Dominions 3: popularity rising?

[CUnknown]

Is it just me, or is this site seeing a steady increase in traffic? How do we check that? I would be interested.

Take a look at the number of active games we have going right now, it's pretty amazing! This is not even including blitzes organized over IRC.

Is this number of active games unprecedented, or am I imagining things?

I know as far as myself personally, I am as enthusiastic about Dominions now as ever. I bought Sins of a Solar Empire and was really taken aback by the graphics for about a week. Now that the new Dominions patch is out, though, I realize that all I want to do is play Dominions. Sins seems like an excellent game, but I haven't given it much thought at all lately.

I count over 40 current multiplayer games that seem reasonably active. I don't recall ever seeing so many, for example, back in Dominions 2 days.

[Lingchih]

No, I think you are right. I have never seen the forums this busy, and have never seen even half as many MP games going on as are now, all the way back to Dom2.

A year ago, I could find my game thread in the MP board in about two seconds. Now I often have to search for my games because they may have already been pushed to the second or third page.

[Kamamura]

Well, personally, I have been playing Dom3 for over a year, but only SP. Only this week I got into 2 MP games and it started my excitement, I am trying to study the magic system into more depth. As a chess player, I see more depth in this game than in most strategy games on the market. I like slow, deliberate MP games with lots of planning and combinations.

[Corwin]

Hard for me to tell, I have not be around recently. But MP forum seems to be very active indeed.

Personally I've come back to Dom3 few weeks ago after 1 year long pause. I was kindof burned out on it back then, after winning 2 long and time consuming games, losing the 3rd and having the 4rd (the longest one and the most time-consuming one) abandoned. So I've stoped playing.

But now I am into it again and I love it. I also like all these new nations that appeared while I was not looking, it certainly adds diversity into the game. Great job devs!

Oh, and I also got my friend addicted to this game, he bought a copy of dom3 few weeks ago, now he is plying the heck out of it. He will likely to appear on this board at some point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[AlgaeNymph]

Well, I did post about the Gaming Relief Act sale on the Steve Jackson Games Forums...

[Edi]

Lots of new faces around now. I'm on the forums nearly every day and I'm seeing many user names I've never seen before, so you're not just imagining things.

[NTJedi]

The community is strong and growing because Dominions has great depth, game content, strategy, map options and constant game patches.

Dominions is a masterpiece which has great room for improvements, we just have to wait for Illwinter to return and develop its next sequel. The same as waiting for Michael Jordan to return to basketball when he left for wanting to try baseball.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[moderation]

I've had Dominions 3 for about a week and I'm loving it. But if Dom 4 came out next month with a lot of improvements, particularly UI improvements, I think I would get it too. The SP is only so-so, but playing the demo in MP won me over. Also, Dom 3 fills that place in your gaming life that Master of Magic left behind. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Corwin]

moderation said:
I've had Dominions 3 for about a week and I'm loving it. But if Dom 4 came out next month with a lot of improvements, particularly UI improvements, I think I would get it too.




Don't hold your breath for it. Based upon what I've read on this forum, there is a zero chance of Dom4 happening anytime in the close or medium future. Which is a damn pity IMHO.

On the positive side devs keep updating Dom3 and adding new content with the patches.

[Tenebrion]

Well, I just got into the game about a month ago, and have been spamming my MMORPG guild forums with Dom 3 propaganda. I'm sure there've got to be other newbies out there like me that are doing the same.

It's a pity that more people don't know about this game, because I think it could be even bigger than it is now. If the developers were to advertise on websites like www.penny-arcade.com (http://www.penny-arcade.com), or www.mmorpg.com (http://www.mmorpg.com), I'm sure they'd be able to tap into a new market of gamers that's particularly rabid about fantasy / strategy games.

It worked for Poxnora.

[Kristoffer O]

Poxnora ?

[Dedas]

LOL!

[llamabeast]

What's Poxnora?

[Dedas]

Ok, I looked it up. It is some sort of collectible card game made into turn based strategy. You must apparently buy electronic "cards/runes" for real money to be successful. Just like Magic the gathering but without the physical cards.

