Ogame is one of the best browser games i found and is one enjoying a long life too. However there is a continuous decline in number of players. Why?
Let me say what i personally think :
There are a quite a few fine characteristics of the game that makes it a good choice to spend your free time playing it but also, there are a few aspects causing the continuous decline.
Many of them have been discussed on other topics on this forum.
What can be done stop this decline and to make Ogame highly attractive to a wider audience?
1. Goals for Ogame
The main goals should be to :
• Have more and more players : Most enjoyable universes are those with high number of players
• Keep stable the number of present player, reduce the abandon rate
• Bring in new players and make them stay
• Provide a way to obtain a sense of accomplishment for each playing style
• Ensure the game brings profit and in the same time maintain it free. One player should be able to play without paying but in the same time to find a discrete way for paying players to get small advantages and make them pay more - pay less- pay more frequent without making the non paying players feel that is a pay to win game. The free game should be able to ensure a large number of players and the progress of paying players should not affect the balance of the game.
2. Situation assessment
What makes a player to choose ogame
Before thinking to different solutions like universe merge or advanced noob protection or new features in the game just because we think that this will revive the game, I think it is extremely important to think and discuss why we are in this situation. Knowing the cause will make easier to find the good solution to our problem.
The causes have been discussed in previous threads as :
- ogame is one of the first online games of it's type
- it is / it was less computer power demanding, no need to download a client.
- no computer skills are necessary to play the game at the start , experience can be gained along the play
- you can play it from anywhere , all you need is an internet connection and a browser
- game play demands a certain life discipline : you have to know exactly when you will be online next time, when your fleet is landing.
- is a strategy game , a game of mind
- social aspects of the game are strong and players do have the impression they are in a community : alliance is the main feature .
- you can smash ships , destroy defenses , steal resources ( things that in real life are punishable ) , here depriving other players from their goods is the way to go.
- there is no limit to your development ( only time )
-inside ogame the players are divided among too many universes, too many communities not taking into account that there is a finite number of possible players of Ogame )
- playing a game for 2-5 years is a long time, players are growing, getting old, changing life habits, they get new responsibilities- a family , children, new demanding job , new games
- people now are having an active life, running from school /work to house. meeting with friends, spamming Facebook, playing other games. there is little time to wait 2 hours for your fleet to return
- in ogame you can't do something significant in less than 15 minutes
- playing the game from your phone is not an easy work
Age span of players
a) Younger than 16 : We have only few underage players . If they are, is highly improbably they stay longer than a few months, they’ll move to the next game advertised on the gaming sites.
b) College/students less than 22 years old (often high school level – this is the profile of the ogame highly admired fleeter unfortunately their gaming experience is not longer than a couple of years as they get busy with RL , friends and changing schools, increased education demands over the time - they leave because of the amount of work to do and because of their IRL which changes a lot. In general, they are some of the best and most active ogame players
c) Young professionals aged less than 35 years old, all professions but many of them working in IT and having huge online times , most have families – they are the long standing players , sometime if the ogame do not becomes a family problem, it is most likely they’ll play the game for many years.
d) Mature and senior players aged over 35, all professions (usually with good education , some with good jobs or retired )- this category has also a great level of stability in the game, once they get experience , they are most likely to become mentors for their gaming mates.
Many young people are not so much attracted to a text based browser game, they prefer 3 D games, highly interactive. Some players can't stay on the same game for too long , they like changing games, get new skills, see different characters, features – in general they lose interest of any game in a few months or even less. Conservative players love the old way and hate changing things, any change is a reason to quit in disgust
A unique game & competition
Ogame used to be unique, now I hear many commenting: Game X is very much like ogame . There is a need to make a balance between any common elements versus singular aspects of the game. We must take care to make the singular aspects to have more attractive value than the common features and aspects with other games. The clone ogame problem is not serious but makes ogame “bleed “ good , active players.
The redesign
The redesign is bringing the ogame’s graphic interface to the modern standard but even after so long time since it was implemented is making unhappy a large number of conservative players ( especially the b, c and d categories). Is true, once accustomed with the change, it makes no difference. These players have the strongest voice and many are ignoring the good things brought by the redesign.
A friend made a nice comment at the time the redesign was implemented to the old universes:
He compared Ogame with a mature lady that wishing to keep her husband ( the player ) more attached to her is passing thorough a cosmetic surgery - a face lift . Then the husband is not happy with the change, he was in love with the old lady he knew. Now his choice is to accept the new face of his love or to look for a different lady with an similar aspect to the initial face of his wife ( Ogame).
