WhoisMafia Annual Report

Habraprive all

Today marks exactly one year since I released my first multiplayer video game on the Internet. I really want to share the accumulated statistics, financial indicators, interesting moments of the project, thoughts about the present and plans for the future, as well as invite you to a party in honor of the anniversary of the project.
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about the project

Whoismafia is a mix of video conferencing and psychological mafia games. More details about the project can be found in my posts ( 1 , 2 and 3 ).

Whoismafia is a 100% garage project. The idea to create a video game arose in the very real garage in the country, where my brother and I were discussing a new p2p technology for me from Adobe. This moment completely flew out of my head and just as unexpectedly surfaced when they were discussing another crazy idea.

The main goal of the project at the very beginning was to delve into the peer-to-peer technology, to do something more than hello world, to work with Flash Builder in conjunction with Flash Catalyst and Illustrator, and the main thing is to create a live project, where real people communicated live , because the mafia is just an excuse for communication, a topic uniting people.

Mafia was written from scratch in two weeks and came out in hard alpha - everything was wildly buggy, but it worked. Therefore, for another three weeks, I diligently finished the game.

Expectations

After the release of the mafia, I had the persistent feeling that just about a little bit, I would remove the bugs, finish the features and everything will be fine, the people will start playing. Habra effect was accompanied by 7000 loyal users, who gave very solid feedback. Every day about 200-300 hosts without ads with glitches and bugs meant that someone needed it, which means it was worth working.

In addition to coding, I participated in start-up activity - to be honest, I had a desire to quickly grab and score. Various people appeared, some offered cooperation, others wanted to buy out the project, invited to make presentations, etc. I have merged from everywhere — until the project is ready either for sale, or for monetization, or even for an influx of visitors — they will sit and scatter. There was not even a primitive forum so that people could discuss the game's bugs.

After the long-awaited update, which was supposed to be the turning point of the project, nothing happened. Quite the contrary - the release came out again strongly bazhnom, Habra indulgently sent a little more than two thousand scouts who did not find anything interesting on the site and left the game forever.

On the one hand, it was a bit sad - the dream to work a little and swim for the rest of my life in luxury (a joke) did not come true. On the other hand, I was absolutely clearly aware that the product is very raw, the prototype is nothing more. And once the prototype - work and make a product out of it. But I didn’t want to work at the mafia at all - for this month I was completely squeezed out, and as a result, 20-30 uniqes a day, which they don’t even play the game (to play, you need to get everyone together at the same time).

In the end, I just stopped working on it.

Defeat?

In early June, I saw this picture of visits:


No one played. But it didn’t even upset me - I wasn’t involved in the project at all, but he wasn’t growing at all. It was frustrating for another - Google announced a new billing model, in which the mafia would become a heavy burden for me. Especially if a bunch of users appear - the project is optimized for the old billing model, in which up to 50 thousand users per day can be cut into the game for free for me (hypothetically).

On the 6th of June, I decided to turn off the mafia - no one plays it anyway. I climbed into the appengine control panel and found a very strange activity - there were people on the site, they were playing mafia . I didn’t believe it, I went to the site - they were real people, happy contented people played my game - it was so nice. A few days later, people left, I dug in the Internet and understood - someone liked the game, he made a description (where to click, how to play) in Armenian and posted on his social network (thanks, buddy)

People played and fled, but I was inspired and decided not to turn off the server - what if someone finds and will play and enjoy.

Victory!

As expected - found.


Every day about 40-50 people came steadily. It turned out that the mafia was closed in classmates and the people who played it quickly relocated. How do I know this info - I talked to them, the specificity of the site :)

Further statistics in figures for this time (two months). Please note that they play about the same people (22% of new visits).

Game Man * Started: 13671
Games Man * Finished: 10924
Created rooms: 505
Users kicked: 255
Feedback sent: 126
* If 6 people played 5 games, we will get 30 man-games.

