SOM Online update: growth initiatives, ATG, Mystery Card...

[BDWard]

Bernie: Thank you for your efforts on our behalf. You have always been a great advocate for the gamers.

As far as pricing goes, I agree with those who say the game gives great entertainment value for the buck.

Regarding pricing incentives, the key is to attract new customers without neglecting or alienating the existing loyal customer base.

When I was a young man, my friends and I frequented an establishment known as Bill's Pizza. None of us were big beer drinkers, but Bill had a special where the 4th pitcher of beer was free. Needless to say, we all drank more beer than we should have just to get the free 4th pitcher. Without the 4th pitcher free promotion, we probably would have drank 2 pitchers of beer between our usual group of four people. Bill was a smart man.

I think TSN should offer a similar incentive to existing customers along with continuing or enhancing performance based incentives. Let's say, for example, that every 5th team was free. Now, gamers with mediocre records would have an incentive to keep playing instead of walking away frustrated, never to return. To those concerned about the super successful players with managerial ratings in the thousands, what difference will one more credit for every fifth team make on top of the dozens they've already accumulated anyway?

Not only would free credits based upon the number of teams played keep new players coming back, but it would also reward the core group of players for their loyalty. It's a win-win situation for TSN and players alike - Bernie W

[keyzick]

[quote:dfcd3f768b="BDWard"]
I think TSN should offer a similar incentive to existing customers along with continuing or enhancing performance based incentives. Let's say, for example, that every 5th team was free. [/quote:dfcd3f768b]

They already do offer this incentive....it's $24.95/team, or 5 for $100 (ie, the 5th team is free).

But I do agree with your logic...

[Ninersphan]

[quote:f3bc6c9bd5="bernieh"]

[b:f3bc6c9bd5]'70s and/or '80s[/b:f3bc6c9bd5]
At long last, we'll be refreshing one or both of the '70s and '80s Mystery Card games, bringing it/them into the central SOM Online site. Based on our resource constraints, we may end up having to choose just one.
[/quote:f3bc6c9bd5]


What exactly does this mean, Does it mean bringing the 70's and/or (hopefully) the 80's into a standard type game and ditching the god awful (to me anyway, YMMY) Mystery card format for these era's??

I for one would be thrilled with this.

I know the mystery card has it's proponents, but I'm not one of them and I believe the majority of players prefer the standard card game. It kills me that teams I'd love to play from the 80's are locked into a format I won't play.

[bernieh]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses, everyone, and also the words of support.

[quote:62c159ec1f="Voovits"]Its good to hear the plans on moving the mystery card game(s) to the main site, but the question I would have would be if there's only availability for one game to be moved, will that completely rule out the possibility of the other being moved at some point further down the road?[/quote:62c159ec1f]
Absolutely not. The plan is to move them both/all to the main site, the only issue would be what we can handle this fall.

[quote:62c159ec1f="andycummings65"]will there be a way to keep the existing set for multi-season franchise leagues if you so choose?[/quote:62c159ec1f]
When we add cards, we won't be removing any, and we will also always keep all existing sets available.

[quote:62c159ec1f="rjoh"]Sounds like ur pricing model is set but the logic is severely flawed.[/quote:62c159ec1f]
If you're implying that I said we're done making decisions on our business, that's quite far from the case. If you take what I said in black and white terms, then yes, it's flawed, but let's agree that nothing is black and white, and I'd ask you to give SOM and SN more credit for thinking the whole problem through.

[quote:62c159ec1f="rjoh"]If all WalMart thought of is take existing customers and how many more units would they buy at a lower cost, they'd never lower any prices. They lower prices to attract new customers - better to try and sell a million glasses of lemonade at 5 cents then 1 glass at a million dollars.[/quote:62c159ec1f]
That's not [i:62c159ec1f]"all"[/i:62c159ec1f] we're thinking of; the example I gave was, as stated, an "easy" one, to illustrate a point, but certainly not a complete one. Of course one of the benefits of lowering prices is it's more attractive to new customers. I'm just saying that there are also risks on the other side of the equation which can't be overlooked.

