Horse Racing Fantasy Community

Each week our virtual horse racing game releases new features and fixes some issues. Probably the best new feature that was released this week is the ability to go into the upcoming trainer tournaments and search by age and racing surface. As we add more and more tournaments, filtering through all the available trainer tournaments should be a breeze.

Every day I read the threads for at least a half-hour and I see plenty of conversations pertaining to ideas on how to improve certain areas of the game and the request to add new features. Those forum posts are very important to us and help us understand what certain players are thinking and how we can incorporate those thoughts into our future plans. Now, with that said, a lot of the ideas in their suggested format may not be applicable, but with some modifications, there can be some level of adaptation as long as it is planned out properly.

The next few weeks will seem quiet. There will be some minor things happening, but the reality is that there are four major projects in the works. Three are in development and one is being spec'd out. This is a very intricate process because with every change and modification we make, or with every new addition, there is an impact on current functionality. I'm not going to spend time this week on going through these features. Let's review those in the next couple of weeks. Instead, I want to briefly touch base on the mindset we have and where we need to go to be successful for the horse racing fan and, of course, the gamer who just loves action and wants to apply strategy and skill.

Two important things have to happen to reach mass appeal. The game has to incorporate multiple levels to satisfy different levels of engagement by our members. The game has to be extremely social. It's my belief that most horse racing games fail because management never really understands what "social" really means. In order to be successful, games have to fall into and be adaptive to the player's lifestyle to not only become an entertainment destination, but a social event.

I'm sure everyone knows by now that I'm a big horse racing fan and I absolutely am all about creating awareness for the great sport of horse racing. It is absolutely our intention to do that through our game. Look forward to many new features and functions, a lot of which we've already talked about - and please do not ask me where we are with this feature or that feature. No features have been forgotten. Let's enjoy the building of our community, our great member base that reaches out and supports each other, even though they compete against each other, and look forward to more and more of the game enhancements that will not only grow our player base, but bring a lot more fun and excitement to our great community.

- Puddles