2011 Annual Report

[ddavison]

This is also posted on the SmiteWorks website.

SmiteWorks believes in transparency with its user base and licensed publishers. The best way forward in the future is to have a clear grasp of where you are today and where you've come from. We are committed to growing the user base from 23,000 + licensed users and expanding online gaming in general.

For the full annual report, read here (https://www.smiteworks.com/press/AnnualReport2011.htm).

[madman]

Link is broken!

Chris

[ddavison]

Sorry about that. Give it a shot now.

[madman]

Goals for 2012


Cement a license from Wizards of the Coast or Paizo
Complete Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin and continue to expand our product offerings there
Add more content and features to existing rulesets (Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, etc.)
Bring older rulesets into feature parity with D&D 4E and 3.5E product offerings
Build support for D&D 5E
Build better integration with third party tools and websites (Obsidian Portal, Hero Lab, Google+)Looking forward to 2012


Chris

[phantomwhale]

Love the goals - hoping I can assist on #3 and #4, where possible.



Rank Title
1 Savage Worlds Ruleset v3.2 for Fantasy Grounds


:D :D :D

[GunnarGreybeard]

Rank Title
1 Savage Worlds Ruleset v3.2 for Fantasy Grounds
Just noticed that. And by looking at the 2011 by category it was a pretty wide margin too.

I just might need to look in this SW thingy. :D

[Deron]

Hope most of the targets will materialize. Nice to have that sort of transparency in your business operations, this certainly is missing in today's economic environment.

Best regards,
True Fan Of Yours :)

[afilaccio]

Fantastic work really IMHO. Glad to see that there is still growth in this market. More players will keep growing this into the future.

[mrklin]

"Cement a license from Wizards of the Coast..."

I may be overly optimistic, but would that perhaps mean a Star Wars ruleset coming if successfull?

[wbcreighton]

I believe that FFG has the license for a SW rpg now.

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fantasy_Flight_Games

[ddavison]

I don't know what the options are for the older Star Wars Saga Edition product line even if we do sway GW. Unfortunately, any licensing of conversions from a publisher that licenses the brand from another company may simply be too complex to unwind all the legal constraints, payments, etc. This will probably hold true for the newer Star Wars content that eventually gets released too. It's a shame, though, because at one time I put together a decent chunk of Star Wars Saga NPC modules and a basic functional ruleset and it will most likely never see the light of day.

[mrklin]

Awwww....

that may be the biggest loss for this tabletop system ever :(

There are 1 or 2 homebrews out there, but good as they are they lack those certain touches that make the official stuff so complete here :)

[Dracones]

Other goals that'd be nice for 2012:

1> More tutorials and market driving to bring new people into the system. Get some people with unlimited licenses and host weekly one shots for people that are interested in seeing what the system can do.

Heck you don't even have to do this yourself. You can donate unlimited licenses or product(settings, modules) to good GMs who are willing to run these for you on a regular schedule.

This can culminate into a yearly con where you introduce new rulesets or even new ruleset updates.

2> Reviews in the store. When I look at a ruleset or module I want to see comments from other players on it.

3> A blog with weekly updates. Maybe a "tips and tricks" post with a short video showing "hey, did you know you could do this?". Maybe a screen shot showing off some new setting, ruleset or feature on something being worked on. Maybe give your ruleset creators post access so they can post their updates to it too.

This helps with the information flow to players, and again, is marketing for anyone who comes onto the site. Potential customers like to see a lot of activity.

[ddavison]

Good suggestions. #2 is kind of on my unofficial list and is something I've worked on a little already. I just need to bust through the few issues I was having getting it integrated with the store.

#1 is also pretty interesting.

[GunnarGreybeard]

1> More tutorials and market driving to bring new people into the system. Get some people with unlimited licenses and host weekly one shots for people that are interested in seeing what the system can do. We kind of started up something like that in this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14218). I'd be up for doing a weekly Rolemaster demo and maybe GURPS but I'm "really" rusty on GURPS so I would need time to bone up on that one. The problem I've had is that the times I am available makes it hard to round up players. I suppose a weekly, regularly set time for short one shots might work though since there would be no need for anyone to feel they are committing to a regular game.

