7) So far, the ISFL has been incredible. It’s served the exact purpose I hoped it would. I’ve met some incredible people on my journey, mostly within the London locker room but there are certainly many other great individuals scattered across the league that I have had the pleasure of meeting so far.
While @katarn22 and @slate have certainly been incredibly helpful in guiding me through my first season, it would be amiss to not acknowledge all the veterans in the London locker room — both players and War Room members — that have allowed me to lean on their experience over the last couple of months. My teammates have also been absolutely incredible. Whether it’s Ace and Seb preaching about the #TwinTowers or Wildfire’s consistent enthusiasm for the league and the people within it, there is always something going on. It’s an incredible group of individuals that make me want to log back in every day.
A Blorgl deserves their own little paragraph. Quite possibly one of the best human beings(?) I have encountered in 23 years of internet usage. Genuinely, a credit to the league.
Game days are always great. It’s usually the same half a dozen people, due to time zones and general activity levels of each user but everyone is engaged. There is very little moaning when things don’t go our way but plenty of excitement when they do. Here’s hoping I get to see that locker room during an Ultimini at some point soon!
From a personal point of view, the season has gone much better than expected. I anticipated finishing the season as a middle of the road DE but to have (almost) hit cap before the close of the season and rack up 13 sacks and TFL’s as a rookie has been an incredible surprise. To then be nominated for numerous awards and win the MDM with Gragg was just the icing on the cake.
Getting drafted is great fun. The run up to the draft was a bit awkward, as people distance themselves from you a little more, through fear of a leak. The DM’s falling silent after a fortnight of intense scouting does feel a bit weird too but that’s a little more expected. However, knowing that I wanted to be in London and then having them take the risk to come get me in the 1st round was awesome and just motivated me further to extract every point of TPE I possibly could from each week.
As for feedback for the league? Well, I guess it’s time we move onto point 8...
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8) Getting new players for any “game” is a complex affair. There’s a reason that publishers have their spot in the market and Steam is able to command such a large percentage of revenue from each sale. The developers are essentially outsourcing the marketing of their product to a third party. This isn’t an option for the ISFL, as I very much doubt there is a budget at all, let alone one that could cover these kinds of expenses. So, my proposal is to improve the websites rankings in the search engine — more specifically, Google. As it currently stands, it’s not looking healthy.
I searched for “sim league” and “simulation league” and the ISFL wasn’t present in the first 5 pages (SERPs — Search Engine Results Page). Those are the terms I hear being used the most to describe the ISFL and similar sites, so it’s fair to say that the site should probably be ranking for them — if it wishes to bring in a consistent stream of players. There are some relatively simple steps that could be taken to improve the site's performance in this area but they go way beyond the scope of this PT. If anyone from HO would like to discuss this in a little more detail, they’re welcome to message me on Discord. The fact the website operates on Sim-Football.com suggests that someone at the top has a rough idea of what they were aiming for, so I have hope on this front.
In terms of retention; Streamline, streamline, streamline. I almost fell out of the league entirely due to the delay between me registering on the forum and having everything approved. That’s not a slight to the excellent work done by the rookie mentors. It’s simply a huge point of resistance for new players coming in. Had it not been for Zoot messaging me for scouting a few days later, I in all likelihood wouldn’t have come back to the league. New players need to be able to sign up and get straight into the action. No delays, no manual intervention. Let their excitement carry them through the process, begin to engage with the community and their new player. Errors with an update page can be fixed down the line. They’re going to get the same feedback from the RM’s, the only difference is when they receive it. At least with this approach, they’ve already invested some time into the league and have a reason to push through any initial issues.
From there on, it’s about the users ability to consume information. There’s an awful lot to get across to them and it’s very difficult to present this in a user friendly manner — trust me, I tried writing my own version of the Rookie Guide for London. What was supposed to be a 1 page how-to quickly turned into 6-7 pages of proof reading for Slate. Sorry about that, Slate. My solution to this would be a weekly checklist for every user, pointing them to every TPE and money making opportunity they have available to them that week. There are many ways this could be executed but it depends entirely on the development skills we have within the league. Each task on the checklist could be greyed out until a predefined and visible time and date, when the forum post that was stored as a hidden draft (or similar) with the task goes live — just as an example. Something like this: https://github.com/its-sparks-fly/Bewerb...cklist-1.0 could very well be morphed into what I am describing and could even be extended to the creation phase of a new user's journey.
