warning: I am someone who writes poorly so the post might appear very disorganized or simply crappy.
Hello everyone, toke a long break from FH2. Actually I am still taking the break, but these days I had been trying to show my new friends this amazing game. Their reaction leads me to think that what this mod lacks is not contents but packaging.
Typical responses:
- Wow the graphics is really good, can my machine run it?
- Map is very large!!
- I don't know how to win in this game...
- I can't read English probably cannot play
- What game is this?
- You can respawn?
...
I can't help but to think how many players were turned away due to the difficulty of approaching this game. The game looked nice to hardcore players only because FH was already in our heart for a long period of time. However, for a newcomer, there were many barriers to break through...
Video promotion
When promoting the game to my friends, I try hard to find materials scattered all across the internet to show them about the gameplay. The lack of trial version means videos were the best way to explain the game. However, solid videos were very few and they were not successful in letting my friends know how this game is different from games like Medal of Honor. The videos I find:
- FH2 training videos: shows how to fight, not particularly inspiring
- FH2 trailers: well made videos that inspire the old playerbase, but to a newcomer there is no special meaning, it is "just another WWII shooting game"
- FH2 gameplay videos:
1. boring bot stomping videos (only to make the mod look bad)
2. less skilled players making the game feel like just walking around and die (confuses new comers).
3. Actually skillful players recording, but the videos failed to bring out the awesomeness of the mod in the attention span of homo sapiens.
As many of you might have noticed, people in the new age no longer compile information like people in the early information age. It can be said that people become dumber but the fact is that, people don't like to read giant blocks of text accompanied by some .jpg because their attention span is low, therefore, to adapt to the new age and bring in new players we need actually thrilling, concise, and informative videos.
The first release of FH2 was preceded by a series of awesome videos. Although the success of 2.0 release was not solely due to the videos, it can be argued that the videos play an important part in attracting players from all over the place.
Language barrier
I come from Asia, English is not my first language, I only know English well because my home city happened to be a former British colony. It might be shocking but there are many many people on the world that are:
- very poor in English
- knows basic English but does not enjoy using them
So, in the end, only people who actually is very interested in WWII and/or knows English well will get into this game. We can only help to imagine how many players were turned away when they saw a block of English text in the official webpage. Also players that does not feel comfortable reading English would not be able to enjoy this game as good.
Potential of acquiring playerbase from other countries? FHSW was the perfect example, FH was not only introduced with Japanese playerbase, the mod was also expanded twice or even larger, with numerous bug fixes and improvements on game mechanics.
For FH2 to effectively acquire new players, solid work needs to be done on presenting the game in more languages.
The next update would be the East Front, which would inevitably bring influx of Russian players during the release party. The more home the game is to the Russians, the more of them will come, and more of them will stay.
This also brings out that the webpage would need to be written such that people from all over the world can easily see what FH2 is about before their fingers were tired of clicking and scrolling.
To sum up:
Hopes cannot be put on that new versions will be more awesome
New versions are usually more awesome yet player count decrease
so the problem does not lie in contents, it is somewhere else..
I am already quite tired at typing all these and I am looking forward to your responses.