Follow up on zOMG from the admins

[Petit Marionette]

Well, I don't have anything of great import to add or any pressing questions to ask, but I just wanted to thank all of the Gaia staff members who've posted in this thread (as well as elsewhere on the z!F) to help the community understand this whole situation. It's sad that it took such an event for this kind of communication to happen, but I'm really glad that it finally is. Thank you all for your explanations and perspectives - it's been very helpful to read, and I'm certainly feeling much less confused than I did. Taking time during the weekend to keep up this line of communication shows real dedication!

[dreamsk]

Hate to break it to you, but hard facts like numbers are not subjective at all. If zOMG can support itself, aka it makes more money than it spends, then you dont just go around saying the opposite.

[Spifficated]

After reading more responses, it sounds like what Gaia used to be, was dragged to a different area to work on new interfaces. The remaining team was left thin and to drag out as much money from the Community here on Gaia to feed the new interface team.

In a weird sort of way, it seems like taking from the poor to feed the potentially rich. Milking one cow to feed the new cow, while the old cow just gets used and eventually dries up.

Hey, I could be wrong but if my outlook wasn't poor on this situation already, what I've read has made it worse.

[Infamous]

Ridley Starsmore

One: Refund the BB tickets. Lanzer made the statement, he's gonna have to eat his hat. But since GC is virtual currency, as is the product, this isn't really a loss to you. Also, the refunds should go to CURRENT ticket holders. The ones that sold theirs in the MP were gold compensated at the time of purchase.

But I never sold mine. :/ I bought them so friends could play.

Plus I know that JK gave out several. That's like handing over free GC.

Other than that, I pretty much agreed to your post. XD I would love to see a legit PR person that knows the forums and isn't afraid to be like "Hi guys 8D" even during the biggest s**t storms.

Like those people who can smile and wave and be all friendly even though the customer is red in the face shouting and flinging poo.

[kizuria]

The main of what i wanted to say has already been said,and i dont want to be a parrot.so i'll just say another thing that is bothering me about this.this thread is essentially announcing the shelfing of zomg,a game that always has many people playing it in the many times i have entered the game,and yet it has only a handful of people posting in it.is it that the majority of zomg players feel their words are not worth a post,or is it that they dont even know about this because they cant find this thread? as i do not recall an offical announcement of this,i needed a link from a friend to even know about this.intresting way to handle this gaia.

[swarf]

Almandaragal

You never once indicated that you were talking about marginal profit. At least, not until now.

Sigh.

I was addressing the issue of whether zOMG is sustainable. Sustainability is gauged by multiple measures, the primary one being marginal utility. If you want to nit pick, fine. You're correct that I didn't use the exact term "marginal utility" even though I was discussing the principle of marginal profit.

[Catalyste]

Ridley Starsmore

Catalyste

Ridley Starsmore

Ok, I agreed with 98% of the stuff you said there, so much so that I totally tipped you.

I just disagreed with your opinion over Aquariums being useless, just like I still disagree with afixing user-grown belief and definition of "timely" to previous evolution times of other EIs. I think when it comes to these two things, the former is subjective while the latter not only made it clear on it's schedule, but had further explanations and apologies from the artist herself as well as finally reaching a compromise that allows people to keep older poses. Aquariums also had some shady instances behind it, but I feel as though this has been cleaned up since then. Both used user suggestions.


Anyway that's all I wanted to say. I don't want this thing turning into some EI witch hunt again because even mentioning CoP is a trigger for hysteria. So let's just keep to zOMG. 3nodding

Sorry, I used the Case as an example of the situation being handles poorly. We can disagree on the solution, but it's an example of why communication is important.

As for the aquariums, what it really takes is seeing the history of the aquariums to see there have been many issues.But those two issues were cited as recent examples of problems not handled as well as they could have been, no matter what could be done to fixed the issues.

Anyway, thank you for the tip! And I'm glad you liked the post. emotion_yatta

Ah I see! Yes then I'll have to agree that they do make excellent examples....especially Aquariums. So many things were changed out without notice.

Hey, you deserved that tip. It was a very excellent post! It's like a Portal 2 Lemon Rant.....

[SophiBarks]

boisterously_silent

I'm not sure why they think that Facebook games are such a good idea. People play facebook games on facebook. Nobody plays Farmville and then thinks, "Oh hey, I like this game. I should go to Zynga's website, check out their other projects, form lasting friendships on their forums, and give them money!" They play it for a bit, get bored, and move on.

-snipped the rest-

I feel like I need to point out that a lot of my 'facebook friends' on Moga, that started out ON Facebook, did create accounts on Gaia. And they actually have been spending a decent amount of GC on this site now that they have found it enjoyable.

Please don't assume something like this without hard facts. :/

[Pilfer von Durem]

Kaceper

boisterously_silent

I'm not sure why they think that Facebook games are such a good idea. People play facebook games on facebook. Nobody plays Farmville and then thinks, "Oh hey, I like this game. I should go to Zynga's website, check out their other projects, form lasting friendships on their forums, and give them money!" They play it for a bit, get bored, and move on.