[quote:62c159ec1f="PotKettleBlack"]This is a stretch, but the marketing of the game needs to be more aggressive.[/quote:62c159ec1f]
THIS is a major point. Perhaps I didn't explicitly use the word marketing, but it is obviously key to the growth of any business, and I know we all agree that we should be doing it better. Built into our new customer initiatives are greater efforts to get the word out. We have an extremely limited budget, unfortunately, but we'll be getting more creative with our promotional campaigns, including social media, etc.

So again, while lowering everyday prices would attract [i:62c159ec1f]some[/i:62c159ec1f] new visitors by itself, it won't succeed without a lot of new visitors being aware of our game. Therefore first we need to demonstrate that we can bring in a more significant amount of new business through our new customer initiatives and promotions, before we do something as drastic as changing our entire pricing model. I think this is a reasonable and responsible [i:62c159ec1f]first step[/i:62c159ec1f] to take in our [i:62c159ec1f]evolving[/i:62c159ec1f] strategy.

[quote:62c159ec1f="djkalle"]I will love the ability to see the game play-by-play. BUT, can you imagine how many more owners will realize how bad HAL manages our teams.[/quote:62c159ec1f]
Oh yeah, I can guarantee that there will be more complaining. :) At this point, though, I feel that no matter how good the computer gets, the level of complaining will be the same. This is not an excuse to either stop trying to improve it, or a way to dismiss complaints - it's a personal mission of mine to make Hal the smartest it can be, and many complaints are totally legitimate - but we're on the internet. There's always complaining. So it's pointless to shy away from offering a gamecast because we're afraid of this.

[quote:62c159ec1f="Artie412"]How about an ATG "randomizing" option where you can sign up for a league where t[i:62c159ec1f]he player pool is cut roughly in HALF, with managers not knowing WHICH players would be in the pool until you sign up? [/i:62c159ec1f][/quote:62c159ec1f]
Yeah, I've heard this idea before and I do like it a lot. If it can be done easily and the logistics work out, I'd definitely consider it. How does this idea sound to the rest of you guys?

[quote:62c159ec1f="geekor"]I wish they would just automate pricing changes every month based on usage. It would artificially give the game a newer feel and make/unmake bargains that were never there before.[/quote:62c159ec1f]
An age-old idea, and the concept is sound. But we simply haven't figured out an easy way to make salary changes on a regular basis without creating entire new sets. The way it works now, if we adjusted salaries on June 1, for example, every existing league in that set would pick up those changes, causing mass hysteria. In order to have it support fluctuating salaries, I'd have to make major infrastructure changes which would not be worth the gain at this time.

[bkeat23]

A vote for Artie's idea of a random player pool cut in half.
Or a player pool cut in half at random?
Or however the symantics work out :D

[modmark46]

Sounds like some good ideas/innovations coming down the pike. Thanks for update, Bernie! And yes, I also like Artie's idea of a random paring down of the player pool option. :)

[george barnard]

Some great ideas. The randomizing is fine, but only if it were to be an option. Some of us like to wallow in the great mudpile of history that is the full (and soon to be enlarged) player pool.

[novie]

As soon as I read Arties idea I loved it! Perhaps options to cut it by 25/50/75 percent.

While we are at it Bernie... I think this would be easy to do as well. We can cut the pool based on Era, Nl/AL etc.... could we also set subsets so league creators could do so by price range. Often can make "setting" teams and "searching" much easier to match particular themes.

Thanks again Bernie!

[tony best]

I love the idea of play by play. 8-)

By the way I am VERY impressed with HAL. This is NOT easy programming! I do wonder why relief pithchers can pitch so many innings I suppose its because they dont lose enough effectiveness from over usage which I then assume is a bit too difficult to program into HAL at this time.
To get the correct relief(and maybe starter) usage would require larger rosters so we open another kettle of fish.

[doug_tucker10]

I also like Arties idea of random pack of players to be used for a league. And as also mentioned by someone prior, only as an option, leaving the default per league to be the entire pool of available players for ATG.