Draw traffic to this site

[bvanevery]

Per the SEO thread though, forum links are generally marked "nofollow".  Whether or how much they can contribute to a Google rank is unclear to me at this time.  It seems like their actual contribution may be the people who actually click on the link and check out the content.  The link itself may be doing very little for rank, because of the "nofollow".

My alternate hypothesis is that Google's content analysis has gotten sophisticated enough, that they can somehow tell if a link leads to something of value.  The study on that would be Paradox's forum.  I have not yet undertaken the study.

The prejudice against forums is that anyone can put links in them.  So link spammers do so.  I recently read a bunch of stuff on a Black Hat SEO site, about the tactic of going to old school web forums, like a Simple Machines Forum.  If one has an old account on such a forum, and the ability to edit one's old posts, then one can add very new links to one's very old posts.  Usually without admins noticing.  Understanding just this one instance of such technique, informs me as to how / why Google would put the kibash on an entire range of forum links.  They don't have a default reason to regard forum links as "authoritative" on a subject.  Rather, they have every reason to suspect that they're spammy garbage.

But they may have gotten good in various instances, at detecting the quality of surrounding content.

[bvanevery]

And Yo; I'm talking, say, if you happened to be a hypothetical modder who generated a scenario, it would, hypothetically, be a SMACX AI Growth mod-based scenario with SMACX AI Growth mod included in the package, leading directly to people actually playing SMACX AI Growth mod.

I'm aware that I can do it.  In fact I'm better situated to do it than the other 2 major mods, because I don't require binary distribution of any kind, to make my mod work.  I can put everything in a scenario folder and it's Done.  But... I already advertize SMACX AI Growth mod periodically on r/4Xgaming.  It clearly has the most new blood available, and people thereby coming to this site.  If my mod itself is not persuasion enough, I'm not exactly seeing why a scenario would be.  It might increase retention of people who checked out my mod once already, but that's a theory only.  An alternate theory would be, 4X gaming is about randomly generated maps, not scenarios.

I can't really explain your previous empirical observation of "scenario success".  I don't deny that it seemed to work for you then.  But I am concerned that we're dealing with now, in the age of YouTube and mobile devices.  It changes things.

A depressing SEO ranking issue, is that Google now evaluates your site first and foremost, according to how it looks on mobile.  I see this as complete monopolistic scummery on their part, a shameless desire to push more Android phones.  I have no idea how this site comes across on mobile.  I categorically refuse to own a smartphone.  I call them dumbphones.  Heck right now I don't have any phone at all, a sort of pandemic fiasco, but that's another story.  If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't be connecting to the internet with it.

I'm a laptop guy.  I pretty much expect games as complicated as 4X TBS, to be played with a keyboard.  That said, out of necessity I've become pretty good at touchpad dragging, because I don't have a full size numeric keypad anymore.

Well, maybe learning how Paradox copes with and overcomes these various issues, will shed light.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I might miss it but what are we fighting for in term of SEO? When I search "alpha centauri forum" this one comes third. I think it is good enough.

[bvanevery]

I'm still trying to understand the oh so many facets of SEO.  This morning's exercise is, what free tools are available for analyzing keyword searches and website traffic?  So far I don't have anything to recommend, and I've learned some scummy things about Google.  I'd like to know who looks for an "after action report".  It seems that Call of Duty players do that, and that's about all I've got so far.

Who says people search for "alpha centauri forum" ?  It's not "good enough" if you don't even know what the behavior of actual game players is.

Another issue is that searching for things, isn't the same as clicking on the links that result from the search.

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs]  YouTube had already taken over the world before I even got a fast internet connection, let alone nearly ten years ago when I was accumulating my empirical experience.  Phones, I can't speak to at all, and that does bother me.

-But I'd submit that the age of the game is way more of a problem increasing difficulty level of playing forum-growth at all.  We were always too focused on a single game too old for our own prospects/good - and did it anyway, and it worked about as well as anyone could practically hope for.  Dunno; for the nearly-13 years I've been around the greater Civ-family online community, people have been bemoaning the decline of same as some irreversible trend that - I think they're probably right, ultimately, but it doesn't give enough credit to Owner Burnout.  I mean, a lot of the quiet around AC2 I actually blame myself for, for not trying as hard as I used to, and at that, Solver tells me I'm getting very close to outlasting everyone (forum owner) ever but Thunderfall, if he even still counts.  I certainly think it's more useful to blame the parts I could do better at than the things I can't control, anyway.  (That I have some ferocious mood swings complicating the long haul effort doesn't help.)

On spammers - y'all may have noticed that spam's quite rare here, and never lives anything like 24 hours; they certainly try, but I don't get so lethargic that I don't eyeball every single signup and ban many instantly for sufficient reason, being careful to show mercy where I'm much less than 100% sure.