The game can take part from 5 to 10 or more people. If we assume that 6 people participate in an average game, we can calculate the approximate number of games played: 2000 .

Further more interesting

If two months ago, 70% of users left forever, then over the past two months, this figure dropped to 22% . Please note - 3543 users have been logged in 10 or more times in 2 months. Special pride is of course the lower figure in the table :)


Another nice sign:


The last line means that 200 users stayed on the site for more than half an hour per session. Sorry there is no further detail.

The bounce rate is constantly hanging around 80%. This is influenced by two factors: first, the game starts immediately, without the start page. Accordingly, the first thing that users see on the site is a flash pop-up with a proposal to allow the use of the channel for p2p, then another “give the camera” window and only after that the game. Although not even a game - the lobby, which lists the rooms in which there may be no one. Surely new users are afraid of such behavior of the site and go. The second reason - regular users have already mastered, can immediately understand how much time they will have to wait for other players - at the bottom of the page displays information about the number of players on the site. If there is the number 1, then there is no one on the site except for you and you can quickly leave - it is quite logical. And you can wait.

Another interesting observation is keywords. Because The site consists of one page, and on the page there is no text, the main message should go from the title. So it is - the only key phrase, according to which people come from search engines - multiplayer webcam games :) No SEO, advertising, etc. - we are on the 5th place in the issue, this phrase is 100% reflects the content of the site. By the way, maybe someone will make the right conclusions: from the launch until July, there were 100 transitions in multiplayer webcam games, over the past 2 months there are 200 more.

Financial results

For the whole year, free daily quotas have not been overcome. Those. for the year I received an invoice for $ 0. The maximum percentage of using free quotas is 5% (per day of habraeffekt). Now it fluctuates around 1%.

Revenue is also $ 0. And it does not matter, yet :)

Funny moments

Look at the second graph in the article - see the button at the end of the graph? This we found the anons with dvachcha . I think this is also a very important point, because the atmosphere of kindness and domesticity was diluted with a specific anonymus culture.

Another interesting moment happened on September 13, when I suddenly realized that I forgot to pay for hosting and it was cut off 4 days ago.

But this year is not scary - even Habr screwed up .

Well, another funny situation: in Montenegro, you need a video chat, the cellular operator (by the way, HSDPA at the level - 5 megabits gave out easily) blocks skype calls. After 10-20 seconds after the start of communication, the Internet drops by 10 minutes. We decided to connect through the mafia - the sound quality is certainly much weaker (lag, echo), but we could communicate with the four of us.

Future plans

I would be very humble. In the near future I plan to completely redo the site, the game, the very concept. The first version was pure brute force, the second one starts with the UML. This version of the game will work until the server is transferred to the new billing system, and then we'll see - maybe I’ll post the source code, familiarize the public with my vision of bydlokod :)

About the team, partners, investors, mentors - not to me. I enjoy being free, feeling free. If you do not want to - you do not do it, if you want to do something completely unusual - you do and do not prove to anyone but yourself that this is necessary. Mafia is the project where I can do everything. Hobby.

A party

In conclusion, I want to invite everyone to the party dedicated to the year since the release of the mafia. The party will be held right on the mafia site - especially for this event I made a cheat room in which up to 1000 people can play simultaneously. Not sure what will happen, not sure if Flash will be taken out, but you can try.

Event starts: 19:00 Moscow time.
Address: www.whoismafia.com
To participate, you must have a computer with a browser (Chrome is recommended) and a flash, a camera (if you want to play, you can communicate without it), a channel from 1Mbps, good mood and a decent view. Registration as usual is not required.

Come beforehand, I will be glad to everyone, even the most evil troll :)

UPD: the party room is set up for 1000 players, at 7 pm it will be clear how many people are present, this value will change. Don't be afraid of black windows - this is not a bug, this is a feature: users who logged in earlier and were thrown out because of problems with the connection, or turned off the camera after login, reserved the first places in the room. If you do not return - we will remove.
In the meantime, if you want to play - join the game in any room - the people will catch up.