly outlines where we are going to advertise to and that 100% of the donated money is going to go towards this advertisement campaign.

3. Try to strike bargains with websites like www.armorgames.com, www.kongregate.com (which is reallly game friendly), and websites like www.romnation.com, basically any website that hosts games and has games for download from the NES/Sega/SNES days where people cared more about the game than the graphics. Offer something like a discount on advertising on their site, or having our game listed as their "special game of the month" in return for having a banner and link for their website mixed into our twsites banner. See if we can't get it a bit cheaper if we do this.

----

So basically the idea is really simple, advertise on websites where people don't play games for amazing graphics, advertise to people who want to play a game with a great community over dealing with doing automated quests given from a NPC 24/7.

On top of this maybe if anyone here runs their own IT firm or works in Management at an IT company you could even offer a job reference to people who are willing to help us write code for our game, they would get some experience and get a job reference from a credible IT firm or manager of one.

Come uo

This is all great stuff, well written. If the campaign is structured in this way, I'll probably donate to it.