The 3-Month Players

[Jax]

@Faraday Something else to consider with the Bubble talk is to consider what else is going on in the real world with the theme of the game. Successfully super hero movies can cause a bubble for a successful superhero game. A bad Star wars movie can hurt a star wars game. Some food for thought.

[Third Eye]

OK, but specifically on the New Game Bubble thing.

There is a pattern.

New game opens. The theme at this point almost doesn’t matter. The appeal of it at this point almost doesn’t matter.

It is mobbed by the same 40+ people, most of whom evaporate in 3 months.

The cycle repeats at the next new game, the XYZ of which almost doesn’t matter.

There are a LOT of reasons players don’t stick with games. I think 3 months is a pretty reasonable, and probably more-than-reasonable, time to see if something is for you or not. But the Bubble is its own thing and it’s exhausting and it keeps happening and I want it not to happen again on the next project I undertake.

ETA: I guess I’m interested in the ‘I only like new things’ mentality because it’s so foreign to me and so counter-productive to the kinds of environments I enjoy over the long term.

[Ominous]

I think that there are a lot of MU* players out there that have very specific unmet interests. Most MU* players have been playing the game for a while now and know exactly what they want. A new game comes along that sounds close grabs their interest, they give it a shot, it doesn’t check all their boxes, and they move on.

[bear_necessities]

@Third-Eye said in The 3-Month Players:

New game opens. The theme at this point almost doesn’t matter. The appeal of it at this point almost doesn’t matter.

It is mobbed by the same 40+ people, most of whom evaporate in 3 months.

The cycle repeats at the next new game, the XYZ of which almost doesn’t matter.

IMO the bubble seems to largely happen on specific genres of games and my theory is that it happens because 1) it’s the genre people want to play, and 2) there aren’t enough games in that genre to tickle everyone’s fancy. So a game in that genre comes up, 40+ people rush to play (even tho the theme/setting only appeals to 10-15 of them), then slowly but surely those people who aren’t really “all in” on the game trickle off & the game settles into a ‘reasonable’ population. But then the new hotness in the same genre pops up, and the rush happens again, and hey your friends are playing over there and not over here, so you go over there too and by 5 month’s time the first game is dead and the second game is about to lose half of their population because the theme/setting didn’t appeal to them but they want to play in that genre, rinse & repeat etc. etc.

Then you have the OTHER side of it where gamerunners determine a game’s success off “The Bubble” and the natural trickling off of people to settle into a more “reasonable” population makes it seem Unsuccessful, so they give up. Or they burn out. Or they didn’t hook the people they wanted to hook and they don’t really want to Rp with the people who are left so they give up.

I suspect if you had 2-3 high fantasy/pretty princess games and 2-3 modern supernatural games opening up at the same-ish time, you wouldn’t experience that bubble. But IDK, I could be wrong.

[Pavel]

It’s standard New Hotness. We see it with TV, we see it with video games, we see it with basically all forms of media in some fashion. It’s a tale as old as time. You’re not going to appeal to 100% of people, but 95% of people will want to try the new hotness. After a bit, the ones who don’t like it will leave. It’s not really a mystery.

[Raistlin]

I often struggle on “older” games because there just aren’t many ways for new players to find RP with the established crowd. Cliques have formed, RP circles have popped up, storylines are already rolling…and I find myself stuck trying to break in. I’ll make a character, maybe do one or two random “coffee shop scenes,” and then just stop logging in because nothing clicks.

I really dig games that give newbies a natural in with older, more established characters. Star Trek works great (getting assigned to a ship, base, or Starfleet Academy), school-based games too (Hero High, Supernatural University, etc.), and super-hero games (with their teams or those built-in relationships between FCs we can lean on).

I obviously don’t speak for all new players, but I don’t think I’m some special snowflake here. I bet tons of new players hit these same walls. Maybe this is why so many MUSHes fizzle out after a few months - they don’t solve the “new player integration” problem.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:

You’re not going to appeal to 100% of people, but 95% of people will want to try the new hotness. After a bit, the ones who don’t like it will leave. It’s not really a mystery.

Yeah this. I don’t think it’s a magical 3-month window so much as bunch of people saying: “Oh hey maybe this will be fun!” Then after anywhere from 1 to 12 weeks being all: “Eh, not so much.”

Like you said, it’s the same with TV. A hot new show will get a bunch of viewers for its premiere, but then they’ll start trailing off. Depending on how good the show is, or how niche its appeal is (even if it’s objectively good), you might see that tapering off be more or less dramatic, but you’re never going to get rid of it entirely.

