Listen. You've done a pretty good job so far. I'm gonna give you some money next month. But, honestly, you ALREADY had me. I already love the game and this tool makes life easier for me.
But what about this tool will bring in new people? Twitch integration? Maybe. Maybe someone sees a Twitch stream, gets excited and decides to try the game out. But the biggest missed opportunity that I see so far is this: It's a character sheet and a searchable set of rules. It's a gaming tool. What part of this would you post to Instagram? What part of this sheet would make someone on another site or app click away from what they're doing and play this game we love? What adds the gaming to this gaming tool?
Not much so far. And I have some suggestions.
A Character Play Timer - When you play any video game for 100 hours, you're proud of it. When you play a D&D character for years, it goes to another level. I suggest a character play timer. It starts with the creation of each character and is activated every time the character is played. Make it easy to link that the time played in Instagram and Facebook posts. Award trophies at certain points. What's in it for you? I will log into your service every time I play because I want my character's progress caught on the timer. And if I have two years of character progress charted on your site, how likely am I to jump to another site? And on a similar tip...
Character Funerals - When the character I've worked on for years dies, give a tool that will build a funeral pyre graphic that I can post wherever I want.
"After five years of life and over 2,000 hours of play, Grim Richard's rogue, Samutain, died in an alley in a tiny, nasty village called Daransk. Samutain, who gained fame after literally stealing the Balls of Anubis, died because he ran down the alley without even glancing to see if it was safe. In lieu of flowers, Grim Richard asks that you send dice of all sizes. His former foul, low-rolling dice were thrown out the door and are presumed lost."
MVP Trophies - Give DMs an MVP trophy to hand out to players in each gaming session. Use it to rank players and post a leader board. Continually add metrics that let D&D players compete even though they're playing in different games. Put those stats on the front page every time I log in.
DM Rewards - It's hard to be a DM. It's thankless and time-consuming. If DMs use your tool to create content - especially if they share it - track it. And then give them discounts to buy your stuff. Loyalty cards are just another kind of gamification.
I am essentially telling you to build a game, not a tool. A tool is valuable right until someone builds a better one. And they ALWAYS build a better one. But if you build a tool that works like a game, we might stay with you forever.
Yeah, as I mentioned in the post, I'm aware of the Twitch integration. If you stream your games, it will be great. I don't want to denigrate that. But any Web site can integrate Twitch in some form. It's literally not a game-changer. Charitably, less than 5% of users of this site will use Twitch. It makes for a great headline but it won't keep subscriber churn down.
Yeah... I dunno, maybe it's just me, but these "gamification" ideas sound like reasons to leave more than they do things that will further incentivize my sticking around (and I say "further incentivize" because the tool being useful is incentive already, and more than enough at that).
Also, if I can elaborate...there's a transactional time-cost when people use Web sites. The bigger that cost, the less likely they are to use it. So, if using Twitch integration means that a user has to spend an hour on the site to gain a feeling of satisfaction, the user is less likely to use that feature. The time-cost for most things on this Web site is high. In some cases, it's still okay because the cost is less than other sources. Character creation on this site, for instance, is awesome because you can roll a character in five minutes - a time-cost way below what a person would normally spend to generate a character.
But I'm not likely to generate a character every day. This site needs low time-cost transactions so that users will come here everyday - instead of once a week. That's one of the reasons I'm suggesting gamification.
Now, if they want to make the Twitch stuff super popular, they should add betting tools so that fans can bet on the battles. If they set it up like the poker tournaments held at local bars, it might even be ethical and legal.
Listen. You've done a pretty good job so far. I'm gonna give you some money next month. But, honestly, you ALREADY had me. I already love the game and this tool makes life easier for me.
But what about this tool will bring in new people? Twitch integration? Maybe. Maybe someone sees a Twitch stream, gets excited and decides to try the game out. But the biggest missed opportunity that I see so far is this: It's a character sheet and a searchable set of rules. It's a gaming tool. What part of this would you post to Instagram? What part of this sheet would make someone on another site or app click away from what they're doing and play this game we love? What adds the gaming to this gaming tool?
Not much so far. And I have some suggestions.
A Character Play Timer - When you play any video game for 100 hours, you're proud of it. When you play a D&D character for years, it goes to another level. I suggest a character play timer. It starts with the creation of each character and is activated every time the character is played. Make it easy to link that the time played in Instagram and Facebook posts. Award trophies at certain points. What's in it for you? I will log into your service every time I play because I want my character's progress caught on the timer. And if I have two years of character progress charted on your site, how likely am I to jump to another site? And on a similar tip...
Character Funerals - When the character I've worked on for years dies, give a tool that will build a funeral pyre graphic that I can post wherever I want.
"After five years of life and over 2,000 hours of play, Grim Richard's rogue, Samutain, died in an alley in a tiny, nasty village called Daransk. Samutain, who gained fame after literally stealing the Balls of Anubis, died because he ran down the alley without even glancing to see if it was safe. In lieu of flowers, Grim Richard asks that you send dice of all sizes. His former foul, low-rolling dice were thrown out the door and are presumed lost."
MVP Trophies - Give DMs an MVP trophy to hand out to players in each gaming session. Use it to rank players and post a leader board. Continually add metrics that let D&D players compete even though they're playing in different games. Put those stats on the front page every time I log in.
DM Rewards - It's hard to be a DM. It's thankless and time-consuming. If DMs use your tool to create content - especially if they share it - track it. And then give them discounts to buy your stuff. Loyalty cards are just another kind of gamification.
I am essentially telling you to build a game, not a tool. A tool is valuable right until someone builds a better one. And they ALWAYS build a better one. But if you build a tool that works like a game, we might stay with you forever.
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ModeratorIt has already been stated that there will be a Twitch integration. This video talks about it at 2:38
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Yeah, as I mentioned in the post, I'm aware of the Twitch integration. If you stream your games, it will be great. I don't want to denigrate that. But any Web site can integrate Twitch in some form. It's literally not a game-changer. Charitably, less than 5% of users of this site will use Twitch. It makes for a great headline but it won't keep subscriber churn down.
Yeah... I dunno, maybe it's just me, but these "gamification" ideas sound like reasons to leave more than they do things that will further incentivize my sticking around (and I say "further incentivize" because the tool being useful is incentive already, and more than enough at that).
Also, if I can elaborate...there's a transactional time-cost when people use Web sites. The bigger that cost, the less likely they are to use it. So, if using Twitch integration means that a user has to spend an hour on the site to gain a feeling of satisfaction, the user is less likely to use that feature. The time-cost for most things on this Web site is high. In some cases, it's still okay because the cost is less than other sources. Character creation on this site, for instance, is awesome because you can roll a character in five minutes - a time-cost way below what a person would normally spend to generate a character.
But I'm not likely to generate a character every day. This site needs low time-cost transactions so that users will come here everyday - instead of once a week. That's one of the reasons I'm suggesting gamification.
Now, if they want to make the Twitch stuff super popular, they should add betting tools so that fans can bet on the battles. If they set it up like the poker tournaments held at local bars, it might even be ethical and legal.
Yeah, my gamification concepts might be lame. The concept, though, might be sound.