The Blog of Susanoo

It looks like it's time again for a new blog post. :)

As usual, there are several things happening in the Shogun Wars universe. I am of course still working on Phoenix. The two latest additions are a 48 hour cap on occupations and removing the commander/officer reset that happens with island hopping. I'm considering that for the next version of Genshu, but since the season is underway I won't be adding it right now.

I am going to make some changes that will be affecting both Genshu and Phoenix in the near future. Mainly I will be adding some optional game tips and things to help new players get adjusted. Nothing that will affect game play on Genshu, but you might see some new messages and things popping up. We lost quite a few players in the confusion that happened after the release of Phoenix, and we really need to look at things we can do to build up again. We learned a lot of lessons, but whew.. it's been a rough ride.

I'm not 100% sure what all we will be doing to get some new players in, but we have started running some banners in a few places and we'll definitely be looking at sending out an email to people that have gone inactive. I would really like to see Genshu get back into the 1500 player bracket at least within the next month or so. So that also means a BIG HEADS UP.. expect to be seeing an influx of newbies on Genshu!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch I'm still trying to get an absolute "must do" list for Phoenix that I can use to give a definite launch date. It seems like every time I get one together, something else is pointed out and the list just grows again. I have a list of about 15-20 things right now and I'm going to go through it with Xaudius this afternoon to try and narrow it down to mission critical things only so we can get the show on the road.

So, now that most of the bugs have been worked out of the season changeover it's time for me to consider where we're going next. To that end, I've been thinking lately about the growth of Shogun Wars.

We've kind of leveled off in terms of size for the last season and this one. I think it is due to several factors, but I think the main one is the officer limit. During the first two rounds, we had unlimited officers, which gave a lot of incentive to continue growing your pool of people and spreading the word about the game. Now it seems like once people reach the maximum number of officers, they turn from finding new people to play to maintaining and helping the players they have recruited.

That leaves a bit of a conundrum. I think the officer limit is good in that it has leveled the playing field and done a lot to balance the game. On the other hand, it has stunted the growth of the game.

As I see it, there is really only one factor that determines growth, and that is word of mouth. It naturally follows that you then have to address the question of how do you attain more.

In our situation, I can see three ways:

1.) Advertising - ok, this has to be mentioned, but so far every time I've tried it, it has been more expensive than it was worth. It is hard to advertise for something where most people just use the free version and the setup is such that those that do buy a paid account don't pay in that much in the grand scheme of things... at least compared to going ad rates.

2.) Direct Incentive - That's what we've always relied on. You get more people to play, it helps you grow your own account. It has worked, but it has also created some very uber accounts. In my mind it also doesn't quite sit well in that it is very great when we have players that are really hitting the streets and trying to get everyone else to play.. but then it seems to me that playing the game should be more about playing the game, not just recruiting.

Incentives are still good, which is why they are still there, but really if a player brings a couple of friends to the game, they've done their part and should be able to sit back and enjoy the game itself without feeling pressure to keep finding more.

3.) Make a buzz through features - This is the point I think we will have to attack, but then it poses it's own conundrum. How do you make a buzz? Well, by doing something none of your competition is able or willing to do. Something cool, extreme, and noteworthy that motivates people to consider you worth talking/blogging/posting/etc about.

Now, considering I am the only programmer here at the moment and that I have to manage a web design business and a family life on top of my work on Shogun Wars... this is a serious challenge.

It is also a serious challenge in the hardware department. Fancier features and real time calculations are going to outgrow our existing server fast and on a level that will outpace any single server. That adds tackling distributed computing/clustering to the development department and buying more servers into the hardware department.

I've always wanted my own super-computer cluster anyway ;)

So.. in a nutshell:

We're not growing because we balanced the game and I'm not willing to unbalance it again for the sake of growth.
We're not growing because we aren't quite progressive enough, but development is going as fast as it can under the circumstances.

Or in an even smaller nutshell:

We need money to increase development, and we need development to increase money.

I love viscous circles, don't you?

The question now becomes how do we tackle these things? I really hate the whole money issue, I really do. I just want to work on the game, if the rest of the world would quit hounding me for rent and bills and hosting and such .. I would gladly just spend my days coding on Shogun Wars. But it just doesn't work out that way, so I guess it has to be addressed.

I like the paid account setup we have. I think the price is right and I don't think we could justify raising it. I definitely don't want to get stuck into accepting or soliciting donations, not that I think that would get us anywhere anyway.

Investors and partners.. probably not an option for several reasons, the biggest being that we just aren't even at a size that a real investor could even take us seriously.

There is really only a couple ways I can see it working out.

a.) We can continue like we have been taking a developmental step every change of season.. presumably to eventually see the game blossom into something really great.

or

b.) We could move to a larger genre or create new games based on Shogun Wars in different genres. That could do the trick, but then it could present pitfalls as well.

Actually, I said we could move it to a different genre, but I really wouldn't even consider doing that. it would just be wrong. I just mentioned it to be thorough.

I am mainly just considering making new games based on the Shogun Wars code base.