@Third-Eye said in The 3-Month Players:

But the Bubble is its own thing and it’s exhausting and it keeps happening and I want it not to happen again on the next project I undertake.

What’s the alternative though? Let’s postulate that a game is likely only a good fit for 30% of the people who check it out. If 60 people check it out in the first month, you’re left with 20 players who will hopefully stick around. You can build a game around that. If only 20 people check it out and you’re left with 7 players? That’s a tougher proposition. Sure it can work (see: TGG and other smaller niche games) but I think it’s an uphill battle.

[Pyrephox]

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

@Trashcan said in The 3-Month Players:

I also don’t agree that all players want to stick on a game but the game fails them, and I don’t agree that you can make the game so shiny that these people will stick when they would have otherwise gone off to the new shiny thing. Some people are 3Ms and that’s just the way they are. You can make the greatest, most inclusive, most content-having, most relationship-building game anyone has ever seen, and they will still wander off to check the next up and coming game.

Just because the game isn’t meeting their needs, that doesn’t mean that the game failed them. There’s no conceivable way that a game can appeal to every single MUSHer out there, because many of us want different things out of a game.

There are many reasons folks move on from a game. I’ve just seen zero evidence that there’s some kind of ticking 3-month clock (where they’ll move on just because of “novelty” if the game is otherwise a good fit for them) built into the majority of MUSHers. YMMV.

I agree with this.

I think the “Bubble” is basically just what happens when a whole bunch of people try something out. Think about any sort of “trial” or “demo” program you’ve ever been involved with - if there’s something ‘hooky’ about it, then you’ll absolutely get a lot of people who initially show up to try it out–but the majority of them are always likely to find that it’s just not right for them.

That can be for a myriad of reasons: some element of the theme/plot is offputting, the active times aren’t when they can play, their friends aren’t interested in playing, maybe the first few scenes they had didn’t go well, or maybe the character they made doesn’t really “fit” either them or the game but they don’t have the energy/investment to make a new one, or heck, life gets busy/stressful and you miss a week of that New Game Activity and you come back and it’s like…well now I don’t know what’s going on and you just don’t have the energy to try and find out.

Your initial rush of players are “freebies” in some ways, because they will try out EVERY game that’s vaguely in line with their interests. But you won’t keep most of them, even if you offer to send them ice cream or something. What you can do to try and control what parts of that attrition that you can control is a) be ready for that rush as much as possible so that people who MIGHT stay don’t feel neglected or like they can’t be seen among the throng, and b) have an answer for what happens when you lose 60% of that initial rush, including a lot of people who were enthusiastically participating in things.

Things like the Search rotation mentioned above, or what Arx did with its chapters and broad areas of entry can help sustain a steady influx of people as long as staff can sustain the work involved in those and people can feel like they can have a nice balance of Plot RP and Personal RP.

[Roadspike]

@bear_necessities said in The 3-Month Players:

OK but what will people RP?

This is something I always want to think about when creating a game – and what I want to put into the mission statement to guide and explain every game I work on. I think that every game should have a sentence/paragraph that talks about the OOC community you’re trying to create, and a sentence/paragraph about what characters will be and players will do.

For example:

Fly the unfriendly skies in airplanes that never were, casting spells, dodging dragons, and fighting fascism in the late 1930s. Characters will be members of a “free” militia, The Sky Guard, secretly serving the interests of the French and British governments from an airship base. They will crisscross the Continent finding high adventure.

This describes the setting in an IC manner and emphasizes a “radio serial” feel.

The Savage Skies MUSH is a game of dieselpunk adventure and modern fantasy. Players might be flying against air pirates one week, gathering information on Nationalist Spanish movements the next, trading spells with minions of the Drachenordnung another, and then treating with a great dragon to convince it to join the cause at the end of the month.

This provides a definition of the game OOCly, including the type of events that might be available.

All characters will be explicitly tied to the militia group at the heart of the game, either as a fighting member or one of the smugglers, informants, and hangers-on that work directly with them. From there, you’ll work together with other players to create your own adventures within the setting and metaplot provided by Staff. Staff-run action will take place in Adventures of 1-4 months, with some time between them.

This describes the expectation for players on how they’ll interact with the game and who they can play.

[Artemis]

@Raistlin ehhhh I think it’s fair to put just a little bit of responsibility on the part of other players here. In my opinion, it’s simply not difficult to engage new players, invite them into things etc, and plenty of places have a really strong culture of this! There will always be players who don’t have the energy/time/interest to do all that, but it perplexes me when a whole game has given over to that cliquey type vibe. If I hop on an old game that I might otherwise really enjoy if only people included me in things, it just sends the message that the game isn’t actually very active.

