Promote through efficient trade?

[Blacklava]

Hi,

I'm wondering if some game owners would be interested in building an efficient trade system, nothing like crap banner exchange but a real new way to circle the players... The idea would be to use a trade script based on "CPA" scheme with actions not only limited to classic registration but more something matching 10-15 minutes of play. To be efficient each action would trigger a reward for player. (Read the example at the bottom)

Some important points :
- It would be free of charge, it's just traffic sharing
- The script would be free and open source
- Fairness would be directly enforced by players themselves as they will complain if not beeing rewarded.

Yes many will say "I don't want to send my players to other browser games, that's stupid" but IMHO most of your players already play 2-3 games or will do so through upcoming months so why not trying to open the gates and flood your site with new players? Such traffic exchange might send HUGE amounts of fresh traffic as the reward will make it a buzz on your site.

Technically a basic version coded in php would be really easy to build but I won't bother if no one interested
And of course the script would be smart enough to send hits only to sites triggering back players too.

A live example :
Site A action = Signup with no email and reach level 2, approximately 10 minutes of play
Site B action = Signup with email, confirm it and enter shop, approximately 3 minutes
After discussion both owners agree it's about same value with a bit more weight for site A...
Let's say Site A trade points per action would be 1000 and Site B 800
(When a player is sent from site A to site B and complete action then Site A would score 800 trade points)
Everything would be controlled through balance and script would temporary block sites below a certain limit until the needed trade points are scored back.

Summary : It's like a reward tool where players are paid for signups and/or actions behind but it's a trade script! Compared to banner exchange or link exchange it would be 100 times more efficient.

Now it's perhaps a bit complex to understand or too exotic idea? 

[JGadrow]

I think this is actually a good idea for promoting traffic across a network of sites. Indeed, I believe some of the companies with multiple running games already do something like this like some of the MySpace games my ex-wife used to play. It helps to distribute the player load across the games.

I'm not certain of the viability of this for sites between two separate owners but if you ever plan to run multiple games concurrently, it's worth your while to implement it for your own purposes in any case. If you find someone interested in a free traffic exchange, you'd already have a tool to facilitate it.

The additional snag here would be handling processing of meeting the defined criteria. You would need to create an API for the other site developer to utilize on their end. Ideally, for maximum portability, you would want this system to actually have its own server and the API would be implemented with SOAP (or similar technology) so that any programmer capable of making SOAP requests (regardless of chosen programming language) would be able to use the system.

[Blacklava]

Thanks for your point, yes it's a tool which would be good for internal use between own sites too (which I plan to test at first if going to code it).

About using a dedicated server and running soap APIs sure it would be the best way to code it but I don't think that's a must as only basic php/asp knowledge would be needed to integrate the script on both sides (the goal isn't really to have millions of sites trading traffic and maximize portability, more to attract games with active players who will I hope all know how to handle such easy integration...)

[JGadrow]

Yeah, that's why I said ideally. However, by building it as a PHP-only system, you're limiting yourself from being able to share traffic with a huge site constructed with Ruby, or C#, or Java, or anything else. Granted, PHP is very prevalent, but it would still make this utility limited in use. If the goal is to get traffic, I would strongly advise you making it portable so that you can get traffic from nearly any web game out there.

Since you've not begun implementation, it's not like you have to shift gears on development of the tool to incorporate a language-neutral API, it could be included from the start giving the project a greater viability. Again, that's just my suggestion. However, to put it into a different context, it's like advertising your movie that's about to hit theaters ONLY on ABC channels. Sure, you'll have a sizable audience but not nearly as sizable as if you'd have targeted ads for ABC, CBS, and Fox networks.

[Chris]

I don't know why, but it feels like a poor concept to me...

[Blacklava]

"poor"? Can't really explain a bit more? 
The reward tools proven some efficiency, it's quite the same engine... Reason why it might technically work IMO but I'm really interested in any feedback and at first from people who don't see it as a good tool.

[JGadrow]

I don't know why, but it feels like a poor concept to me...

I doubt many other webmasters will go for it. If they're advertising another site, they probably want some revenue from the advertisement. But, as I said, it has some value for transitioning players from one game that you've created to another. The model has already proven effective.

However, it might be of interest to some webmasters so it's worth taking the extra time (in my opinion) to generalize the API. Plus, I don't know about anyone else here, but there's no guarantee that I'll stick with PHP in the future. Maybe I'll make a game with a compiled binary because I want to preserve data across page accesses better than PHP can provide, or I just want the bare-metal speed available from such a game system.

