Number of users

[CONN CHRIS]

I am curious to know if anyone has the slightest idea how sales of this game have been? I have noted that anything posted on these boards generaly will get viewed 25 to 40 times at most. Over at Cornerwork, some of the posts have been downloaded hundreds of times.

It would seem that there are roughly 35 or so active users that also post and download here, do the download numbers at Cornerwork mean that there are hundreds of users or is this small group just re-downloading quite often when data bases crash or we want to create something new?

The reason I ask, is that if there are only 35 or so users, this is a dead end for the developers. I would think that even if there are a few hundred users, the same would hold true. Unless there are a lot of sales to people who buy the game but never download anything here or at cornerwork, any hope for a new version would seem missplaced.

As an aside, I have the game at two locations and decided to buy the game twice rather than contact the licensing folks. I would encourage anyone that can afford it to do the same. It is trivial in terms of their financial model, but I would hate to see this die without us at least making a decent effort. I would even be willing to contribute more money to the cause. In my opinion, the value that I have gotten from the game and this board far out paces the purchase price (or double that in my case)

Christopher

[javier_83]

i do al the cleaning stuff

wash the dogs

get a good grades at the high school to make my father buy me the license

now for my birthday i have my own debit card that can buy the licenses so i will buy everything of TBCB stuff

[Dave1877]

I think at the start, there were not many purchases. Mainly because this game was DAMN hard to find! I couldn't believe it when I stumbled across it, I bought it immediately. At first, the die hard TB fans would have bought it, but other than that there were not many people aware of it. You did have hardcore boxing fans all over the internet who knew nothing about it, but now there seems to be a lot more in terms of advertising, mainly from recommendations of the people who play the game. In the middle of 2004, the message board was almost dying because there was only a very small number of users. But if you notice, these days new users are popping up on this forum all the time which is great, possibly due to the advertising at places like Boxing Torrents etc.

These days when I log on to this site there are normally at least 10 topics with 'new replies' to read. Chris you came along at a time when the community was beginning to really come alive again and people like you have added a lot of discussion to the place.

[bear]

There is another matter to consider. Downloads may not be a good measurement of activity. Some where in a thread somebody suggested "right-clicking" and saving the link as option instead as another manner of downloading. I've taken to using this form for any of the files that are not zipped. I don't know whether or not this manner of doing it registers as a download.

Bear

Originally Posted by Dave1877

I think at the start, there were not many purchases. Mainly because this game was DAMN hard to find! I couldn't believe it when I stumbled across it, I bought it immediately. At first, the die hard TB fans would have bought it, but other than that there were not many people aware of it. You did have hardcore boxing fans all over the internet who knew nothing about it, but now there seems to be a lot more in terms of advertising, mainly from recommendations of the people who play the game. In the middle of 2004, the message board was almost dying because there was only a very small number of users. But if you notice, these days new users are popping up on this forum all the time which is great, possibly due to the advertising at places like Boxing Torrents etc.

These days when I log on to this site there are normally at least 10 topics with 'new replies' to read. Chris you came along at a time when the community was beginning to really come alive again and people like you have added a lot of discussion to the place.

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by Dave1877

I think at the start, there were not many purchases. Mainly because this game was DAMN hard to find! I couldn't believe it when I stumbled across it, I bought it immediately. At first, the die hard TB fans would have bought it, but other than that there were not many people aware of it. You did have hardcore boxing fans all over the internet who knew nothing about it, but now there seems to be a lot more in terms of advertising, mainly from recommendations of the people who play the game. In the middle of 2004, the message board was almost dying because there was only a very small number of users. But if you notice, these days new users are popping up on this forum all the time which is great, possibly due to the advertising at places like Boxing Torrents etc.

These days when I log on to this site there are normally at least 10 topics with 'new replies' to read. Chris you came along at a time when the community was beginning to really come alive again and people like you have added a lot of discussion to the place.

Advertising may indeed be needed. I played the board game version for 20 or so years but like you just stumbled onto this. I have been playing Pursim baseball for many years - since Shaun Sullivan's early freeware release. This past October, some one on those boards posted a link to something at OOTP which I clicked by mistake - and when there, as I was reaching for the back button, caught the words title bout in the corner off my eye from a post. That's how I got here, and I literaly have not touched Puresim Baseball since that night in October that I made the mistaken mouse click. (Nothing against Puresim - that is a great product as well)

Sales based on stumblers by can't be all that great, I hope there is a better effort afoot This is a top shelf game, well designed and versitile. It realy does sell itself, is it listed at the major download sites?

I hope that the developers will let us know if there is any way that we can help out at all.

Christopher

[sabotai]

You can't, in any way, guess the number of buyers from simple download figures (except for the game itself) or active users on the board. The vast majority of the people who buy the game probably have never been on these boards or know about cornerwork.com

I know that TBCB has been reviewed in several gaming magazines (and has been given good grades in all of the ones I have seen) and CGW nominated it for Best Sports game of the year (the rest were "button-mashers"). Someone at CGW loves this game because it's always displayed at the back of the magazine in a section where they list about a hundred games and what grade they were given. They must have gotten a lot of buys based off just people who saw it in a magazine and checked it out. They might not even know we exist here.

