The original post can be found here: http://www.councilofelrond.org/forum/vi ... .php?t=907
This thread deals with
Frodo wrote: Problem area 2: New players
How do we reach out to them? Next, how do we continue to make them feel invited, and want to remain, so the game can grow?
B- PRODUCT AVAILABLITY, COMMUNITY AND ADVERTISING
Okay, let’s say we explained it well enough to some friends we’ve met, and—wow!—they like the game! Not only that, the rulesbooks have been streamlined and—double wow!—they say they can actually understand them. Now, the players greedily ask us… so where’s the CARDS?
This is probably the single-greatest challenge our game presents us. We can streamline or simplify the rules, we can develop demos all day, we can advertise like professionals—but there’s the product?? How do I play this game?
Solutions: These are only attempts at solutions, some ideas to keep in mind, and finally, some very controversial ideas I will propose:
i. We must be give away SOME product at tournaments to new players. In addition, we must be able to SELL a little to new players who want more—then redirect them to a stable source/website where they can get the rest.
ii. I fear that the above is getting harder and harder. Therefore, I offer an idea for discussion: effective immediately, no new sealed product is to be given out as prizes at tournaments, EXCEPT where the player receiving the prize is a new player.
iii. Are we comfortable existing completely as an ONLINE game only? Because if we run out of product, this is what will happen, at least for new players who cannot gain access to the cards the collecting players have. Remember, I am speaking about a scenario in which we are really receiving dozens of new players a year, thanks to the efforts of projects I’ve already described.
Even hoarding the prize support will not solve all of our product problems, though it may delay Judgment Day a few more years. Therefore, I ask that we give serious thought to another long-debated solution: reprinting all of the cards (illegally). Or else, provide the knowledge and the methods so that players can print them themselves. Printing technology is getting cheaper and cheaper. Providing such methods—for example, 9 card image sheets hosted on a server—would be legal because we are not printing the cards, we are displaying the images/pieces of this game in order to give a perusable library. Players would be choosing to do the illegal actions.
Even before we reprint the whole set, there is perhaps a more pressing issue: the challenge decks. Players who reach level 2 will want their own set of decks, or at least a few. But the supply of decks is nearly exhausted. This is a very real threat. I would suggest that as a test, the community considers “broadcasting” the challenge decks card images on a server somewhere, in a 9 card sheets that would fit on a standard piece of paper (both American letter and euro A4). On the famous game site boardgamegeek.com, our wonderful MECCG is ranked the 3rd best game of all time… not just out of a pool of card games, but a pool of hundreds of all games, even board games! This is quite a compliment. Some of the posted comments there mention the difficulty with getting into the game, and stress the importance of reprinting the challenge decks. This will greatly expand our ability to meet the growing demand for cards.
Proxies: Finally, I offer one other idea that I’m sure will also prove controversial. Current players, but especially new players, will feel a certain unfairness in the difficulty of obtaining particular hard-to-find cards, and this will only add to their frustration with tournament-level play. I believe that the GCCG model, where everyone can play with whatever card they like, has proved to be successful: you don’t see any players anymore claiming that you should actually “own” the GCCG card to be playing in GCCG tournaments, etc. Still some players in the real world (those with the cards, of course) might feel that having the hard-to-find cards should count for some kind of detriment when composing a deck for tournaments, otherwise the whole collecting market could change too much.
Solution: I propose a middle-of-the-road solution, which is thus. All Worlds, nationals, and local tournaments should implement the “at least one-of-a-kind proxy rule.” This rule states that: for any card that you have multiple copies of in deck and sideboard, one of these copies must be original, but all other copies can be proxied. For example, if I had three Longbottom Leafs in my deck, one of these must tbe the original, and the others may be proxied. If I had a unique card in my deck, it would have to be the original. This solution also prevents a negative situation where one player needs to know the text of the card but the proxy does not have the text (just the title); by my suggested rule, the original card can now always be hunted for.