[allthecookies]

Now, I’m not the most active to begin with. (Workslow/async-player here!)

But I can totally understand the meaning of this ‘bubble’ phase and it’s a brilliant way to put it.

I’m also one of the sorts that struggles in the ‘new game frenzy’, but finds proper stride when things settle down and people become established in their stories. This is of-course after there’s been a significant departure of the ‘shiny’ crowd: I wish 'em no ill-will, but I definitely can’t keep up with them.

I personally love a steadfast game with a comfortable and inclusive (I don’t do cliques) player base, after the shiny has worn off but the story continues to flow.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

What’s the alternative though?

The only one I can really think of is to invite people specifically, rather than allow for general admission.

[Ashkuri]

I don’t think anyone is trying to keep all 60 players that come in The Bubble. They’re trying to keep the 25 that really would find the game a good fit.

But we’ve got multiple people in this thread alone who are saying “I don’t like the experience of the bubble, it turns me off and drives me away, that’s not fun for me.” So as a game administrator, wtf do you do with The Bubble? You can say it happens for whatever reason you want, but it happens.

How do you provide an experience for 60 people that is so good at the beginning that it will hook some amount of players even after everyone who came to check out the new hotness has gone on to the next hotness? If the answer is “magically have enough bandwidth to support all 60 of them with individualized attention and exciting content and then simply scale it way back after,” idk that it’s realistic.

@Trashcan said in The 3-Month Players:

every way of trying to manage it administratively has some flavor of contraindication

That feels accurate to me, which is frustrating. Maybe you just have to time new game openings with another new game opening so that there’s multiple new hotness and the bubble is split.

[MisterBoring]

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:

I don’t think anyone is trying to keep all 60 players that come in The Bubble. They’re trying to keep the 25 that really would find the game a good fit.

I agree with this, and it brings up another aspect of the 3 month Bubble. Even if the staff of a game is trying to keep the 25 that best fit the game, dropping over half your players at the 4 month mark is still demoralizing, even if it’s not the intention.

This can be tempered with a staff having a plan going in, and having a realistic idea of how many people they actually want for the duration vs what they expect the Bubble to produce.

[Pavel]

@Ashkuri said in The 3-Month Players:

How do you provide an experience for 60 people that is so good at the beginning that it will hook some amount of players even after everyone who came to check out the new hotness has gone on to the next hotness?

You don’t. You provide the experience you can, and that’ll either appeal or it won’t. Losing a vast swathe of players is going to sting, losing a vast swathe of players while you’re burnt out and struggling is going to sting while you’re burning.

[Roz]

Am I alone in kind of enjoying the bubble? I’ve always found it kind of exciting and energizing.

I do think, from a staff perspective, than you just…honestly don’t have to worry about providing personalized plot service to everyone. You do what you need to do to process approvals and character stuff, but when it comes to kicking off plot and bigger RP things, one of the benefits to the bubble IMO is that people are actively doing a much better job of entertaining each other. The new game energy means they’re excited to meet each other and play together. This sort of energy won’t last, but I do think that you don’t have to worry too much about plotting for each and every person.

[Ominous]

@MisterBoring I have also been wondering about this recently. This thread and my partner watching a lot of reality TV series like the Bachelor(ette), the Mole, Million Dollar Secret, and also a bit of Bridgerton have combined with me recently playing Fire Emblem and Unicorn Overlord with their harem anime elements and my constant desire to run a lord and ladies game, resulting in the crazy idea of doing a parody lord and ladies MU*.

At first I was going to call it Pretty Princess Simulator, but maybe The Courtship of the Crown Prince might be better. Basically every season will start with that generation’s crown prince having his debut and all the eligible noblewomen of the land coming to try to woo him into marriage, using their wits, wiles, political connections, etc. to do so. At the end of the season, the best noblewoman (or nobleman, maybe we will have a gay crown prince or a crown princess every so many seasons to mix things up) will win. All of the kingdom’s politics, wars, natural disasters, regime changes, economic swings, etc. will take place in the background during the intervening years. Every season will have a crown prince with a different personality, tastes, hobbies, etc and the noblewomen will need to figure them out and try to use them to their advantage to snag the future queenship. Hopefully the time skips between seasons changing the world would be enough of a change to bring the bubble players back to try again with a new season.

[Artemis]

@Ominous I support this

[KarmaBum]

@Ominous this idea sounds neat but what will people RP?

[Pavel]

@KarmaBum The same thing we RP every night! Sex and bar-related things!