Anybody have any better recomendations to bring in traffic?

Bowhuntr11

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 18, 2006
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I mean, I don't want [H]ardGaming to be taken down. Which I feel will eventually happen if we don't bring in more traffic. I use to hang out in the servers, vent, TS, but I just never saw many people on at all. Usually it was just me or loco.

So what else can the admins of [H]ardGaming do to bring in more traffic? I hope if we can get some good ideas, that the mods/admins will listen. And I hope that this will get seen by some people, as I know this subforum is kinda dead lol...

My ideas?

1) Maybe bring HardGaming out from being a subforum of General Gaming and bring it to the top of the forums? I mean it might not help too much, but more facetime with more people is always better....

2) Admin's actually run it kinda like a clan. Obviously this isn't how it was suppose to start. We wanted just a community, but that isn't working. Let's get some kinda Clan membership thing going here?

3) That all I got so far...I will add more as I think of them! Add yours!!! :)
 
I am working on some new idea's and also a possible overhaul to the entire website, if not just fixing some code issues I found.

We WILL be on track to a revitalized [H]ard|Gaming
 
I didnt even know [H]ardGaming existed... And i have been a member here for how long? ^lookup
 
Giveaways
"Contests/Tournaments"
"Person with the most logged time on server wins ____"
"Team for "Pro" tournament"
"Trainings for those that suck at games"

The stuff doesn't have to be anything really, I mean, there's always free games flying around/beta keys with games and stuff. But people usually do things if they get something out of coming back (more community, etc. etc.). Could be simple stuff like a custom title or Genmay access...

Get some kind of thread which brings people in. Also make the site more public. I mean, I come here all the time and haven't really seen any links to it. I am sure there are some, but they need to be more obvious! :D
 
In house tournaments/ladders. Who's the best [H] gamer?
 
In order to bring in the crowds, you need such a spectacle that people can't help but want to be involved. That would probably mean giveaways, membership drives, signups on the website, or what have you.

A lot of things probably are outside the scope of what can be done here, but the reason there is a lack of interest is honestly because there never was much interest in the first place outside a very few members who wanted to do this.

Now, I'm not saying you guys can't succeed and I'm not trying to talk to you down, I'm just saying if you want to revitalize [H] Gaming, you have to start with that in mind, so in other words, you have to CREATE the interest that was missing in the beginning in order to bring people into the fold.

I'll throw an idea out there.

Everyone loves a good LAN party, right?

How about a [H] Virtual LAN party? Frame it in those terms, and push that as the centerpiece of what an [H] Gaming community can offer as a semi-regular event, bi weekly or monthly, but in the meantime between events, you'd need something to keep traffic going, possibly relevant polls, or threads tracking involvement in events, what games to be played, etc.

In order for people to be interested, they need to feel like that being involved will mean something. Groups that lack that tend not to last long, because they don't have a centralized mission or a centralized focus. People who are involved want to see results, the faster the better. Lack of results causes a lack of interest. The best way to get results is to have everybody invested in this in some manner, and I'm not talking financially.

Just my random thoughts.
 
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Having a single group that defines itself by the variety of games it plays doesn't typically work well. To use random numbers, if you have 100 members, but if they play 40 different games (6 of which are single player games) then on average the popular games will have 3-4 [H]ard|Gaming members present, and the single-player titles will bring up the rear.

This is where professional teams come in. Pick one game that a few [H] folks like, start a pro team (or at least a team vying for a pro spot, such as in a DOTA2 open league or an LoL open league) then start winning matches. As the interest is generated more folks from that specific game/genre will be introduced to [H]ard|Gaming. From there a second team can be added, or a second game can be added by folks who helped establish the first team (and subsequently handed it off to other members who are still interested.)

There will be very few overnight solutions that don't involve a significant contribution effort, either in virtual goods/services (some kind of GenMay access, game codes/keys, custom titles/status indicators, etc.) or physical prizes (i.e. shirts, ball caps, plaques, Kyle's overflow hardware, etc.)
 
I like the idea regarding the giveaways and maybe I can start looking into that.

Also I do agree in having specific games for the system, but at the same time, I really REALLY don't want to exclude anyone. Now with that being said, it was said before that [H] really isn't a clan, its more like a community that anyone can be a part of as long as they have a [H]ardForum account, even if their in a clan, it don't matter, its just to hang with other peeps.

As for a professional team for a specific game, I DO believe this CAN be done, but not without proper fundage, and if this has to come in the form of a donation system, maybe that can be looked into for sponsorship reasons, but that can raise a few red flags as well, so we need to be careful about this. This may not be an immediate thing.

I LOVE the sound of an inter-[H] league though. Best of the best of the [H].

Training for those that suck, eh, this might be an interesting one! :) LOL, might not be able to be done, but wouldn't hurt either. We could have a kiddie-pool section where people who suck can play against others that suck and have a ref kinda person who has a little more skill and can watch and give pointers, but beyond that, good-gaming comes with time and being able to pick up the game and figure it out, the ins and outs, relatively quick.

Thanks for the idea's, PLEASE keep the coming my way!

Viva la revolution!
 
I think if you was to turn hard-gaming.org into a Ladder and Tournament site where clans can setup ladders/tournaments and other challenges via hard-gaming.org it would help bring in people.

Needs to cover every single game possible. (multiplayer that is)
It needs to allow anyone with an account to start a new ladder/tournament.
Tournament/ladders need to be able to be public (anyone can join) or private (invite only, password)
[H] sponsored ladders where free hardware/software/whatever is given way to the winner(s).

The ability to easily start a new ladder or tournament needs to be simple and easy. their needs to be a way to specify server settings, maps, etc...
 
If you look at the successful clans people are active on their voice servers.
HGC has a good 100 slot TS3 voice server now and the Gametracker monitor works fine.
I guess the next step is to promote it more and have members announce when they are usually online and which games they would like to play.

The web page seems to be working fine now so it be a good idea to have it reflect the current server information.
Some current online player server monitors would probably be a good idea. I can help with those if you'd like.
 
If you look at the successful clans people are active on their voice servers.
HGC has a good 100 slot TS3 voice server now and the Gametracker monitor works fine.
I guess the next step is to promote it more and have members announce when they are usually online and which games they would like to play.

The web page seems to be working fine now so it be a good idea to have it reflect the current server information.
Some current online player server monitors would probably be a good idea. I can help with those if you'd like.

Will keep the current online server monitors in mind, especially for ones we rent.
 
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