Something I don't understand: games and competition

[Jerry]

In this thread, I would like to ask you guys a question, well, actually two. But before reaching that point, I will give a little info on how I started to wonder about this. So bear with me, the question IS coming. In case you are too lazy to read, just scroll down to the bolded part.

As you guys know by now, I have started a website, and I want more people to register their games on it, and put the voting code on their sites. Well, you could sit, and wait. But that's not gonna work, so I put in a bit of effort. Now, my favorite approach would be to have a chat with each and every game owner on the web, but since that is impossible, I want to go with the secondbest approach: email. In this approach, the best way of doing things, in my view anyway, is to first check out whether the game actually matches with my site. Then you have the possibility to write a semi-personal email.

But, many game owners do not leave any email adress on their site. I won't go deeper into the legal factors this may have, I did that in another thread. Yet, it is important to mention, because it is this absence of an email adresses what made me go for the third best approach: signing up on the game, and then sending the admins an ingame message. It takes a bit of extra time to actually FIND the admins in some games, but it's worth it (it actually made me discover two new games which have a good chance of "hooking" me.

But what happens: when you send the admin a message with an URL in it, many games (MCC code, quite often) auto-fed you. For a simple URL! ANY URL. I mean, it's not like I am going to your game trying to steal away your players, right? Yet, I get banned for an URL.

Of course, I understand why they do it: you don't want some dude who just started a game to come to yours, spamming all the players about how the game they play is so much worse than that new, really great, game that they are advertising. I totally understand that. But, why so harsh? What if people want to tell eachother about their own blog in which they describe their daily adventures while working at Mcdonalds?

And, the question which really boggles my mind: why so severe? Why take measures to stop advertising of other games, while the player can find them at the next mouseclick anyway? Why take measures which hurt a lot of sincere, bona fide, people, just to stop a few spammers?

Especially since most game-owners are also present in some forum where game-owners discuss how to improve their game? How do you see eachother? Collegues, or clear competitors?

To boil it down, the questions:

- Why crack down on IGM's in a way that does not only stop spammers, but also hurts those of good faith (badly)

- How do you see other game owners on communities like this?

[a_bertrand]

Well I can answer openly here: Some owners (if not most) are scared that you will steal away players. As easy as that.

Now let me explain something to everyone, first of all players don't stay glued on one game because they don't find anything else to play with. If they stay on one game it's because they appreciate it. So sharing links of other games for me is not a problem. I do allow it even in the chat, or in my forums (as long as it's not starting to be spam). If they like your game better than mine, then it's my fault that I didn't made a game good enough, and nothing else.

Another problem is that many if not all of the mc game owners are kids, and don't understand how to make a game which is not just a copy cat of others, and of course in this situation you are scared that people may move away. On my case, I don't think there is many games in my category, nor that would be a real problem for me. I do try to do my best, and have fun, if others like it, fine, if not then well... too bad.

[Danny696]

On my game, i just remove certain parts of the url, e.g .php, .com .co.cc(for kiddies)

[BoGFx]

Confidence. Be confident enough to allow links. If not, add certain game names to the list.

[lmgtfy]gain confidence[/lmgtfy]

[Redex]

Totally agree with Bert over there, make sure you you provide enough facilities in game to make sure you're users are going to stay. Have the guts to allow links, and for that you got to make sure and beleive you're game can compete with the top games out there. If the answer to that answer is yes, then you've got nothing to worry about.

[snailian]

I agree wholeheartedly with what a_bertrand said. The reason is fear and insecurity. Fear that players will not return to their game if they discover something "better" and insecurity that their game is not good enough to keep the players otherwise.

[wolfe]

I agree with the general idea, but you should take precautions to block spam since games constantly have people sign on to run mail scripts, etc. In some cases this is needed by blocking certain sites that are notorious for having their players spam.

[Zero-Affect]

I like many others use preg replace to strip urls down - nooby way really but im speaking from my older game not my new one.

Most people are insecure as was i since most of my early members where lets just say adventurious when it came to the rules, so basically all sorts of links where passed around and i didn't want to be responsible for parents coming to me about infected links which originated on my website.

That is really bad PRk in my eyes so i simply disallowed specific things ie '.co.uk', '.com' and so on but they do work ways around these ie 'www[dot]site[dot]com' but then it isn't a actually a link on your website then.

[Jerry]

Interesting replies. From the replies, I gather that you guys feel that there are two kind of game-owners. The little kids who are insecure, and think brute force will get things their way, and game-owners with some maturity and brains. And I also notice the little-kid type seems to be not replying.

[Zeggy]

You can be confident with your game all you want, if you don't do anything with it, your game will still be terrible :P

But yeah, I agree. There is actually no way of stopping people from spreading website links. You can replace the dot with [dot], or add spaces in the url, or split the url, or get around whatever filters you have in a million other ways.

Also, if players are leaving your game because they click a link and find that link is more interesting then your game, then those players would have left your game anyways.

And finally - even if your game is extremely awesome and you are one of the top 100 games in the world... players will still leave your game eventually. Players come and go, that is completely natural. It is not always a bad thing when players leave. It's only a bad thing when a visitor never signs up to begin with.