RESEARCH TIME
Well I mean your not wrong.
I have done some (although not to the extent I'd like) statistical research and yeah the game still receives a fair amount of (search) traffic,
I have God back and done some more digging, and what I found again exactly mirrors what I have said before. I'll take you threw it bit by bit. Apologise in advance, there is a lot of graphs ahead.
1. Search traffic for BlocklandNOTE: This is GOOGLE SEARCH TRAFFIC, not game traffic! That comes later.
The spike at the beginning is when the game first went on sale, it jumps up a lil bit again when it goes up on sale on steam, and again when one or more of its major updates comes out (I believe it was shaders and static builds?) and the game getting Greenlighted.
2. Search traffic for the forums
So this is the search traffic for the BL Forums (duh), it's not as high as it used to be, but certainly not as flat as the games search traffic. So this does show that there is still relevance to this game, and it's funny to see RTB besting roblox.
3. GAME TRAFFIC
Ok, so this one has a lot of images, most being self explanatory. They come from Steam Charts and SteamDB (DB = Database), which both take the data straight from Steam. The ones that need it I will explain/elaborate, otherwise it'll just be a bunch of images and/ graphs.
SteamDB:
Steam Charts:
- Note here that the player count has flat lined (essentially), it's going down so slowly that it's hard to notice without putting a ruler to it.
Now this is the interesting one!
What this shows is
A. The average amount of players for that month
B. The increase OR decrease in players from the previous month (as both number and percentage) and,
C. The total amount of players for that month
Focusing on 2017, this month (aka the last 30 days) has so far had the highest average and the most gain this year, yet so far the second lowest player count, and the highest average in the last 9 months!
The highest number of players ever was June 2014, and both websites say the same. What we need to know is, why? What attracted so many people?
Well digging a bit, that was the month Blockland got Greenlighted (Greenlit?) on steam! Yay!
Sadly though, the next month took a big dive.
So what does this mean for the game? What can we do?
Well, it's simple really and I believe pecon already said it, though there is a 'lil more to it.
So it's time for...
CONCLUSIONThis information shows us that Blockland gained its popularity so to speak from "major events", shaders, static maps and greenlight. So in order to boost Blockland's popularity again we as a community must do a few simple things (not in any particular order):
1. Push/Fight back against the bad publicity. This is what is currently hurting the game the most I feel, but in doing so we have to remain "composed" and not make ourselves look bad, which will just make it worse and in a sense prove any points he had (you know who I am referring to right?).
2. Build the game up ourselves. People have already started doing this, with extremely cool adding and services like bringing back static maps, Blockland Glass, awesome vehicles and more. This ties in perfectly for the next bit,
3. ADVERTISMENT. Good advertisment. We need to show people that Blockland is still a game worth playing. The fact that it still has mostly dedicated players after 10 years is truely a testimate to it. Probably one of the most influential people would have to be Filipe, 8000 subs is a lot. Though I'm not saying he should do it alone, we should ALL get involved, and you know what? We can! As evident by the red chest collab.
TL;DR At the end of the day, what we need to do is "band together" and show everyone that we are not just a bunch of rando's who hate everyone else and don't know what they are doing. How? Well that comes later.
