Conquer Club

You've just been promoted to Grand Overlord of Conquer Club. What would you do to reverse the declining numbers and help this site grow again?

Free cookies for everyone.
And depending on budget, advertise.

Fresh site redesign and enter the mobile market on ios and android. The mobile market are where the customers are these days.

Reality TV show and send DaGip to London in a chicken suit. I miss jiminski!

um.... pretty much has been covered in the great decline thread.... but appreciate your trying to put a more positive spin on it... *cough*...-Jésus noir

gimil wrote:Fresh site redesign and enter the mobile market on ios and android. The mobile market are where the customers are these days.

That pretty much sums it up. You can't have 2007 design in 2015 and you can't have badly working mobile site.

Also, I'd add a tutorial for new players which they would play the moment they register, with a bot of course, so they don't have to search for the bot games section.

And more achievements (like in popular games, in example "Complete tutorial", "Play 1 game with human opponent", "Lose game 5 times in a row", "Win 10 times in a row", "Have 25 forum posts" etc.)

dakky21 wrote:

gimil wrote:Fresh site redesign and enter the mobile market on ios and android. The mobile market are where the customers are these days.

That pretty much sums it up. You can't have 2007 design in 2015 and you can't have badly working mobile site.

Also, I'd add a tutorial for new players which they would play the moment they register, with a bot of course, so they don't have to search for the bot games section.

And more achievements (like in popular games, in example "Complete tutorial", "Play 1 game with human opponent", "Lose game 5 times in a row", "Win 10 times in a row", "Have 25 forum posts" etc.)

The medals already go a long way towards that end. So again, the infrastructure is there to port this over to mobile!

dakky21 wrote:

gimil wrote:Fresh site redesign and enter the mobile market on ios and android. The mobile market are where the customers are these days.

That pretty much sums it up. You can't have 2007 design in 2015 and you can't have badly working mobile site.

Also, I'd add a tutorial for new players which they would play the moment they register, with a bot of course, so they don't have to search for the bot games section.

And more achievements (like in popular games, in example "Complete tutorial", "Play 1 game with human opponent", "Lose game 5 times in a row", "Win 10 times in a row", "Have 25 forum posts" etc.)

And hand out cc credits for completing said tutorial (something like a 2-day or a week free premium). It's a proven business model.

consistancy.

Auto tourneys, there were just a dozen started, after none for a month. After a while people just stop looking for them.

macbone wrote:You've just been promoted to Grand Overlord of Conquer Club. What would you do to reverse the declining numbers and help this site grow again?

I don't think it'll ever grow again.
The original pot would have included a lot of old Risk players searching for an online variant i.e 30 - 40 years worth of Risk / strategy / board game fans.
I imagine the vast majority of these joined a few years ago and are still here or left.
I can't see where the next lot would come from.

xroads wrote:consistancy.

Auto tourneys, there were just a dozen started, after none for a month. After a while people just stop looking for them.

This raises the user interface point again. I've just found the auto-tournaments having been here for quite a few months. Its just not that intuitive.

Medals for inviting friends would be good advertising. Its already high up in the google results for RISK online, so no issues there.

fp'd I'm new, and I'd say that an age thing that I never looked for risk online before. There are lots of new players out there, but they dont know that they want to join this site.

Information... good collected and easy to find info ...

nippersean wrote:I don't think it'll ever grow again.
The original pot would have included a lot of old Risk players searching for an online variant i.e 30 - 40 years worth of Risk / strategy / board game fans.
I imagine the vast majority of these joined a few years ago and are still here or left.
I can't see where the next lot would come from.

You do have a point. Risk used to be one of the most popular boardgames out there. Now it's only listed nr 28 on Amazon and there is so much competition with videogames. Though according to what I've heard, there are still sufficient new visitors every month, priority is to retain those new recruits.

xroads wrote:consistancy.
Auto tourneys, there were just a dozen started, after none for a month. After a while people just stop looking for them.

Do you include the great war series in your comment or merely the non-great war auto-tournaments?

macbone wrote:You've just been promoted to Grand Overlord of Conquer Club. What would you do to reverse the declining numbers and help this site grow again?

Most CC's players like to play 24h-round games, however there is probably large population out there seeking speedgames. This probably includes many freemiums. I think freemiums should be allowed to play a max number of speedgames every month. This would revive speedgames and new recruits would be able to acquire the rapid satisfaction, while not completely deconstructing the advantage of premium(not limited # speedgames/month).

WingCmdr Ginkapo wrote:Its already high up in the google results for RISK online, so no issues there.