Reasons, outside our control for the decrease of player numbers
- The game market is flooded with all kind of games ( free or paid)
- Young people ( 14-22 age ranges) most likely to be interested in online games have a lot of other choices to spend free time
- We live in a speed world, things are changing fast, people are asked to adapt each day to modern technologies, products. The present economic crisis changed a lot how people are spending their free time and money if they have it.
- There is an increase of activity over the social networks, leaving the online games outside these networks
- People are driven a lot more to use the mobile as the main communication and recreational media. Ogame is not easily playable on a phone. Playing from the mobile phone is the future of ogame
The importance of the social aspect of ogame
One of the strongest cohesion factor in Ogame are the board, the chat and the Alliance.
Empowering the alliance features and developing new ones, facilitating ingame cooperation is one of the most important things that should be considered .
- if you are lucky to get in a nice, active alliance, you will continue to play , no matter what
- if you are not accepted in an alliance or your alliance is crappy , you will lose your interest soon, no matter if you are attacked or not .
clear examples :
-my account in uni 7 ogame.us = happy alliance, a lot of newb players enjoying the game , no matter if they get crushed from time to time, account in kassiopea.de – I have a good alliance , I play it , like me, many others.
-my accounts in ogame .de ( 35, 50 and 32) : I wasn't able to get in any alliance = I +have no joy to play them and nobody attacked me yet , I just keep them in v-mode , activating them from time to time .
Weaker player protection
The advanced newbie protection is a good thing to work on, we had so many complaints from players about being attacked by top players with no chance to fight back and I strongly believe that is a necessary thing to do. How we do it is a difficult question.
While this noob protection can be comfortable for noob players, it can be a nuisance for medium and advanced players.
I see a good point in escaping fleets and hideouts but only for newbie accounts. For accounts close and over 1kk points, the situation is not that good. Just remember, ogame is a war game, making more restrictions and reducing the hunting pool , will induce starvation and discontent form the advanced players if not enough incentives are given to those too .
Players are quitting game for various motives , one of them is being crushed , another is lack of socializing, mentoring , the "wolf pack " feeling, many are quitting because ogame is not for them. Ogame requires a certain style of life, to be a successful player one needs to spend a lot of time online, to have a predictable daily schedule; he must know for sure at what time he will be able to come online at the moment his fleetsave returns.
4. Recommendations & suggestions
Age shift&playability
Make the game run smother on all platforms able to connect to internet. When thinking to any game improvement think to whom you are pointing this improvement Make ogame more playable : enhance the speed of page loading, reduce the needed clicks and pages to get on before sending fleet. Enable a text only version, many players are after the thrill of the action, not for the nice pictures . Ogame is requiring long times staying in front of the screen, strong colors and vivid pictures can be tiresome and can become a problem in the long run.
The future of ogame is mobile. Ogame must be fully playable from any mobile device.
Reason : Young people from today are more dynamic, they have a social life, they visit friends and friends are visiting them, they spend time in public places , that is hardly the time schedule of an ogame player. One solution would be to ease the play from mobile devices, enable short commands instead of a three stage fleet sending menu.
We live in a world of speed and miniaturization, graphic design should be appealing ( the ogame layout was one of the things that attracted me at the beginning ) but should not be a source of annoyance for the players in need of speed .
Ogame players have different ages from teenagers , up to senior people in their 80s .
I do not have exact information about the age span of ogame players but all top players are over 20- up to 45 years old, or even older. That means that the mature players are most likely to stay playing the game.
Some the of the reasons might be :
- Adult players have more stability and get tired less of their game
- Adult players have already a daily schedule that can be adapted to the ogame routine and young players have the tendency to have a social life, in outdoors and they like spending time in groups ( is not advisable to play ogame in groups ) . Young players are most likely to quit ogame earlier since they can’t be there when fleets comes from fleetsave, if they remember to fleetsave being too occupied with FB conversations
A simple game
One reason for the long life and success of ogame is that it was a simple game but complex in the same time, a challenge for mind and courage , a dynamic social medium allowing interaction between real people ( way before the time the market to be flooded with other massive multiplayer games . Now the situation changed and is hard to compete with such a wide variety of similar games or so much different, practically covering any possible preference a player might have .
