Where Players Heard About Armageddon -- 2012 Edition

[Nyr]

I figured some of these numbers might be of interest.

Out of 1631 new accounts:

268 (16.4%) heard about us through TMC
223 (13.7%) heard about us through a friend or family or a current player or word of mouth or even a flyer
135 (8.3%) heard about us through TMS

Some other numbers:

152 heard about us by searching for stuff on Google (regardless of what they were looking for there)
78 people found us (in general) on some forum or other
29 people found us because of you dwarf fortress crazies on the Bay12 forums
At least 25 found it using an iPhone or other mobile mud client
21 found us in reddit
8 found us from a comment on a slashdot article back in February of last year
6 found it because they are specifically interested in roleplay
5 found it because they are specifically interested in permadeath
1 found it because they are specifically interested in "depth" muds
6 specifically came because they heard about us on TV Tropes
3 found us through an article in Gamesradar?
3 were reading about Dune and found us
2 heard about us through Facebook
2 heard about us through an IRC channel discussion
3 thought we should copulate with ourselves (whether in general or because we asked this question--I'm unsure)
At least one player found us while smoking weed with their buddy
One heard about us from the voices in their head
One heard about us in a comment on a rockpapershotgun article about rainy day games
One used (stole?) their girlfriend's phone and used pocketmud to find it.  (it's technically part of the entry listing use of the iPhone apps)
One had their college roommate tell them about this in 2006 and then they ran into the guy again back in April.  (I assume whomever it was immediately said "so, have you tried Arm yet?")
One was taking a class on electronic literature and was given a link by their professor to MUDConnector; they then found our game.  (AWESOME PROFESSOR.)
One created an account as research for a social media class.

Overall, about 40% of new players (at the bare minimum) come here solely because of you and your actions, whether it be telling a friend or just by voting.

[Nyr]

Year over year, this is a 23.1% increase in new player traffic compared to 2011.  However, 2011 was low overall (the lowest in the last 4 years that we have this data), with 2010 as our highest year.

New account stats, year over year (no data is readily available to grep from 2008 and prior):

2009 -- 1481
2010 -- 1865
2011 -- 1325
2012 -- 1631

I'm still digging through the 2010 data to account for the crazy high values for new players.

[Barzalene]

Did I not read carefully, or did "your Mom" stop recommending us? Last time "Your Mom" had a presence if I recall correctly.

[Nyr]

Did I not read carefully, or did "your Mom" stop recommending us? Last time "Your Mom" had a presence if I recall correctly.

Heh.  Forgot to include that.  Yes, "your mom" was apparently a good referral to at least 3 players.

[Malken]

I figured some of these numbers might be of interest.
268 (16.4%) heard about us through TMC

This surprises me, I always thought that TMS was the main source of newbies, and that's probably why I never bothered making an account for TMC or vote there, but seeing these numbers, I will go and make an account right away.

[bcw81]

DOH... Wrong thread.

[Nyr]

That trend follows year over year; we seem to always get more people from TMC.

Something to take away from that:  we should aim to get more voting in TMC (this means we need people to make accounts there though).  We should also push for votes on TMS.

Let's look at TMS first since it's easier to vote there.

We currently have 288 "in" votes for the month of February.  February has had 7 days so far.  Fewer than 40 people voting once per day could have gotten us to where we are now.  Let's assume that's about the case, then.  If those 40 people voted twice per day, we'd be at 560 by now.  That's #2 on TMS, at least by this month's current numbers.  40 people might sound like a lot, but we have 36 people online right now and it's off-peak.

Next, TMC:  We currently have 302 votes on TMC for this month.  TMC requires an account.  This puts us at about 43 players per day on average voting for us, and by the end of today, I expect we'll be at about (maybe?) 315 or so, which would be 45 players voting once per day.  We can easily up that 10 more players to that just by getting the players that don't have an account on TMC yet to create one and start voting.  55 x 7 = 385.  With 55 players voting since the beginning of February (once per day, at that), it would put us at rank 6 on TMC assuming all other variables remain the same.

[Ender]

I figured some of these numbers might be of interest.

Out of 1631 new accounts:


152 heard about us by searching for stuff on Google (regardless of what they were looking for there)

I see that we have Google Analytics set up on the main page. 

So do we know what our conversion rate looks like from natural search currently?  And if so, what keywords seem to convert the most?


I know we are getting a new website soon, so this may be fairly moot, but our SEO practices on the main site are kinda lacking in some regards.  Google still can't index the gdb at all which makes us lose out on a lot of potential traffic.

[Derain]

I found arm through an article on MMORPG.com one of the writers there tried ARM out.

[Nyr]

I'm glad Saikun actually explained to me the robots.txt issue.  I sent him a fancy new optimized file in a request.  ::crosses his fingers::

Send it to producers@arm please.

[Kismetic]

At least one player found us while smoking weed with their buddy

I wonder if one of my friends started playing, and didn't tell me.  A few of them always ask what the game is, because when I'm playing it, I'm unable to divide my attention to them.  Hrmm.

[Feco]

Seems like we have awful player retention.

[Ender]

I'm glad Saikun actually explained to me the robots.txt issue.  I sent him a fancy new optimized file in a request.  ::crosses his fingers::

Send it to producers@arm please.

