But how many alts is too many? People have filled entire clans with Alts. In one case, a whole Division, then it was speculated they were able to throw a match for the purpose of betting. But these are shenanigans that typically only affect the in house economics, or at most the pocketbooks of users. And to his benefit, Nick is able to deal with these moments fairly effectively on a case by case basis.
But how can the number of alts in the game effect it on a business level? To show this, I’m going to use the example of Facebook itself.
In February of 2012, Facebook became a publicly traded company. Stocks rose to over $38 a share over the next quarter, the Heavens opened up and proclaimed Facebook a great success with comparisons to such companies as Google and Viacom (which had actually offered Mark Zuckerberg $75 million back in 2006) as far as share valuation was concerned.
The preliminary prospectus of the company announced that it had 845 million active monthly users who initiated 2.7 Billion likes and comments. Investors were ecstatic over this potential market of which they had access to and the money poured in.
What this was though, was an overvaluing of stock, in part because an estimated 28-32% of active accounts were in fact alternate accounts held by the same active users.
The IPO fiasco tanked Facebook stock down to the low $20s in only a couple weeks and Facebook found itself not only a first quarter flop, but also facing several lawsuits over promised figures. Things had to change.
Now while there are several other reasons for the low IPO other than active users (a glitch mobile platform for example) Facebook took several steps to guarantee a solid value rate to it’s stocks and finally became the traded company of everyone’s dreams reaching $68 a share by 2014. One of these steps was the cracking down on alt accounts to get and maintain a solid number of active users to base its IPO off of.
Now fast forward to today in Mecha Galaxy. Mecha Galaxy has worked hard to not be typical of the “cash vacuum wrapped in a game” model that so many other games on Facebook have used. There are at least three different platforms (Facebook, Kongregate, and Mechagalaxy.com), in-game currency in the form of niodes, some boosts, and that’s about it. Nick tries to garner as much of his operating costs as possible through the use of rent parties, betting events on Clan Wars, and sales on both the Facebook platform and on the website platform. Even the messages to friends are kept to a minimum. Leveling up and of course Honor Guard postings are about as intrusive as it gets which by and large pleases the whole community.
Now we get to the trickier parts, and that would be advertising by Facebook investors. You might see this in a couple forms. One and the most obvious is the videos. Investors have direct access to MG users who use the videos as a way to gain niodes. Here they can bombard you as much as you can take for as long as you can take it. Direct correlation between active users and marketing analysis is achieved
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Then you would have the more subtle marketing ties, and that’s through algorithms. As a user of Mecha Galaxy, there are certain sites, articles, forums, pages, groups, chats, and clickable thingies that you use. From all of these different places, algorithms are created every time you click or post, allowing investment data miners to categorize your political affiliation, your buying habits, your interests, and what might fascinate you enough to be sidetracked. These things make the number of active users a very serious business matter for Facebook, its investors, and any advertisers that pay Nick directly for access to his users.
Recently the community saw a number of accounts receive nerfing at the end of Faction wars. In this case, accounts were picked as being low level accounts that were over powered and earning more than their fair share of KotMs, causing disgruntled new players who might not stay long enough to appreciate what Mecha Galaxy actually is. Valid reasoning. Without new players the game stagnates and stagnation leads to ruin.
However, I do see a future when either Facebook or investors are going to possibly pressure Nick into having a more strict policy over alt accounts as a way of being able to reconcile actual user accounts and original clicks and posts. And when that day comes, do not be surprised when you find yourself short a few accounts.
