Why streamers do not work, and how to promote your game?

Good day! In this article, I want to talk about our project, highlight the problems and discuss exciting topics with knowledgeable Khabrovites. Please do not regard it as a promotion guide, rather the opposite.

What are my concerns? Yes, actually there is one, the most important one that worries the whole team – attracting players. For a game of our genre (MMO RolePlay), the number of players is a kind of paradox. The more players, the more interesting it is to play, the faster online grows. And the reverse situation – there are few players, it’s not so interesting to play, online falls. It turns out that in order to increase online, you need interesting content, and in order to have interesting content, you need to increase online 🙂

We will talk about the GTA5 game and our Divine RolePlay project (I will try not to provide links so as not to scold)

What is the game all about? An unfamiliar listener, when he hears RolePlay, can probably immediately imagine a couple of things: either men running around with swords and shields, fighting for the honor of the queen, or sexual games with a nurse and a policeman 🙂 But it’s not quite like that!

This is a huge online world, the action of which takes place in the state of San Andreas (California, USA is taken as a prototype). Each player chooses who he wants to be: a simple resident, a member of a gang or mafia, a biker, a lone robber, or stand guard over the law by joining the police department or sheriffs, save people’s lives as a medical officer, or maybe even lead the entire state on post of Governor. All this is accompanied by game mechanics, quests, organizations and other entertaining moments. The administration closely communicates with the players, arranging various events.

But it’s better to see once than hear 100 times (in no way advertising!)

There are quite a lot of game servers like ours, many of them copy each other or use publicly available scripts and mechanics, do not follow RolePlay processes. On all servers, you can buy game currency for real money.

We decided to bribe the players with our uniqueness. We do all game mechanics from scratch, without borrowing ready-made, well-worn scripts. On our server it is impossible to buy game currency for real and all players are in the same conditions. We follow the rules of the ENT, and observe the RolePlay medium level. We try to follow the general rule – to do everything for people.

We launched in January 2022, relatively recently. From the start, about 200 players immediately came to us, and after some time, the number of active players decreased and, at the moment, is about 50 active players daily.

Judging by the online analysis on other servers, we have room to grow 🙂 Top online servers have up to 2500 players at a time.

Now our primary task is to attract players.

We have tried quite a few methods, namely:

• TikTok activity (115 followers / 500 likes / 3,000 views)

• Activity in the social network, which is now banned, I will not even mention

• YouTube activity (150 subscribers / 25,000 views)

• Activity in the VK community (1300 members)

• Paid Community Advertising in VK

• Paid Advertising site/discord in VK

• Maintenance of the main site divine-rp.com

• Discord activity (1100 members)

• Regular in-game events

• Continuous periodic functionality updates

• Periodic player quality surveys

• Attracting small communities to the game on a paid basis

• Attracting streamers of different suits on a paid and free basis

• Referral system for invite friends

• We analyzed the players who spent less than an hour on the server, sent letters with gifts and a request for feedback – the result is zero.

I want to dwell on streamers separately. I want to say: STREAMERS DO NOT GIVE TRAFFIC! And I want you to explain to me why? We attracted dozens of streamers, from centurions to hundreds of thousands. They paid money or attracted on a mutually beneficial basis. The result is always the same – almost no result. Each streamer has its own referral code, by which we track registrations. Hundred-thousanders bring 2-5 people to the server in total.

I witnessed how our competitors ordered a millionaire streamer, whose video, with the game on that server, gained 5+ million views. But the server-competitor was closed as a result because online there did not rise above 10 people. I just can’t build a logical chain for such events. The only hypothesis in my head is that those who watch streamers do not play themselves)

Total. After all the efforts spent, registrations go, but the number of active players does not increase. In most cases, players indicate [ VK / Приглашения от друзей / нашел сам ] as traffic sources.

Judging by the schedule, we should add 5-10 players every day, but a miracle does not happen 🙂 I’m very interested in the opinion of experts or those who have encountered a similar situation. What other (preferably effective) ways to attract players can be used? Maybe you have noticed errors in my narration or logic and can you point them out? I would appreciate any advice in this area. Do you have experience in attracting players to game projects? Thank you very much for reading to the end! I invite you to the discussion in the comments.