I’M BACK AT WORK! First of all, I want to thank all our donors – and that includes those who could only wish us well – because your donations were enough to buy a computer capable of getting the job done. Not only that, but a group member donated us a very useful backup system, and help from outside of this group has replaced Lisa’s dying laptop. So thanks be to God, our hardware problems appear to be over for the foreseeable future! I will now get back to work (it took two whole days just to download software and test all the hardware). Whilst this is cause for celebration, let’s get this in context. I’ve just spent 15 days without being able to properly maintain this game. We can’t ever let that happen again. We need a future with many thousands of users at the very least, and when they have all joined up and few of them know me by first name, there isn’t going to be tolerance of the system drifting without a certain future for weeks at a time. So first and foremost, this community has made it possible for the game to continue; but the only real security for the game is in major growth, leading to a point where the community can afford – by paying for things people want to buy – to pay two regular programmers and an administrator, plus providing artists with appropriate royalties. When SGN bought Mike Sego out, fluff has its first mass exodus. Monthly users fell from 1 million to 600,000, as new more commercially minded features were introduced. As someone I miss said at the time, “the game shouldn’t be all about money”. That statement is both wrong and right, depending how you look at it, because without money there is no game – no programmers, no admin, no artists. We all have to earn a living through the game eventually, or the game dies for lack of skilled input. But at the same time, if the users feel that the developers are in it only for the money, something about a game dies; and in this genre, the most social of all social games, that matters a lot. Naturally I’d like the game to grow. Everyone who makes something complicated over a period of years wants it to be successful. What I don’t want are expensive offices, fancy furniture, an airhead on the line to tell everyone why they can’t talk to me and a heap of people saying I am the new this or that. I do want equipment good enough to do the job (we now have it!), to work from home with my wife, to pay our bills and have some kind of plan for the future. We aren’t even near the last three things. For even such simple things, we need growth. There are some things I can do at my end to help make that happen: - Create a complete set of ‘how to’ videos, ensuring that new users stay when they arrive. 10 million people added fluff, but no more than 1 million ever played it per month. I would be very sad if we lost 90% of our new users just because they were confused. Our software is better, but to be better, it has to be different. So because it is different, it must be explained. - On completing the videos, I can open the app to adoption without users having to be a member of this group first, because there will no longer be a need for continual help and advice (that takes about ten minutes). - Create Facebook ‘invite’ software, so you can ask people to use the app in the same way you would any other (this is partly done already). - Write hunt software, because no ex fluffer can resist a hunt. (I’ve got it all worked out on paper, and the prizes are ready). When I have done those things, then the challenge will be for you all. Armed with videos to link to and the promise of a hunt as soon as we have 2000 users in the directory (I don’t think we can hold a hunt with less), you will have the ideal situation in which to contact all those people you used to have fun with. Let’s keep this in context. When fluff was a blank screen, there were still thousands of people logging in each day just to check if it might still be there. Before the app was abandoned by SGN, there were still 20,000 users playing the game. In January 2011 there were still over 100,000 people fluffing every month, and until the new UI hit, there had been 600,000. Fluff died because it was crippled by badly designed new software written by an out of touch developer who ignored the users and pretended all was well. I don’t believe the concept was ever unpopular or past its time. This app is not the new fluff, because we have far too many wholly original ideas for that, but it appeals to people who liked to play fluff. They are still out there; and so are a new generation of people who never played fluff, but like pets, humor, uncomplicated friendship and art. There is no copyright on those things, and the only reason other developers have not repeated the idea is that Facebook set the bar too high; too high for anyone who was merely interested in profit. That is why we have been the only serious attempt to capture the abandoned market; we loved the game and we miss those who played it. What remains is to turn your love and our love into a big enough game to be successful long term. That’s entirely possible. If anyone doubted it before this week, can we doubt it now? A group this small has raised enough to buy a new pro-class computer. Can we fail to do what we are good at – convincing friends we have missed to join in a kind of fun they have spent three years wishing would come again? So let me get those videos done. And then, armed with them, I see no reason why we can’t first get big enough to run a hunt, and then grow like crazy when our old friends suddenly realise everything they have been missing is right there to be played with. We’ve survived our hardest test so far. Now we know that we’re not so easily defeated, let’s build the app until everyone who wishes we existed, knows that we do!
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:04:23 +0000