I have writtin this collumn with the intention to reply on Kamz' collumn tbh, but i faded a bit away and think that it would be more useful to post it as a new collumn, than as a comment.

image: hr2c8ctx

There are 6 different stages in the productlifecycle of a game like Enemy Territory.

I Introductionstage[/u]
The game is getting developed and hasn't been published yet. There are only some informations such as a gametrailer or whatever to make people get interested in this game.

II Startingstage[/u]
May 2003 - Enemy Territory gets published and everyone can download and try it out. The community starts to grow and the interest of the game is raising. Activity is very high. The players decide if they want to stick to this game or not and some kind of "lock-in-effects" occur.

III Penetrationstage[/u]
Everything is new and everything seems great. ETTV gets developed and the first lans are planned. There are still some new players to the scene, but not as many as when the game got published. Activity is not growing as fast as in the beginning but it is still growing.

IV Maturitystage
Activity is on max and there are many lans, community work, Ettv viewers, new maps, Open Cup with many sign ups. First satiationeffects occur.

V Crisisstage[/u]
Players start getting bored of the game, because lack of innovations.The activity is decreasing and more and more players leave the game. This is our current situation.

VI Breakupstage[/u]
Only a few players are left. Activity is on a very low level. Everyone is moving to a new game and Enemy Territory finally dies.



Is there any possibility to save the game and prevent us from moving to the last stage ?


YES !

There are two aspects:

Many companies are using this prductlifecycle to manage their products. It is important to keep the product alive as long as it makes profit. In this case profit means for us that we try to keep ET alive because we want to play it on high activity with many lans, many cups and much more.

It is possible to make some kind of step back in the stagesystem to be honestly.
What made Enemy Territory so special in the first stages ? Why did the activity kept growing ? This are the questions we have to ask our selves. We need new innovations such as new maps, new anti cheat, new grafics (to attract other people). We need new innovations which make the game more interesting again. Old innovations were for example ETTV, fragmovies !, lans, new maps, new mods and much more. This was one of the two aspects, which can keep ET alive.

The next aspect is about us. It is in the hand of the community. If they want to keep using Crossfire to flame, troll and annoy people without any motivation to help other users and without any motivation to keep the game alive, then we will join the last stage very soon. We need more people like Merlinator or Krosan, who try to do something for the community. We need more people like chapija who invent new things, which make the game more attractive.
We need to stick together and stop downvoting every new step. They are investing so much of their freetime to make this game better. Everytime someone tries to make a new step, he gets flamed hard by most of the community. Look, he just tries to help the community, but they search for every tiny fact, which could be flamed.

Quote by random troll "Oh look, the new map seems very awesome tbh, it isnt too big, it is possible to play it on a competitive level and the grafic is very nice, BUT i dont like color of the obective. Lets flame him hard for that "fault" and lets forget about the good parts of the map. everyone will respect me for that flame, because im so cool"


We have to leave this attitude behind us, because this will be the mainreason for the "death of ET"