FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

[biass]

Work with the trainers to see if they can actively approach new players. We could say something like “each new players should be contacted by PM within the first 10 days of playing”.

It's a good application, but are you really sure about this part?
I would like it if you elaborated on this area, because i'm not convinced this is a good idea.

Good luck with the rest of it mate.

[Sir Prize]

Trying to get the wiki sorted is a waste of limited resources tbh, the last time coordinated effort was made the wiki still wasn't used. More importantly, I can't think of a gaming community with a base game this complex, with as many ongoing changes to the game, supporting apps and clients but also has such a small number of people involved. Definitely not one with a useful, used wiki. This means you are always pushing shit up hill to keep the wiki updated for the amount of benefit it provides. I can think of MORE complex games, with bigger communities, more regular patching and more important third party apps that still struggle to keep wikis complete and up to date.

Spoiler: show

Specifically Eve Online, which deleted their official wiki a few years ago although some player organisations maintain ones that are reasonable for some stuff but very incomplete, also Starcraft II/liquipedia doesn't really manage it and is MILES from the most useful education or retention tool in a much more successful game.

I would encourage promo councillors to look elsewhere for newbie retention/education ideas. I really like the Anihilnine idea of proactively getting people into newbie friendly games and accessing friendly, competent mentors (trainers, clans, whatever - how dead is #newbie chat these days out of curiosity?). I've seen similar stuff work well in other games, and I've seen a some interesting presentations (not to mention had personal experience) on the importance of establishing good social connections and access to online friends/mentoring/being on a "team" in retaining new people. Playing other games with shit wikis hasn't been a problem for me, put it that way. I would also say compared to other gaming communities I'm in or have been in I think FAF is the furthest I've seen (and in a few ways getting further) from good practices and culture for newbie retention. Dunno if councillors can fix the second thing but nice to see some ideas for the first thing.

[nine2]

About tournaments?

No one asked this but I just wanted to mention that I will not be able to be involved in any tournaments. I am in the wrong timezone (Australia) and dont really have those sorts of skills. I will be a very busy person organizing other things (news, advertising, etc). However I'm all about promoting someone elses tournament. I'm all about trying to find a person willing to run a tournament.

@Rowey

About the wiki?

I think if anyone wanted to fix up the wiki it would be worthy goal. I have seen the forum/zulip posts from Rowey and Laticlave about their wiki ideas and I think it would be terrific. However I can't help but feel that it would be a matter of time before the new wiki fell to the wayside and became outdated again. Eventually another dutifull person would step up and fix it - I guess it's the wiki circle of life. It might be more sustainable if we just update the current wiki rather than rewriting it - that would require less effort therefore the contributors might keep it up to date for longer. However I think it's important when working on volunteer projects for people to work on what they are attracted to. If someone wants to invest the time into a wiki upgrade, then I'm all for it.

However, upgrading the wiki is not something that I see as critically important. I would not be working goal towards this myself as I will focus on other issues - getting new players and keep them. Lets make a professional ad campaign and get some numbers - what is our advertising cost per new player? How many new players would we have with $1000?

Why don't I see the wiki as being important to retention? I believe the wiki is something you get into you are a bit hooked. I bet we need to catch people earlier than that.

About constructing a team?

I would love to work with anyone who wants to join this project. As I mentioned already I can't do this all by myself and I need support from many types of people (content, graphics, video, dev). My current opening plan is to start talking to everyone to see if they would like to contribute. Then I would love to make some changes to the in-client news system so that I can actually get messages to the player base with messages like this: "FAF is trying to grow and needs someone with mad VIDEO skills. If that's you, click for more information". It would be amazing if we could get some momentum with a few people working on it.

If I am unable to rally a team - I'll just have to do it myself and limit my ambitions. I can dev, write, photoshop, edit video. However I won't be able to sustain that by myself forever.

About changing the news page?

This is one of my favourite ideas but it would require development help, since I'm not a java dev. The short version is I would turn the news section into a hub with icons and short text descriptions and links to articles. Then I would put in tonnes of articles, for example about upcoming balance patches, new maps, etc. There would be an article about this forum post for example - we need a Promocilor. I could do the content mostly because as mentioned I read the forum etc a lot and really I am just making up links with a headline. It would be easy enough just to write up a small section about any trending forum topic. If its trending then its news. The current news system has a few issues
1. small content
2. layout is not enticing, we should copy layout from trashy clickbait websites
3. list format hides articles quickly
4. players skip over news - i change the tab to Play before the news tab is loaded
5. ideally, news should be shared between FAF website and client

It's all about curating content. The truth is that FAF is interesting with lots of cool bits and pieces - you just have to go through a LOT of stuff to find them. Just like how the "M&M Top Picks" features cool maps without you having to look through the entire vault. Lets do that with all of the FAF content.

Other contributors would still submit news items about releases/servers/nomads etc but I'd probably try and sex them up a bit, prioritise them the right way, give them a consistent style.

So one of my first questions would to devs would be - can we do web online articles such as wordpress - can we make a sexy css news hub - can we embed that into the java client?

About social media?

I'd turn social media into a tool to get new players and retain them. I don't see as much value in social broadcasts for our normal playerbase. I spoke about this earlier but I would find appealing little snippets, make animated gifs send them out on social, ask the playerbase to share them. Then I'd measure the effect of such activities to see if it is worth the time. My expectation is the greater return on investment would come from posts to reddit and twitter - but I'd measure that and prove it. Lets focus on what works.

@biass

About am I sure its a good idea to contact new players in 10 days?

No I'm not sure at all, and if I get elected I'll ask you for your thoughts on this. This is a draft plan and subject to massive change. The point is that I would develop a retention and adoption strategy - with feedback from ye ole good upstanding FAF citizens, formulate a plan, implement it, measure it, refine it. I'd like to get feedback from key FAF groups before putting anything in place. I don't have all the answers - I just talk to the people who know what they are actually talking about. If my idea sucks someone will tell me and we'll factor that in. So in a way the final strategy would be crowdsourced. Surely there are things that we can do to retain players. Lets go find out what that is.

[Farmsletje]

i will vote for anyone who would stop this

[FtXCommando]

I can’t lock threads in gen discussions, but the application period is over. I’ll be moving onto the 2nd stage of the selection process and we should have a new Promotions Councillor within 10 days or so.

[Bennis-]

I would appreciate if you considered my application. I think the discussions in this thread have destroyed most of my competitions points but no one yet engaged with my proposal. Silent agreement I would say.

I do believe that bennis returning to streaming with the authority of a promotion officer will improve community building and newbie retention more than updating the wiki or removing nomads from the news feed.

[FtXCommando]

The FAF Council has decided to hand the position off to Anihilnine after reading his application and going through the interview process. We wish him good luck in his endeavors and are eager to see how he can leave his mark on the project!

[nine2]