What can we do to make this game more popular?

A few more points:
Word of mouth taken further, some of you make videos about CH, be it youtube or other platforms, that sort of exposure has potential.
Dunno about the potential of the steam community hub, does content there get the attention of new players?
We can encourage new players in the lobby to get the purchasable content, everyone who experienced it can recommend the deal with peace of conscience.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/stats/293260/achievements

If you're wondering about player retention this is interesting to look at...

72% of people who start this game complete the tutorial (Save Ommlet)

• Not sure what to think of this. It's hard for me to look at the tutorial with fresh eyes but I remember the tactics being incredibly easy. What was a hurdle was the incredible amounts of popups/tooltips/things to learn.

13.8% of people who play this game beat Melvelous-- which is not even halfway through the game (level 8)

• Of course people will quit playing naturally, but does the dramatic drop off also have something to do with learning curve?

Only 3% of people complete campaign

• Only 10% drop-off between those who beat Melvelous and those who go all the way. Compare this to the drop-off between the tutorial and Melvelous.

Only 4.1% of people get their MP rating to at least 500 but 13.5% of people win at least one MP game

• Only 9% drop off between those who win one MP game and those who win the 3 or 4 necessary to get to 500. Again, compare this to the drop-off between the tutorial and Melvelous.

Yea there's definitely a mix... I think the confusion may have something to do with how you interpret "we". I'm one of those annoying people who uses "we" when talking about my favorite sports team. "We" is the incorrect term technically-- but the use of "we" is a compliment and a showing of connection with the game/sports team as a whole. And ideally, don't you want your fanbase to use "we" instead of "us and them"?

 

This is a free game, so lots of people will be willing to take a chance on it, then quickly realize it's not the game they were looking for. I think 72% completion of tutorial may even be higher than average for free games.

Level 7/8 is when you need to actually pay attention to what your opponents are playing and adjust your own builds in response. Note that Melvelous, Stafford, and Trogs have been nerfed multiple times each since beta.

 

Yea that part of the learning curve is tough. This is also the part where you have to constantly change your equipment which I know is a pain for many of the friends I tried to introduce to the game.

 

To be honest I was expecting slightly higher numbers. Now I am afraid that these are inaccurate and the reality is even more grim. If I am not mistaken then noticeable group of active players from pre-Steam era have decided to link their game's accounts to Steam ones, therefore being counted above as people who (probably) completed the tutorial or beat Malvelous. At the same time of players who played and did not like CH before its release on Steam probably did not re-try game on Steam, therefore are not counted in calculations.

 

I'm sure there's also lots of players who beat the campaign here and never transferred to Steam (some may not have even played since the Steam release), and I'm sure most Kongregate players haven't transferred to Steam either.

From a business standpoint, you don't want these numbers to be too high, because that would mean that many people who would like the game aren't hearing about it. The more important numbers are how many players have beaten the expansions (0.6% and 0.7%), since that's the best measure we have of who is giving money to the game.

 

Social media could be handled a lot better. Last Facebook post was 18th November, last tweet (not a retweet) 20th December. No Instagram, which is as simple as photos of what the devs are doing on any given day, it's weird but people are always interested in other people's workplaces. There are unanswered questions on the Facebook page.

I handle two commercial social media accounts (one for charity, one for beer money) and combined, across four platforms, they take about an hour a day to manage. It's just a matter of scheduling it into daily tasks, instead of treating it as an afterthought.

 

Good point. If social media is used, it should be kept up to date. I've never used twitter, and deleted my facebook account years ago, but I think having a bad or badly outdated page would give a worse impression than having none at all.

 

I don't use social media to find games, nor do I use social media to interact with the communities of the games I already play, thus I cannot comment on its potential. However, I can concur that if you're going to have one it needs to be vibrant and active, as I have formed premature negative opinions of institutions at large based on my localized experience with a poor social media page on multiple occasions.

 

Current generation of gamers have too many hand-holding games, and this is like a shock for them when they are suddenly given chance to think for themselves for once in their life...what do I do??

