Concise description:
- A period from 18:00 Friday evening to 04:00 Saturday morning will be designated the Friday Night Speed Zone. Speed games will be open to players on free accounts during that time.
Background:
- Over the years many, many people have suggested that we should allow freemiums a limited number of speed games, which would purportedly whet their appetite for more and get them to become premium. As a secondary benefit, it is suggested that allowing this would help fill speed games for premium players too, and lead to a more satisfying experience for them.
Several variations of this idea have been tried at one time or another, but with little success. The most basic problem is that giving introductory speed games to new accounts creates an incentive to abandon accounts once their games are used up and create new ones. The simplest variant (just giving 3 or 5 introductory speed games) predictably resulted in an epidemic of multis. The next thing that was tried was to give one free speed game each month, but this also had its problems. It was technically buggy (some freemies inexplicably got unlimited free games) and it also didn't really attract a great following (I'm guessing because one speed game a month just isn't enough to really get someone hooked on it.) Nowadays we have a third variant, where newbies are given enough introductory free credits to buy a speed game pack, but this isn't working either, for many reasons: many players either don't realize they have the introductory credits, or can't figure out how to navigate the Store and buy their speed game packs, and in the end it still is an incentive for abandoning accounts and creating multis.
I've spent some time thinking about a better way to do this, and I think I have an answer.
The Friday Night Speed Zone. During that time, speed games will be freely available to all accounts including freemies. This is not an introductory offer; it will be a long-term (one hesitates to say permanent, but at least indefinite) change in policy.
Advantages:
- Unlike small speed game introductory offers which get used up before a player is truly hooked, this would allow a player to play as many speed games as he could handle for the whole evening and possibly become a true addict. The small but dedicated speed game community will attest that speed games are addictive, but there is an initial learning curve and 3 or 5 games are probably not enough to get 'over the hump'.
- Unlike introductory offers, this does not set up an incentive to create multis. A freemium player who has been here ten years would be just as eligible as a brand new player. Being able to play unlimited games on that night (and not on any other night) would leave him no reason to start more accounts.
- Friday and Saturday nights are the slowest nights on CC, so it makes sense to create a special night on one of those (for the same reasons that restaurants put their best specials on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, which are their slowest nights.) Of the two, I think Friday is far superior, because generally speaking people often indulge their hobbies on Friday, but on Saturday they're expected to be doing something with their friends or families.
- Also because Friday is a slow night, this would put the speed games at a time of low server load and encounter fewer slowdowns/crashes.
- By creating this limited window, it would also have the effect of concentrating what speed community we have left. It is a frequent complaint that there are too few speed players left and games don't fill. By creating a period of increased activity, it would tend to build a critical mass and result in games filling more quickly.
- The revival of the speed community might take a while, but I think eventually it could build to the point where it might spill over to other days. At that point there would definitely be an incentive for some of the freemies to buy premium accounts.
- Not all freemiums, obviously, would become excited enough to join, but I think a significant number would. Even if there was only a small number of membership sales resulting it would be helpful, but I think the increase in buzz and excitement would have benefits in all parts of the site (chat, forums, monthly challenges, etc.)
