Programming and Long-Term Strategy
Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:46 pm
This is where I solicit programmers and people willing to go out and find programmers to assist with the site. I've got one potentiality among my own contacts, but he's taken himself off a similar project previously - I don't think he wants to take this on without help.
If we don't get progress on this front, most likely we wind up just being some random forum without a very cool front page.
Over the long term, this is where we could be headed:
(Reposted from private)
Long term goals:
-Catchy name, URL, and getting off the university server.
-Commercialize the site for sustainability. and profit.
-Front-page content. One area that I think there is GREAT room for improvement upon in the MTG world is information synthesis. There's any number of ways that the current major websites, Ugly Sally, SCG, TCG, Wizards, Channel Fireball, are completely failing at synthesizing the
information that magic players are looking for into a single convenient location.
-Find volunteers and additional personnel to assist with graphic design, coding, and website updating. We're probably thinking teenagers to college age personnel, given MTG's demographics, and they've got plenty of time to toss our way if we give them reason. Wages would be something we want to try to avoid, but tossing them semi-expensive gifts, giving them a voice in management and a personal stake in the site and the venture, possibly some kind of informal ownership stake in any eventual profits. Ugly Sally was built off the backs of volunteer labor investing back into a community they love - no reason we couldn't do the same, while also taking the time to actually say thanks in a meaningful way.
Things we could do better than other people:
Traffic equals potential profit. None of the current major MTG websites are adequately harnessing the traffic that they do have, or making an attempt to understand how to truly
maximize it. (I have a first-hand vantage point on that, having briefly performed some consulting work for TCGplayer's website, aside from writing there)
*Start by bringing all the features that an MTG player is likely to want to use, in a single stop shopping location that makes this the only major website that a MTG player needs to go to, and the most convenient by far. Expand into other games and products as is deemed advantageous.
*Online store would be a no-brainer, after a sufficient level of traffic is produced. Online stores, if they have a sufficiently comprehensive inventory, also draw in substantial traffic in their own right. Physical store partner or branch would likely be necessary, to gain access to the economies of scale that Wizards offers to brick and mortar entities through their distribution model. I may be able to acquire some of the necessary capital to get that launched. Kjin's expertise may be invaluable, if he's interested. Location of a physical store, and trustworthy
personnel interested in running it, are major question marks for me. Personally, I know there are plenty of people who would love to work at magic shops, and could be trusted to do it, but I don't know them, and my physical location is oversaturated with game stores.
*Cull recent T8 results and format them into useful gauntlets for people to look at. Standard Gauntlet - Put a resource like this on the front page of a major site, and it's going to attract traffic. Make one for every single format, and you've got a huge draw. It saves magic players an awful lot of time, compared to going through clicking on each major tournament looking for the latest iterations of any given deck.
Example: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=378941
*Visual spoilers, a la Ugly Sally. There's a single, very simple reason that Ugly Sally gets the traffic it pulls in. It provides visual spoilers in a
prominent location, displays them all on a single page so that you don't have to click through successive pages, and updates it faster than anyone else.
*An event calendar. None of the major sites are using one. http://mtgmom.com/
*Social networking, deck sharing and editting, and trading tie-ins. http://deckbox.org/ For bonus points, tie in the trading aspects of the site into a store-front model, with smart ads that search players' want lists. And a real-time chat system, to facilitate trading.
*Forum pruning. Ugly Sally mods fail in an awful lot of ways, but in terms of having an incredibly active moderation force keeping an eye on the forums and striving to make them legible, they really excel. There's a reason Ugly Sally's forum communities are the most successful and most popular of any MTG website bar none, despite their high level of suck. Balance
that with people who don't have such a hair-trigger on the post infraction button, and you've got a good selling point.
*Electronic Booster drafting. http://draft.bestiaire.org/index.php
*A more effective search engine for MTG cards. Starcity has an excellent design in terms of the fields you can search under - but their database is limited to searching only for the cards that they have in stock as a store, so you can't rely on it fully to view cards. Other databases, such as magiccards.info and gatherer, don't have as many options.
Instead, what would be preferable is a view that requires less scrolling and clicking than the current iterations, but with legible text. You'd also want to keep a MTGS-style view of each edition available for easy access and perusal. For bonus points, add buttons to make each edition organizable/filterable.
*RSS article feeds to leech off the talent and article writing of
other sites. We don't need or want to compete with other websites in a bidding war for pro player writers - we can just copy them when they're published and consolidate the major articles from SCG, Channel Fireball, TCGPlayer, and Wizards, in a single spot.
- Optional - Put some amount of the profits, potentially a very large degree of them, to a worthy cause, if the profit margin grows high enough to cover it while compensating people for their time. It's a lot of work we're talking about, but if it does pay off, I'd feel good knowing that it eventually went towards something meaningful. It also gives people a reason to volunteer their time, here.
- Business formation - As a lawyer, I have a limited amount of experience with putting together a business and running it, and I can take point on handling management, formation, taxation, accounting, and legal issues generally. The critical need that's holding me back is finding enough technical personnel I can trust to implement the above and get the
concept rolling.