To my eyes it looks like a common way to make fast money off children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poxnora

[Endoperez]

I have a faint idea that Penny Arcade is a webcomic, but I've never heard of mmorpg.com or PoxNora. In that regard, at least, the idea has merit - Dominions fandom seems to have pretty much no exchange between the people who frequent those sites. If there are enough people who would like Dominions in those communities, getting some info to them could help, but IMO good word-of-mouth would be easier to get to work than an ad campaign. I'm not Shrapnel Games though, and they probably know better any way.

[moderation]

Corwin said:
Don't hold your breath for it. Based upon what I've read on this forum, there is a zero chance of Dom4 happening anytime in the close or medium future. Which is a damn pity IMHO.
On the positive side devs keep updating Dom3 and adding new content with the patches.



Yeah, I'm aware that Dom 4 is a longshot, but I thought I would add my support for the idea, just in case it counts later. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

By the way, I found Dominions through Wikipedia's page on 4X games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X#Examples_of_4X_games) of all places. Not that I would want to use Wikipedia to propagandize the game, but it is a good information source.

[sansanjuan]

I found Dom3 searching for a patch on a HOMM5 forum site (Homm5 had promise but what a debacle ). Refreshing to find and play Dom 3.
-SSJ

[Cheezeninja]

Penny-Arcade has a pretty active forum full of gamers, most of the comics tend to be game related as well, all it would probably take is one person properly posting and maintaining a thread to get a community going there. If it got popular enough for a front page article/comic there would be some serious traffic from it, given the number of hits the comic gets.

We've got a small to medium Dom3 community going in a thread on the Something Awful forums as well, usually with 2-3 games running concurrently. All it takes is one person enthusiastic enough to get the ball rolling.

[moderation]

All this talk of evangelizing makes me feel like have joined a cult.

But at least it is a fun cult. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[quantum_mechani]

Obviously, what we need to spread dominion are some blood sacrifices.

[Tenebrion]

http://www.quantcast.com/penny-arcade.com 32,000 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/poxnora.com 65,500 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/mmorpg.com 663,000 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/shrapnelcommunity.com 2,000 unique hits per month

I'm a product development manager and marketing director, so keeping track of website growth and product popularity is sort of my 'thing'. The point of my original post was to say that the game Poxnora, with a very similar potential fanbase to Dominions 3, went from having very few unique hits per month to getting between 50,000 to 100,000 unique hits per month in a fairly short period of time thanks largely to advertisements on mmorpg.com and penny-arcade.com. The reason being is that the main bulk of fans that visit those sites share an interest in deep, strategic fantasy games, often times regardless of graphics.

Pox Nora is a prime example of an alternative turn based strategic game (with dated 2d sprite-based graphics) aquiring broad success. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dominions aquiring similiar success with proper advertising, because :

A. It's different
B. It's fun
and
C. It's deep

[Shovah32]

I believe I could help with that... Yes.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[moderation]

Tenebrion said:
http://www.quantcast.com/penny-arcade.com 32,000 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/poxnora.com 65,500 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/mmorpg.com 663,000 unique hits per month

http://www.quantcast.com/shrapnelcommunity.com 2,000 unique hits per month

I'm a product development manager and marketing director, so keeping track of website growth and product popularity is sort of my 'thing'. The point of my original post was to say that the game Poxnora, with a very similar potential fanbase to Dominions 3, went from having very few unique hits per month to getting between 50,000 to 100,000 unique hits per month in a fairly short period of time thanks largely to advertisements on mmorpg.com and penny-arcade.com. The reason being is that the main bulk of fans that visit those sites share an interest in deep, strategic fantasy games, often times regardless of graphics.

Pox Nora is a prime example of an alternative turn based strategic game (with dated 2d sprite-based graphics) aquiring broad success. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dominions aquiring similiar success with proper advertising, because :

A. It's different
B. It's fun
and
C. It's deep



Hmm, how did they get those statistics for shrapnelcommunity.com? I don't recall mentioning how much money I make or how many children I have when I signed up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Lingchih]

Big Brother man. He's watching you. Everything gets tracked these days.

[Tenebrion]

I'm more concerned with the ethnicity rating. The statistics further solidify my conclusion that the Dominions 3 fanbase is comrpised mostly of number-crunching aliens.

