arsenal
District 13
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2013
- Messages
- 2,806
- Reaction score
- 3,231
Introduction
This thread is not going to focus on the little problems. That is what has been done by everyone else. In the process, many of them have missed what is a much more complex problem. The following problem is very important in my opinion, especially considering the current situation. Unless it is corrected within the very near future, MCGamer will not have a future in my opinion. So anyone who cares about the network, please read this thread in this entirety.
Important note: Please understand that I am not saying that the other little problems are not important, are irrelevant, or did not contribute in a major way. THEY DID FOR SURE. This problem is just perhaps the biggest right now, as it has been severely worsened by all the other stuff. It is time to address it.
The problem
Lets start off by stating what has already been stated numerous times by the community (myself included), the little problems. Most people argue that the reason that MCGamer is declining is as a result of a combination of all these issues.
Back when MCGamer first started it was called MCSG. Old timers will laugh, but some new people don't know this. MCSG's domain at the time was minecraftsurvivalgames.com. To this day, that domain still redirects to what is now MCGamer, but the primary domain is currently www.mcgamer.net.
Go back 3-4 years ago and the Survival Games was the hot Minecraft multiplayer gamemode. MCSG was the undisputed leader in the category, until Hive broke off from within it. Then they both shared a split of the market for a while, and other competitors eventually rose. However, both MCGamer and the Hive went on to be very successful networks. Obviously today the Hive is way bigger, but back then they weren't too far apart.
Interestingly, MCSG and the Hive used two very different advertising strategies to attracted new players. The Hive focused on voting websites, while MCSG dominated Google.com. The prior method turned out to be a bit better long term. Nonetheless, MCSG's method was amazing at first.
You see, every player wanting to find the new hot gamemode would search on Google something along the lines of "Minecraft Survival Games" or "MCSG." The first result would always be "minecraftsurvivalgames.com" with the title "Minecraft Survival Games" or something like that. Most people clicked the MCSG link. It was at the top, and the info provided was a perfect fit for their search. This got MCSG a lot of new players. MCSG never had to rely heavily on voting websites like other networks such as the Hive, they had the luxury of letting Google do the work for them.
However, once MCSG became MCGamer things changed. You now may be seeing where I am going with this. The main reason for MCGamer's demise was a heavy reliance on Search Engine Optimization (or SEO, basically the info that a website provides to search engines like Google) for advertising. This issue was actually considered when MCGamer V1 was released. The administration, devs, and Chad decided to keep minecraftsurvivalgames.com as the primary domain despite the network being called MCGamer. This was to keep the SEO set so that MCGamer would continue to dominate the Minecraft Survival Games or MCSG search terms. However, while they did try to maintain strong SEO, they never considered adding other forms of advertising as well. BIG MISTAKE!
Anyway, back to the SEO. While the "MCGamer" name change didn't exactly help, the domain was still similar so the effects were properly mitigated. Additionally, MCGamer was currently headed into its Golden Age so people were coming from Youtubers and general word of mouth. MCGamer was doing great so the name change didn't really effect much at all.
However, then MCGamer went on to release MCGamer V2 and change the primary domain to mcgamer.net. The combination of the two now means that if you search "Minecraft Survival Games" on Google MCGamer's results now show up like this.
Even worse! The first word is "Home" which simply blows my mind. NO. REALLY? It takes you to the HOME PAGE. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? Part of the most valuable line of text on the entire network is a complete and utter waste of space.
The only place that MCSG or the Minecraft Survival Games are mentioned is in the fine print. However, most people don't read the fine print unless the title is attracting amongst the other results. This is a huge step down from when the title was Minecraft Survival Games, url was www.minecraftsurvivalgames.net, and the description was all about MCSG.
Here is what the top search results look like for the search "Minecraft Survival Games" on Google today.
You will notice that while MCGamer has only dropped one spot to #2, all the other results have the term "Survival Games" in the title. This is a huge problem if you want to be attracting clicks from one of the most popular searches for Minecraft gamemodes. No longer is MCGamer at the top, and no longer is MCGamer standing out. Once you remember that MCGamer has relied on this type of advertising way more than voting websites, where it invests little to no effort, you have yourselves a problem.
