It's All About Adverts

It's been a while since I've talked about regional politics, so I thought I'd mention something which, depending on your point of view, is either a useful NationStates tool, or a self-serving scourge of the site: namely, regional advertisements.

Almost every region will hit across the problem of recruitment, unless you're a lone wolf in which case you don't care, or you're the delegate of one of the Pacifics, in which case you don't need to. There are various solutions of course, some of them are obvious, some of them are McDonaldesque in their cynicism, some of them are innocent, and some are against the rules.

Let's consider the brand marketing adverts first.

One way in which some regions can gain greater membership is to have a region which is well-exposed, has a good name, and a bold and sunny appearance (where applicable anyway - this IS NationStates). Such regions usually have 'obvious' names, coming from real countries, continents, et cetera. Or they will try to gain acknowledgement through other means, for example adding long strings of zeroes to the beginning in order to appear near the beginning of the region-list (which, sadly due to technical limitations, cannot have a search engine). Personally I would never feel comfortable in a region with such a crap name though. The main reason I named my region 'Lancre' was because it had a nice solid sound to it and is a great name for a region. Those places without snappy names have resort to other techniques however.

As any new nation will know, about thirty seconds after coming into existence you will be plagued with telegrams asking you to join a region, offering love, fun, organised government, and other such joys and treasures. This is where the cynicism sets in because it's exactly the same trick used by junk food companies (and quite a few other industries are guilty of the same thing). What they're doing is getting them while they're young. Such innocent nations think "Oh, wow, I must be incredibly special to have received such an invitation! They must really want me!" and of course they're soon immersed in the region's politics before they can explore and fully appreciate the scope of the game. Prevents them mentally from considering creating their own region, or finding one which is more well-tailored for their individual needs instead of a hefty huge region whose main aim is power. That's great from one point of view, because it's such amazing initiative and really adds a whole new dimension to the NationStates community. On a personal level it's a bugger, but there you go.

Such telegrams and regional messageboard adverts have to fit to the rules of course, to prevent spam. You can't advertise in player-created regions (which leaves The Pacific, The North Pacific, The East Pacific, The West Pacific, The South Pacific, The Rejected Realms, Lazarus, and the warzones). This is because it would be a real pain if some prat came into your region and said "Hey, come and join my region! It's got bells on!" and then left. You can only advertise your region on the messageboards once a day for obvious reasons.

As for using scripts, that's DEFINITELY against the rules as it is spam of one of the most invasive and annoying types. No script may be used to send unsolicited telegrams.

How did I advertise my region? Well, as I've said in earlier blogs, I tried to make Lancre more interesting. For example, I created The Lancre Cup (fun for all the family), indiscriminately encouraged everyone to try to be delegate (still do), and generally told everyone that the most important thing about being in Lancre is to have fun. Otherwise there'd be no point. To actually get people shifting bottoms into the region I simply created a thread in the NationStates forum (there was no Gameplay forum back then) which had lots of info about the region and basically said "Come along if you want". I created another thread a few months ago too, but it didn't attract much attention. Too much jousting from people who wanted new members more than I did, I suppose!

The best method I've personally discovered is to get everyone to encourage friends to join NationStates and then join Lancre - if they want to, of course. I may be a cynic at heart, but I don't like cynicism. It's a tad boring and isn't anywhere near as fun and imaginative as I want Lancre to be.