-snipped the rest-

I feel like I need to point out that a lot of my 'facebook friends' on Moga, that started out ON Facebook, did create accounts on Gaia. And they actually have been spending a decent amount of GC on this site now that they have found it enjoyable.

Please don't assume something like this without hard facts. :/

I call bull.
There are so many complaints about being forced to Gaia from FB, that people left. Those that do join, mostly stay in the MG forum. They have roughly 4 months of activity before leaving. The percentage that stay and move onto other things?
Extremely low. EXTREMELY.
The only part of what you said that is agreeable is the GC part. Monster Galaxy is a money machine (it's why people leave 99% of the time). I'm not sure of anyone who disagrees. Except that it is short term. As the person correctly stated above you, "they play it for a bit, get bored, and move on."

What the hell am I even arguing any more?

[SophiBarks]

Pilfer von Durem

I call bull.
There are so many complaints about being forced to Gaia from FB, that people left. Those that do join, mostly stay in the MG forum. They have roughly 4 months of activity before leaving. The percentage that stay and move onto other things?
Extremely low. EXTREMELY.
The only part of what you said that is agreeable is the GC part. Monster Galaxy is a money machine (it's why people leave 99% of the time). I'm not sure of anyone who disagrees. Except that it is short term. As the person correctly stated above you, "they play it for a bit, get bored, and move on."

What the hell am I even arguing any more?

You can call bull as much as you like. But where are your facts?

I'm not defending Gaia here. I'm merely stating that users, too, should have facts before they make statements like that.

[Pilfer von Durem]

Kaceper

You can call bull as much as you like. But where are your facts?

I spent a year following Monster Galaxy and as a friend of several devs.
The average amount of time spent on Monster Galaxy was something like 2 months. Don't know what the average amount of money spent was. As a semi-celebrity, everyone who came over to Gaia from FB tended to friend me (Had the top PvP score when it first came out for awhile).

[SophiBarks]

Pilfer von Durem

Kaceper

You can call bull as much as you like. But where are your facts?

I spent a year following Monster Galaxy and as a friend of several devs.
The average amount of time spent on Monster Galaxy was something like 2 months. Don't know what the average amount of money spent was. As a semi-celebrity, everyone who came over to Gaia from FB tended to friend me (Had the top PvP score when it first came out for awhile).

Those still aren't hard facts though.

I was only even bothering with my first post because that person said that nobody would do such a thing.

Even if it was only for a few months, those users that did transfer to Gaia for a while render that statement null and void.

And I still have friends on Gaia that came from MoGa and still play it with me to this day. I may not hardcore play it anymore, but I do get on when there are new evolutions and new quests.

My only qualm with that post I originally quoted was, as I already stated, the fact that they didn't have hard facts on this and that people do transfer over.

[Pilfer von Durem]

Kaceper

Okay, I see that you cut it down, although the "they play for a bit, then leave," was still included. Mostly what I took issue with.

Of course I don't have the hard facts, since it was already said that Gaia won't release them. Only had a desire to believe that Monster Galaxy was going to get fun after they were well funded enough. It didn't happen.

[swarf]

II_Kisame_II

I understand your reasons for cancelling the marketing campaign for zOMG in its infancy, but when you guys had to opportunity to virtually run a marketing campaign for free by promoting zOMG in game through Monster Galaxy, you guys simply let the opportunity let by. When Monster Galaxy was getting 20 million monthly users, you guys failed to capitalise it, this tells me you guys weren't serious about zOMG. I've spouted this idea numerous times in the AtA months back, but you guys kept misinterpreting it by thinking that I was talking about advertising in Facebook, I didn't mean that. So since you guys are in a attentive mode, will it be possible to promote zOMG through the new games you guys are releasing and publishing?

Much as I love the creativity of this approach, I think it's a difficult proposition. Facebook is, to say the least, not popular among the zOMG community. Advertising a facebook game in zOMG would be pretty pointless. The situation isn't totally symmetric, but I don't think zOMG appeals to your average facebook gamer as much. Not that some people wouldn't join, but it's inefficient. It's probably a better use of Moga's ad space to send traffic to other Gaia facebook games like Zombie Farm. But I like the way you think. =)

[Pilfer von Durem]

swarf

I didn't get to read back through bronstahd's replies after I accused him of lying. Could you enlighten me?
I tried to put it together in my head how you and bron could both be telling the truth. This is the best I could do:


"They operated it for years at a loss. This isn't new information, we all knew that they weren't selling anything in the beginning except for null fragments (after they had been free), followed by upgrades (which had also been free). They sold zOMG! monsters for Aquariums (which I doubt they marked as being for zOMG! in record keeping) and I bought those with cash. Also real life items such as sweatshirts, bags, plushies...

When Gaia says that they have unsuccessfully tried to make zOMG! profitable, they are lying. When bron says that they haven't made their money back, he is being truthful, yet misleading.

Buddies, cash rings, and the DMS way of selling upgrades HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL.
They've only done the last part since November and had already planned of pulling everyone off at that point.


Agreeing with bron is not disagreeing with Swarf. It took me quite awhile to figure that out in my head."