With MCGamer V2 and on wards MCGamer dipped out of its Golden Age and the community stopped growing. For a while it stayed the same, but if you aren't attracting enough new players eventually things start to slip. Especially when you make other smaller mistakes, like the ones I listed earlier.
So why did MCGamer do this?
MCGamer did this because it probably thought that with all the numerous gamemodes that were added in MCG V1 and V2 one of them would turn out to be pretty popular. Maybe not as popular as MCSG, but at least competitive. With a solid player base, if you have attracting stuff you don't need google or voting websites as much to bring in new players. You can simply rely on the word of mouth and youtubers to do the work.
What really happened.
Obviously MCSG is still MCGamer's only popular gamemode, and now all of its offerings apart from Battlegrounds and Skywars are direct spinoffs of MCSG. With all of the other little problems that MCGamer has had the community has declined as a result of bad SEO, and lack of advertising on voting websites.
It can be also noted that MCGamer has stopped advertising on Twitter via retweet giveaways. This isn't helping either, but I consider it to be a smaller issue. The SEO and lack of voting websites are what is killing it in my opinion.
Solution
Not that difficult!
MCGamer should work on its SEO so that the title of the website is "MCGamer|Minecraft Survival Games" or something like that. No more wasting space! That way the key phrase "Minecraft Survival Games" is in the title.
However, this alone is not enough. Times have changed and the Minecraft Survival Games are not quite as hot as they once were. MCGamer needs to get on most voting websites and encourage players to vote. Maybe 10 MCGamer Credits per vote? That seems good to me.
Maybe also do some Twitter giveaways as well to increase the social media presence again. That can't hurt either. But all in all if MCGamer fixes its advertising I think it may be able to recover. Most of the little issues have been addressed, or at least mostly addressed so they shouldn't be dragging it down too much. The general development state of the network is now pretty stable. Now it is time to bring in some new players!
Conclusion
Bad advertising, combined with small issues frustrating the current player base, means that players leave, but new ones don't come in. MCGamer needs to get its act together in terms of advertising. It just isn't cutting it right now. The only way the community is going to grow again is if we can get some fresh blood.
This thread is not going to focus on the little problems. That is what has been done by everyone else. In the process, many of them have missed what is a much more complex problem. The following problem is very important in my opinion, especially considering the current situation. Unless it is corrected within the very near future, MCGamer will not have a future in my opinion. So anyone who cares about the network, please read this thread in this entirety.
Important note: Please understand that I am not saying that the other little problems are not important, are irrelevant, or did not contribute in a major way. THEY DID FOR SURE. This problem is just perhaps the biggest right now, as it has been severely worsened by all the other stuff. It is time to address it.
The problem
Lets start off by stating what has already been stated numerous times by the community (myself included), the little problems. Most people argue that the reason that MCGamer is declining is as a result of a combination of all these issues.
- Anti-cheat
- Chad's inactivity/leadership issues
- Lack of intriguing gamemodes other than MCSG
- MCG V2 + AntVenom network merge causing a lack of focus
- and so on and so on
Back when MCGamer first started it was called MCSG. Old timers will laugh, but some new people don't know this. MCSG's domain at the time was minecraftsurvivalgames.com. To this day, that domain still redirects to what is now MCGamer, but the primary domain is currently www.mcgamer.net.
Go back 3-4 years ago and the Survival Games was the hot Minecraft multiplayer gamemode. MCSG was the undisputed leader in the category, until Hive broke off from within it. Then they both shared a split of the market for a while, and other competitors eventually rose. However, both MCGamer and the Hive went on to be very successful networks. Obviously today the Hive is way bigger, but back then they weren't too far apart.
Interestingly, MCSG and the Hive used two very different advertising strategies to attracted new players. The Hive focused on voting websites, while MCSG dominated Google.com. The prior method turned out to be a bit better long term. Nonetheless, MCSG's method was amazing at first.
You see, every player wanting to find the new hot gamemode would search on Google something along the lines of "Minecraft Survival Games" or "MCSG." The first result would always be "minecraftsurvivalgames.com" with the title "Minecraft Survival Games" or something like that. Most people clicked the MCSG link. It was at the top, and the info provided was a perfect fit for their search. This got MCSG a lot of new players. MCSG never had to rely heavily on voting websites like other networks such as the Hive, they had the luxury of letting Google do the work for them.