[moderation]

Arr, how did you know??

We are in fact squid-headed, mind-enslaving, number-crunching aliens.

http://content.ytmnd.com/content/a/0/7/a07ebe644b25c7f3a38fcfb88ab7d09d.jpg

[Twan]

Attiring MMORPG/CCCG fans would have heavy consequences for the poor illwinter team.

It means there would be constant debates about how "perma death" in dominions is bad, why no expansion is planned (free content doesn't count for guys ready to invest money each month to continue to play a game or be competitive in it), why graphics are the same with their top notch one month old computer and ten years old ones, frequent flame wars will oppose the partisans of different evolutions of the game, etc... Nothing is worse than the MMORPG public for game developpers tranquility. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

(ps : it's a caricature, but...)

[Kristoffer O]

The ethnicity was fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
As was zoidberg http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Regarding the MMORPG public behaviour I'm not too concerned. We've got 10 years of experience of not listening to stuff that feels irrelevant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

It would likely be more of the kind, since the public here is both thoughtful, openminded and friendly (but there have been times that I have wondered a bit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ).

I'm also quite used to irrational behaviour since I work as a teacher http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I like to educate (or make people better than they are), so if they come her and rants, we might turn them into civilized members of a community. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

To sum up: I think I would suffer less then you as a community would http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Kristoffer O]

Hmm, I must bee in a good mood. Lots of smilies there http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[PashaDawg]

Spring cometh.

[Tenebrion]

Intelligent games attract intelligent gamers. The kind of people that most gamers worry about, from the MMORPG community, are the people that likely wouldn't be interested in Dominions, much less discussing the finer points of the game. Among the 600,000 or so monthly uniques that visit mmorpg.com, even if you assume that half of those visitors are immature, that'd mean there's a potential of 300,000 gamers that could be interested in Dominions.

People that are concerned about 'perma death', graphics, expansions instead of patches, etc wouldn't likely give Dominions a second glance. It's the mature gamers that want a different and deep experience, and would find an interest in Dominions, so the community on the Shrapnel forums would remain much the same. Just look at the communities from games like EVE and Poxnora ; the games are complex, and as a result, the communities are top notch, despite the player base being made up of MMORPG gamers.

[DonCorazon]

What surprises me is, given the apparent size of the fan base here, how few reviews there are on popular sites like Metacritic and Amazon. Maybe its just me but I use those sites all the time. I posted reviews for Dom 3 on both places, even though I purchased Dom 3 through Shrapnel. I suppose putting it on some Amazon lists that come up when more widely known games are searched would help increase exposure even more.

I guess it is a mixed blessing as I appreciate the smaller community size and interaction with developers here, but on the other hand, my hope is strong commercial success motivates continual development of the franchise. As they say, content is king and I think Dom 3 is a hidden gem.

Also, I have yet to do this but I think there is strong crossover between those who love fantasy boardgames and Dom 3 and consequently posting on Boardgamegeek would also bring in many more fans.

[Kristoffer O]

Boardgamegeek?

Sounds interesting. Unfortunately I rarely take time for boardgames nowdays.

[DonCorazon]

I fear providing this link for it can become a rather addicting website if you enjoy boardgames but here it is:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/
Some amazing games have come out over the years, especially from Europe (Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates, Ra among some of my favorites), and some fun fantasy wargames (Battlelore).

[Kristoffer O]

There was 429 viewing the dominions forum just now. I suppose most are just inlogged and not reading, but it's still the highest number I've ever seen.

[Evil Dave]

I agree w/ DonCorazon that trying to attract boardgamers might be more satisfying than trying to get MMORPG players. Boardgamers seem to be (IME) more interested in strategy, deep games, and games where the ideal strategy and tactics depend on what (you think) your opponent is doing.

I'm not sure all boardgamers will like Dom3, because there are some big differences between the way boardgames and computer strategy games have developed in the past few years, but I think making them aware of it won't hurt. And, of course, all boardgamers are used to MP-only play, because for most boardgames, that's all there is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Tenebrion]

DonCorazon said:
As they say, content is king and I think Dom 3 is a hidden gem.




I absolutely agree. As a lifelong fan of strategy and fantasy games of all flavors, it still amazes me that I didn't find out about Dominions until a few months ago. I can't help but wonder just how many hundreds of thousands of gamers there are out there who are just like I was - completely unaware of this highly addictive, deep strategy game, just waiting for someone to tell them about it.

[S.R. Krol]

DonCorazon said:
What surprises me is, given the apparent size of the fan base here, how few reviews there are on popular sites like Metacritic and Amazon.



Metacritic is unfortunately rather useless to the indie world. The fact that there are eight reviews from official sites/publications is actually pretty good compared to most non-mainstream reviews, but still sorely lacking. They also drop titles from their list pretty quickly. I recall the frustration I had when Weird Worlds came out, and though it was getting great reviews left and right Metacritic refused to put them up even after I pointed every single one out to them. That's when I learned they only use "approved" review sites. Or so they say. You'll notice that for a really popular, big budget title like Halo 38 they'll have reviews from everyone on the planet.

As far as Amazon goes I think that's simply a matter of most folks not realizing that you can find it on Amazon.

The 'Geek is a good avenue. Jason Lutes, who has been active in the map making community before, is on their fairly regular so there are some Dom players already there. I know we've looked into advertising with them, not sure what type of decisions have been made with that.

[DonCorazon]

I've been on the Geek for a couple years and know people who log on and read it religiously such as one of my close friends who runs the Berkeley board game group. It is an amazing site - the amount of user created content is staggering and I think one of the best examples of the power of web communities.

I think MP Dom 3 comes closer than anything else in providing the epic fantasy war game experience dreamt of by many board gamers, going back to games like TSR's Divine Right, and Avalon Hill's Titan, leading up to FantasyFlight's a Game of Thrones and Days of Wonder's Battlelore. Even better, the PC format of Dom 3 takes care of all the mechanical pain of an actual boardgame (dice, looking up results on tables, etc.). Either an ad or comments from BGG users like myself (I believe word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, especially when it is from authentic / non-troll sources) would be useful in capturing this demographic to increase Dominions fan base.

[PashaDawg]

I have commonly described Dom 3 to friends as a board game on the computer. I think DonCorazon is right that many board gamers would groove on Dom 3. (Unfortunately, I have been a total failure at getting any real friends to try Dom 3. Maybe I push too hard. Maybe it's the freakish look in my eyes.)

[Cerlin]

Ive found that using Hotseat games to convert friends really works well. I was able to get both my brothers to play, also a couple friends and my girlfriend too. Starting them with the flashiest factions and helping them understand I have seen that it helped convert the most people. I still feel this game has a lot of appeal to people, even laymen (aka not big nerds.)

[moderation]

Which factions did you find to be to be the flashiest?

[Velusion]

DonCorazon said:
I've been on the Geek for a couple years and know people who log on and read it religiously such as one of my close friends who runs the Berkeley board game group. It is an amazing site - the amount of user created content is staggering and I think one of the best examples of the power of web communities.

I think MP Dom 3 comes closer than anything else in providing the epic fantasy war game experience dreamt of by many board gamers, going back to games like TSR's Divine Right, and Avalon Hill's Titan, leading up to FantasyFlight's a Game of Thrones and Days of Wonder's Battlelore. Even better, the PC format of Dom 3 takes care of all the mechanical pain of an actual boardgame (dice, looking up results on tables, etc.). Either an ad or comments from BGG users like myself (I believe word of mouth is the best form of advertisement, especially when it is from authentic / non-troll sources) would be useful in capturing this demographic to increase Dominions fan base.



As a heavy boardgamer, boardgamegeek member and poster (and someone who has been to every BGG.con) I second your comments.

[Cerlin]

Any nations with bigger more fantasy/strong units i found tend to work best. Like some of the more easier to use EA ones, Niefelhiem, vanhiem, or Formoria. The unit selections are impressive looking and so are the battle effects. Combat pretenders help too in my experience.

[Kristoffer O]

Lol http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Ragnarok-X]

PoxNora is like a warhammer/magic hybrid.

[moderation]

I guess that rules out Hobbit-- I mean Hoburg Militia.

