#also tho: tumblr’s user base is smaller than a lot of other social medias

[darkwood-sleddog]

This is me @everybody taking staff’s words with goodwill after like 12? Years on this goddamn website:

[fushiomi]

Here’s a video on how to reach Liber/Eng staff about the termination of the English server:

[Video ID: Player is in the A3! app, the songs “Insert the Sunshine” and “Slowly Flowing”, both OST from the game, are playing. The player click on the profile icon, (the content isn’t important). They click on their bio and write “Hi” with a kaomoji on the side, then they write a letter “i” and hesitate before deleting it and click off. They exist their bio and leave the profile page. They instead click on the “Support” button which leads them to a page titled “A3! for Appstore inquires”, there’s a hyperlink that reads “For feedback regarding the ceasing of operations”, and below that in smaller writing it reads “Frequently asked questions (FAQs)”. There are four options viable to the viewer, “I want to play on another device”, “I have received my purchased Gems”, “I can’t login. / I got error 904/905/906.” The player clicks on the hyperlink that leads them to a page to give feedback, it has a green banner and says “For feedback edgar ceasing of operations. Below it reads: “Players that have any opinions or feedback on regarding ceasing of operations can do so here. A disclaimer is below that reads “*Although feedback from users will be reviewed, we cannot respond to individual users”. Green text above a box is present after scrolling, it reads “Please input your feedback here.” The user types in “don’t please ahaha you’re (stylized as ur) so sexy” with a winky emoji, they then access their emoji keyboard and place a broken heart. They can clarify “Actually write something serious though (written tho) with a kaomoji of a smiling person, then press done (two exclamation points) don’t spam and remember to be kind (two exclamation points)”. They then click off the page and settings, the video ends with them on the main page of the game. End ID]

Bellow the readmore is what I ended up (actually) submitting, if you want to copy and paste it, please make a few changes! But ultimately what I felt like was needed to highlight:

- Marketing issues and comparisons between other games that handled international marketing.

- The sudden nature of the announcement and how it impacted the player base.

- The fact the game does have a fanbase and has a market (leads back to the point of bad marketing), and that the success in Japan is an example that the game does have ability to be a hit.

- Other options that don’t include terminating the server (such as a temporary hiatus).

—

Other ideas: Events to connect with the fanbase (example: art contests where winners get “X” amount of gems), twitter events (“Y” amount of retweets in “Z” days will give “X” reward”), subtitles of the stage play so international fans have more content to interact with, etc.

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this while still drowsy from crying and sleep medication, so if you’re able to, please help us write something better than… this.

“Hello, I hope this review/feedback finds you well.

As you can imagine, this is about the ceasing operations of the A3! English/International servers, and the opinions and ideas I (as well as other players) have.

I’ve been observing the way the player base has reacted to the news and, not so surprisingly, the reaction has been pretty negative. A lot of players feel overwhelmed with the sudden news, many disappointed at – what feels like – the sidedness of the decision. While we are all thankful for the amazing localization of the game, we can’t help but feel deeply saddened and, in more extreme cases, betrayed at the decision. The game has garnered quite a community, notably in social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, as it became quite a vital and comfort game for many.

Alongside seeing the way the player base has reacted, I looked at the graphics and economical side of things and noticed how players in the server have been lowering. Which, alongside the pandemic and loss of profit Cybrid and Liber have been experiencing as of the last two years, is what I imagine is impulsing the decision to halt activities.

With all of that in mind, I personally still think that terminating content to the English server is a bad idea — in the long run, that is.

The last two years have been quite a financial struggle for many, and to decide to end the game due to loss of profit seems hasty. While I understand it’s not possible to continue operations, I think halting operations until further notice would be a better idea.

Instead of completely pulling the plug, halting operations while focusing on marketing would honestly work better.

The marketing of the game has been, for lack of a better word, quite messy. I think there were lot of missed opportunities, marketing the game as found family and card game — where you accompany a group of people to achieve their dreams — would have been a better strategy than saying it was an otome game - which is what led to a lot of player joining and then leaving due to the lack of romance wh the characters. A good example of marketing, in my opinion, would be the Obey Me! franchise or games such as Cookie Run.

I’m saying all of this, but what I mean is, if the team behind it focused more on the advertisement on social media’s such as twitter and ads on youtube where the nature of found family and the true nature of Mankai (a company where family and brotherly love blooms) the game would find and flourish in the demographic, since it’s not unheard of players wanting a game like that — especially in the west.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I think the idea of terminating operations on the English server is a bad idea especially when there is an obvious marker for it, and A3! really does fit it. Personally, I think halting the events and focusing on marketing the game further — truly pushing the game with ad’s (which could include in game CG’s where we see how the boys grow and connect as a family) where the nature of A3! is shown clearly, A3! English server could absolutely bloom into something amazing.

A3! is about not giving up, even when things get tough, and to try and reach an audience – which is why, I guess, seeing you guys give up on it seems… sad and like a truly missed opportunity.

As someone who’s been with the game since launch, the game has so much potential, so please, please give it another try. Focus on the marketing, push it with ads on youtube and instagram, put the boys’ face out there and make the focus of the story known.

Look into the way games such as Obey Me!, the idol games (mostly female based), and other successful asian/japanese games have marketed themselves and try to adapt it into A3!. An example, instagram ads where you can see parts of a CG (let’s say the Muku and Yuki from Act 1) where Muku comforts Yuki, the voice lines there as you hear the game music and subtitles playing. Be honest about the gameplay, it’s not the most exciting, but market it as fun, add more rewards for when you train the actor — more gems or maybe trophies if you train “X” amount of times in a day instead of just a training card. You can even make more Eng server exclusive cards to insensitive Japanese players to also engage with the English server.

