Better Plan?

[unerwünscht]

Since I have had several of you ask if I had a better plan, I guess I can start a new thread for this, but I warn you all... It is not a simple vision and could take sometime to set down in words (I will do my best to sum it up shortly). Even more time to come up with raw (and referenced) statistics data.

But here goes.

If I owned Fantasy Grounds (I do not, but my offer was a serious one), I would start by getting rid of the lite license as it is now known, and upgrading all preexisting customers to a full license. The company takes a small financial hit in doing this, but it is a necessary step in the overall plan. I would then drop the price of full license to $30.

After that I would implement a true floating license structure into the Fantasy Grounds application. This floating license would be registered and attached to a GM's full license and would be non transferable. It would allow players who do not have a license of their own to connect to a hosted game and play as normal. These floating licenses would be priced in the neighborhood of $10 each.

Next would be the global chat lobby. I would integrate into the launching application a global live chat lobby to aid in finding and playing games on the fly. Some people like the ability to run a game on the spur of the moment, who would have figured.

After this initial stage of changes were completed I would then have my team of coders go through and set a standardized system and pricing scheme for Rulesets, Token packs etc, and insist that these things be handled through our local store. This will help cut back on piracy of the add on content, and help insure the future of third party developers in the network.

The next stage (and this is a big one) Merchandising. Who here wants a Fantasy Grounds T-Shirt, or ballcap, calendar, mousepad, this list goes on, and there is a fortune to be made in solid merchandising.

And Advertising, I can't stress enough how much any product needs proper advertising. Going to GenCon and demoing the product is a good start, but that's all it is, a start. Get on Project Wonderful or any number of other cheap advertisement networks and start getting your name out there. People will see that they can download the player software for free, they will give it a try on a GM's floating license, determine they like the application and would like to run games for the friends. The next thing you know you have the largest distribution of a VTT ever. You have made a nice profit, and you are now retired and living somewhere like Cancun, Mexico (Don't dog it till you have been there, It's heaven I tell you).

[Moon Wizard]

I previously used Klooge.Werks as our virtual tabletop, and they supported the host license with floating client licenses. It's one of the things that I miss from that tabletop. (along with better targeting and client map view control) Obviously, I found FantasyGrounds to be better in the long-term. ;)

Cheers,
JPG

[unerwünscht]

Don't get me wrong, I can (and will at some point) give a list of reasons why I feel Fantasy Grounds can be the superior VTT application. I'm not even sure Smite Works understands the treasure that they have made. I feel confident that if they did understand it they would be taking a VERY different approach on many aspects of the marketing and development.

In fact I think if they had any idea of what they actually had they would have already done all the steps in my plan (even the ones not yet listed), and then some.

[unerwünscht]

Now that I have a little more time, lets start to examine each element and why.

Stage 1: I would start by getting rid of the lite license as it is now known, and upgrading all preexisting customers to a full license. The company takes a small financial hit in doing this, but it is a necessary step in the overall plan. I would then drop the price of full license to $30.

The reasoning for this is that the Full Client can already connect to a gaming session, and I can think of no better form of advertising than a fully functional demo. So since we already know that floating licenses are in "the" plan, we just go ahead and make this preemptive step. We should at this stage see an increase in sales of the full client, at the cost of losing sales to the lite license and losing all the potential upgrade sales. There is not doubt about it, the company would see a drop in net profit at this stage. But I honestly cant imagine that sales are that impressive as is anyways.

The reason for the price drop is to help encourage more sales. Yes, we make less money per sale, but we potentially reach a much larger customer basis with the lowered price, this should net a gain for the company.

The next element is the floating licenses. Here we sell them at a drastically reduced price from the original lite license, the reason being is they are tied to a master account, and are only good when used with that account. With the comparatively inexpensive cost of this license one can reasonably assume a large amount of sales to be generated.

Also since players can now play in a game for free, one can also reasonably assume that at any given point in time we will have more players than games. This should generate more sales of the full client (and byproxy the floating licenses) to individuals who want to play but find it difficult to find a game to join, as the system is over saturated with players. This also allows GM to be a little more picky about who they accept as a player in their games, and should make the overall community a more enjoyable, and used entity.