However, once MCSG became MCGamer things changed. You now may be seeing where I am going with this. The main reason for MCGamer's demise was a heavy reliance on Search Engine Optimization (or SEO, basically the info that a website provides to search engines like Google) for advertising. This issue was actually considered when MCGamer V1 was released. The administration, devs, and Chad decided to keep minecraftsurvivalgames.com as the primary domain despite the network being called MCGamer. This was to keep the SEO set so that MCGamer would continue to dominate the Minecraft Survival Games or MCSG search terms. However, while they did try to maintain strong SEO, they never considered adding other forms of advertising as well. BIG MISTAKE!
Anyway, back to the SEO. While the "MCGamer" name change didn't exactly help, the domain was still similar so the effects were properly mitigated. Additionally, MCGamer was currently headed into its Golden Age so people were coming from Youtubers and general word of mouth. MCGamer was doing great so the name change didn't really effect much at all.
However, then MCGamer went on to release MCGamer V2 and change the primary domain to mcgamer.net. The combination of the two now means that if you search "Minecraft Survival Games" on Google MCGamer's results now show up like this.
Even worse! The first word is "Home" which simply blows my mind. NO. REALLY? It takes you to the HOME PAGE. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? Part of the most valuable line of text on the entire network is a complete and utter waste of space.
The only place that MCSG or the Minecraft Survival Games are mentioned is in the fine print. However, most people don't read the fine print unless the title is attracting amongst the other results. This is a huge step down from when the title was Minecraft Survival Games, url was www.minecraftsurvivalgames.net, and the description was all about MCSG.
Here is what the top search results look like for the search "Minecraft Survival Games" on Google today.
You will notice that while MCGamer has only dropped one spot to #2, all the other results have the term "Survival Games" in the title. This is a huge problem if you want to be attracting clicks from one of the most popular searches for Minecraft gamemodes. No longer is MCGamer at the top, and no longer is MCGamer standing out. Once you remember that MCGamer has relied on this type of advertising way more than voting websites, where it invests little to no effort, you have yourselves a problem.
With MCGamer V2 and on wards MCGamer dipped out of its Golden Age and the community stopped growing. For a while it stayed the same, but if you aren't attracting enough new players eventually things start to slip. Especially when you make other smaller mistakes, like the ones I listed earlier.
So why did MCGamer do this?
MCGamer did this because it probably thought that with all the numerous gamemodes that were added in MCG V1 and V2 one of them would turn out to be pretty popular. Maybe not as popular as MCSG, but at least competitive. With a solid player base, if you have attracting stuff you don't need google or voting websites as much to bring in new players. You can simply rely on the word of mouth and youtubers to do the work.
What really happened.
Obviously MCSG is still MCGamer's only popular gamemode, and now all of its offerings apart from Battlegrounds and Skywars are direct spinoffs of MCSG. With all of the other little problems that MCGamer has had the community has declined as a result of bad SEO, and lack of advertising on voting websites.
It can be also noted that MCGamer has stopped advertising on Twitter via retweet giveaways. This isn't helping either, but I consider it to be a smaller issue. The SEO and lack of voting websites are what is killing it in my opinion.
Solution
Not that difficult!
MCGamer should work on its SEO so that the title of the website is "MCGamer|Minecraft Survival Games" or something like that. No more wasting space! That way the key phrase "Minecraft Survival Games" is in the title.
However, this alone is not enough. Times have changed and the Minecraft Survival Games are not quite as hot as they once were. MCGamer needs to get on most voting websites and encourage players to vote. Maybe 10 MCGamer Credits per vote? That seems good to me.
Maybe also do some Twitter giveaways as well to increase the social media presence again. That can't hurt either. But all in all if MCGamer fixes its advertising I think it may be able to recover. Most of the little issues have been addressed, or at least mostly addressed so they shouldn't be dragging it down too much. The general development state of the network is now pretty stable. Now it is time to bring in some new players!
Conclusion
Bad advertising, combined with small issues frustrating the current player base, means that players leave, but new ones don't come in. MCGamer needs to get its act together in terms of advertising. It just isn't cutting it right now. The only way the community is going to grow again is if we can get some fresh blood.
Last edited:
