I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I have a serious question

Has anyone made some type of push for an iPhone app or android app for earth empires?

It could really boost player base, hell we could even find some of us who are artistic and make some type of graphical representation of the country and actions we control (building, research ect,) while keeping the same exact game formulas.

discuss?

i like the idea and all of that.. however, i dont think they would stay long for the simple fact that new players will get farmed. like untaggeds now. which will turn them off of playing.. and or they wont wanna conform to our stagnant politics.

dead horse is dead

Their has been no interest in adding developers, and as such this game will not progress. 1 person doing the coding for a project (a busy person at that) will be able to maintain the game at best.

Much work would be needed, choices would need to be made.

i can make a iphone or andorid ap. I have a team of bangladeshi and packastanis ready to start development

for it to be a hit it'd need lots of graphics
Think about it, clash of Clans for example is based on the exact same premise. You have an attack force and a defence force, resources you gather and resources you acquire by attack
But competing head to head with something as entrenched as that (millions of players, hundreds of servers) is impossible, so a niche product is needed

text based, fast/easy to play - doesnt take much of your bandwidth etc - that'd be worth investigating

I rather like the look of the game as it is. Couldn't really say why.

we all like the game or we wouldn't play. The funnest part about it is not the gay game its the clan war family enviorment. Back when i was in SOF and we had 500 members i remember feeling lik,e i was really apart of an army when i went into their war chat rooms and got read for the strike. Honestly some people will like the game for what it is and others wont. I dont think our main market is spoiled americans. I think we should be looking toward newly developed countrys where band wish is VERY slow and a game like this wont take up much room and high addicting. Bangladesh, india, packasta, egypt, syria, we need to get into all of these countries and more. that means allowing to change translation of the text.

There is alot of potential and ad revenue with a member base lets say 500,000 would be more then enough to keep a steady advertising and marketing campaign

on its hey day earth2025 had ~20k countries on alliance-server (primary game a at that time) so 500k is utopistic and many today's players want realtime gaming not do this and wait x hrs before can play again.

do this and wait x hrs sounds like Clash of Clans to me.. $2,5mil profit per day. No idea how many players but tons!

The days of running large sites off ad revenue are long gone.

Oh, and you might consider removing that link in your sig. Apparently it is not appreciated.

This game isn't worth investing in long term. Keep it on life support as long as us old timer's are sticking around, and then let it die. We're here because we've always been here. That's it. The game would need to change drastically to be successful on a mobile platform, and opening it up to thousands of new players would mean that all the terms, policies, rules etc. that we've all fought for over the years would suddenly be gone, because there aren't enough of us to enforce and defend them.

I understand the need to try and improve the game and keep it growing, but the game hasn't grown or improved in over 15 years. It's not about to start now. The folks at the top are doing their best to keep it afloat for the community. Earth is a hobby, that's all it's been for a while now, and that's all it'll be until we all move on. And guess what. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

I've been a member of this site longer then you and my sig has been around longer then you so worry about your self first and other people last in this case. Instead of worrying about what i'm doing why don't you worry about becoming a better player. If you spent half the time doing that maybe you could break the top 10. Just saying.

Who are you to say that running a large site off of ad revenue is not applicable anymore? When was the last time you tried and and succeeded or failed? I bet you have no knowledge of Marketing and Advertising and less knowledge about Search Engine Optimization. If Earthempires.com came up on the first page of google under the keyword Free Online War Game this website would be crawling with Millions of people from all over the world. It dosn't matter if some people prefer the fancy game with the cool graphics because this is its own nich and a certain amount of people would prefer a text game compared to what everyone else wants.

Bambam - you make it sound so easy. If it were so easy to get this website "crawling with Millions," one of two things would have already happened. Either, the admins would have done that already, quit their jobs, and become rich; or, you would have contacted them privately, explained your plan for the game, offered them a large sum of money, and done it yourself. Since none of those things have happened, I must conclude that it's not as easy as you make it seem to be.

And about your signature - the length of time that his handle has been active doesn't matter. His point is correct. Pang had posted in another thread of yours that he was considering deleting all of your posts because of your signature.

I just removed his signature. That's more mouse clicks but less complaining. :p
Sorry, no advertising for non-game related services on our forums.

Re: mobile dev.... the forums are mobile friendly; the game needs the port as well. qz has been working on it with the template we made like a year ago. Once all our pages can handle mobile easily I can do the quicky "hack" to get html5 into apps (android+ios+blackberry) easily and it's in the app stores.

Hawkeye's hit the head on the nail: anyone who posts things like this -- while also trashing the admins for not accepting help from a random offered on AT -- is more full of bravado than anything that's actually valuable to the game. I'm sure he's a great guy with lots of skills as he says but I don't think that methodology (farming the game dev out, just marketing what's here now, etc) works.

This isn't a vanity or static product brochure site where we send a team half a world away a visual mockup and they send us back flat pages. The game mechanics alone make this the sort of project you realistically need to understand at a deeper level to be able to develop. The architecture of the game also isn't MVC as I would want it to be so the view logic isn't decoupled from key pieces of game logic.

Digging deeper, the issue isn't even marketing... why keep talking about marketing as if the game is complete and that's all that we need? If that was all we need, I'd put my marketing skills to work (you could say I've dabbled in digital marketing...) and build our social footprint and marketing activities. The issue is that the environment and documentation are VERY lacking. I've made a couple of pushes for the community to help build this up and there's been some support but not enough to create the critical mass of tutorials, documentation and help needed to bring a player from n00b to knowledgeable. Without a product that is going to be able to retain new n00b users it's a waste of energy. I mainly spend my time dealing with drama brought forth by the worst people in this community (why I'm active now) and that sours me from wanting to do much else ATM.

So, in general, when I see a post talking about how someone has all the answers it just makes me think they don't really understand the nature of the game and the community for which we're trying to build the game.

Pang, I respect that you continue to answer these silly posts. Even from a new member.

I am not knowledgeable about ad revenues nor about making sites more prominent through search engines.

Are there any large sites run off advertising revenues?

Every website that isn't subscription based runs almost exclusively off of advertising revenue. Any blog, any newspaper, any magazine, any search engine. Unless it's providing a service (for example, travel sites that make money off packages you buy through them), or representing a company (for example, Nike's website), they're making money off of ads.

There are various amounts based on the number of visitors who see the ad, how many people click on it, how long they stay after they click, etc.

thanks, it's easy to answer because it's the same stuff I've said numerous times. none of this should be new information :p

++ opportunity to promote ppl making documentation + tutorial content :D

Hawkeyee, thank you.

Can you point me at a large website run off advertising revenue? If it is a gaming site so much the better. :)

I really don't see this game transferring to an app. It's not just ads for revenue, you have to offer something like 'gems' or 'gold bar' for real life cold hard cash. So, what exactly are you going to have players buy? Turns, missiles, whatever it is I don't like it, lol. I'm poor, I want to be beat with skill, not by a 12 year old with rich parents. Then you also run into the problem of sets, are people going to want to pay for something they only have for two months, in other games it's a long term investment.

Another thing is the constant updates to the game and/or holiday update and timed task. I don't see this working either, I commend the admin team for all the updates they have done. But really it's been tweaks to the code and us tweaking game play.

Last I feel like we would take a giant step back in security, we might as well call the app Earth 2025. Now people can create multiple accounts to sucide with or increase clan numbers or to farm. If you say who cares that'll improve our overall numbers, you might as well all switch to the FFA server.

Personally if I was Pang or someone with an ounce of coding ability. I would revamp Boxcar and make a more universal clan site for games like Clash of Clans and any other clan app. Make the the site super mobile friendly, the player base is already there, you just need them to use your site for their clans. To me he could make real money doing something like that, then trying to get a text based app to compete with graphic apps.

I am not sure I follow the idea that tutorials and so on would help attract (and keep) players.
But your opinion is plainly the one that counts.

So I wonder.

Maybe a beginners server open to people who have less than one week's experience (yes it will be abused but probably only by beginners).

And all players on that server would be inducted into one of half a dozen clans with a vet leader to do the training things that are done in clans. Keen newcomers would progress at a pace, as we know.

