Hallo to all, first of all I have to apologize for my English that is far from perfect, so be patient for some formal and grammar errors.
The preface of this post is that Spell of Genesis (SoG from now) is one in the very restricted number of projects that actually are doing real revenues in the crypto-economy. The game-linked true-ownership blockchained card idea is disruptive for the game industry, and SoG have the right positioning to take full advantage of this new sector. For this reason right now there are all the ingredients to see bitcrystals in the top ten crypto for market cap very soon.
So why bitcrystals is so weak comparing to so much vaporware token and cryptocurrencies?
Bitcrystals is not a new token, it have more then 18 month, and the project under bitcrystals is well developed and it recently reached the maturiry for a soft launch in the Google and Apple stores in two country (Canada and Switzerland)
In my opinion it is time to do some fact checking on the reasons why we are in this weird and frustrating situation analyzing every aspect of the project. So this is my personal contribute to the discussion:
Game and ecosystem, coding, development, bug fixing[ This is the strongest area of the project, SoG is good and addictive game and the Sog Team (the Team from now) are doing an excellent job balancing spells, game mechanic, graphic, sound effects (i like to play SoG with headphones).
The bug fixing and player feedback process is not perfect and have to be refined, probably slack is not the best software to address this issue but it can be used. The team is actualy build some procedures to correctly report bugs and feature request on slack. Also the team do provide to users some documents that are in their internal bug fixing procedures:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m0NmAnBl8KpFOUWseIPyZ4kg0dSFaH6veyrZwYXfuUY/edit#gid=979109819 As for ecosystem we actually have, Sogasset, Book of Orbs (BoO from now) Bitcrystalbox, and normal counterparty tools. BoO in particular is a very wise and effective Idea, as for SoG, BoO have to be strongly developed in particular allowing cross game-currencies secondary market trades but right now is a very powerful tool to improve the True Ownership card game experience.
The game is not finished for a real launch, the most important things to be done are:
1) There are few levels, quests and achievements
2) There isn't any kind of mulyplayer mode right now (it is only mentioned in an achievement)
3) And most important for the bitcrystals token ecosystem, there isn't the card blockchainzation system for non-blockchained maxed out cards.
The point 3 in my opinion is
by far the most urgent and disruptive. The ability
to obtain a valuable and tradable true ownership asset through the game is the real "new thing in town" in the game industry. The real main driver of the game.
Doing a real launch without this feature is a suicide. Because this single feature worth the effort to download the game, try it and be addicted. And also, the blockchainizzation feature is a powerfull marketing weapon.
Marketing, communication and Social Influence And here is the real problem.
To my external eyes the Team have not a real internal marketing professional, so they hire Vambex Group and All4games to do this job, let's have a look.
Vanbex group (
http://www.vanbex.com/ ) the face and the nicknames of Vanbex here is Coin@Coin (bitcointalk) or @nic (slack) , this professional is doing what it is called community management. Informing on new cards, web articles (sometimes provided bu the Vanbex team) and doing some kind of moderation and community help. I have nothing to say about the two first jobs, is fine , but he is total disaster as moderator, you can see it observing how many users (mee too) are personally pissed about is bad attitude with forumers. Bitcointalk is almost a dead channel now (
what a big mistake, bitcointalk is the first informative channel were a crypto investor look at) and the general Slack section is not doing well. I think he is in charge for this situation.
All4games (
http://www.all4games.co.uk/ ) my question is : what are they doing? I suppose they are doing translations, quality control, and that they are preparing a big style launch on the mobile market. The problem is : WE DO NOT HAVE ANY VISIBILITY on what is the All4game work. And that's unfair because investors did agree to have a cut for the all4game work. So probably some feedback is needed. I'm not asking for industrial secrets but it would be nice if someone from the all4games team do explain to the comunity some ldetails about the state of art of their work right now.
Now let's talk about official communication.
Actually Sog directly or not directly (Vanbex) do regular statements on
1-new cards
2-burning report
And recently:
3-game devs report
http://www.moonga.com/board2/index.php/topic/15582-week-1-objectives-summary/ Some pr material is sporadically done by Yodark itself ( video and roadmaps) like this, the last Yodark video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMseE14Evbo&feature=youtu.beThey use:
1- Twitter
https://twitter.com/SpellsofGenesis 2- facebook
https://www.facebook.com/spellsofgenesis/?fref=ts3- Slack
https://spellsofgenesis.slack.com4- Tumblr
http://spellsofgenesis.tumblr.com/5- bitcointalk
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=957797.05- Moonga forum
http://www.moonga.com/board2/6- Official website :
https://spellsofgenesis.com/ I want to start with
Moonga Forum, I perfectly understand that this communication channel is in the Team comfort zone but really, except a very small community no one know about it, the moonga forum at my non-moonga-player eyes is invisible. It haven't any network effect and... come on is called "moonga" not "spells of genesis". So please I beg you to stop using it as a comunication channel. Investors have NOT to do a treasure hunt to find news. And we are talking about important news like the last objective summary.
Now Tumblr: the question is, Is SoG Tumblr an official blog? Because I do not see any link from the official website
https://spellsofgenesis.com/ to
http://spellsofgenesis.tumblr.com/. Anyway let's suppose it is (what a mess), the official blog IS the center of investor and communiuty official communication. So all the interesting news have to be posted there.
Not only new cards or the burning report.
I didn't see the last Yodark video on Tumblr and actually that video have less than 150 views,
that's a Joke and Yodrak simply waste his time doing it, 150 is less than the Slack community so no one see it except us.
I didn't see any official communication about the fundamental objective summary, that I hope will be a timely regular public relation edition (let's say bi-montly?)
I didn't see anything official about the release of the new game versione 1.0.3 on Tumblr and bitcointalk. And that is very serius mistake. New game version IS the "news" any new release is the most important news for investors. Because it certificate the company hard work.
But again no one know outside slack. To me it sound crazy.
Then facebook facebook is a powerful marketing channel for cryptocurrencies and games, bitcoin and other crypto are a strong topic on facebook now, so i didn't understand why facebook is not used like twitter is. Have a look on how many "like" we have there:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dyi7yMsqDOxCzk2cf9slODeein2L4GCDVubCY706QR8/edit?usp=sharing (second tab)
All the official communication and sometimes one or two custom post a month have to shared on facebook and probably a facebook like campaign is needed we are not talking about huge investments. I understand that most people here "hate" facebook (me too), but fb IT work for games, and recently it works for crypto (the facebook decred case)
For Slack and Bitcointalk I have already said. The Vanbex moderator is the main problem, ha have not the skills to engage forumers. Probably some devs post on bitcointalk is needed. Actually bitcointalk remain the first place were crypto investor look at for every project. Slack is a more restricted area.
Twitter is the only media that in my opinion is properly used.
My final impression is: a real good project (one of the best in the crypto sector) that lack of proper communication.
That's all, hope it help.
Paolo Rebuffo (funnyking)