So, leaving the API generalized can still be argued as making sure it's useful to you in any circumstance.

[Chris]

If banner exchanges are poor and direct link exchange is poor, then why this one would be good? It's not about API, but about the general concept.

I think traffic exchange works best with unequal parties (seller and buyer).

I just wish someone made a good & efficient toplist (there are so few decent ones nowadays), these are like 10 times better that any other free traffic sources (to me, most people use them the wrong way).

[JGadrow]

This concept has proven effective because the traffic that you're transferring would be active players. Basically, you're granting an incentive for your players to click a link. This would be something like (for a mobster game trading traffic to an rpg):

Be a hero in one world to become a better villain in this one! Get to level 10 or better in [rpg game] and you'll receive 10 new henchmen eager to do your bidding in [mobster game]!

So, you're offering in-game incentives for clicking on the referral links.

[Blacklava]

Chris : It can't be compared to banner exchange... It must be compared with reward tools like blvd, cpalead or offerpal : Those are doing well and players are just asking for more and more offers (and they have none or not enough new ones...), such trade system would do the trick. I'm sure at least 30-40% of my active players would give it a go and try 5-6 games (not only signups! The idea is to trade real players who will do more than just checking screenshots and use a fake email).
There is no way any link or banner exchange would offer such traffic, yes toplists rock but that's simply complementary

[codestryke]

Very nice idea and I can really see some potential in this type of system, not only for a single entity with multiple games but for a group of game owners. I'm not sure it would work as a complete open system though.  There are just to many dishonest people that create games or are not committed enough if they don't get the success of  TornCity or KoL in a week LOL.

If this could be setup like the old WebRings (anyone remember those back in the day) system then I could actually see using the system. The WebRings system allowed someone to create a Ring and then people who wanted to be a part of the ring would ask to join, basically the creator is the moderator of the ring.

Now take your system and pair it with an open id server for PBBG users and you could really start to shift traffic around and give players what they want, options along with ease of signup. To me this would be akin to a quazi Facebook/MySpace setup where multiple games would  allow a richness that isn't really offered by any single developer or entity that isn't making the Facebook/MySpace apps.

[Harkins]

What would be the value over a pbbg-specific login over Facebook Connect?

[Chris]

It's not like I'm stongly opposed to such concept, I don't even can give hard evidence against, it is half logic an half my intuition that tells me it is a wrong idea


Why no one made this before? CPA concept is not new, it is not because no one thought about it before. Still, for some reason no one went for this concept so far...

80/20 rule. Would such concept solve my problems in significant way? No. Is implementing it the most efficient way of getting traffic vs time needed to implement? No. This is definitely not one of the ideas that "require 20% effort and solve 80% problems". Sure, it might work, it might be complementary, but let's face it, if concept can not solve your major problems then you can not call it good even if it works. If you want to win you have to strike high value targets first, if you concentrate on second valued targets then you lose even if you did the best possible.

[JGadrow]

And as far as your 80/20 rule goes... I seem to recall you having difficulties converting users from one game to another at some point in the past but my memory is always short-circuiting. lol You are someone I should think would be really interested in this idea at least from the standpoint of trying to shuffle traffic between your own games.

[codestryke]

What would be the value over a pbbg-specific login over Facebook Connect?

I would use it as well, or to be more specific, use a service or create one like RPXNow and include say the PBBGNetwork as an OpenID server to chose from. The easier the login process the better

@Chris,
For me I was always of the opinion that if the players didn't play my games then they were dead to me. As stated above people will play more then one game at a time. For me it's been an apathy of sorts when it comes to traffic and players. What I'm looking for is someone that wants to play a game. I use banners and top-lists but to me these aren't as effective as I would like. The reason for this is they might not be looking for a game or it's junk traffic to help the site they are already loyal to. With something like this the qualification is there, they want to play a game, ok good. Now some of our games have a pretty steep learning curve so we lose a lot of people because of it. Instead of losing that person I would much rather hand them off to a fellow PBBG user, maybe my loss could be their gain.

Some of our games are round based and some people like to take time off, again, have them go and play one of your games for a while. I'm not losing that person but I am offering them another place to put there entertainment time. Heck with this system they could come back with a bit of a bonus accrued from playing other games.

If done right with the right group of people I think this could be a very profitable endeavor for everyone. Traffic, QUALIFIED traffic is gold and to me this is what this system would be.

[Chris]

For me I was always of the opinion that if the players didn't play my games then they were dead to me.

