A short survey - How did you find Discovery?

[Ash]

I've been looking over the data and the comments posted and have made a few assumptions based on what was obtained. There has been some minor fault with the survey in general due to certain individuals being confused about the options, thus ticking 'other' when it is not required. This has to be taken into account despite the numbers as they stand.

Only a small portion of the community claims to have discovered discovery accidentally which happens to be good as well as bad. It shows that the rate of incoming users is fairly stable in that sense and is not likely to be overwhelmed due to chance. But then of course the less votes on any option in general means less people are finding us here. Nevertheless, the numbers obtained from the first two options carry little weight otherwise due to the chance factor it puts forward.

Many people claim to have found us through word of mouth which explains a lot about what I like to call the Discovery effect. Put simply the mod is so god damn amazing it's rather difficult to not talk about. It explains a lot about how we've managed to maintain a constantly high population of users in the past, but does not explain why this population has fallen recently.

Interestingly the option that received the most votes happened to be those that had gone looking for discovery through a search engine or otherwise. By reading some of the comments I've noticed many of these people are familiar with Microsoft Freelancer, and this leads them to pursue leads on it. This could be an explanation and a reinforcement of arguments that Freelancer is indeed becoming evermore ancient; that less people remember it, and increasingly less people have heard of it. Despite the fact that many people enter into discovery through this gateway, relying on such a high density of incoming users through this gateway would consequently lead to a slow decline in net users over time. However this theory does not explain the steep decline in users by nearly 50% in the past 6 months.

MODDB seems to attract a substantial portion of players, and by reading some of the accompanying comments, such people are interested in the gaming type as opposed to the game. Consequently, the players that pass through this portal would be more likely to stay since the gaming type is of a sort they are familiar with. Another factor I feel contributes to the discovery effect. The advertising value we obtain from MODDB is invaluable, however it is a search engine, we cannot expect to be found if we are not sought after.

Understandably no people mentioned they found discovery through advertising, it makes sense since DiscoveryGC or the discovery server have no advertising agreements. An option that would be considerable in time, but as to the effectiveness of such a campaign, one can only speculate.

The Freelancer Community Network is still bleeding a small portion of players through to us. Discovery is the last standing Freelancer server as far as I'm concerned so it makes sense that players should migrate from servers that are dead or dying through that portal. This is by no means a reliable income of users, it will surely decline to nought over time and only adds as a bonus to our numbers. However players entering into Discovery by this portal are ever more likely to stay than those from MODDB since they are familiar with the game and it's mods in general. This adds again to the discovery effect I have been mentioning.

A considerable amount of players chose other, and despite the anomaly noted initially, the number of accompanying comments fall short of the total votes made leaving much to speculation. However it seems a number of players found discovery through the multiplayer portal when Freelancer was still supported by Microsoft. This entry pathway is outdated and almost void at present since no other users will be finding us this way.

I have compiled a small scale on which I have put demonstrative values of incoming players to rate each portal through which people find discovery. In addition I have compared them from now to six and twelve months ago assumptively.

12 Months Ago

Accidental: +/-1
Word of Mouth: +2
Internet Search: +3
MODDB: +2
Freelancer Community Network: +2
Other: +1

6 Months Ago

Accidental: +/-1
Word of Mouth: +2
Internet Search: +2
MODDB: +1
Freelancer Community Network: +3
Other: +/-0

Present Day

Accidental: +/-1
Word of Mouth: +2
Internet Search: +1
MODDB: +1
Freelancer Community Network: +1
Other: +/-0

So across that time, purely assumptively speaking, the net increase in players is approximately -4. Added to whatever the outgoing user stats may be this figure does not bode well for the overall net transfer of players into the community.

I believe there are a few ways in which we can influence this increase but I fear without proper intervention the problem will not fix itself. A sudden influx of players I feel would be purely down to chance and should not be interpreted as a reversal of the process we have been seeing over the past months.

As individuals we can enhance the influx of players through word of mouth. Many people that have been recommended here appear to like the game and the server in general judging by some of the comments made. Members I believe now make up a large portion of the community, but who's presence duration is not yet proven. Time will tell if such a solution will prove effective in the long term or not.

Alternatively, any of the other portals can be enhanced if more attention were to be paid to them. Applications to MODDB for features on the discovery mod, requesting priority in internet search engines and advertisement campaigns are all worthy options to consider; most of which require financial support to proceed. Free 'publicity' campaigns in forums across the internet can also be launched to attract more suitable players to the mod.

One thing I think the managerial team here at Discovery are doing that is not attracting as much attention as hoped is to continually develop the mod. It is a fantastic mod for an already fantastic game, but if nobody in the wider world knows about it, then how can we expect to see more people attracted by it.

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