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Post by De Lírios on Jun 16, 2014 2:17:51 GMT 1
Since our server became - officially - a place for tests, and the number of players decreased due to the limited registration, I couldn't help but catch myself wondering... What is gonna happen with us? Our small community? I understand that the devs are giving us a special treatment and a great chance to help the game as testers. I'm sure we all are glad for it as I am! But, after all, we are still players, right? We like to build and share our games. But, sadly, we don't have so much players around (we never had anyway)...
Some people say we will merge with the EU, but thinking now, wouldn't it destroy the idea of a server for testers? The devs really plan to do it, or it's only an old rumour? I like the idea of merging, but I don't quite understand how, or when.
On the "KoGaMa Friends" News post, there's a line that says "We're slowly moving away from all of the regional servers in an attempt to make KoGaMa more global and united. We've already renamed EU to WWW internally, and now it's time for US to get a name change as well.". Fine. But, will we be moved for the international server eventually, or we'll stay here for who knows how long?
Would be nice if the devs clone our profiles into the international server, so we could stay on both. We would build and share our games at the international, while testing new content and bugs at the Friends. That would be just a way to satisfy our two sides: avid testers, as well avid players. As it used to be with the old Test Server, no?
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Post by NeonViper on Jun 16, 2014 8:18:58 GMT 1
Very descriptive, it makes me wonder to.
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Post by DrVista on Jun 16, 2014 12:56:38 GMT 1
All of us will slowly quit until the server has no users left
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Post by swarm on Jun 16, 2014 16:39:04 GMT 1
Then how about the devs litarly merge us with eu? Right? Verry reasonable.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2014 16:50:41 GMT 1
I don't see how others don't have their name took on www.But me,it's taken.It's some old user that isnt anything at all.He isn't online.If we merge with EU and our accounts are wiped,im going to ROBLOX. |
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Post by Jatsu on Jun 16, 2014 19:34:42 GMT 1
Went ahead and grabbed 3 quotes from the old forums that should explain a little bit about what was planned and intended: March 18, 2012, 11:06:14 pm Yeah, as Rasmus already said we're working on this. Of course we want users to be able to share content globally. But we needed to do something about cross-atlantic lag, and we needed to do something fast. So we figured it was better to get a US server up and running, and merge the data later. Eventually you will also get plays and likes from European servers - you will just not get matched in the same game-sessions, as cross-atlantic lag is terrible! April 10, 2012, 10:48:10 pm The goal is to share everything globally. Having 2 separate setups (EU and US) is NOT because we believe it's a good idea, but because we wanted to get kogama out in US sooner rather than later. The alternative was to wait 4-6 months, so we decided to just get it out and merge everything when the architecture is ready. We're a small team working on a huge vision, and these things are complex to develop - but we're getting there :) July 11, 2012, 08:52:57 am We aim to merge the servers together, so having different content on the servers is a no-go. All games, all assets & all profiles should be available anywhere in the world. However, due to cross-atlantic lag, US-players should play together with/against other US-players and not against European players. So, in the final setup anybody can play a game made in, say UK, but in US you will not see the same number of 'current players' as in UK, as you would only see how many US-players are playing. For your TL;DR about server merging: - All content (games, assets/models, and profiles) would be accessible anywhere in the world.
- Online sessions would be limited to regional play: US players can only play with other players from the US.
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Post by swarm on Jun 16, 2014 20:43:14 GMT 1
But Jatsu, The question people are asking is how long is this going to take and if it will even happen, But that problem is now solved by what you showed us, Now people will be asking how long will this take.
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Post by De Lírios on Jun 16, 2014 20:46:47 GMT 1
But that's old news. As we can see, there's no big base of US players right now. Imagine if we merge in this way with the actual US number of players? You all would keep facing the same problem: lack of players.
They need to rethink everything... And I hope they already did it.
