Dominions 3: popularity rising?

[Cerlin]

Ive found that using Hotseat games to convert friends really works well. I was able to get both my brothers to play, also a couple friends and my girlfriend too. Starting them with the flashiest factions and helping them understand I have seen that it helped convert the most people. I still feel this game has a lot of appeal to people, even laymen (aka not big nerds.)

[moderation]

Which factions did you find to be to be the flashiest?

[Velusion]

DonCorazon said:
I've been on the Geek for a couple years and know people who log on and read it religiously such as one of my close friends who runs the Berkeley board game group. It is an amazing site - the amount of user created content is staggering and I think one of the best examples of the power of web communities.

I think MP Dom 3 comes closer than anything else in providing the epic fantasy war game experience dreamt of by many board gamers, going back to games like TSR's Divine Right, and Avalon Hill's Titan, leading up to FantasyFlight's a Game of Thrones and Days of Wonder's Battlelore. Even better, the PC format of Dom 3 takes care of all the mechanical pain of an actual boardgame (dice, looking up results on tables, etc.). Either an ad or comments from BGG users like myself (I believe word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, especially when it is from authentic / non-troll sources) would be useful in capturing this demographic to increase Dominions fan base.

As a heavy boardgamer, boardgamegeek member and poster (and someone who has been to every BGG.con) I second your comments.

[Cerlin]

Any nations with bigger more fantasy/strong units i found tend to work best. Like some of the more easier to use EA ones, Niefelhiem, vanhiem, or Formoria. The unit selections are impressive looking and so are the battle effects. Combat pretenders help too in my experience.

[Kristoffer O]

Lol

[Ragnarok-X]

PoxNora is like a warhammer/magic hybrid.

[moderation]

I guess that rules out Hobbit-- I mean Hoburg Militia.

[Annette]

Interesting discussion, and one we're following closely. Please allow me to throw in some facts:

Although we don’t advertise on MMORPG, we do advertise on most of the MMO game sites, to the tune of almost 3.5 million Dominions 3 ad impressions last year. We have contacted MMORPG, and just heard back from them this morning. As to BoardGameGeek, we are currently working on an advertising campaign through them. It started as a campaign for Digital Eel’s upcoming board game, Eat Electric Death!, but we are now adding Dominions 3 into the mix. We will see what happens.

We would love to advertise on Penny Arcade, but they just want way too much money. The ads would not even come close to paying for themselves.

Of course, this is terrible time for advertising. The US economy is stressed to the max, and, even in the best of times, ad banners don’t convert well to actual sales. In poor economic times, they perform even less -so we spend a lot of money (yes people still click on the ads, they just don’t buy!)that doesn’t equate to sales.

Several here have mentioned word of mouth advertising, and this is the best way to get actual sales. One well-placed comment in a forum (with a link) will almost always convert to more sales than a $1000 ad.

One last thing. We don’t know how quantcast gets their information either, but their numbers are definitely incorrect. The size of these forums is understated, as is our entire site. The demographics are off also.

Thanks for your suggestions and for supporting the game. Keep 'em coming!

[DonCorazon]

Well I put my money where my mouth is and started a thread on Dominons on BGG under the Age of Conan Boardgame, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/27848
This board game will be attracting a lot of attention as it is not yet released but is on a lot of Most Anticipated game lists.

Hopefully some folks will see that thread and be lured into checking out the game. I am on a Dom 3 crusade (er, mission) to generate at least one sale, since my friends are too lazy / intimidated to pick it up (actually they are probably just not as much of a geek as I am)

[Maltrease]

I wonder if a flash game could be created that captured enough of the Dominions spirit to convince people to download the demo?

Flash game are amazingly unique in their ability to reach an incredible large audience. They are actually what took me away from Dominions... first for writing my own flash games.

Asteroids Revenge
and
Sola Rola

Then I/we actually formed a company FlashGameLicense.com to broker games for other developers making them 2-3X more money for their work.

A recent game we brokered has been played 4.5M times in the last two months. Two million plays were on the 'sponsors' website. The other 2.5M plays have brought back 500K unique visitors (20% click through ratio) to Kongregate.com.

The game is Protector

If you could take some aspect of Dominions to create a compelling flash game experience you could reach a TREMENDOUS audience. I'm certain a good percentage of them would turn into the typical rabid fan.