[Griogre]

I think a weekly scheduled time might be a good idea especially if it is organized so the different rulesets are rotated through each week so no one GM would have to do all the work of demoing.

[Dracones]

We kind of started up something like that in this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14218). I'd be up for doing a weekly Rolemaster demo and maybe GURPS but I'm "really" rusty on GURPS so I would need time to bone up on that one. The problem I've had is that the times I am available makes it hard to round up players. I suppose a weekly, regularly set time for short one shots might work though since there would be no need for anyone to feel they are committing to a regular game.

Yeah, my thinking on it would be from a company perspective with a specific aim to bring in potential new players and sell specific settings.

For example as a start, find 4 good GMs. Offer them ultimate licenses if they'd be willing to run 1 public game a month for half a year. Past that if they want to continue they'd be "paid" with rulesets and modules you'd be promoting in a given month. When licensing rulesets with vendors make sure the licensing allows you to give away ruleset and module copies for free for marketing purposes.

Each GM would handle a week and run a module with pregen characters already setup. As a player(or potential customer), I'd just connect and grab a character. At the start they'd go ahead and run whatever they wanted to, to get into the groove of things. Later on when that's run its course you'd give them a setting + module to run.

June might be Deadlands Reloaded, Don't drink the Water month. July might be Castles and Crusades: A1 Assault on Blacktooth Ridge.

The idea being that there'd always be a weekly game running that anyone with the free client could join. This allows for people on the fence about buying FG2 to try it out: "There's always a game running each week, just download the client and jump in".

Maybe they're completely open games and when all the pre-made chars are taken, the remaining players can just watch. Maybe you have to register beforehand. I like the "just jump in" idea, but if you always have 15 people joining a 6 character game, you might need to open up more games and have the GMs balance the players between them and handle the overflow. There'll be some trial and error here.

The other aspect to that is to allow existing customers to try out new rulesets they don't already own. Maybe that Pathfinder player has always been interested in C&C but there's never any games of it running. The monthly events could also be combined with a sale of that ruleset for the month. So, if I ever thought about buying Deadlands, maybe June I should join one of those games and if I like it pick it up while on it's sale.

Later more games could be added(in different time zones) as you increased your GM pool. Just make sure to vet them first by sitting in a game or two they're already running. They may be a potential customer's first view of your product.

Content creators could also take advantage of this. Maybe combine the release of a module with a couple play sessions of it that month. Is the Mutant and Masterminds ruleset ready for release? Put it in the monthly rotation. Find a couple of your GMs that are interested in it and "pay" them the ruleset to run a couple public sessions of it.

If the above worked out then I'd be looking on externalizing the marketing for it. A natural for that would be a yearly con. Bring in all your GMs, put up a registration for the events, pay them with new rulesets they want to try out(or modules), some of the GMs might be your content creators who want to promote their new ruleset or module. Spend some cash on marketing to make outsiders aware of the con and that they can join it for free(all the GMs will have ultimate licenses) and track the sales to see if the marketing dollars for the event paid off. Also setup a special landing page for the con and track the incoming links so next year you have a better idea where to best advertise it.

[JohnD]

More "how to" examples/tutorials are a must.

The pricing of an ultimate license is at a premium level (although reasonable if the program does what it promises); people who pay for the software shouldn't have to adopt a scavenger hunt approach just to figure out how to perform simple activities to prepare/run a game.

This is the biggest shortcoming of this product I can see so far (admittedly a small sample size).

[Answulf]

No annual report for 2012?

[ddavison]

I've been slacking. Things were very similar for 2012 as they were for the previous year. I'll see about collecting the new stats and collecting my thoughts for 2013. Rest assured, we've been working on a bunch of new initiatives already.