Thursday 12 May 2011

Long Time No Update

Well been very busy of late freelancing (mainly PPC in Google Adwords, Hitwise etc) for one of the biggest online furniture retailers (Oak Furniture Land) in the UK, actually the biggest online furniture retailer in the UK. Some awesome peeps working there really sharp when it comes to all things IT, so dunno what they want with me  Actually I think I’ve done some decent PPC stuff for them and have added value.

I suppose the big topic relating to this blog is the sad demise of Football Manager Live. I think FM2011 is a fine game and the ME and database is eons ahead of anything else so I think SI have a great future.

In my view there were mistakes made way back after all the churn rate in beta was there plain as day and this issue was never properly addressed. I think if they ever dabble again with online it may be and added extra to FM much like Pitboss is Civ5. I think this would be viable personally even though you hear the argument that everyone would want to be Man Utd I’m not so sure if you look the success of FIFA Virtual Pro.

Anyway no use looking back at past mistakes the game was what it was and I do think they could have found a way of marketing the game cost effectively even given its high churn rate.

I did offer to do PPC for them and actually spent £30 myself demonstrating that they could drive costs down and have a viable marketing route. I rolled out across the US (changing from Football to Soccer in adverts, silly US) and I think had they targeted English Speakers across Euroland with the Cost Per Click I was getting could have secured the long term future of the game.

I do not think there is much more to say really, this blog has covered the game in detail looking at its direction at various stages. I suspect if they had gone for a proper rags to riches type thing culling the top teams off we might still have FML but now we will never know.

What next then… I think I’ll continue to blog about my gaming exploits here but I’m not seeing much that really hooks me in. Civ5 I found a bit slow and buggy, have had the odd blast of FM2010 which I have enjoyed but it lacks an edge. The last game I really got into was Starcraft 2 so will keep an eye out for an expansion of that.

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