Triggered: Ask Dave and Jeff questions

[mystyka]

utopiasupport@utopia-game.com still working? no one reply to us since 8 days ago

[Panthira]

This is a nice summary IMO. I think before I would ask the questions I might have not listed, I'd want to know the answers to those.

Agreed. As an ex-business owner, and ex PR person, this isn't going to be an easy road. These are good questions that baka posed.

[citadela01]

Will you commit to keep utopia ftp ?

[Pillz]

and adding some basic tour and explanatory features to the game.

Will you acknowledge this was my idea?

[Bishop]

utopiasupport@utopia-game.com still working? no one reply to us since 8 days ago

Yes it's working.

[baka]

This is interesting both as a player and as a business owner.

I personally have considered purchasing Utopia from Sean & Brian and then operating it out of my own pockets simply for the love of the game. However, I also have a game development company in the largest mobile gaming market in the world (China) and realized it will be very difficult (and costly) to continue operating the game within the same business model - a website based MMORPG.

As users these days have moved to mobile, any game that is not mobile-friendly usually cannot compete within the market. Similarly, a large group of players in this game have played for many years and have literally 'grown up'. They have their daily lives of work and family which literally takes up quite a lot of time. Of course, this is also a main reason why a game and a close-knit community can help these people cope with their daily lives as it acts as a de-stress factor as well as a way to "get away from the real world". However, if it is not mobile-friendly, it can also be too much effort and become an inconvenience. I think I speak for a large group of "oldschoolers" within this game that they stay playing not because of the convenience of playing but mainly because of the social factor and the close-knit community within the game. But that cannot be a winning strategy from a marketing perspective as it will be hard to market this advantage to new players and younger groups as they will only feel "left out". Many of us grew up playing text based MMORPG, but a lot of the younger groups do not understand it and does not understand the fun of it. Educating them will be very costly.

So, my question to the new Lords of Utopia is 3 folds:

1) In terms of the new business strategy and marketing strategy, what is the demographic Utopia will target and market towards;
2) Secondly, is there a plan to convert Utopia to a mobile-friendly or even mobile-based game; and
3) How to you plan to educate and bring back text-based games to this new age of digital, visual and 3D gaming?

Finally, I really wish to thank the new owners for their passion towards this game. I have played for nearly 9 years and have grown up within this community and have met some great people a long the way. I came back this year to play mainly because of the good memories that this game has given me. I hope Dave and Jeff and make new memories for a lot more people.

Further to my previous post, I thought about this news all day and have some more questions I'm really curious to know the answers for.

As mentioned, I also run a gaming business, and as common sense may dictate - having and making a game and operating a game is completely two different things. The former requires an initial injection of capital (whether it's monetary or time) to develop and complete but once it's done then it is done. To operate a successful game becomes a completely different monster as this requires on-going support, updates, marketing and advertising, and user expansion as well as enhanced user experience.

While Dave and Jeff have taken the load off Sean and Bryan by purchasing the game with which I assume a lump sum purchase, the game still remains as it is. The cost remains the same as well. Changing some bugs and errors as well as some minor enhancement will not make much change (if any at all) to a diminishing community of Utopia. Further funding with a solid business model and plan is required to "take it to the next level". But in order to do that, the game needs ongoing funding or, it needs to fund itself. Games, similar to mobile apps and platforms can generate revenue two ways: 1) Have an ongoing user-expansion, high user = potential profit, collect funding from investors and bank on the fact that the game can eventually cash-in on the large user base or; 2) There are revenue generating functions within the game (for example League of Legends generates revenue from purchasing of skins and heroes).

Therefore, with this in mind, I have some further questions:

4) What model is in place (any case study to share) to 'expand' the game as opposed to going status quo?;
5) How do you intend to re-brand a dying concept (text based game) to a new-age crowd?; and
6) Is there a revenue model in place? How does the game continue to fund itself?

Sorry for so many questions. I obviously do not expect them to be completely answered but I'm just speaking out loud to myself as I'm very curious to see what Dave & Jeff envision.

[protector]

Will Bishop keep his job? :-p

[Pillz]

Will Bishop keep his job? :-p

Why wouldn't he?

[protector]

Why wouldn't he?

Maybe the new owners don't like him!

[Nim]

I thought of more questions this morning:
- Will the game's time still be based on GMT+0 or will it adapt for a new age to your timezone (if that's different)?
- Will either or both of you have a certain amount of personal participation or maybe reachability in the forums or IRC, or will you work through omnipotent proxy's like Bishop, Palem and other possible mods, or both?
- Is there a chance I could convince you to participate to the Utopian Secret Santa? Not as players (cause you have plenty of work probably), but as an extra tier people can choose when signing up. For example, John signs up for 1 gift (makes or buy 1 gift, receives 1 gift) but he'll send an extra gift to you guys. They could possibly send it to a postal box, addressed to the company. It's a nice way to show our appreciation of the effort you put in our favourite past time. Of course mods like Bishop could also do something similar. :)
- Will there be an (on demand) shop with Utopian merchandising? Those could be t-shirts or a cool office mug.
- Would there be a possibility to have a community input in the shop? Some people playing have some awesome skills to make great Utopia themed stuff. But it's expensive to just make it and ship it for free (part of the Secret Santa concept). It could maybe work as some market place (fixed prices) or auction (bidding option, tho I prefer myself fixed prices) where a fixed percentage would go to the dev company. Think Etsy or eBay but with only two categories: official merchandising and a community merchandising. It would be a way to get more funds for the game. The on demand system has as advantage that you don't need to invest in wares that maybe won't be sold, since you only order (official merchandising) or make them (community merchandising) when an order comes in the shop. It would of course take longer for the merchandise to arrive at the client, but if you calculate that in the expected arrival and announce that in the shop, I'm sure people wouldn't mind!

[Chrystal Palace]

Do you like midget porn? Will you send me noods? Is it true bishop and Palme are the same person with multiple personalities?

[Nim]

Do you like midget porn? Will you send me noods? Is it true bishop and Palme are the same person with multiple personalities?

+1!

[Emilio]

What a shame, bishop sounds so fun. that was unexpected. can't these new guys have at least cool nicknames then. :) now we get utopia changes from brian or benjamin or something. allright good luck guys!

[Minty]

Will you fix "The Oops"?

This

[Vengeance]

Perhaps odd but to me brutally obvious question... As a community, how can we help?