[Why am I losing contract bids?]

I'm controlling BCF - I'm number 3 overall, rated at High Level National, and I'm at the point now where I've got big money and I'm trying to poach elite fighters from everyone else.

 

The problem is that there's more to that than just money apparently. I've made offers to a couple of guys from GAMMA and ALPHA... the GAMMA one was William Harrison I think, the Army guy? I had the rival offers beat by 50% and guys still choose to remain with the company they were already with.

 

When I say I had them beat, I had them beat everywhere... base salary, all the percentages, with a much higher signing bonus. Both me and my opposition had 'cut after a loss' clauses in there. But there was no financial aspect of the contract where I was not ahead.

 

I do win sometimes... I landed Atep of Indonesia. But my offers are such that I should always win and most of the time that's not happening. What am I missing here? Do fighters give a big premium to stay with companies in places where they are popular? Is there something with contract length and guaranteed fights? IIRC I was offering longer contracts with more guaranteed fights the opposition too.

 

It didn't seem like fighters were cutting me any slack when I was getting poached - what could be going on?

[Why am I losing contract bids?]

I'm controlling BCF - I'm number 3 overall, rated at High Level National, and I'm at the point now where I've got big money and I'm trying to poach elite fighters from everyone else.

 

The problem is that there's more to that than just money apparently. I've made offers to a couple of guys from GAMMA and ALPHA... the GAMMA one was William Harrison I think, the Army guy? I had the rival offers beat by 50% and guys still choose to remain with the company they were already with.

 

When I say I had them beat, I had them beat everywhere... base salary, all the percentages, with a much higher signing bonus. Both me and my opposition had 'cut after a loss' clauses in there. But there was no financial aspect of the contract where I was not ahead.

 

I do win sometimes... I landed Atep of Indonesia. But my offers are such that I should always win and most of the time that's not happening. What am I missing here? Do fighters give a big premium to stay with companies in places where they are popular? Is there something with contract length and guaranteed fights? IIRC I was offering longer contracts with more guaranteed fights the opposition too.

 

It didn't seem like fighters were cutting me any slack when I was getting poached - what could be going on?

[Important note regarding a new ad]

FWIW I don't like them at all.

 

I can accept ads which are unobtrusively within the page, but banner ads like that big rectangular one which constantly pops up on the bottom of the screen are really unpleasant. When I'm trying to navigate the site, that thing popping up constantly is too much.

 

And with ads in general it is more than that. This website isn't like a blog where there would be no money coming in at all without ads. It's a store and the only sales pitches it should be doing are for your games IMHO.

 

Your forums are also ads. People read the different threads and get into what is going on. If I'm getting a popup every time I reload a page while I lurk, that's not going to encourage me to spend much time on the forum and on some level that reduces my potential interest in the games. I can tell you I upgraded a GDS game at least once through lurking on the forums and seeing what other titles had to offer. Out of curiosity, what has your forum traffic looked like since you locked non-members out, then added ads?

 

And to new players? The times I've gone to look at an interesting-sounding game and their site throws unrelated banner ads at me, it makes me think the devs aren't serious about what they're doing. It makes me think of cheap browser-based flash games and sketchy Russian websites that I shouldn't be providing any personal information to. It makes me wonder if they're going out of business or if they were ever really in business at all.

 

Also, not having a Steam presence already makes this company somewhat unusual in terms of how it distributes its software. Ads like this are putting you even further away from the norm and that isn't good. I don't see other good independent game devs plastering ads all over their sites.

 

Finally I'm just here to update to the latest version of WMMA5 (why can't upgrades be set to happen automatically FFS?), and I'm clicking on the button to do that and nothing is opening. That has never been a problem here before, so I can't help but think there's something about these site changes that my PC or AV doesn't like. I suspect you're trying to show me another ad of some kind to get my download kicked off and my PC isn't having it.

 

Just my 2c. Now time to hopefully figure what is wrong with my connection and get my damn update going.

[Boxing Game?]

Anyway you can also go on steam there is a game world boxing championship manager WCBM its 5 dollar game it is quite good

 

The designer may be interested to cooperate he has always started a desire to start a second part of him game.

 

It has a good base.

 

World Boxing Manager really is good, but the dev is still working on "On the Western Front" so I doubt he'll be getting back into boxing soon. He's one of my favorite solo devs, doesn't seem like a great programmer yet comes up with these ambitious ideas and completes them, bug free, using sheer determination. I think he's been working on Western Front for over 2 years now. I doubt he makes much money doing game development, but he deserves to. I hope there's a hit in his future.

 

By the way, WCBM is different and I don't think that's what you all mean. World Championship Boxing Manager is a game from the early 90's which has been adapted somehow to run on Steam. It's also a $5 boxing game on Steam so I don't want people to mix the two up. World Boxing Manager is where it's at.

 

I'll second that Leather is an excellent mobile title. I've dropped quite a few hours into that.

 

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with, Derek. I agree that it's tough to add the role of promoter, unless the deal is that you're managing a venue or something. Boxing is just too different, with fighters competing for different organizations at once, and the fact that you don't really sign or develop boxers if you're running an org. Gym owner/Coach seems like the only way to go IMO.

[Did the older TEW games get removed?]

Well that sucks. Those games will end up disappearing for good and that's a shame. Why would it be assumed that no-one would ever be interested in these titles? Someone is always going to have nostalgia or an old save file or something. Was their presence here really draining that much profit from the newer releases?

 

Regarding already owning the titles, you're not taking into account the mid-1990's era registration method that GDS uses. Given that I've changed computers and e-mails a few times over the last 20 years, I can no longer play the vast majority of the GDS titles that I've purchased (which has been most if not all of the TEW's and WMMA's, along with several others).

 

And while we're on the topic of the site, what's with the secret service stuff on the subforums? I came here to look up some strategy for one of my games, just to browse and read discussion, but before I can do that I now have to dig up a username and password that I only use about once every 4 years.

 

I love your games, but there's always an off-putting sense of paranoia emanating from Grey Dog...

 

What does it hurt to let loyal, long-time fans access a 15 year old wrestling title? Really, what other demographic is going to have interest in something like that?

 

I assure you that the North Koreans are not interested in stealing tips and strategies for WMMA2 from your subforum.

 

And consider joining the rest of the world and coming over to Steam. I get that Steam takes 10% or something and you no longer have quite the same control regarding reviews and such, but you're probably going to gain more money than you lose by selling on Steam as opposed to remaining in this isolated enclave. You can't be getting many new customers using a business model that is 10 years out of date.

 

Just consider it. Now I'll get out of here and browse the year-old comments in the WMMA5 forum as I'd intended.