Then the chess site I play on Chess.com has an absolute wealth of material as well as providing the ability to play on-line. I´ll have a look to see if any of the things they do there are readily repeatable on Earth.

http://www.incomediary.com/top-earning-websites

We've done some informal user testing and that's what the results were: no one had any clue what to do to start off and didn't know where to turn for help. Those who are able to play the game essentially need to be mentored by clans or learn by trial and error on solo servers.

Everything I say isn't me trying to preach; it's the outcome of the work we did years ago. And it aligns with generally accept dev/game dev practices. Look back in the archives, I've been saying this sort of thing since like 2011 when the game was actually "finished" mechanics-wise. :p

Pang - create a smaller server. Teaching server.

Eg - Teaching server, newbies come along and sign up for the teaching reset, say a 1,5week reset so they get to grips with it. Several teachers volunteer, say alliance heads, or vets. New decides strat before starting
Each teacher manages say 5 newbies - sorted by prechosen strat. Get's them to ingame ally each other (so newb makes friends) and they learn how to ally, teacher then teaches them a normal 100-turn start, importance of CS and whatnot, in the 1,5weeks they go up the normal first explore jump etc. They even even try a grab, and sell stuff on the market.

Newbies can send ingame question to their teacher about anything, teacher can see the country as if it was his or her own but cant do anything, teacher can read messages the news send to each other. (Teaching to be polite and not crude is also important)

*shrug* that's what they do on playdiplomacy.com and imo its a great way of getting into the game and how the site for the game works.

After the 1,5weeks the teacher has "first dibs" so to speak on getting these newbs to join his or her alliance because hes helped them. Newb can choose to/is encouraged to repeat experience with a different strat etc

Because it's simple and doesn't need graphics as enhancement. The game as-is is attractive to people who like to crunch numbers.

We tried a more loose system for that with tourney/primary/express + the "learning" forums. Slag did an amazing job working to set that all up and keep it quasi-anonymous.


At the same time, I don't think one thing precludes another and not all users want to be mentored and need to pay attention. The biggest shift in gaming between when EE was started and now is the more casual gaming experience. Earth is not a casual gaming experience :p

ur mums a casual gaming experience m8

ee players don't get profit for waiting x hrs (sales happen if we are of or online).

I once spoke to Pang about buying the game or somehow buying in to help fund its expansion but as soon as he gave me the ad revenue #'s it becomes pretty obvious.

Guys qz and pang do it because they like the game and the community (unbelievable given some of the muppets that play) they make no money from it. Asking for big redevelopments and marketing would be asking them to make a very very silly financial decision.

So unless people are willing to donate time or take time for equity then there is no real expansion.

More or less, Arsenal -- Earth (+ Boxcar, it's all bucketed together into one shared pot) runs in the black even when including qz's hardware related costs that come up off and on :D
We have resolved to keep the game going because it's not that hard to keep going at this point and we try to look past the assholes who bring us grief to those who don't when we need to deal with bullfluff. The mods get fluff on more than we do now, everyone should be really nice to them.

Personally, I spend my former EE time doing non-gaming related projects and it's much more lucrative than I ever see Earth being short of perhaps a one-time "patron" cash grab. But that would lead to the expectation of more development and if I'm going to put serious effort into building a game it's very unlikely to be this one. That being said, a more modern game that reflects a lot of Earth's core themes with more modern, engaging gameplay is definitely always being designed in the back of my mind.

But anyway, the point I want to stress is the same one that I try to make in all of these sort of threads when I happen upon them: it's unlikely that we'll continue to expand EE much beyond what's here now but it's in no danger of being shut down. It's up to the community to self regulate for the most part -- we built and maintain this for all of you -- so if you want to make a positive difference for this game start by being a positive influence on the community.

* pies Pang

Get back to work!

Bonus!

Pang - you have been doing this a long time. So of course you have seen/heard it all before.

But hey! What is the problem with a bit of optimism?

If anything is to be tried it must:

Not put you guys to much trouble or expense,

Not damage the enjoyment of the considerable number of people here who like playing the game which you have kept going.

The notion being developed above seems to me to meet those criteria.

Say there was one new server (OK some expense).

Say that all players on first opening an account join that server and are admitted to no other (OK some programming).

Now the game run on that server is like Express (fast and, because copied from Express, limited extra programming).

Players are told that the top 25%/50% become vets and can thereafter play on any server.