My my, CC must have made quite a bit of progress there. I looked into this a couple of months ago and CC wasn't as high on the google-ranking. Marketing is making progress.

waauw wrote:Most CC's players like to play 24h-round games, however there is probably large population out there seeking speedgames. This probably includes many freemiums. I think freemiums should be allowed to play a max number of speedgames every month. This would revive speedgames and new recruits would be able to acquire the rapid satisfaction, while not completely deconstructing the advantage of premium(not limited # speedgames/month).

Perhaps it's no longer the case, but free players could play up to four speed games a month at one time, only on Classic if I remember correctly. I assume it didn't work if that's no longer a feature.

I cannot play speed games. Or Polymorphic games.

nippersean wrote:

macbone wrote:You've just been promoted to Grand Overlord of Conquer Club. What would you do to reverse the declining numbers and help this site grow again?

I don't think it'll ever grow again.
The original pot would have included a lot of old Risk players searching for an online variant i.e 30 - 40 years worth of Risk / strategy / board game fans.
I imagine the vast majority of these joined a few years ago and are still here or left.
I can't see where the next lot would come from.

I kindly disagree. Conquer Club just isn't in sync with its market any more. Less people play desktop/browser based games than they used to and it hasn't stayed pace with our modern connected world. If you look at mobile gaming platforms Google Play and the App Store are packed with games of every type and niche. There is no reason why Conquer Club, if done properly, could find thousands of new members from these markets.

CC was around before the age of smart phones and tablets. The gaming demographic has moved from desktop to mobile. The new generation of gamers haven't found CC because they search for new games in their app stores, not search engines.

I hope its possible to have both ... cause i hate to play on phone/tablet and love my laptop:)
But yeah new redesign, clearly and easy to find rules/info and breath some life into the foundry...

On a positive note, I've been checking out the competition. Though competitors have seen a rapid rise in members, they are still all far inferior to CC in terms of active players. Seems like they've got the same problem as CC, retaining new recruits. Only one of them has about half the active users CC has, and all the rest has a mere 1/4th-1/6th.

Lord Arioch wrote:I hope its possible to have both ... cause i hate to play on phone/tablet and love my laptop:)
But yeah new redesign, clearly and easy to find rules/info and breath some life into the foundry...

It is absolutely possible to have both platforms to coexist comfortably.

A redesign would take a little work, but I don't think it is a behemoth job. CC's code base (from a design perspective) doesn't take advantage of any CCS3 which is packed full of functionality to make for a smoother UI.

waauw wrote:On a positive note, I've been checking out the competition. Though competitors have seen a rapid rise in members, they are still all far inferior to CC in terms of active players. Seems like they've got the same problem as CC, retaining new recruits. Only one of them has about half the active users CC has, and all the rest has a mere 1/4th-1/6th.

But if competition have membership on the up, and CC on the down. Who do you think is doing it right?

*****

Swell! So basiclly check out what people want ... and no listening to the greybeards mumbling about the golden ol days and so on ... I think CC has not concentrated its effort... not identified what is selling instead it has tried to keep everybody happy which usually means everybody gets pissed:) ...
I love easy, understandable information, rules, should be way easier to find all on the same place. I do hope Teegee gets on that!
When i joined i were a bit confused and just jumped into games ... propobly destroying some for people back then ... maybee a good solution should be for premium noobs to get a tutor ... not only for play but for guidance and information?
When u sign up u should instantly be contacted/redirected to society of cooks?

gimil wrote:

waauw wrote:On a positive note, I've been checking out the competition. Though competitors have seen a rapid rise in members, they are still all far inferior to CC in terms of active players. Seems like they've got the same problem as CC, retaining new recruits. Only one of them has about half the active users CC has, and all the rest has a mere 1/4th-1/6th.

But if competition have membership on the up, and CC on the down. Who do you think is doing it right?

I don't know whether they are really still on the rise. I know that a couple of them, I won't name any, have seen a rapid increase right after start-up. But at least one of them, which apparently gets praised a lot on the internet, seems to have stagnated for several years already.

Lord Arioch wrote:Swell! So basiclly check out what people want ... and no listening to the greybeards mumbling about the golden ol days and so on ... I think CC has not concentrated its effort... not identified what is selling instead it has tried to keep everybody happy which usually means everybody gets pissed:) ...

It's not about what people want, it's about what will increase the userbase. People are stupid. People don't know what they want or what is best for them.

iAmCaffeine wrote:

Lord Arioch wrote:Swell! So basiclly check out what people want ... and no listening to the greybeards mumbling about the golden ol days and so on ... I think CC has not concentrated its effort... not identified what is selling instead it has tried to keep everybody happy which usually means everybody gets pissed:) ...

It's not about what people want, it's about what will increase the userbase. People are stupid. People don't know what they want or what is best for them.

They do once options are listed in mass. It's spoils them into awareness of what they really want.