The ‘Digg effect’ on the Collective.

It was bound to happen, even though we were invite only and there was no way to get into the collective without an invite from an existing member the Collective got dug, and then dug again, and then dug some more. We even made it into the top 10 with 947 diggs.

It all started when a Digg member called scrag_10 started a group called, you guessed it, ‘Digg’ and started handing out invites on digg.com. Those that accepted the invites posted their own and so on. In the 3 days that followed we gained 1,554 members as a direct result of the invites they shared.

But what are these Diggers doing on the collective?

Week 6 Update – The BETA is dead…. Long live the BETA!

Today we entered our 2nd phase, the invite beta. The 2 major changes over the private beta we left behind are:

1. All those who registered before lunchtime today are now able to log into the site
2. All members can send invites to friends which will allow them to join

We also launched with a couple of new game options, firstly the ability to hide your maze from the other players which great for those who worry about their new maze technique been copied. And secondly a mode in which some of the towers you can use are disabled.

Now I am off to sell invite keys to the highest bidder on eBay ;o)

// Edit @ 2:35am on a Sunday morning.
After having 1,700 join today (via invites from existing members) We now have 10,000 members! Weeeeee :o)

Week 5.5 Update (in the form of a list)

Since update 5.0

• We have purchased the unlimited connections license for the games server (the software the game uses to talk to the server) we also upgraded to the ‘pro’ version which lets us send much smaller packets of data between the client and the server and is also more secure.
• We re-wrote the way in which the games talk to the server (again) to greatly reduce the occurrences of lost scores and false disconnects and also make it more secure.
• We consolidated the member upgrade options to a single package. There is no more Silver or Gold, Silver now gets the works!
• We decided that the site will now launch as an invitation only system where you can only join if you are given an invite key by an existing member, we did this to keep the growth steady and to help keep the current close knit feel the private beta has.
• We added Country ’super groups’ which will enable members to see how their score compares to the rest of their country. More importantly it will make playing games and chatting with people who speak your own language a snip!
• All members can now create groups, they can even password protect them to control who they let join which is great for school/college/work groups.

Some preemptive answers to questions I am sure you have:

• All those who register before we go live will be let in when we go live.
• Each user gets unlimited invites, however they are limited on the number of pending invites they can have at any one time.
• People who are invited also get unlimited invites.
• Even though Silver now has all the benefits of Gold it still has the same cost
• We do not have an exact launch date & time, but we are still aiming for this week.

That’s all I can think of right now.

If you have any questions just post a comment and I will be glad to answer it as best I can.

Blogging milestone #1

It was created 2 months and 11 days ago
It has been in the top 100 WordPress blogs for 72 days straight. At it’s peak it had 4,877 hits in a single day.

And today ladies and gentlemen, our blog will get it’s 100,000th hit!

So thanks to all of you for reading!
More Casual Collective news following shortly :o)

Week 5 Update – Almost public Beta

Paul and I have been working our proverbial asses off over the last couple of weeks (I for one have only had 25 hours sleep in the last 5 days) but it has been worth it as we are very close to going public with the Casual Collective Beta!

We were going to launch this Friday (10th) but we only had a license for 500 connections on the comms server and we thought if we got Dug this would not be enough to see us through the opening weeks, so we are just waiting for our unlimited user license to arrive via email. Part of the upgrade will also let the game talk directly to the server instead of via scripts so there should be a huge drop in any score posting related bugs.

If we get the license and the upgrade goes well we should be launching on Monday (13th) if not very soon after. As soon as we do I will post on here so (if you have not already) hook up with this blogs RSS feed to be one of the first through the doors.

See you in the Collective
–
Dave

Week 4 Update – The dawn of the private beta.

We started the week by opening the private beta and letting people into the Collective, the first 20 or so were Friends of ours and then after that it was on a first-register first-invited basis as we worked our way through the registration list. All seems to be going well, we had some pretty funny bugs in the MPDTD game which Paul sharply fixed but other than that it has mostly been event free.

This afternoon we invited our 1,000th member. Out of the 1,000 invited only 400 have logged in, which seems a little low considering all email addresses were validated, and as they all registered on day one you would think they would be the most eager to use it.  Nevermind, it has been good that the influx of players was steady as we were able to keep on top of bug reports, and even with only 400 responding it is pretty easy to get other people to join your game with around 30 to 50 on line at any one time.

For those of you who have not yet had your invite email I made a super quick YouTube video which should give you some idea as to how the site and game look and function. I put in some footage of Paul leaking (which is quite rare) and then the look on his face at the end of the video, priceless. We have also encouraged the beta players to blog & make videos, so keep an eye out for those.

Both Paul and I took part in an interview for Business 2.0 a couple of weeks ago, the interview is now online and talks about our games, how we both started out, and our plans for the Collective.

If next week goes as well as this week we should be opening our doors to everyone very soon! but don’t quote me on that :o)