LOL, exactly the same for me. At last we have something in common

The tastiness of a concept depends also on personal skills, compare this:
stateofcrime.com created 2005, PageRank:1
samuraimmorpg.com created 2008, PageRank:3
You sux on SEO beyond any imagination If I were doing such poorly on other promotional methods then yes, I would find this concept quite attractive.

Completely off topic. Everyone have certain personal traits that have to deal with (for example I'm pathetic when comes to monetarization, when I compare other people's reports I feel as if were missing at least one digit ). These will affect (or even shape) the way you run things and perceive things.

A side note: MystressNyx, you don't have to care so much about filtering what your coder says, we know he is not admin and has rough attitude. But we all here are/were coders as well, so we are not much offended by harsher words and we remember how we were ourselves before admin duties tought us to be more careful with words Let him have fun/anger outburst from time to time, we are not players, we can handle this

[MystressNyx]

A side note: MystressNyx, you don't have to care so much about filtering what your coder says, we know he is not admin and has rough attitude. But we all here are/were coders as well, so we are not much offended by harsher words and we remember how we were ourselves before admin duties tought us to be more careful with words Let him have fun/anger outburst from time to time, we are not players, we can handle this

I would never edit something of Codestryke's in the way that you imply. In actuality, I changed a phrase in which he used the wrong word (empathy / apathy), completely changing the meaning of the post. Given that we're not just "coder and Admin", but partners in every sense, I always want to ensure that what comes across in posts regarding our business practices is accurate. And, for the record, I'm the mean one who tells it like it is without any flowery padding. He actually holds his tongue more often than not.

[dsheroh]

In principle, I like the idea and will be watching for any further developments.  (I won't make any bold claims of intent to participate because, well, I can't participate until my own game is up and running.)  I definitely favor a cross-platform design, since I'm a non-PHP guy myself, but I expect that a basic HTTP-only approach to interacting with the server (dare I say... REST?) should be quite adequate.  SOAP feels like overkill for this.

In practice, though, I can see definite potential for trust issues.  If I have something to gain either by claiming to have sent you users or by claiming that your users have been active in my game, then what's to stop me from lying about it to improve my standing in the referral system?

[AcidicOne]

I'm with dsh, the only way i could see this working where the possibility of a single owner could not try to cheat would be to(can stone me later for this suggestion) have a common user base that tracked the amount of time/levels etc logged into each game. like mentioned before for a single owner having a common user base between games isn't much of a problem, but that doesn't work to well with a group of game owners,unless of course those owners decided to merge into a super PBBG company

[Blacklava]

About cheat, as I said in my first post, players themselves will be here to ensure fairness as they will complain if not rewarded (remember it works with incentives, a report button or support email will work well as you can trust your players for beeing efficient when it comes to moaning ).

And about not using php -even if soap would be of course the best system- I don't really understand what's the real issue : if your game is java, C or anything else you could serve php/asp pages from your server and have your scripts trigger those urls no matter the primary language you're using. Same story for administration, just use php & mysql somewhere or adapt the script a bit... Best forum's scripts are php, I don't see how you could skip php nowadays, isn't it a browser game forum?

EDIT : added a poll to the thread 

[gnoh]

Well, why should I have to setup a server just to use your system?   I use application containers since I use java;  I'd be interested but I'd want a cross platform solution.

[Blacklava]

I'll build a beta php version and push it live under GPL open source licence, so anyone interested in going further with crossplatform APIs will be able to do so...
Nice java forum btw, I didn't even know such script exist

[gnoh]

No such _script_ exists as it's compiled bytecode that's just me being pedantic though.

[Blacklava]

Update...
Working on development and need to point an issue many will have when it comes to cycling traffic between own games : If you have yet tried to have your players registered in all your games you will see lot of duplicated accounts if you simply push live the trade script offering rewards for playing again through new accounts... IP crosschecks and other rules must apply to avoid duplicated stories but then you'll have moanings because your biggest fans playing more than one game can't benefit from those rewards. Hard to balance 

Summary : If you trade with your own games or any game where many of your players are already registered you must think about the exact effect!
Ideas welcome...

(Personally I still think the best from it would be to trade with totally new databases, such duplicated stories will happen mostly for own games and only for the ones which have trade traffic yet, launching a new game on your own network will trigger no issue as soon as you'll use exclusively the script to share traffic)

[Blacklava]

Fixed the issue about duplicated accounts, the trade script can now handle existing accounts in a good and fair way for both ends (not triggering points if player already got an account)

I've released beta version and tested it here, working fine... I would need at least 1-2 beta tester to confirm installation process and system working fine for other games too.
Please write to me here through PM or at support@cityslaves.com
Thanks!