On joining the server each player comes under the "sorting hat" and is allocated to Slytherin, Hufflepuff, etc etc

If not enough people turn up some of us get to play 10/20 dummy countries (badly) to make up the numbers.

Slytherin/Hufflepuff whatever each get a website (OK some more expense and time setting up - but not much) and one of us babysits each clan site, sorting out from amongst the newbies those who like the game and want to progress and those who are just here for the ride. The keen ones will qualify out of the beginners' server, the others will either drop out or will carry on playing at a rudimentary level in beginners.

What's to lose?

In fact there is a tiny collateral benefit in that multies will be deterred because of having to spend time qualifying out of the beginner's server before they can play in the real games.

If coaching to play decently and to get something out of the game really is the key to increased interest this will provide coaching to the intake.

You say not everyone wants to be mentored. Fine. But at least this addresses those who do.

Tutorial?

Talking about making a video? Isn't written strats enough? Those are tutorials in themselves

You tube has a lot of videos for the game

I'll laugh really hard if I ever see youtube tutorial videos for EE.

I would recommend (unless we get a huge influx of new users) having the help reports sent to the discussion forums instead of help forums, where they'll get more eyeballs.

I'd also recommend immediately providing the user who made the submission with a link to the thread that's been created.

Finally, I'd point out that the get help feature currently doesn't work.

Ive mentioned it several times to staff that the help forums are broke. They didnt get updated when the forums switched over

we're waiting for the social media sites to adopt a standard for interacting with ancient text based web games so that we may save time and effort when we decide to introduce this game to the billions of people who watch porn on a minutely basis. hmmm, i should probably modify my signature in such a way that it explicitly states that I am making fun of people who have read this far and don't have a clue that I am in no way responsible for administrating or publicly representing this game and whatever forum happens to accompany it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jieh52Iq9F8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZrtypKsrTk

Didn't watch those but two hits in a simple youtube search

I this the same hawkeye that owned Promisance? If it is you already know whats about to happen this game is going to be extinct in 2 - 5 years.

Everyone keeps saying there is no market for this game but look at us we play. I spend my 15 minutes playing everyday and I enjoy it. So will others in less developed countrys that don't have the connection to play these advanced games. Papasmurf you dont want a rich kid buying gold bars and more missles to beat you but guess what if I was the owner of the game i would sell that kid all the missles i can to blow you up because its money in my pocket. 20 nukes for $10 there is tons of marketability.

All Pang has to do is open a porn section on the website and he will immediately turn a profit.

porn.earthempires.com

This

and get instapermabanned from workplaces and family nets globally

This game will be extinct soon. I say we create task team to grow it and market it to the public. With my skills i could teach anyone. Lets get 4 people beside me to create the Earth2025 Marketing Team and launch a campaign to get new members. Im sure alot of you think its hard but i have experience and for nothing more then our time we can start a successful campaign guided and directed by me to bring new players and get it back to how it was. Whoever joins me will be bright, unique, energetic, focused, and does what their told. Next I believe our team deserves a % of the total business in whole because we are going to take what we have left of swirve earth2025 which was once semi profitable and turn it into a money maker again for the new owner. We wont do it for free but for a % of the money which is nothing right now to anyone who has money when it does turn a profit we are entitled to some of it and we will split it as a team.

Lets say we did come to an agreement with the higher authority what % is fair?

Wheres my Team!

put down the bong, sir

Get some of the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis on the job.

I imagine it is proficiency in the all over the world language which is needed but if English has a place in the sales drive you could get them to help out there too.

Your creating but you have to fit the other criteria aswell

would be nice to have a few more buttons and less text inputs for either a mobile app or mobile website version

for example
an explore 1 turn button to click
rather than
click enter 1 then click explore or press return

1 action rather than 3

and theres no reason more buttons couldnt be available on one screen

such as explore cash build 1 turns bpt with a choice of which building or even 50% of two buildings

then auto updates with the results

click on an attack on you and you can choose search that country or spy that country and so on

then on attack page you could display total defence from last spy op you did and give an indicator when you pass that or get 90 or 99% success chance and so on

in other words ui changes alone could make the game much more mobile friendly

wrong handle*