IMPERIUM EMPIRES —Root Cause Analysis

5 min readApr 29, 2022

IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM
CURRENT STATISTICS AND OBSERVATIONS
ASSUMPTIONS
ENVIRONNEMENT
QUESTIONS
OBJECTIVES
PROBLEMS
SOLUTIONS AND COUNTER-MESURES

IDENTITY THE PROBLEM

Despite a high-quality project, Imperium Empires suffers from low activity on Twitter and Discord. Interactions are either low or inorganic (resulting from interaction-bait, such as RT contests).

Current contest seems aimed at dedicated members, instead of aimed at gaining new members.

Problem:

How can Imperium Empires grow its community and maintain that community organically active?

CURRENT STATISTICS AND OBSERVATIONS

A list of statistics and observations that could be related to the problem

Twitter (https://twitter.com/ImperiumEmpires)

Tweets March 8th to 18th (Post-NFT sale)

Post- March 18th tweets with significant interaction examples

Currently at around 46k followers
Gaining around 200–100 per week since feb 14th (Exception: week of 21st to 28th of march — 3400 new. Events during this week: Pre-Alpha teaser and Bybit)
About 25% of tweets are replies
About 10% of tweets are retweets
Averaging around 30 tweets/week

Observation — Only times there is interaction is when there is a contest or when tweet involves another account.

Observation — Twitter account rarely comments on community posts. Is it because community doesn’t post about IE, or because it isn’t in it’s goals to do so?

Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqFCQg2HYHJxr36NxGd5piQ)

2.27k subscribers youtube
Gaining 20–100 subscribers per week
Receiving 1000–5000 views per week

Discord (http://discord.gg/ImperiumEmpires)

8.5k members
General chat is used by a small group of users
A lot of the activity comes from Imperium Empires team
Some efforts by team to create activity (ex. giveaways)

Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/ImperiumEmpires/)

Subreddit is basically inactive.

Website (https://imperiumempires.com/)

Support links to part of website that still discusses ship NFT sale
Need to log into website for marketplace
Roadmap respected so far

Q2 — Guild registration, management system, genesis land sale

Q3 — Beta test, Guild tournaments

Q4 — Game launch

Observations and facts

NFT sale in February
Partnerships with TJ, Benqi, Avalaunch

https://medium.com/@imperiumempires/imperium-empires-secures-funding-from-gbv-capital-acff789b1836

There are 4 major problems commonly seen in most GameFi projects that Imperium Empires seeks to address:
- Low-quality graphics and limited gameplay — simply put, there’s no fun playing them;
- Hyperinflationary and unsustainable tokenomics — no NFT burning mechanisms, and play-to-earn rewards drain fast as the number of players skyrockets;
- Lack of deep DeFi integration — most GameFi staking rewards are unrelated to the gameplay; and
- Lack of guild-based gameplay that bonds guild members together and make gaming into a social experience.” says Cliff Yung, Founder & CEO of Imperium Empires

https://medium.com/@imperiumempires/imperium-empires-development-blog-february-2022-fe7fb2187250

We noticed as well that people spend at least 7 minutes in our site browsing, mostly looking at their newly-minted spaceships.
During the launch day, we had more than 5000 unique users logged in live on our site across the world banging and waiting to mint. Initial pre-approvals were more than 80% of supply even with hard restrictions placed on wallets.
Our efforts to focus on South-East Asia has paid off as more than 50% of traffic comes from the Philippines, followed by Turkey and Japan.

https://medium.com/@imperiumempires/imperium-empires-development-blog-march-2022-39b0b1b14da1

The main purpose of the demo is to (i) test our server data and loading to ensure data synchronization with low latency; and (ii) showcase our game development progress.

Price

General bear market
Peak volume and price during NFT sale
Market cap of about 6,000,000$

ASSUMPTIONS

Since I am not part of the organisation, I am forced to make some assumptions

Roadmap will continue to be respected
Heavy website is being improved

ENVIRONMENT

Observations of organisation ’s environnement

Ascenders

Upcoming Avalanche game also in early demo stages

Twitter account regularly retweets game footage from community
Low interaction rates, but it encourages posting
Teasing upcoming games modes
Screenshot competition
Fun game modes (Easter egg hunt)
Quick overview of Twitter account show interaction levels similar to that of Imperium Empires
Discord chat has community which encourages sharing clips and images of game
Discord creates an environment where you can already identify to a faction (Builders, Fighters, Explorers)
Did not have time to examine whether same members are constantly posting on Discord

Ragnarok

Upcoming Avalanche game also in early demo stages

Founder regularly interacting on Twitter with community
Game demo gradually integrated tasks/missions which community had to do to get a chance to get what they wanted (whitelist)
Creative side of community was often called upon on Twitter and Discord
Whitelist passes were often given to community members, to increase outreach

QUESTIONS

These are questions for which the answer wasn’t searched for or wasn’t found

How do other Avalanche projects perform in terms of activity on Discord?
Did not have time to investigate Telegram — Is it active?
Did not have time to investigate Facebook — Is it active?
Are there accounts in other languages?

OBJECTIVE(S)

A list of objectives which should be presented in a SMART manner.

EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE OBJECTIVES

Get X number of pre-alpha testers to play X number of hours by X date
Get X number of members on Discord by X date
X% of messages on general chat are from non-IE team members
Get X number of followers on Twitter by X date
X% of tweets WITHOUT contests/interaction bait receive X likes and X retweets
Host X number of trivia games relating to science fiction pop culture per month
Host X number of science fiction watch parties per month
Comment on X number of game footage posts Tweets per week

PROBLEMS

A list of problems which could prevent us from attaining the objectives

The format of the game (spaceships) makes it difficult for users to project personality into the content
Community activity is inevitably correlated with price action
Repetitive content on social media becoming stale

SOLUTIONS AND COUNTER-MESURES

Reward Discord activity with unsolicited incentives (Do NOT give expected rewards (ex. 100 IME if you are most active member this week))
When guilds registrations are open, use them as a method to have members compete (in a respectful manner) (Tribe-Mentality)
Encourage the creation of community resources (See Hoppers channel)
Create partnership with recognized gaming guilds (ex. Fief Guild) to gain some of their informed and active members
Hold contests relating to a space simulator (ex. creating your own galaxy). There is a free version of Space Engine: (https://spaceengine.org/download/spaceengine/)
Set a calendar of quizzes, with a different TV series/Movie every time
Give Twitter presence specific mandate relating to game content sharing