Maybe it could be used as a nice tool to encourage this for kids? I dunno. But hope that this game can be used in this way to improve future gamers mindsets. To really explore options not just hack-and-slash or steal a car and shoot everyone. And to be a unselfish co-op teammate.

I've learnt some things about myself from this game, good and bad, and I genuinely feel like a better person for it.

 

I think the foremost thing is to support the devs with $, which will naturally lead to much needed additional contents.

Equally important is of course talking about it. I would suggest dropping a line about this game in other popular card games in the forums. Also be sure to leave positive reviews especially on Steam.

I love this game and I want this game to grow.

 

The problem as I see it is, Jon and Flax are too busy to update it, which also means they'd be too busy to keep anyone else apprised of content development and what details are fine to be shared.
It's likely not as simple as "oh, they should put more time into it," or "oh, they should get a volunteer to manage it".

 

My point exactly, they got their workload and the "product" is already top notch. Back to the mission outlined by the threat title, how can we contribute to making this fine game known to more people?

 

It's worked very well for the wiki, so it's a possibility. Any long-term player with the desire the skills might volunteer to @Jon, and see how it goes.

We could form various cults targeting different demographic groups (goths, yuppies. etc.), with their prime similarity being at least x hours a week playing cardhunter. The higher the rank, the less onerous the duties assigned. An alien abduction cult would give the widest exposure, but I' m unsure how to go about abducting aliens.

 

I am coming to the conclusion that this thread never had any chance to help those interested in effectively promoting CH.

 

I think we pretty much topped out with "invite your friends, mention on forums you're a member of, and post YouTube videos." If a player/fan wants to help with Facebook, I think that would pretty much cover the bases.
Spam is a definite DON'T, and I can't think of anything else that isn't just fluff.
If you can think of anything viable that hasn't been mentioned, ignore the fluff and post up.

 

I would like us to stay open for the possibilites of ideas.

Steam again, i dont play by it, only visit the hub from time to time. It seems like a good idea to keep an eye out for negative buzz in the discussion section there. I noticed a minor rant going on about campaign difficulty. I dont recommend ganging up on anyone complaining, just one fast and levelheaded response to ease frustated players back into retrying.

EDIT: I sat down and and responded carefully, only to trigger reinforced rejection. Well, i didn't claim it was easy. Hes right about one thing, "I just can't stand my lil baby to be dissed".

 

Editing the wiki doesn't require in-depth dev interaction. If you just want what is effectively a very engaged moderator but on a different platform, that's easy enough.
If you want an actual community manager/representative of Blue Manchu doing content updates, promotions, announcements, etc on behalf of BM via the different social media platforms, that's a lot more involving on BM [and, well, the volunteer(s) of course].

 

Steam is the best place to actually attract people, but reviews don't seem to be enough. So, how about the following:

- Give people a way to get pizza directly to the Store page of Card Hunter. You wonder why? There's a reason.
- When sales happen, steam WILL see that. And WILL show the promotions on their end. And people get attracted to promotions. Speaking of, having sales every now and then won't hurt.

Then the more troubling part - keeping people in. So far the mechanics of the game seem to be convoluted, every now and then we have a person on chat asking about something campaign/selling things/multiplayer. And every time it's either a hand-made reply or a copied link to Forums' FAQ. I also noticed that the chat engine is basically a mIRC-like - with all the commands like /me. So that would allow for a bot to exist. Upon a command, say something like "/faq", bot would automatically post a link to the FAQ with an explanation to what the link is.

Hell, I'd even say that having a Video Guide in a visible place could be a helpful thing. Like, from start to finish, in a few parts, etc. If I had a clear accent and some free time, I could handle that.

I'd put the "forums" bar out of options, and just make that a separate button in-game, to make it more easily available from the game.

I think I have an idea about modifying forums a bit to make it a bit more friendly place, but I need some time to form it all.

 

Funny story, all our bundles have been on sale since Steam launch >_>