If we don't get progress on this front, most likely we wind up just being some random forum without a very cool front page.
Over the long term, this is where we could be headed:
(Reposted from private)
Long term goals:
-Catchy name, URL, and getting off the university server.
-Commercialize the site for sustainability. and profit.
-Front-page content. One area that I think there is GREAT room for improvement upon in the MTG world is information synthesis. There's any number of ways that the current major websites, Ugly Sally, SCG, TCG, Wizards, Channel Fireball, are completely failing at synthesizing the
information that magic players are looking for into a single convenient location.
-Find volunteers and additional personnel to assist with graphic design, coding, and website updating. We're probably thinking teenagers to college age personnel, given MTG's demographics, and they've got plenty of time to toss our way if we give them reason. Wages would be something we want to try to avoid, but tossing them semi-expensive gifts, giving them a voice in management and a personal stake in the site and the venture, possibly some kind of informal ownership stake in any eventual profits. Ugly Sally was built off the backs of volunteer labor investing back into a community they love - no reason we couldn't do the same, while also taking the time to actually say thanks in a meaningful way.
Things we could do better than other people:
Traffic equals potential profit. None of the current major MTG websites are adequately harnessing the traffic that they do have, or making an attempt to understand how to truly
maximize it. (I have a first-hand vantage point on that, having briefly performed some consulting work for TCGplayer's website, aside from writing there)
*Start by bringing all the features that an MTG player is likely to want to use, in a single stop shopping location that makes this the only major website that a MTG player needs to go to, and the most convenient by far. Expand into other games and products as is deemed advantageous.
*Online store would be a no-brainer, after a sufficient level of traffic is produced. Online stores, if they have a sufficiently comprehensive inventory, also draw in substantial traffic in their own right. Physical store partner or branch would likely be necessary, to gain access to the economies of scale that Wizards offers to brick and mortar entities through their distribution model. I may be able to acquire some of the necessary capital to get that launched. Kjin's expertise may be invaluable, if he's interested. Location of a physical store, and trustworthy
personnel interested in running it, are major question marks for me. Personally, I know there are plenty of people who would love to work at magic shops, and could be trusted to do it, but I don't know them, and my physical location is oversaturated with game stores.
*Cull recent T8 results and format them into useful gauntlets for people to look at. Standard Gauntlet - Put a resource like this on the front page of a major site, and it's going to attract traffic. Make one for every single format, and you've got a huge draw. It saves magic players an awful lot of time, compared to going through clicking on each major tournament looking for the latest iterations of any given deck.
Example: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=378941
*Visual spoilers, a la Ugly Sally. There's a single, very simple reason that Ugly Sally gets the traffic it pulls in. It provides visual spoilers in a
prominent location, displays them all on a single page so that you don't have to click through successive pages, and updates it faster than anyone else.
*An event calendar. None of the major sites are using one. http://mtgmom.com/
*Social networking, deck sharing and editting, and trading tie-ins. http://deckbox.org/ For bonus points, tie in the trading aspects of the site into a store-front model, with smart ads that search players' want lists. And a real-time chat system, to facilitate trading.
*Forum pruning. Ugly Sally mods fail in an awful lot of ways, but in terms of having an incredibly active moderation force keeping an eye on the forums and striving to make them legible, they really excel. There's a reason Ugly Sally's forum communities are the most successful and most popular of any MTG website bar none, despite their high level of suck. Balance
that with people who don't have such a hair-trigger on the post infraction button, and you've got a good selling point.
*Electronic Booster drafting. http://draft.bestiaire.org/index.php
*A more effective search engine for MTG cards. Starcity has an excellent design in terms of the fields you can search under - but their database is limited to searching only for the cards that they have in stock as a store, so you can't rely on it fully to view cards. Other databases, such as magiccards.info and gatherer, don't have as many options.
Instead, what would be preferable is a view that requires less scrolling and clicking than the current iterations, but with legible text. You'd also want to keep a MTGS-style view of each edition available for easy access and perusal. For bonus points, add buttons to make each edition organizable/filterable.
*RSS article feeds to leech off the talent and article writing of
other sites. We don't need or want to compete with other websites in a bidding war for pro player writers - we can just copy them when they're published and consolidate the major articles from SCG, Channel Fireball, TCGPlayer, and Wizards, in a single spot.
- Optional - Put some amount of the profits, potentially a very large degree of them, to a worthy cause, if the profit margin grows high enough to cover it while compensating people for their time. It's a lot of work we're talking about, but if it does pay off, I'd feel good knowing that it eventually went towards something meaningful. It also gives people a reason to volunteer their time, here.
- Business formation - As a lawyer, I have a limited amount of experience with putting together a business and running it, and I can take point on handling management, formation, taxation, accounting, and legal issues generally. The critical need that's holding me back is finding enough technical personnel I can trust to implement the above and get the
concept rolling.