5. Conclusions
- Simplicity : A good game is a simple game, not to many options but enough to make a player feel that his account is what it suits him the best – I use to have the feeling “I’m home “ when I open my account
- Customization Allow player to “tune up” his game interface ( from minimalist graphic display to complex and dynamic interface). Some are disturbed by the exuberant display of colors, and on the contrary some are annoyed but the static aspect of the browser based interface
- Bugs-free : Diminish as much as possible game problems- bugs, solve them with priority – improve quality assurance – implement a system for more effective and complete checks before any release. It is not a good image to accept less quality to any offered product – even if is a free one
- Support Make the game more easy to play, improve tutorial, add a quest system , make the game more addictive and more challenging in the same time. That means simple rules, greater protection and larger liberty of action ( I have no idea how to do that but we can discuss it )
- Playability Make the game accessible and playable from all kind of devices , including mobile phones- that will help keep on the young players and the adult ones as well (playing from school or from work or even on the beach or on the top of the mountain)
- Reward active playing. Let the player feel that his skills are improving day by day; make him have a good sense of progress, reward his fidelity to the game. Make him feel he needs to check his game as often as possible ( give gifts at login at a random time of the day- like drawings in a supermarket )
- Social cohesion The social aspect is one the of the strongest cohesion factors in ogame. Find new ways to enhance the alliance importance and add new features to increase the experience when playing as a member of an alliance ( I have so many ideas in this direction – not the place to present them here )
Actions to be taken
One action is to look for ogame community’s opinion, have a closer look at the proposal sections from all ogame communities. I am happy with the Ogame Origin.- Ideas Planet
To improve the support offered to the start –up player by creating an advanced tutorial
Another action is to implement some changes to the game in the hope that players will be more attracted to the game and to reduce the abandon rate . The changes must be made step by step , in small quantities and fine tuning based on player feedback and mathematical balancing.
The missing action is aggressive advertising.
Give player some opportunity to enjoy those significant 15 minutes he can spare for the game
Change the advertise way : making trailers with moving ships and great animations will only induce prospect players in error. Many will join but few will stay. I think the social aspect of the game should be enhanced and also more accent on the war like atmosphere of the game , its violence and cruelty . Advertise that this is a game only for the brave and with strong spirit.
Keeping the product in its original form we only will be able to keep the old customers(at least), some will leave anyway as their life changes.
The only option is to change in order to be able to compete with other games, flooding on the market, to fight in the "lions den"- the most fierce competition, fighting for the free time of young and mature people (some free, some with subscription).
We must find a way to make it different, unique and attractive and addictive to a wider range of players. More playable, easier to understand, to ensure the entertainment and the achievement feeling any player is looking for when playing a game.
Let me say what i personally think :
There are a quite a few fine characteristics of the game that makes it a good choice to spend your free time playing it but also, there are a few aspects causing the continuous decline.
Many of them have been discussed on other topics on this forum.
What can be done stop this decline and to make Ogame highly attractive to a wider audience?
1. Goals for Ogame
The main goals should be to :
• Have more and more players : Most enjoyable universes are those with high number of players
• Keep stable the number of present player, reduce the abandon rate
• Bring in new players and make them stay
• Provide a way to obtain a sense of accomplishment for each playing style
• Ensure the game brings profit and in the same time maintain it free. One player should be able to play without paying but in the same time to find a discrete way for paying players to get small advantages and make them pay more - pay less- pay more frequent without making the non paying players feel that is a pay to win game. The free game should be able to ensure a large number of players and the progress of paying players should not affect the balance of the game.
2. Situation assessment
What makes a player to choose ogame
Before thinking to different solutions like universe merge or advanced noob protection or new features in the game just because we think that this will revive the game, I think it is extremely important to think and discuss why we are in this situation. Knowing the cause will make easier to find the good solution to our problem.
The causes have been discussed in previous threads as :
- good things
- ogame is one of the first online games of it's type
- it is / it was less computer power demanding, no need to download a client.
- no computer skills are necessary to play the game at the start , experience can be gained along the play
- you can play it from anywhere , all you need is an internet connection and a browser
- game play demands a certain life discipline : you have to know exactly when you will be online next time, when your fleet is landing.
- is a strategy game , a game of mind
- social aspects of the game are strong and players do have the impression they are in a community : alliance is the main feature .
- you can smash ships , destroy defenses , steal resources ( things that in real life are punishable ) , here depriving other players from their goods is the way to go.