On one hand, it would give us a nice testing ground for new features. Right now we have the Beta server, but nobody plays there, so it is hard to get feedback on what different features will do in actual gameplay. Basically when making a new feature, we could then use one game as a test group and the other as a control group and in the end make decisions that are most beneficial to game play. We could also speed up the development cycle by staggering the rounds in each game.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that we may just end up splitting our efforts. For instance if we create a medieval or sci-fi version of Shogun Wars and half of our players just move over to the new version and we don't find new players for shogun wars to replace them.. that's bad. Not only would it be a support and upkeep nightmare, but it could harm the player momentum we have now.

On the other, other hand, if we had two games the size of Shogun Wars.. we would have a much bigger growth budget. Right now although Shogun Wars is in the black, it isn't all that far into the black. As far as online games go, we are still considered small-fry.

On the other, other, other hand, I thought the same thing might happen when we developed the language system.. that we would see growth by making the game available to people that otherwise wouldn't have played with us. Although I see that we do have a growing number of non-english players in the game, the overall membership has remained about where it was.

I dunno .. I'll be sleeping on this one for awhile before I make a decision.

or

c.) Something I haven't thought of yet.

The reason I've laid all this out in the blog is just. When or if I decide to move forward with any of this, I just want people to know why I am doing it. I'm just looking for ways to kick the development level up a notch.

Also, if I do start something like this up, I want people to know it will definitely be a beta concept. If doesn't have a good effect, I'll pull the plug.

So... none of this is really a big deal, it's just what is on my mind at the moment. Till next time.

~Susanoo

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1.) Language Add-on
2.) Improved Command Tools
3.) Community Help Wiki
4.) Islands
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1.) The multi-lingual code is getting much more refined at this point. There are only a few errors left to be fixed, a few small additions and the system will be ready.

It is looking like the first translations will be: Greek, Spanish, and Polish. All of these are at least partially completed by volunteer players at this time.

2.) There are some new non-paid features that I believe will be welcomed by many. They are all non-mechanical in nature, so we will probably see them pretty soon.

- At the top of the attack screen, there is a link to a "targets list". On that list there are two types of targets, personal and alliance. Only the alliance leader can set someone as an alliance-wide target, and anyone in the alliance will be able to see this list and know who the primary targets are during a time of war.

Personal targets can be set by anyone and are only visible to the player that sets them.

- Alliance announcements. The leader of an alliance now has the option to send out alliance-wide announcements. Hopefully this will make inner alliance communications a little easier.

3.) Community help wiki - We've had a few requests to set something like this up to add to the in-game help and forums... so here it is. We'll see how it works out. For all practical purposes, it is meant to be a "by players, for players" type of thing.

If it turns into a spam fest or otherwise gets abused, it will be removed.

It is mostly setup now, but the link won't be added until the next update of the live site. For those that are interested in taking a peek: http://shogunwars.com/user-manual/pmwiki.php (*edit: the pw on locked pages is 'shogun wars', we'll change that later if it takes off)

4) Last item today: I've been thinking a lot lately about the meta-game and the player community in general. I'm not sure how it will all work out yet, but I am thinking about adding more "Islands" of Japan, each of which would be an independent running game of Shogun Wars.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and I think it may have some interesting and overall good results.

Of course there are some potential drawbacks, and pitfalls we will want to avoid.

*** Edit - Have a pretty good outline worked out now. So we may see this pretty soon. :)

Fixing the honor bug.. take #6.

I once again, *think* we have the honor bug whipped as of today. I have tested the new solution every way I know how and it seems to finally be working correctly under every possible scenario. I have also applied a patch to the live server.

So from this point on, if you gain a dishonor mark when you attack/steal from someone that is definitely not in your chain, please let me know.

Our priorities go back to the language system and some new features and ideas we have been working on. Our biggest concern is getting all the new features worked up to a point where we can move them off of the beta server and onto the live site.

Until next time ...

~Susanoo

I know that things have been a little on the quiet side from the development team lately, and I thought it about time to shed some light on what is in the works for Shogun Wars.

#1 - The big news is that we have been working on a multilingual system for the entire site. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but for the most part it is operational.

All things considered, the system has taken a lot longer than I originally intended. Not only have we had to modify every piece of text in the site, I didn't schedule nearly enough time to build the translator tools that would be needed.

But then, that seems par for the course in the programming world. I read somewhere that when planning a project it is best to take your best estimate of the time it will take, then triple it. I do not know how many times I have kicked myself for not doing it, but it seems pretty accurate. In any case, it is shaping up now and I am definitely glad we decided to take that step.

#2 - So this leads me to the next announcement: We need translators!

We already have a few people working on translations of Spanish and Greek, but the more the merrier. Ideally, I think it would be very awesome to see Shogun Wars translated into as many languages as possible.

So, if you are fluent in a language other than English and have some time on your hands.. let me know!

#3 - I have had several people ask me when this season will end. As of right now, nothing is set in stone, but this is what we have been thinking:

Last season lasted five months, and X and I agreed that it got a little drawn out near the end. So for this one, we are thinking 4 months is a good time to try. If we stick with that, it puts the season ending October 1st.

Regardless, we will keep you posted if that changes.

As for what to look for in the next season, I am not saying yet but we do have several things in mind.

I guess that wraps things up for the moment. Til next time...

~Sus