Sent.  I only really had to update one thing from the original file I wrote to deal with the issues Saikun was worried about, but I really think those worries are long since outdated.

[Kismetic]

Seems like we have awful player retention.

Yeah, I wonder how many actually went through with making a character.

[greasygemo]

I want to find the one dude who found ARM whilst sparking up.. Should check Luirs..

Code Select Expand

The dreadlocked, long bearded hippie says, while lighting his solidly packed tube of spice, "Dude, where's my inix?"

[Nyr]

A clarification:  these numbers come from this survey.  The survey data is collected from the account generation process prior to their creation of a character.  While we have tweaked things to allow character generation prior to account activation, these numbers don't necessarily mean we had 1600+ newbies traipsing through Armageddon this past year.

It's more difficult to drill down into more data on where the players go after they do the where survey, but of the folks in the Where Survey (83) for January, 22 of them have actually gotten into the game to play it with said character that they created.

5 made characters that got accepted, but they haven't logged in.  <--- (we might be able to do something about this with a single automated e-mail)
3 needed some major editing work and we'd essentially be writing the whole application for the player if we fixed it.
2 had enough issues with the desc and background that approving it with fixes was deemed to be more detrimental than rejecting with suggestions.  <---- (could err on the other side)
2 were either too silly to accept or did not amount to any more than a spurt of letters hitting the keyboard to get through the app process.  I'm looking at you, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness.

So yes, creating a character is a bottleneck.

This has improved year over year as well, for what it is worth.  While we can look for ways to improve the app process, those ways may depend heavily on coded solutions.  This comes back to volunteer staffing, of course.  The biggest benefit to new player numbers is to actually get the word out there about Armageddon, and for us to find other ways (and improve on existing ways) to draw in new players.  If you're interested in brainstorming and leading in discussion about this, we have a publicity forum for this purpose (you can request addition to it).

[Calavera]

Seems like we have awful player retention.

I figured I'd do a quick sample survey to give you some data on this, although be aware it's a small sampling out of the many new accounts created recently so it may not be entirely representative:

Out of the last 100 people to make an account on ArmageddonMUD, only 78 successfully finished the account creation process. That's not even talking about character creation--I'm just talking about finishing creating an account.

Of those 78 who created an account...

Only 42 created a character.

Now here's where we start to see who's actually playing the game. Out of those 100 accounts, only 42 even submitted a character for approval. Fewer still of those actually make it into the game.

Of those 42 characters submitted, only 31 were approved.

We try our hardest to not reject newbie apps, but sometimes there's little we can do, such as when someone applies for a character whose name is 'ZeldaN64' or 'Lucifer.' Staff can't edit the names players select for their characters, though we can edit everything else. A lot of newbie apps come through as garbled gibberish thanks to the text editor, but we usually just write them up a desc and bio and send them on their way, hoping they don't take offense to our mangling of their creative handiwork of "iii.....q.... the figure with the bright red eyes."

So for those following along at home, out of 100 new accounts, we only received 31 approved characters. I'm going to do a bit more analysis on these 31 accounts, but I've got to jet to work at the moment, so I'll be posting it later.

There are some obvious conclusions to be drawn from this data, for sure--like the fact that many would-be players seem to have difficulties with account/character creation or lose interest midway through.

[Nyr]

Staff research: multi threaded for your pleasure.

[Feco]

Ya'll are thorough; I love it!  Thanks for all that extra info!

I guess *actual* player retention (referring to people who get in game, and continue to play for some time after) would be hard to figure.

[AmandaGreathouse]

I wonder how possible/complicated it would be to add something in there that took whatever puts the new accts created weekly from the weekly update up with a comparison of accts created vs new accts that logged in with a pc?

[greasygemo]

Seems to be an issue of quality over quantity which may be hard to adjust for, if only 31% of people get through the whole process with an approved character.. Only solution would be to increase the amount of people actually going through the aforementioned process, because, well, new players are great, but... Yeah.. Zelda64's and such just.. No. Please god no. I forget what making the original account even entailed.. Isn't it just providing an email address?

[Morgenes]

You also have to provide an account name.  That is challenging.

[greasygemo]

Email -and- account name? Why don't you also get a pint of blood and a family tree while you're at it. Monsters. 

[Morgenes]

Email -and- account name? Why don't you also get a pint of blood and a family tree while you're at it. Monsters. 

Sorry, I forgot to mention we require you to 'confirm that you want to create the account', which is arguably not necessary if you said you wanted to create a new account.

We also ask for how you heard about us.

Done.

[Calavera]

Hi. Remember me? Yes. 31 approved characters. Let's break that shit down.

Of those 31 accepted PCs, 6 have yet to log on, which leaves us with 25 who have actually played.

Of those 25, 4 played for 0 days and 0 hours. Anecdotally, players who quit out at 0 days and 0 hours rather than 0 days and 1 hour typically have not left the Hall of Kings or the starter shops/newbie area, in my newbie-watching experience. This isn't a coded certainty, but you'd be surprised how many people give up at that juncture.

So if we assume for the sake of simplicity that those 4 never left the starter areas, out of our original 100 new accounts, we now have 21 who actually made it into the game and got to experience the ingame world.