Kind of curious about this thread, of course largely hypothetical, and why not get it back on track after above derailment.
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Originally Posted by alhorro
It's not so easy to make a niche game widely popular.
Shrapnel marketing has always been surprising me. I can't understand why it was llama who'd made the server, but not the official devteam. Additionally it's quite easy even for a single lazy web-developer to make a user-friendly web-interface for finding games, diplomacy, tracking results, etc. After launching such services Shrapnel could buy some articles in popular gaming resources, launch ad and SMO campaigns.
However, in my opinion, it's still possible to make Dominions popular and profitable.
Find a venture investor.
Hire a good manager, some decent interface designers, as-coders and several PR/community managers.
Convert the game into a f2p browser flash game. Seriously. Flash is just enough to handle Dominions client-side. It's also about 50 times easier to make changes and improvements.
Make a killer-ui for everything. Easy-messaging and trade in one-click, auto-saving, history, statistics, gamefinding and subfinding tools, blogs/forums for every game, and much more. Translate the game into all major languages.
Keep tracking players' results with exp system. Allow unlocking some nations, pretender/ingame bonuses, general options with levelling, or alternative buying (this system is most efficient in mmo, proved many times). Bonus points limit is customizable for every game. Levelling gives you several random bonus options (like skills in HoMM, or cards in various CCGs) while purchasing allows getting any particular bonus you want instantly. Exp system also motivates for efficient games and subs, no staling.
Host special games regularly — megagames, interesting scenarios, mods, tournaments. Charge some money for participating.
Maintain massive ad and SMO campaigns. One banner with a hot chick and loud words on some popular entertainment site could bring more players, than all our puny attempts to convince friends to start playing.
Dominions have small, but very loyal and selective community. And we could be a base for a much bigger startup.
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It was important to quote all of that because this poster, alhorro, has a
very good grasp of how money is minted with a video game in the 21st century. Imagine for a moment this could actually be done, a whiz bang, super friendly web UI for Dom3, digital distro, and llamabeast on the payroll. An aside, thanks llama! I am gonna click your donate button after I post this, I really like how the OP phrased his contribution to the community. Have a few pay to play features, a little grind or two that can be avoided by a payment, even something simple like a fun avatar or unlocking Bogarus. Achievement badges, a player tracking system, it is amazing how simple database results displayed as a graphic can make people invested in a community, into a product.
Hah, I don't play games like that generally. Kingdom of Loathing is the limit of my experience, and I never paid for any content there. But it functioned along those line and must've had over a 100k users (a random guess) ... in fact here is a quote from
KoL at wikipedia:
Quote:
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Between 2006 and 2007, the game hosted a player base of approximately 140,000 regular users and 190,000 active accounts. It is also particularly notable for managing to be financially successful purely from donations and the purchase of virtual goods rather than from advertising or subscription fees like many online games.
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Pretty impressive I'd think. And as a game, KoL could be considered an extremely
niche game. But what does niche mean when we apply it to Dom3? It is my estimation that Dom3 is niche because it has priced itself into a niche. Stranger and less compelling gameplay has garnered much more mainstream success. And price of entry has a lot to do with that.
And while I don't pretend Dom3 will receive such treatment, I am at least happily imagining a modern UI, after just scripting a mid game Tien Chi army with 20+ commanders and 300 troops all arriving from seperate provinces and hoping to affect a communion, a modern UI that would even reduce the amount of clicking I just did by 10%. That and a neat little newbie icon by my name that I would hope to upgrade. Also a little personal hall of fame page with my best commanders and their kill counts.
But I digress. So much could be done, and the future of this industry is really at the intersection of brilliant gameplay designers like our friends at Illwinter, community development, and marketing/pricing models endorsed by alhorro.