[Annette]

Interesting discussion, and one we're following closely. Please allow me to throw in some facts:

Although we don’t advertise on MMORPG, we do advertise on most of the MMO game sites, to the tune of almost 3.5 million Dominions 3 ad impressions last year. We have contacted MMORPG, and just heard back from them this morning. As to BoardGameGeek, we are currently working on an advertising campaign through them. It started as a campaign for Digital Eel’s upcoming board game, Eat Electric Death!, but we are now adding Dominions 3 into the mix. We will see what happens.

We would love to advertise on Penny Arcade, but they just want way too much money. The ads would not even come close to paying for themselves.

Of course, this is terrible time for advertising. The US economy is stressed to the max, and, even in the best of times, ad banners don’t convert well to actual sales. In poor economic times, they perform even less -so we spend a lot of money (yes people still click on the ads, they just don’t buy!)that doesn’t equate to sales.

Several here have mentioned word of mouth advertising, and this is the best way to get actual sales. One well-placed comment in a forum (with a link) will almost always convert to more sales than a $1000 ad.

One last thing. We don’t know how quantcast gets their information either, but their numbers are definitely incorrect. The size of these forums is understated, as is our entire site. The demographics are off also.

Thanks for your suggestions and for supporting the game. Keep 'em coming!

[DonCorazon]

Well I put my money where my mouth is and started a thread on Dominons on BGG under the Age of Conan Boardgame, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/27848
This board game will be attracting a lot of attention as it is not yet released but is on a lot of Most Anticipated game lists.

Hopefully some folks will see that thread and be lured into checking out the game. I am on a Dom 3 crusade (er, mission) to generate at least one sale, since my friends are too lazy / intimidated to pick it up (actually they are probably just not as much of a geek as I am)
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Maltrease]

I wonder if a flash game could be created that captured enough of the Dominions spirit to convince people to download the demo?

Flash game are amazingly unique in their ability to reach an incredible large audience. They are actually what took me away from Dominions... first for writing my own flash games.

Asteroids Revenge (http://www.kongregate.com/games/AdamSchroeder/asteroids-revenge-iii-crash-to-survive)
and
Sola Rola (http://www.kongregate.com/games/offthewrist/sola-rola-the-gravity-maze)

Then I/we actually formed a company FlashGameLicense.com to broker games for other developers making them 2-3X more money for their work.

A recent game we brokered has been played 4.5M times in the last two months. Two million plays were on the 'sponsors' website. The other 2.5M plays have brought back 500K unique visitors (20% click through ratio) to Kongregate.com.

The game is Protector (http://www.kongregate.com/games/undefined/protector)

If you could take some aspect of Dominions to create a compelling flash game experience you could reach a TREMENDOUS audience. I'm certain a good percentage of them would turn into the typical rabid fan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Wokeye]

DonCorazon said:
(actually they are probably just not as much of a geek as I am)



I have much the same problem DC. I spam a few games sites here in Australia without much success. Must spam harder.

[Tim Brooks]

Maltrease:

Please PM me.

Thanks.

[Endoperez]

Maltrease said:
If you could take some aspect of Dominions to create a compelling flash game experience you could reach a TREMENDOUS audience. I'm certain a good percentage of them would turn into the typical rabid fan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



This sure sounds fun, but WHAT aspect? Saving the beautiful Hierodyle from the evil Vanir with flaming weapons as Hierogallus the Lizard Hero? A Guru leading a group of Markata in a lemmings clone? Blood Hunt the Game? "You have found the Enchanted Forest! Congratulations! You've found the missing nature gem, and the priests have summoned a Faery Queen! The Plague is cured, and your village is safe!" Tower Defense, where you must build a fortress that can withstand the slow, tough Ulmish hordes, endless skeleton hordes, giants, LA C'tissian mixed heavy infantry and skeletons, with pretenders as boss-fights. Position your mages well, research new spells and upgrade your fort into an impregnable Mountain Citadel!

There are so many wonderful ideas...

[kasnavada]

Blood Hunt the Game?



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Endoperez]

kasnavada said:

Blood Hunt the Game?



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif



When you lose, a little imp will laugh at you while eating your entrails.