[CONN CHRIS]

Originally Posted by sabotai

You can't, in any way, guess the number of buyers from simple download figures (except for the game itself) or active users on the board. The vast majority of the people who buy the game probably have never been on these boards or know about cornerwork.com

I know that TBCB has been reviewed in several gaming magazines (and has been given good grades in all of the ones I have seen) and CGW nominated it for Best Sports game of the year (the rest were "button-mashers"). Someone at CGW loves this game because it's always displayed at the back of the magazine in a section where they list about a hundred games and what grade they were given. They must have gotten a lot of buys based off just people who saw it in a magazine and checked it out. They might not even know we exist here.

You and Bear are probably right that nothing can be inferred from the download numbers. The reviews that you mention are encouraging, I am just wondering out loud about the long-term viability of this game. I hope it has legs and can be profitable for them.

Christopher

[wildhawke11]

If were are going by the number of people who come to this forum and ask questions about the game i would say its not selling well. Thats the reason i feel our game is well down the list when it comes to priorities in production. 200 people coming here over time might look good to us but that would i guess not even cover costs.Plus once they dropped the price to about $25 it told me sales were pretty much coming to an end.

One thing they need to do is on the main screen in the game, which is the first one any buyer will see when they play it. Is at the top of the page in bold letters advertise a link to this message board perhaps informing the buyer to pay a visit for any help needed or patches.

It is so hard to get even friends interested in this game because boxing to a lot of them is way down their list of interests. At the same time we must not stop trying to get our friends to try the demo. Thats why i feel its imperative to get the new buyer to visit this site and get him around to our way of thinking and perhaps encourage him to try to help make sales on the game. Because no matter how much you love a game if your in business and its losing money in the end it stops. Simply as that.

Personally like Chris i would be willing to pay $50 for this game if i thought this would help. It might seem a little overpriced but any two other games would cost at least this, and not give me the same pleasure i get from this game. The drawback of course being we would then not attract the casual buyer so were then back to square one with no gain. The big problem of course is it cost money to really advertise a game and the returns from a boxing game make it hard to justify the costs involved.

If my posting is not very well done or dont make to much sense please forgive, but at the moment i am full of a flu bug or something i have picked up.
Cheers Gentlemen

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

Plus once they dropped the price to about $25 it told me sales were pretty much coming to an end.

FWIW, every text sim developer I know usually ends up dropping their price after a period of time. It's pretty much standard and I wouldn't read too much into it.

[wildhawke11]

Originally Posted by sabotai

FWIW, every text sim developer I know usually ends up dropping their price after a period of time. It's pretty much standard and I wouldn't read too much into it.

If your selling a product and working on small profit margins or just holding your own. It is certainly bad business practice in my opinion if your product is still selling quite well, to throw away any potential profits by giving it away at say cost price. I myself would be trying to show the company i work for that my product meaning TBCB is worth expanding on and putting more resources into. Again in my humble opinion losing money by dropping the price if sales are still OK is not the right way to go about doing this.

Then again its hard and impossible to know why a certain route was taken unless your on the inside and have seen the whole picture.

By the way Sabotai ummm what does FWIW stand for i know its going to be something really simple but right now my brain is not at its best

[mh2365]

for what it's worth

[wildhawke11]

FWIW
Thanks Mike - Put it down to old age i will be 66 in March so i cant keep up with you young guys ( in our out of bed )
Danny

[sabotai]

Well no, obviously they're not going to drop the price if sales are steady, but all games eventually have a sales drop off and lower the price to try to bring in more customers. But all text sims that I know of do this at some point and I wouldn't take it to mean it sold badly and they needed to lower the price in order to just get respectable sales numbers. That's all I meant by not reading too much into it.

[mh2365]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

FWIW
Thanks Mike - Put it down to old age i will be 66 in March so i cant keep up with you young guys ( in our out of bed )
Danny

I'm not the youngest anymore (37 in April) and it took me a while to figure out a lot of computer lingo too.

[Hootowl 9]

Originally Posted by wildhawke11

FWIW
Thanks Mike - Put it down to old age i will be 66 in March so i cant keep up with you young guys ( in our out of bed )
Danny

LOL..... Well,...at 58 I can relate,...some "things" are still working for me still. hehe

[Boxingnut]

I doubt the game sells fantastically well; Boxing is pretty much a minority sport nowadays (unfortunately) and TBCB is a niche product. There is a hardcore group (us lot!) and the occasional person who finds the game by accident.
I suspect the reason for there being TBCB 2 and the role-playing game (hopefully on both accounts) is that these projects are a labour of love for Jim, Tom, Andreas and the rest of the guys.

[thebadguy]

I was the one who got the advertisement posted over at Boxing Torrents and I have gotten several PM's on that site from users who bought the game and wanted to thank me for bringing the game to their attention. I have gotten at LEAST 40 or so messages like that, which leads me to believe that MANY more have bought it thru the advertisement, only they haven't messaged me. I think in the end TBCB will be just fine and we will have new improved games for years to come.

Sorry, I had to give myself a pat on the back for the Boxing Torrents thing. You may call me arrogant if you wish... and you're right! Another thing that I have done and something you guys should consider, is putting the setup file in your shared folder that comes with any P2P software you may be using. You could set it up so anyone who does a search having ANYTHING to do with boxing would have TB pop up in their search. But what am I thinking? I know that no one on this board would even consider engaging in "illegal" activities such as file sharing. LOL.

The only thing that is bothering me at this point, is the fact that even after my proven loyalty and my contributions to the sales... I still get threats about being banned whenever I stand up to that ****ing PUNK that is poisoning our board! No specific names are necessary.