(I now have my regular players showing up for our face to face game, so I will have to continue this analysis later.)

[EugeneZ]

Maybe I mis-understood, but if the rulesets become sold via an Apple Appstore type deal, doesn't that spell doom for, uh, "questionable" rulesets like 4e_JPG? Smiteworks would probably simply say they won't host it, just like Apple does for some stuff, out of fear of reprisal.

[unerwünscht]

That will be covered when I get to that stage of "the better plan". However in direct answer to your question, yes there are several rulesets that would be problematic in an "official store" however, that section of the plan is to cut down on piracy of addon content to assist companies such as DA. Rulesets that are free are very difficult to pirate.

[zabulus]

Also since players can now play in a game for free, one can also reasonably assume that at any given point in time we will have more players than games.

I am not entirely sure about this, since in your scenario, every player is also a potential GM. And since there's usually more players than GMs in a game, you could have a chatroom filled with GMs waiting for players, so potential players would only have to log into the chatroom and play on free (to them) floating licenses, never having to buy anything.

[longarms]

@Zab ... "at any given point in time we will have more players than games."

I think he meant the community at large, not specifically the chatrooms. He's right that removing the barrier of entry for new players (the $30 upfront cost) will expand the community at large. That exactly the reason why the developers want to make floating licenses in the first place.

[unerwünscht]

Next is the global chat integration. Honestly the best bet here would be to use a modified form of openIRC, and integrate it right into the launcher application. The software would ask you for (or store) your forum username and password, and log you into your account on the chats server, and automatically log you into the "Lobby".

Ideally it would have a global Lobby in English since that seems to be the most common language on the forum, and alt Lobbies for other commonly used languages (the more languages you openly "support" the more users you will have in the end). There really is no need for anything "fancy" beyond the launcher script integration. A basic chat lobby would work wonders. It would allow users to chat in a live environment, and allow people to find or host games on the fly. Doing this will increase usage of the software, and in turn bring many more users through word of mouth advertising (the best kind of advertising, cause it is targeted and free).

Next is a standardized system for addons. A standardized system for addons will allow for a much more clear understanding of what you are getting at any point in time, and a set of guidelines on what can be considered a complete set. Also, by running the addons through a localized store, each purchase can be automatically tagged with an MD5 encoded strand or their original license key, thus cutting down on piracy of addon content, something that is a serious issue at the moment.

This isn't to imply nor enforce a communistic form of censorship or copy protection, the system would still allow for unprotected addons to be released, but the user should be made aware of the fact that there is a difference between community addons and official addons.

Then on to merchandising. Now that we have reworked the application to bring in more people the next stage is Merchandising, there isn't much to say here, if you do not see the benefit of merchandising, then you will never understand anything else we are covering and the entire point is lost. Lets just add that there is a reason merchandising is a lucrative business practice used by almost every major corporation, and millions of tiny ones as well.

Last but no least is advertising. Word of mouth advertising is a wonderful thing, but no company should ever expect to survive on it alone. If you want your product to sell to the masses it is imperative that you invest in some form of marketing. Advertising on the internet is a whole new ballgame. The best strategy is to start with untargeted mass advertising. Setting up with places like Project Wonderful and Adbrite, dropping some money in the account, and selecting ad campaigns that will drop your banner on a million low traffic sites. This will get you started on getting you name out there, for a few dollars a day. As the community continues to grow, you start to target your advertising, start selecting high traffic sites that have a similar audience as your customer base. Sites like "Order of the Stick" (cant think of the actual URL at the moment). Sites like Gaming Army (if I ever finish it, and get the traffic flowing in.)

I guess it should be noted at this point that this plan is not perfect, and will not generate a million sales over night. But I feel confident that it would greatly improve the quality of the application and community, and over the course of a few months to a year, generate such a massive amount of sales that early retirement would be a thing the owners and developers would start thinking about.

[unerwünscht]

Another quick note on marketing would be that you could place a rotating banner add at the bottom of the desktop on "free" player clients. I would not cash in on this revenue but instead use it to reinvest in more advertising. Thus generating a circle of advertising that could generate the majority of your ads for free after awhile.