Firaxis has a link to Apolyton on their Civ game page.

[Dinner]

I was looking at Firaxis's official website at their listing for the Civilization game series and I noticed on Community tab there were links to the 2K Forum, CFC, Apolyton, and WPC. Thank you, Firaxis for supporting the fan community.

[dexters]

Thumbs up!

[Dinner]

It is kind of cool but it also helps them build some buzz for one of tgeir new products so it is win win.

[Lorizael]

Shhh. If you make noise about it, they might remember and remove us.

[Aeson]

Firaxis has always been cool with the Civ community.

[giblets]

Firaxis must be trying to scare people away from Civilization

[C0ckney]

good move.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I was looking at Firaxis's official website at their listing for the Civilization game series and I noticed on Community tab there were links to the 2K Forum, CFC, Apolyton, and WPC. Thank you, Firaxis for supporting the fan community.

Firaxis has always been cool with the Civ community.

Not gonna say it, not gonna say it, not gonna say it.

[Aeson]

It may be because Firaxis doesn't have the rights to Alpha Centauri.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

It may have to do with a lot of things I'm not going to stir up trouble talking about, but of course there's the rights issue, too. I have a degree in communications and I've worked PR, and have a somewhat informed opinion about some stuff that I'm not getting into.

-A venue's a venue, though, and if I was flacking 4x strategy games ... some excellent marketing opportunities have definitely been lost pointedly ignored...

[Aeson]

From a marketing standpoint I don't know if it makes much sense for Firaxis to link to or even care about any of us. The user base of these sites already know about their games, we'll play them if they're good, won't play them if they don't stand up to scrutiny. For game development on the other hand, it makes sense to draw from the game community, and Firaxis has done that quite a bit. I spent 2 years helping balance Civ IV, as did many others from Apolyton. Some of those broke off and went to WPC. At least a few from Apolyton and CFC have gone on to work at Firaxis. Those links probably have more to do with personal relationships between Firaxis and the communities that have developed over the years than economic interest.

For marketing (which 2K handles) they go after places like Wikia, gamespot, etc ... big sites that have millions of visitors a month who cover tons of games and cross-promote games on their sites ... where in exchange for some exclusives they get Civ in front of millions of players who otherwise might not have known/thought about it. We're just small potatoes to 2K. CFC, the largest of the bunch by a big margin these days, is barely a blip on their radar.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Well, I have no delusions that I'm worth going to any trouble cultivating - but as I told the last flack I tried to establish contact with -no answer, of course; I miss Kate- "A publicity venue's a venue, and each one draws unique search engine hits, growing the online fanbase a little" -and so on, including the observation that I'd just like a little equal treatment with other small venues like Poly and the occasional heads-up.

That was in mid-March, and I have an emotion about the 6 announcement, which is how I found out on the 11th. [deadpan]

I don't waste time feeling jealous of Franky contacts, but it's a shame...

[Aeson]

Bear in mind that while Apolyton is small now, it was the main Civ website early on, and competed with CFC for that title for years. Firaxis has gotten a lot of playtesters, some programmers, and even expansion pack leads/game designers out of it. So while Apolyton is small now, the relationship with Firaxis isn't just based on Apolyton getting 3k visitors a day now. It's list and how it affected future games, the conversations with Firaxis over the years, the 2 years I and 20 or 30 others spent playtesting Civ 4, the (I don't know how many/how long ... Ming would) who did the same for Civ 5. The 16 years of working together on various aspects of the game. Even with CivBE I worked with Firaxis to promote the game on Wikia by making a web based ship viewer, and the interactive Tech Web ... after they noticed the Virtues planner I put on Apolyton. They've always been generous in return.

With 2K it's a different story. To them we're just any old 3k visitors a day website it seems.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

You're not wrong about the history and how important it is - but that perspective doesn't grow the online fanbase. AC2's demographics/stats/whatever were slowly trending up when we were talking about this two years ago and they're still trending up now - BE and 6 ain't got a lot to do with that, but really could have.

You gotta plan for the future, which I'm definitely doing...

[Aeson]

Well just understand that Firaxis doesn't do the marketing stuff. 2K does. And 2K likely isn't wasting time on us small sites because it doesn't make any business sense. It's nice to say you're trending up and thinking about the future, and make fun of Apolyton ... but Apolyton still gets a lot more traffic total, and a higher % of that is Civ related, than AC2.info ... and we're still irrelevant to 2K. CFC gets many times the traffic Apolyton does, and is still barely relevant to 2K. 2K is interested in the really big fish. Because it takes just as long (likely longer) to talk to us about a promotion, but the rewards of doing so are hundreds or thousands of times less for 2K.

Also a link isn't going to an significant difference in how well our sites do. The quality of the game (in the eyes of the userbase), the search engine rankings, and what content are on the sites does that. Even in regards to search engine rankings, it won't mean much at all given the sites involved.