Community and Advertising:
Okay, got the rules, got the cards. Got game. Where’s the COMMUNITY?
I have to say, our web forums are amazing. Never is there a better time for small communities to thrive then now. Without the miracle of electronic communication that these forums provide, and the equally great miracle of GCCG, our game would have died long ago, like any esoteric hobby that requires a platform to keep it going. A strong community is needed to attract new players to the game, and if we keep working on the community ideas I previously mentioned (newsletter, bigger GCCG… larger tournament structure, newer and more inviting WORLDS) we should be fine.
But we still need to streamline our approach to advertising the game. Also at the American GenCon convention, our players saw many attendees peeping at the dealer tables asking dealers if they “had any middle-earth cards for sale?” These questions came from convention attendees unknown to us. Luckily, some of us had business cards I had hastily developed with the game’s basic contact information—COE website address, description of newsletters, etc.—and we ended up giving out all 20 business cards to random people we met at the convention!
Convention Advertising:
So here’s where I ask some questions. Are big conventions merely an American thing, or do they happen a lot in Europe and South America as well? Do our European and South American players go to these conventions? I ask because I can’t think of a single, better venue for advertising our game than a gaming convention.
Use the Conference Programs: Think about it: there’s a program guide listing hundreds of games which thousands of players are scanning, and suddenly there’s a line about “Middle-earth” and “Tolkien.” If you’re a fantasy buff, who wouldn’t be curious? Also, if allowed, in that two-line description you get to advertise your event, you can use that opportunity to list the COE website address. Now of the thousands of people who have scanned your information but don’t actually show up to the event, maybe a few dozen will look up our game.
Use the Conference Goodie Bags: Conventions also give out bags of free stuff that different game companies provide. What if we gave out free common middle-earth cards, that have a sticker of text explaining that we’re doing events, and listing our website address?
Use your Own Body: Additionally, I started wearing some homemade Middle-earth t-shirts a few years ago to cons, and I was really surprised to see how many players just walked up to me because they recognized the giant burning eye symbol, and asked, “Hey, is that game still going? I have all these cards I bought… how do I find out more information?” In fact I was so convinced it was the EYE that attracted them that this year, even when I had on a normal shirt, I taped real MECCG cards to my left and right sleeves (and backside) with the burning eye facing out. I looked like some kind of game-geek-freak (who didn’t??), but hey, I had three to five people approach me every day about the game!
Create Business Cards: Like I said, we should create a standardized business card, targeted either to people who know about the game and left, or else to people who don’t know anything about the game (great for posting in random game stores in your city in case you don’t attend conferences), or probably two different cards entirely. If even one or two people respond, that’s huge. I will post my example later. Most descriptions of MECCG should target newbies, so we need to think about what language they want to hear.
Advertising through the COE Treasury:
We have a COE Treasury. It has money in it. Highly aesthetic prize support is one good solution for the money, but another solution, a solution that is appropriate for the games’ leadership to implement and share amongst themselves, is to use it for advertising. For example: at conferences I have seen thin, aluminum-cased tripod devices that hold giant, slick, glossy-cloth posters about the size of a person. They are used to advertise games and game companies, and with such huge images, such as characters from Game of Thrones or Warcraft, they are tremendously eye-catching and beautiful! Wouldn’t THAT be an absolutely fabulous use of the COE funds? Ah but what about image rights, you ask? I suggest two tracks to explore: analyze the fair use law to see if we can simply make a collage that uses parts of different images (e.g., the heads of characters) into one new image, or else just use the art of artists who have graciously agreed to allow anyone and everyone to reprint their art for non-commerical purposes (such as Ted Nasmith). In the Nasmith example, we could take his minion image of Bag End, for instance, blow it up on a giant poster, and have the middle-earth logo underneath (so we wouldn’t use the actual Bag End card template). Even just the burning eye, massively sized, would be great. Does anyone know of a company that makes such rollable, cloth posters?