- there is no limit to your development ( only time )
- bad things
-inside ogame the players are divided among too many universes, too many communities not taking into account that there is a finite number of possible players of Ogame )
- playing a game for 2-5 years is a long time, players are growing, getting old, changing life habits, they get new responsibilities- a family , children, new demanding job , new games
- people now are having an active life, running from school /work to house. meeting with friends, spamming Facebook, playing other games. there is little time to wait 2 hours for your fleet to return
- in ogame you can't do something significant in less than 15 minutes
- playing the game from your phone is not an easy work
Age span of players
a) Younger than 16 : We have only few underage players . If they are, is highly improbably they stay longer than a few months, they’ll move to the next game advertised on the gaming sites.
b) College/students less than 22 years old (often high school level – this is the profile of the ogame highly admired fleeter unfortunately their gaming experience is not longer than a couple of years as they get busy with RL , friends and changing schools, increased education demands over the time - they leave because of the amount of work to do and because of their IRL which changes a lot. In general, they are some of the best and most active ogame players
c) Young professionals aged less than 35 years old, all professions but many of them working in IT and having huge online times , most have families – they are the long standing players , sometime if the ogame do not becomes a family problem, it is most likely they’ll play the game for many years.
d) Mature and senior players aged over 35, all professions (usually with good education , some with good jobs or retired )- this category has also a great level of stability in the game, once they get experience , they are most likely to become mentors for their gaming mates.
Many young people are not so much attracted to a text based browser game, they prefer 3 D games, highly interactive. Some players can't stay on the same game for too long , they like changing games, get new skills, see different characters, features – in general they lose interest of any game in a few months or even less. Conservative players love the old way and hate changing things, any change is a reason to quit in disgust
A unique game & competition
Ogame used to be unique, now I hear many commenting: Game X is very much like ogame . There is a need to make a balance between any common elements versus singular aspects of the game. We must take care to make the singular aspects to have more attractive value than the common features and aspects with other games. The clone ogame problem is not serious but makes ogame “bleed “ good , active players.
The redesign
The redesign is bringing the ogame’s graphic interface to the modern standard but even after so long time since it was implemented is making unhappy a large number of conservative players ( especially the b, c and d categories). Is true, once accustomed with the change, it makes no difference. These players have the strongest voice and many are ignoring the good things brought by the redesign.
A friend made a nice comment at the time the redesign was implemented to the old universes:
He compared Ogame with a mature lady that wishing to keep her husband ( the player ) more attached to her is passing thorough a cosmetic surgery - a face lift . Then the husband is not happy with the change, he was in love with the old lady he knew. Now his choice is to accept the new face of his love or to look for a different lady with an similar aspect to the initial face of his wife ( Ogame).
Reasons, outside our control for the decrease of player numbers
- The game market is flooded with all kind of games ( free or paid)
- Young people ( 14-22 age ranges) most likely to be interested in online games have a lot of other choices to spend free time
- We live in a speed world, things are changing fast, people are asked to adapt each day to modern technologies, products. The present economic crisis changed a lot how people are spending their free time and money if they have it.
- There is an increase of activity over the social networks, leaving the online games outside these networks
- People are driven a lot more to use the mobile as the main communication and recreational media. Ogame is not easily playable on a phone. Playing from the mobile phone is the future of ogame
The importance of the social aspect of ogame
One of the strongest cohesion factor in Ogame are the board, the chat and the Alliance.
Empowering the alliance features and developing new ones, facilitating ingame cooperation is one of the most important things that should be considered .
- if you are lucky to get in a nice, active alliance, you will continue to play , no matter what
- if you are not accepted in an alliance or your alliance is crappy , you will lose your interest soon, no matter if you are attacked or not .
clear examples :
-my account in uni 7 ogame.us = happy alliance, a lot of newb players enjoying the game , no matter if they get crushed from time to time, account in kassiopea.de – I have a good alliance , I play it , like me, many others.
-my accounts in ogame .de ( 35, 50 and 32) : I wasn't able to get in any alliance = I +have no joy to play them and nobody attacked me yet , I just keep them in v-mode , activating them from time to time .
Weaker player protection
The advanced newbie protection is a good thing to work on, we had so many complaints from players about being attacked by top players with no chance to fight back and I strongly believe that is a necessary thing to do. How we do it is a difficult question.
While this noob protection can be comfortable for noob players, it can be a nuisance for medium and advanced players.
I see a good point in escaping fleets and hideouts but only for newbie accounts. For accounts close and over 1kk points, the situation is not that good. Just remember, ogame is a war game, making more restrictions and reducing the hunting pool , will induce starvation and discontent form the advanced players if not enough incentives are given to those too .
Players are quitting game for various motives , one of them is being crushed , another is lack of socializing, mentoring , the "wolf pack " feeling, many are quitting because ogame is not for them. Ogame requires a certain style of life, to be a successful player one needs to spend a lot of time online, to have a predictable daily schedule; he must know for sure at what time he will be able to come online at the moment his fleetsave returns.
