Archived Transparency On Player Retention

[Astraaeus]

Dear MassiveCraft © van Duijnhoven Digital Service 2011-2023,

I believe MassiveCraft if they are not already should start collecting and performing data analytics on new and old player retentions. Sometimes players like myself will return for a season, a week, a day, a month, or even a year, and actively participate. By metricizing the player retention rates, which may or may not already be done by the CS department, there will be insightful data into how to gain new players.

Moreover, MassiveCraft should (if not already) post this data on player retention publicly and communicate when player retention rates are falling or increasing. This encourages players in both scenarios to invite their friends to play on the network. I'm not sure how this applies to factions because it is much easier to quantify player activity on the roleplaying demographic than the factions because faction players (assumingly) are inclined to text messages less(?) [one could argue that flaming and speech are markers]. You could use the rate of chats as a metric.

Using this metric and publishing the data while protecting player privacy seems (to me) like a great strategy to improve player catchment. Additionally, more investment into PR, potentially utilizing tools like Google Advertising if permitted, because MassiveCraft has itself become somewhat proprietary, so if MC can gain the consent of Microsoft by reaching out to them through corporate channels or making a deal with them to promote their server on advertisements, or even through sites like Planetminecraft, it would further player retention and catchment.

However, with a warning, before you could possibly contact Microsoft and Google for permissions to run advertisements, a fresh playerbase is required that is willing to donate, and unfortunately the global economy is not in the best shape. Therefore every measure needs to be taken to maximize the income of the company that owns MassiveCraft networks (or MonMarty as the sole proprietor); I am not familiar with the corporate structure of how this business has been legally registered.

Nonetheless, I still believe that transparency on player activity data is key, and since I just returned from a break, this is a fresh new idea that I thought of because my periods of activity on the network are very sporadic as my life is highly unpredictable in the real world.

Good luck to the developers,
And hopefully this can help the server gain more resources,

Sincerely,
Astraaeus

 

[Ocularum]

I'm not speaking for the entire team. These are my thoughts and opinions as a member of PR. I'm also responding from my phone, so it's difficult to form longer thoughts like this. If you have questions about specific responses quote me and I'll attempt to explain my reasoning.

I believe MassiveCraft if they are not already should start collecting and performing data analytics on new and old player retentions.

Click to shrink...

We are. It's not as thorough or as useful as I may like, but it exists.

... [T]here will be insightful data into how to gain new players.

Click to shrink...

Numbers for the sake of numbers isn't as useful as you might think. We can tell (to a degree) where we lose players with manual searches with Prism, but that doesn't tell us why. We also don't know what keeps players. We can guess, but it's not definitive until we have actual feedback from new and old players.

Moreover, MassiveCraft should (if not already) post this data on player retention publicly and communicate when player retention rates are falling or increasing.

Click to shrink...

There's a statistics page already that's publicly accessible. It's the same kind of graphs you'll find on any voting site that displays our peak player counts per week, month, or year.

Why do we need to communicate when player counts are rising or falling? Is the point to let players know that yes, we also see the number of players online?

Using this metric and publishing the data while protecting player privacy seems (to me) like a great strategy to improve player catchment.

Click to shrink...

Publishing data isn't possible unless it can be anonymized, and even then it's not the kind of information that should be released if we had it. You (and outside observers) don't really need to know how long certain demographics play on MassiveCraft, what they buy, or any other potentially targeted statistic. Some of the users on the server are minors.

Legally speaking, there are already rules in place for collecting information about those users and ethical and legal concerns involved with sharing it.

Additionally, more investment into PR, potentially utilizing tools like Google Advertising if permitted...

Click to shrink...

1. MassiveCraft has a limited audience. We cater to a certain age group playing only Java Minecraft.
2. Advertisements may get us views, but don't increase retention.
3. It's already been considered, but there are things we need to fix first before advertising at any scale with actual money becomes a smart investment.

RE: Transparency on player retention, we don't have a static number of users retained that we could give you either way.