The noparse, I assume is something about how Google works, because we have something like two threads marked noparse, and they're both personal threads in Rec Commons.  -Connected, I understand that any links you manage to get on Wikipedia are internally marked noparse, which is definitely a pity, but you know, SEO is only a big part of the toolkit, not the whole toolbox - our Firaxis AC Site rescue is linked in the SMACX article for five years so far, said site featuring linkbacks to this forum three places on each page.  Neither the mirror, nor that Wikipedia link, represent trivial effort, but more than worth it, I think.

---

SO - honestly, GotMs definitely worked back then, but I don't think we ever achieved anything like their actual potential as bait, never having actually sustained the schedule right there in the name for six months straight.  -And I can't imagine that happening now, for sure, which is a pity, because I've always been confident that steadfast reliability was key to building a steadfast following.  Notwithstanding all that, I'd certainly be all-in should an ambitious modder -who certainly stands to gain more from the deal than this forum does- decide to try scenarios as a promotable marketing tool.

For me, they always told me, back when WPC started out, that Content Is King, and Activity Draws More Activity.  My experience in the 13 years since is that it's nothing but true.  Every single forum post helps a little.  Every mod, every AAR, every addition to the AC Wiki, certainly every single link to anything here posted anywhere else, helps.  A little extra effort to engage all newbs DEFINITELY helps, as AC2's always done a lot better on the Content Is King end than the Activity Draws More Activity.  I particularly thank Brandon for a LOT of conscious effort on that last, to a fault.

-And thanks, by the way, to both of you just for taking an interest.  I've noticed since the beginning here that activity levels show a good deal of correlation to how much activity I generate myself, and it does a lot to motivate me in ALL the work when I don't feel so doggon alone.

P.S.  I note that we've never done anything promotional on YouTube, and that's missing out on one leg of the Triple Crown of Free Internet Promotion, the others being Facebook and Wikipedia.  So, if anyone managed to generate a Let's Play or two w/ heavy linkbacking...

[bvanevery]

Previously I was talking about nofollow, not noparse.  Noparse seems to be a way to suspend the interpretation of BB code.  Like perhaps if you wanted to explain how [noparse]italics[/noparse] work.  Heh, well that didn't work.

I'm still trying to figure out if "after action report" is actually a concept that some chunk of the internet cares about.  I did look at Google's word search thing (sorry, my investigations are currently a blur) and the historical trend since 2004 was way down.  Still haven't really dug into Paradox's site.  Last exercise I did, was looking over a bunch of "free" SEO tools that I think were all mostly really "gimme money", not very convincing.

I think many hours long Let's Plays are the most boring things on Earth.  I have a really hard time visualizing why anyone bothers with that.  I'm aware that people actually do.  One thing I learned awhile back, is how a video sounds is often more important than how it looks.  Because people are turning on this stuff as background noise while they multitask at something else, like preparing or eating dinner.  Personally, I think that's no way to live, but at least I can wrap my head around people doing it. 

In other words, YouTube videos should probably be thought of as a form of voice acting.  An illustrated podcast where the viewer is presumed to not be paying very good visual attention.

I've never made a YouTube video.  The only thing I could imagine making, is something short.  It would have to be a limited vignette in a narrow subject area.  The most immediate thing that leaps to mind, is Planet Buster Porn.  I've done the screenshot version of that.  It actually takes a fair amount of finger dexterity to capture all the different frames.

The #1 thing that noobs or even veterans in r/4Xgaming complain about in SMAC, is the UI.  There's a crowd that's under the perception that it sucks for some reason.  Because it's not imitating modern 4X UIs or something.  I don't really get it.  It's not the art assets of the UI in my opinion; in fact I think that's one part of the game that holds up better than a lot of other things.  It's something about how the UI works, that people are objecting to.  On the other hand, I also think 4X as a genre breeds whiners.  Like if something isn't "just so", you're going to run into the kind of borderline OCD person who really throws a snit about it.

I should probably bring up the subject of "old UIs" on my r/GamedesignLounge.  See what others think.

[Buster's Uncle]

What CIVilians have always told me is that the fungus colors -thus pretty much the whole game- are butt-ugly.  "Retina burning", one said.

That would be reasonably easy to mod, actually.

[bvanevery]

Well it's true that the landscape is ugly.  I used to think so at some point in the distant past, that it was chunky even compared to games of the period.  Then over the years it became my new normal, and at least the color choices are functional for the most part.

But I was somewhat under the impression that the UI gripes weren't about how things looked, but about how you clicked on stuff to do stuff.  I guess I'd have to review posts on r/4Xgaming to see if anyone clarified themselves sufficiently, for it to be intelligible / actionable.