I feel like there are so many ways to go about it that don’t include shutting down the game, because shutting down the game truly feels like the easiest way out… but it doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

Anyway, I hope nothing in this feels malicious, I'm simply passionate about it as someone who’s invested hours and hours, almost 700 days of their life, onto this, A3! and the Mankai company feels like a part of my life, and as many others feel as well, I don’t want to let go. Not when I know there’s so many events and games, gachas and character, left for us as international players to experience.”

[rachelraygifs]

Ask Memes and Community

Something I’ve been thinking about the past few days has been that I barely ever see, with a VERY few exceptions on certain types of blogs, ask memes any more. And when I do see them, I rarely see people send asks.

This is a lot of thoughts and I don’t want to subject people to it if they don’t want to read my sociology bullshit, so I’m putting a lot more under the cut.

Likewise, I’ve noticed that I get far, far fewer asks from randos (or even friends) than I used to. Now, I was unfollowed by 1 or 2 “larger” blogs, which might have a little to do with it because I might get less blog-traffic, but I’m not really sure that’s it.

I got into online communities in the early-mid 90s, when I was pretty young. I was in internet communities before live journal existed, which turned 18 this year, and I watched online communities go from angelfire webrings to cheap and easy to make BBSs and forums, to myspace, to facebook groups, to this weird smattering of things that we have now. Digg, Fark, and other once-important communities have faded into obscurity or less importance now, despite their actual content having not changed. And I’ve thought a lot about the ways online communities, especially ones that are much more social media oriented, organize themselves. That means that the reddits and farks and diggs and other websites which basically function as pure comment boards for a number of topics are out. Communities tend to form around tight knit themes and focuses. For facebook, that was people you knew. For Tumblr, despite it originally trying to be a place where artists gather, that’s largely become fandom.

The “big few” social media groupings I can think of; livejournal / xanga, myspace, facebook, and tumblr have ALL had their own variations on ask memes (remember facebook notes tagging??). That’s something I find REALLY interesting, and I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that causes these things to emerge, and why they’ve faded. Facebook, for example, stopped really having ask memes be present probably 6 or so years ago. Tumblr, maybe a year or two ago.

An alternate @rachelraygifs would say “Look, man, it’s pretty obvious that age plays a big role here. What’s happening is that people are aging out of ask memes on their respective platforms. 2 or 3 years ago, most tumblr users were probably 15 or 16, and now they’re 18 or 19 and they have other social experiences going on, and they’re embarrassed and self conscious to post up an ask meme. As people age, this sort of openness becomes more and more a vulnerability and viewed as childish, so people shut that out.”

I think that’s one compelling explanation for it, I won’t deny that. But I can’t help but feel like that’s not right, or at the very least, not the full picture.The reason is that I remember the most recent wave of ask memes on tumblr pretty vividly, and I remember that it was most / any age tumblr user doing them and answering them. “But wait!”, nega-me might say, “That might just mean that the average maturity of the tumblr user, given that they were already ok with being surrounded with teens, might be lower than the average, and thus they’re also ok with answering ask memes.” I think that’s a pretty valid counter-argument, even if it does demean me and some of my friends.

But there *was* a second wave of ask memes on Facebook too, at the time when almost an exodus of people from Facebook, and when Facebook became a completely different type of platform; not mechanically, but how people viewed it. And that’s when older people started using it; parents and their friends. [Note: Tumblr’s UI is still pretty fucking obscure after all these years, so I don’t think this community really faces that risk.. Not to mention it’s asymmetric, unlike facebook].

As all of these older people found and friended people after tons of years, there was a smaller but still present resurgence of ask memes. Surely, nega-rachelraygifs, these people all aren’t also just super emotionally immature (tho some of them obviously are)

My belief, at least, is that ask memes are a way to define people and figure out, in a new community, who you want around and who you don’t care for. It’s also a way for you to test who is actually interested in you; just like at the start of FB where people friended everyone, people basically followed tons of blogs at the start of tumblr, or when it was a lot more nascent. Now that they have a host of people who they are learning about, they want to figure out who cares about them, who is interested in learning more about them, and who they’re curious about and will return the favor. Ask memes act as a double heuristic; the answers are important, but being responsive and reciprocating in asking you questions demonstrates an interest. Even better, since tumblr’s following is asymmetric, it was a way for smaller blogs that had been passed over to grab a potential friend’s interest in a more meaningful way. 

So why do we see that they’ve decreased? I think that in large part, tumblr’s community has reached a sort of stasis where there’s probably a lot less frantic folliowing and unfollowing, and people have a lot more of a rigid friend structure on this website than they used to. That’s not to say that people don’t still make friends on the website, but that as a community grows older and people form deeper ties with others on it, I think the community becomes more socially conservative (not in the political sense, but rather less interested in bringing in outsiders, and less interested in finding new members).   Ask memes usually hinge on more than one person asking the question. Without an influx of new people,, posting an ask meme becomes lonely and kind of sad.

The same thing happened on facebook. Now that everyone got over the newness of rediscovering other people based on the content they posted, certain friendships were strengthened and you drifted away or confirmed that you didn’t care about other people. So what’s the point in doing ask memes now?

I don’t know what the next online community is going to be, or when it’ll start to take shape. But I’m pretty sure as people are discovering new people en masse for the first time in a long time, some version of ask memes are going to crop up.