While @katarn22 and @slate have certainly been incredibly helpful in guiding me through my first season, it would be amiss to not acknowledge all the veterans in the London locker room — both players and War Room members — that have allowed me to lean on their experience over the last couple of months. My teammates have also been absolutely incredible. Whether it’s Ace and Seb preaching about the #TwinTowers or Wildfire’s consistent enthusiasm for the league and the people within it, there is always something going on. It’s an incredible group of individuals that make me want to log back in every day.
A Blorgl deserves their own little paragraph. Quite possibly one of the best human beings(?) I have encountered in 23 years of internet usage. Genuinely, a credit to the league.
Game days are always great. It’s usually the same half a dozen people, due to time zones and general activity levels of each user but everyone is engaged. There is very little moaning when things don’t go our way but plenty of excitement when they do. Here’s hoping I get to see that locker room during an Ultimini at some point soon!
From a personal point of view, the season has gone much better than expected. I anticipated finishing the season as a middle of the road DE but to have (almost) hit cap before the close of the season and rack up 13 sacks and TFL’s as a rookie has been an incredible surprise. To then be nominated for numerous awards and win the MDM with Gragg was just the icing on the cake.
Getting drafted is great fun. The run up to the draft was a bit awkward, as people distance themselves from you a little more, through fear of a leak. The DM’s falling silent after a fortnight of intense scouting does feel a bit weird too but that’s a little more expected. However, knowing that I wanted to be in London and then having them take the risk to come get me in the 1st round was awesome and just motivated me further to extract every point of TPE I possibly could from each week.
As for feedback for the league? Well, I guess it’s time we move onto point 8...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8) Getting new players for any “game” is a complex affair. There’s a reason that publishers have their spot in the market and Steam is able to command such a large percentage of revenue from each sale. The developers are essentially outsourcing the marketing of their product to a third party. This isn’t an option for the ISFL, as I very much doubt there is a budget at all, let alone one that could cover these kinds of expenses. So, my proposal is to improve the websites rankings in the search engine — more specifically, Google. As it currently stands, it’s not looking healthy.
I searched for “sim league” and “simulation league” and the ISFL wasn’t present in the first 5 pages (SERPs — Search Engine Results Page). Those are the terms I hear being used the most to describe the ISFL and similar sites, so it’s fair to say that the site should probably be ranking for them — if it wishes to bring in a consistent stream of players. There are some relatively simple steps that could be taken to improve the site's performance in this area but they go way beyond the scope of this PT. If anyone from HO would like to discuss this in a little more detail, they’re welcome to message me on Discord. The fact the website operates on Sim-Football.com suggests that someone at the top has a rough idea of what they were aiming for, so I have hope on this front.
In terms of retention; Streamline, streamline, streamline. I almost fell out of the league entirely due to the delay between me registering on the forum and having everything approved. That’s not a slight to the excellent work done by the rookie mentors. It’s simply a huge point of resistance for new players coming in. Had it not been for Zoot messaging me for scouting a few days later, I in all likelihood wouldn’t have come back to the league. New players need to be able to sign up and get straight into the action. No delays, no manual intervention. Let their excitement carry them through the process, begin to engage with the community and their new player. Errors with an update page can be fixed down the line. They’re going to get the same feedback from the RM’s, the only difference is when they receive it. At least with this approach, they’ve already invested some time into the league and have a reason to push through any initial issues.
From there on, it’s about the users ability to consume information. There’s an awful lot to get across to them and it’s very difficult to present this in a user friendly manner — trust me, I tried writing my own version of the Rookie Guide for London. What was supposed to be a 1 page how-to quickly turned into 6-7 pages of proof reading for Slate. Sorry about that, Slate. My solution to this would be a weekly checklist for every user, pointing them to every TPE and money making opportunity they have available to them that week. There are many ways this could be executed but it depends entirely on the development skills we have within the league. Each task on the checklist could be greyed out until a predefined and visible time and date, when the forum post that was stored as a hidden draft (or similar) with the task goes live — just as an example. Something like this: https://github.com/its-sparks-fly/Bewerb...cklist-1.0 could very well be morphed into what I am describing and could even be extended to the creation phase of a new user's journey.
![[Image: 025-ISFL-defensive-rookie-of-the-year-WIN.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/fbJ99rwq/025-ISFL-defensive-rookie-of-the-year-WIN.png)