4. Recommendations & suggestions
Age shift&playability
Make the game run smother on all platforms able to connect to internet. When thinking to any game improvement think to whom you are pointing this improvement Make ogame more playable : enhance the speed of page loading, reduce the needed clicks and pages to get on before sending fleet. Enable a text only version, many players are after the thrill of the action, not for the nice pictures . Ogame is requiring long times staying in front of the screen, strong colors and vivid pictures can be tiresome and can become a problem in the long run.
The future of ogame is mobile. Ogame must be fully playable from any mobile device.
Reason : Young people from today are more dynamic, they have a social life, they visit friends and friends are visiting them, they spend time in public places , that is hardly the time schedule of an ogame player. One solution would be to ease the play from mobile devices, enable short commands instead of a three stage fleet sending menu.
We live in a world of speed and miniaturization, graphic design should be appealing ( the ogame layout was one of the things that attracted me at the beginning ) but should not be a source of annoyance for the players in need of speed .
Ogame players have different ages from teenagers , up to senior people in their 80s .
I do not have exact information about the age span of ogame players but all top players are over 20- up to 45 years old, or even older. That means that the mature players are most likely to stay playing the game.
Some the of the reasons might be :
- Adult players have more stability and get tired less of their game
- Adult players have already a daily schedule that can be adapted to the ogame routine and young players have the tendency to have a social life, in outdoors and they like spending time in groups ( is not advisable to play ogame in groups ) . Young players are most likely to quit ogame earlier since they can’t be there when fleets comes from fleetsave, if they remember to fleetsave being too occupied with FB conversations
A simple game
One reason for the long life and success of ogame is that it was a simple game but complex in the same time, a challenge for mind and courage , a dynamic social medium allowing interaction between real people ( way before the time the market to be flooded with other massive multiplayer games . Now the situation changed and is hard to compete with such a wide variety of similar games or so much different, practically covering any possible preference a player might have .
5. Conclusions
- Simplicity : A good game is a simple game, not to many options but enough to make a player feel that his account is what it suits him the best – I use to have the feeling “I’m home “ when I open my account
- Customization Allow player to “tune up” his game interface ( from minimalist graphic display to complex and dynamic interface). Some are disturbed by the exuberant display of colors, and on the contrary some are annoyed but the static aspect of the browser based interface
- Bugs-free : Diminish as much as possible game problems- bugs, solve them with priority – improve quality assurance – implement a system for more effective and complete checks before any release. It is not a good image to accept less quality to any offered product – even if is a free one
- Support Make the game more easy to play, improve tutorial, add a quest system , make the game more addictive and more challenging in the same time. That means simple rules, greater protection and larger liberty of action ( I have no idea how to do that but we can discuss it )
- Playability Make the game accessible and playable from all kind of devices , including mobile phones- that will help keep on the young players and the adult ones as well (playing from school or from work or even on the beach or on the top of the mountain)
- Reward active playing. Let the player feel that his skills are improving day by day; make him have a good sense of progress, reward his fidelity to the game. Make him feel he needs to check his game as often as possible ( give gifts at login at a random time of the day- like drawings in a supermarket )
- Social cohesion The social aspect is one the of the strongest cohesion factors in ogame. Find new ways to enhance the alliance importance and add new features to increase the experience when playing as a member of an alliance ( I have so many ideas in this direction – not the place to present them here )
Actions to be taken
One action is to look for ogame community’s opinion, have a closer look at the proposal sections from all ogame communities. I am happy with the Ogame Origin.- Ideas Planet
To improve the support offered to the start –up player by creating an advanced tutorial
Another action is to implement some changes to the game in the hope that players will be more attracted to the game and to reduce the abandon rate . The changes must be made step by step , in small quantities and fine tuning based on player feedback and mathematical balancing.
The missing action is aggressive advertising.
Give player some opportunity to enjoy those significant 15 minutes he can spare for the game
Change the advertise way : making trailers with moving ships and great animations will only induce prospect players in error. Many will join but few will stay. I think the social aspect of the game should be enhanced and also more accent on the war like atmosphere of the game , its violence and cruelty . Advertise that this is a game only for the brave and with strong spirit.
Keeping the product in its original form we only will be able to keep the old customers(at least), some will leave anyway as their life changes.
The only option is to change in order to be able to compete with other games, flooding on the market, to fight in the "lions den"- the most fierce competition, fighting for the free time of young and mature people (some free, some with subscription).
We must find a way to make it different, unique and attractive and addictive to a wider range of players. More playable, easier to understand, to ensure the entertainment and the achievement feeling any player is looking for when playing a game.