Just web searched for "after action report".  There's a fair amount of CDC biowarfare kind of stuff about that.  It's not an unused term in government planning.  You have to get more specific with "after action report game" to yield anything we'd recognize one.  And I didn't find anything on Paradox's site that way.  You kinda have to know what you're looking for already.  And from an "attract noobs" standpoint, that could be considered a problem.

Going to Paradox's forums, however, I see that they do very exactly write AARs.  One of them had 290k views.  Some monster of historical discursion and fiction, complete with period illustrations.

[Buster's Uncle]

Google "Octopus Overlords" -possibly w/ "Eliza Cuthbert"- for an AAR I hear referenced a lot.  Protip: it's not a serious AAR, but I don't have to tell you that a good AAR is more than a simple report.

[bvanevery]

I'm actually having trouble pinning that down.  I had to add the person's name to get anywhere with it, and it's still just giving me references to it, some of it NSFW stuff.

A consistent theme of my organic investigations of "things AAR" so far, is that I already have to know what I'm looking for.  That doesn't make it an inherently searchable and rankable form of content.

[Buster's Uncle]

-And I meant to mention, somewhere in the long post I made above, my long-standing philosophy underlying promotion and everything:

Most people who like SMACX in particular, and Civ and turn-based 4x more generally, don't know we're here.  Job One, just for making up for natural member attrition, let alone growing, is Getting The Word Out.  Everything is a numbers game where we might get some percentage of people to click on a link posted elsewhere, some percentage of that to look around the forum after they download whatever bait, some of those sign up, and some of those actually participate significantly.

I haven't the faintest how many thousands of people have bought SMACX over the last 24 years from Firaxis, SOS or GOG - but it's got to be a number quite a bit in excess of one, and I think the overwhelming majority of the kind of people who like that kind of game are on the nets and we just have to make it easy to find us.  Still, all these years later.

-'Cause we ROCK - a literate, mature, chilled-out community of Their Kind Of People.  We do not suck at all for content; we merely need to reach a critical mass of activity-sustaining activity, and every participant counts.

[bvanevery]

"The Word" needs venues.  r/4Xgaming is the best I found.  Admittedly I refuse to use Facebook.  I don't really understand YouTube as a venue, because you can't just type stuff.  What else is there?  I have trouble visualizing a groundswell on Pinterest.  The traditional SMAC web fora, they're mostly moribund.   That's why I stopped bothering to announce on those sites.  I used to do it routinely, but it never felt like it translated into either more downloads of my mod, more people showing up here, or even more people talking on the web sites I'd posted on.  The only thing that obviously worked was r/4Xgaming, so I've stayed there to own it.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

What CIVilians have always told me is that the fungus colors -thus pretty much the whole game- are butt-ugly.  "Retina burning", one said.

That would be reasonably easy to mod, actually.

It's ugly only in comparison to usual Earthly game view: green pastures, yellow sandy beaches, gray mountains with white snowcaps, blue ocean and rivers, and the such. Not ugly but unusual.
Maybe it would benefit from more brighter colors because at times it is pretty difficult to spot the landscape details. Like make rainy tiles more brighter green, etc. Sometimes text on a map or faction background it is also not contrast. Like Hive's black text on their deep blue background.

[bvanevery]

Lots of computer displays also aren't that great, as far as their available contrast levels.  And people turn their brightness down too low.  I haven't heard nearly as many complaints about "I can't see what's going on" as "it's ugly".  I always thought it was the repetitiveness and rough squarish edges of various shapes, that contributed to the feeling of ugly.

There's no way I'm going to re Art direct this though.  That kind of effort is pretty much a brand new commercial game.  I also don't need to make my reputation as a game graphics retoucher.  I'm not seeking an art job in industry, and there's not basically any consumer cache for taking on that task.  Whereas with my current modding work, at least I can say hey I'm a game designer.

Frankly the only production value I can see myself putting effort into, is voice acting.  Because for a long time, I've thought I can do it, and I've already researched the basics of it.  But I still weigh it against all other facets of getting an indie 4X game done, which is my real goal.

I do think not enough is done for the art direction of 4X maps.  There's a repetitive sameyness that just doesn't sit well with me.  One obvious contrast is hand crafted HOMM3 maps, which are vastly superior works of art.  Worrying about the map, is the intersection of 4X with the Builder game genre.  SMAC is like halfway there.

[Buster's Uncle]

On YouTube - linkback in the description.  The place has a lot more potential than Facebook or Wikipedia to have something with your link attached go viral.  You just have to post videos people like.

-It's always a numbers/skimming game, and everything promotional I talk about is extremely unlikely to amount to much absent energy, persistance, and a decided lack of shame.