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Post by Jatsu on Jun 16, 2014 21:21:48 GMT 1
As De Lirios aptly pointed out, "when" the servers merge might not matter if Kogama doesn't succeed in gaining a global playerbase. After all, "the social experience" means little when you have no one to share it with. Kogama will have to refocus on marketing to succeed with this global goal. Merging server content would probably help in making it more attractive, discounting language barriers. However, we won't actually know what the dev's current plans are unless if they take the time to provide an official response. Until then, I maintain my stance on the matter: Regarding server merging, it's very unlikely it will happen now. Look at the evidence: the US has been isolated and its cross server links removed, the US server being repurposed as a testing server, limited registration, and limited community support. All this points to keeping us away from other communities and to reduce the amount of content we can create and share. This isn't even considering the crucial fact that if server merging was in the devs' plans, it would have been a lot easier to manage and execute a long time ago when these servers were smaller. |
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Post by swarm on Jun 16, 2014 21:47:45 GMT 1
But the devs, Can't they make KoGama ads and put them on popular sites?
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Post by Jatsu on Jun 16, 2014 22:59:53 GMT 1
It depends on their marketing strategy and also how much money they're willing to spend. Even then, advertising isn't a guaranteed method of increasing the number of players in Kogama - part of the formula is having an attractive game to play as well.
Anyway, they tried advertising once, with Facebook. I think they only followed through on that for three months, maybe four. I don't know precisely how long because I wasn't around in 2012 when they were doing this. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure the devs considered this a failure though - at the time, the Kogama community was very small compared to what it is now.
As far as I'm aware and my searches go, the devs haven't directly advertised again for Kogama in nearly two years. The best they've done consistently is try to maintain a social media outlet on Facebook in the past year. I'm sure that to some people, it would be considered a success - their Facebook page is up to 150k likes now. However, I'm sure we're all well aware this caters nearly completely to the Brazilian community and not the entire playerbase as a whole. To me, this poses a problem when you want to set a goal in having a global community of players. Every player wants to feel themselves being valued, and that just doesn't happen if you exclude parts of the community.
Edit: There's also two Twitter feeds associated with Kogama. Both were discontinued though, the official game one lasting nearly two years and the developer one not more than two months.
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Post by swarm on Jun 16, 2014 23:03:57 GMT 1
Then why dont they make a youtube account, If they are willing to throw some money at advertizements then they should be able to at least advretize videos on sites while like a game is loading or something, It would be resonable.
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Post by Jatsu on Jun 16, 2014 23:15:45 GMT 1
They do have a YouTube account, they used it for all those Tutorial videos we see on the "Help" page. It was also used for their trailers and early sneak peeks. However, it was only used for a little more than a year, and stopped posting new videos over a year ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that someone tried to maintain these things - but games don't generate communities overnight. It takes a lot of time and patience, especially with a game like Kogama. If I can accuse the devs of anything, it's that I think they gave up on these methods of sharing their game too early. There's hundreds of beta games out there, but there's only a handful few that ever getting massively hyped. Kogama just isn't one of those games, and being part of a very niche gaming genre doesn't help much. |
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Post by swarm on Jun 16, 2014 23:21:03 GMT 1
But look at this, I have been on quite a lot of sites, Guess what, All I see on these sites Example Agame.com, I found the br server as an advretizing for KoGama, Why dont I see us? Is it because our community is not too big and does not make as mutch money as the br and eu?
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Post by Jatsu on Jun 16, 2014 23:36:46 GMT 1
There's more than one factor I'm sure. For one, ClickJogos is probably handling those advertisements. The other partner, SpilGames might even do advertising in Europe. Kogama uses their connections in return for several different things - a cut of the revenue, sponsorship, or even control over the game itself. There could be other reasons, but I'm not going to guess.
I can tell you this: the size of the current community doesn't matter. If it was large, it could be used as a selling point for the game, but probably only for potential investors. Nonetheless, the main goal in marketing is to reach a target audience. Game hosting sites like ClickJogos are great for that. If Kogama could create a partnership with Kongregate, that would be great too. However, if they really want to get players from the US and Asia, the devs need to look at other alternatives than just looking for partners and investors.
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