Getting a decent playerbase

[MAruz]

I started to think some when reading the discussion about generating income for browser games, and income is dependent on the player base. So, what are your experiences when it comes to building a player base for your games? What's the key factors for attracting players, and to make them stick with it.

I'm still building my first game, so I have no experiences yet. However based on what I like and not about browser games that I've tried, for me it's important that the game has a good menu navigation, it's important that new players get a good introduction to everything important to play the game, that it's not too repetitive.

I've also played allot of games that do well on everything above, but fail to keep me interested simply because I never feel that I get somewhere in the game. Often it's about the resources. If you constantly need to get more resources to get better, and to get more resources you need to be good/or spend allot of time just waiting.

One of the best games I've played is Dominion by Kamikaze Games. Yes it takes allot to get into it, but it at least keeps an up to date set of rules, and if you need to know how something works, you can find it. And this point is where I feel OGame fails miserably. I've been playing that game the last weeks, mostly out of boredom, but I wanted to see if it offered something later in the game, but it does not. Wait until you have enough resources to do anything, spend the resources, wait until you have enough resources to make use of what you just spent all that resources on, repeat.

Another thing I feel that allot of games fail at, is having enough interesting stuff to do on a daily basis. I know this one must be hard to overcome, but at least I feel that a game must have more to offer than being able to train units/build stuff/attack someone once per day before running out of resources and actions to take.

[OldRod]

Here's my own personal feelings on this:

1 - Make the game that you personally like to play. That will make you more passionate about making it a good, fun game. And since you'll be spending more time with this game than anyone else, make it something you want to spend time with.

2 - Don't set out to make a game that will draw hundreds of thousands of players. Start out with small expectations and grow from there.

3 - Don't advertise and let people start signing up until you have something playable. Posting development shots here is different, as we all like to show off what we are working on, and everyone here understands that posted shots are pre-alpha work.

Just my 2 cp

[hallsofvallhalla]

I agree with all three of those. I have learned that time will bring players. Do not expect many players in the beginning. But if the game is good the word will get out. Guilds do good for this. When players can recruit other players they often bring in new players.