A Suggestion for suggestions and implementation.

Fallen London
1

I’ve got a suggestion for Failbetter that could both help them make money and improve interaction with the community.

Here’s the basis.
People like suggesting new stuff for games, items, story lines, equipment, etc.
And I, for one, wouldn’t mind dropping off a few dollars for that stuff to happen.
What I can see happening is that in a specified amount of time, we open a new forum category called &quotsuggestions&quot and after a certain amount of time, (a month, 2, 6, a year?) Failbetter puts their favorite suggestions up on the nex page.

Now this is where a couple of things could happen

Either, you could buy the item (with fate) directly from the page.
Or-
You could vote for one when you bought something with fate (the extra story lines.) and that one would be released into the community.
Or-
You could vote for one when you bought nex (possibly stacking for bigger amounts) and that one would be released.
Or-
You could buy one, (with fate) and if enough of them are bought you release them into the community.
Or-
You could vote for one each time you renew your exceptional friendship.

Each option has it’s pros and cons, obviously (you could do all of them if you wanted).

And maybe it’s a bit too lucrative to be completely honest.

But if you keep in mind that it’s entirely optional, it will increase the amount of people buying stuff, anyone can suggest something on the forums (improving interaction and forum use) and it’s all better than having no option for this at all…

I think it’s worth a shot.

But keep in mind that I’m no marketing manager and this is only me talking. If anyone else has any ideas about this, -including your support- than feel free, -no, I implore you- to discuss it below.

-Fropps.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
―Robert F. Kennedy.

[EDIT- I’ve sent this through the mail to Failbetter. We can only hope for the best.]
edited by Fropps on 3/8/2014

2

I believe there is a way to give feedback directly to failbetter. You might want to send this to them that way.

3

There’s a thread with feedback guidelines over here, which includes the direct feedback email! Starting a thread to discuss such suggestions isn’t a bad idea - off the top of my head, it wouldn’t hurt to put a bit more of a description of your idea in the threat title, so we know what to look for when we’re coming back to it.

As regards the idea itself, there’d have to be a lot of number-crunching there to see if it’d work, considering how much work goes into stories, the size of the community, and so on. FBG might be able to pronounce on the subject, but as a mere Crazy Fan I have no idea. I will say, though, that when it comes to fresh ideas, they’ve surprised us more often than they’ve followed our lead - our wildest speculation hasn’t always reached to what they’ll actually do next. And, I suspect they have a lot more in the pipeline than we ever see at once!

4

… I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea, though can’t entirely put my finger on why. I get paying for content, but I think that FB make a point of trying to make a vast amount of the game available for free, and this might highlight the ‘not for free’ bits, and might feel too grabby grabby. Unsure.

I get the impression that they implement as much as they can, and while money keeps them in business, it’s time that is the limit on additions.

Overall thought, merely: hmm.

5

Somehow I’m not too fond of the idea either. After all, they are inventing and writing an amazing story, and though I don’t mind some of the player’s feedback going into questions of mechanics, this would go too far.