At this moment the Elite Guard is discussing the new set-up for the next round. A lot of things need to be done, otherwise the future of Bootleggers won’t be very promising. One of these things is advertising. The amount of players is extremely low compared to the amount of players that we had a few years ago. This week we witnessed a very important step regarding advertising; a referral system. This referral system has been added to the Profile page, which also has changed this week. The Profile page is now much easier to navigate as it is subdivided in various categories: Profile, Friends, Account and Refer. Now, let’s have a look at that new page named Refer.
At the Refer page you have the ability to recruit friends by sending them an E-mail with your referral link. For every player you successfully recruit you receive 1,500 bullets and 24 hours bonus time, during which you will be able to carry 25% more booze and receive 5% shorter travel and Organized Crime timers. Not bad, but it gets even better. When 5 of your recruits reach the rank of Hitman you will get a certain cash reward. When the referral system was launched this amount was set at $500,000. One day later the amount changed in a variable amount. The reward is now based on the number of alive players and the total cash in the game. Oh, a secret formula?!
At this moment the total in-game cash is approximately 17 billion dollar and the average amount of cash per player is approximately 1,1 million dollar. The reward for when 5 of your recruits reaches Hitman is now $300,000. A simple calculation shows us that the reward is approximately 30% of the average cash per player. I believe that it is great that the reward is now variable, since $500,000 would be a way too high amount for when a round just has started.
I believe the current structure of the referral system is great. It is easy and the reward is perfect. But what about the timing of the release of this referral system? The referral system has been implemented to increase the amount of players. The only question is; is this the best time to recruit new players? The current state of the round is terrible. There is clearly a dominating group, who cannot be stopped. If a new player is being recruited now, he/she must think the current state of the round is representative for an entire round, which is definitely wrong. The result? The new recruiter players will most likely leave. If this assumption is true the current referral system would be useless at this point.
My expectation is that the referral system is not being used a lot at this moment. I expect a significant increase at the start of round 8, which is interesting. The amount of total in-game cash is extremely low at that moment, which means it is not ‘interesting’ to recruit new players at that time. For the sake of Bootleggers I truly hope you all recruit your friends and enjoy the sweet rewards. Bootleggers has officially started advertising, but I am afraid we need more than a referral system. Let’s hope it is a start of a fancy hardcore advertising strategy!
