Cantr II Facebook Application

[Cwalen]

*nods* I thought 2000 active daily players was a reach. Still in pre GFC terms 1000 active daily players is 12 K a year, unless the market for page hits has totally gone to hell, that is still a lot more than Cantr realizes for it's traffic.

1014 players? I would need statics for average player refreshes for a day, information on the demographics, and a lot more information on the current state of the market before I can say anything that can be trusted, 395 English players? White middle class (70K a year) USA page hits used to be premium demographic. (non usa, non premium hits were savagely devalued) May be cantr is getting every dollar it is worth in the current market.

I'ld like to point out again that nothing that I am saying is anything that someone else who took the time to look couldn't do better with.

"good"players, are obviously a premium commodity, I fear FB exposure will being few of them, Staff members, especially those who can get off their arse and make suggestions let alone bringing something to the party that is worth something are rarer again.

I am biased, but slow organic growth seems like the surest path. I believe some people vote, when I looked for cantr again recently I looked at the bottom of the list first and I found it at position 200. (out of 200) I am new (again) I am relying on the community to give me the information as to, is this worth the the time an effort to investigate, let alone implement.

So far I am disinclined to waste a weekend, let alone make any other effort.

[Andu]

From my reading at that time, there was a chance for about $.5 per player per month for advertising.

If getting more money to Cantr from playing throgh FB, I'll do it.

[Joshuamonkey]

So far I am disinclined to waste a weekend, let alone make any other effort.

All right, then you don't need to do it. But I still think it's a good idea.
I haven't looked into it enough myself; it's not the first thing on my list to do.

[Doug R.]

@ Cwalen - Everything you said scares the hell out of me. There is no way we could cope. Being one of those retards that occasionally finds simple pleasure in watching numbers increase, I can attest that even those companies have a hard time coping, and they're flush with cash and paid programmers. We'd need to acquire venture capital to hire a paid staff before we could start a project like this.

[Cwalen]

I'll keep looking into FB integration, that's definitely a viable step forward. Didn't have a great day for thinking yesterday, but the one thing that came up as a temporary fix was putting a FB "like" button on Cantr's main page. I've seen that embedded in apps elsewhere and it would allow people to easily do some of the spreading of awareness without causing any real problems. Possibly in conjunction with the FB page for Cantr which seems to only have 40 members.

I'll go hunting for more details now.

The researching into advertising revenue? I don't have the company infrastructure around me at the moment, or access to the full picture, that could make any inquiries look professional enough to get a good response. It also seems to me in light of what I read here that we are already doing a fairly good job of monaterising the traffic. As Joshuamonkey says not the first thing on a list of things to do.

@ Doug, I am scared too, the two biggest issues are surviving the increase in traffic without going bankrupt, and the social disruption of any new wave of players.

Given how different Cantr is to other games out there, even if we do get a surge in players (lets face it we can build the link easily enough but just building it wont make people come, or stay once they arrived) I would anticipate that a lot would arrive, look around, get confused, and drop out in a few minutes. Just about 0 value economically, and a pain in the ass for our current player base and the PD.

At the moment to find and start playing Cantr takes some effort, one of the thing that drives FB games is that within seconds you can be embedded in a bright colorful tutorial that can get you hooked on the game, with lots to do for the first hour or so, and novelty for at least a day or two. Great for getting people involved. In the same time in Cantr, you might get to speak to three people per char.

Not knowing a single word of polish, I wont assume anything about that sector of our player base, but just for the English speakers we could easily get 500 new players very quickly, the real trick is keeping 20 of them.

A newby island, possibly populated with some of our current playerbase as guides, and some way of further guiding people into what is is to play Cantr might be a good intermediate step, with application to the PD after they have played in the sand box for long enough to be considered a viable player. Our server rental seems steady, I don't know if that is a result of a steady utilization or some sort of fixed price deal, and I am still prepared to stump up $500 so that the traffic doesn't swamp us.

[Joshuamonkey]

Our server rental seems steady, I don't know if that is a result of a steady utilization or some sort of fixed price deal, and I am still prepared to stump up $500 so that the traffic doesn't swamp us.

It's a monthly payment, and it should be able to handle increased traffic.

[Cwalen]

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/ref ... gins/like/

looks like the like button is even easier than I thought.

Good news about the hosting, I figured 100 a month was more than we would be currently using.

[Joshuamonkey]

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/ref ... gins/like/

looks like the like button is even easier than I thought.

Good idea. I'll try to find a place we could put it on the main page.

[Andu]

Just so you know, the bigger FB Cantr group have over 120 members.

[Cwalen]

Thank you Andu, the only results I get for a search of "cantr" are a group with 12,34, or 40 cantr II gives me a group with 74 or 185.

120 is new to me, and I joined and invited people to the 40 group. (3 new players?)

Perhaps some effort to consolidate these groups into one would be worthwhile?

If the community can give me a go ahead I would like to contact the group leaders for all of them and suggest broadcasting messages to all the members of the individual groups suggesting that we A) consolidate into one group and B) shut down the other groups.

My preference would be a group called Cantr, simple, easy and natural to search for if someone looks.

Combined with the possible inclusion of a "like" button on the Cantr II front page we might be able to focus our recruitment and awareness efforts in one place.

I believe this is important, as the focus would allow more activity in one place, that people (like I was) would not be confused by joining the wrong group, and we can get the FB ball rolling without the effort of providing full integration and spacing out the effect of it over time so we are more able to cope with it.

[Joshuamonkey]

Perhaps some effort to consolidate these groups into one would be worthwhile?

People like me just join the different groups. It's not like they're all different people, though I see your point.

[Cwalen]

The organic growth of FB groups supporting Cantr is wonderful, and I am so glad to have pointed out to me that the group that used to have 36? members before I joined and recruited is not the prime group.

Putting on my corporate hat and as you acknowledge, we have split potential support 4 to 6 ways, and not presented as vibrant and welcoming a front as is possible to the outside world. (anything anyone finds holy it does not become a forum for ranting about others perceived weaknesses)

I am a Cantr devotee, loved it last time I played, loving it again now. If I did the maths I could work out the difference in real years between the 1500's when I first played and the world now. Hell if my lifestyle wasn't so wierd I could just count on my fingers,

Not blind to the fact that our player base has been steadily falling since before I first played, pathetically eager to find ways to reverse this trend. When I first got online, there were tens of thousands of people who were potential players, (and Cantr didn't yet exist) we connected on 2400 baud modems, these days, the fact that I can barely get 200 kb/s marks me. The potential player base has expanded to just about 75% of the world population.

Zinga games appeal to just about everyone, I am one, If I could take my annual pay and divide it into the hours that I have spent playing different mindless games I could afford to fund a marketing campaign that could hold the tide. (but none held my attention for long, and I have never gone back to any of them)

Personally, without good evidence, I believe that the path forward, resource scarcity, RP interaction, revenue, new people interested and prepared to commit to the sacrifice of being staff members, lays with finding the social networks of the people that I believe can play Cantr. The RD can help with this but new players are the holy grail.

Call me foolish, I often do. Dumb-asses don't play Cantr for long. You have to have patience to last your first week, you need social skills to make it anywhere, we are looking for the select few, magnified by the Internet to be many. I believe social networking will bring much more than any amount of advertising we could afford could. FB integration might help, focusing our attention to the other possibilities within FB can let us exploit this potential in a more gentle way.

Edit, some of the FB groups when searched for cantr and cantr II have a collision in the name space.

[Andu]

Sorry, completly outdated facts, I meant the 185 member group...

[Joshuamonkey]

Having an advertisement on Facebook has been thought about for a while. With Facebook, you can choose to show the advertisements to those who list certain interests on their accounts. We already have an advertisement and I set one up; money's the problem in terms of the advertisement. Google brings in lots of players though.

185 member group was created by Jos, so I'd say it's the most official. We can't really stop other people from making their own groups (one I saw was for another language), and it seems that people generally join both.
Cantr has an automatically created fan page that has information taken from Wikipedia. I tried to officially claim the page some time ago, but Facebook didn't respond.

Cwalen, do you want to be a Marketing Specialist (PR)?
The only Marketing Specialist we have now is Cdls, and he's the Players Department Chair.

[Doug R.]

Dumb-asses don't play Cantr for long.

If only you knew the sad, sordid truth.