This is going to be an insanely long post! So, for those of you with the attention span to read the whole thing (which I hope everyone does because there's some exciting/important things in here!), I applaud your dedication!

TL;DR here's an audio version of the post if you'd rather listen than read, or if you enjoy listening to me ramble :P. Click here for audio!

It's been awhile since I've done a general "overview" type of post to let everyone know what is going on behind-the-scenes on HP, what we're designing and working on, etc. So that's what this is! It's the HP State of the Union Address!

First and foremost, though, I just want to say how excited I am to be going into 2017! We've got a lot of new stuff planned for you all, and I think it will be super fun :). More on that below! Plus, our Valentine’s Share the Love event, and the Happy Discount Candy Day grab bags were so much fun and tons of people participated, which is awesome :).

Speaking of which, we're still working on the prizes for that one! I'm stoked with how many people participated! But it'll take us a bit to get caught up :P.

Where has all the new stuff gone?

As I'm sure you've noticed, it has been a few months since we've had any programming done on HP, and even longer since we've had any major feature updates, which is historically uncharacteristic of us, so I want to start by taking a moment to talk about why.

Over the last 8 years (Yes EIGHT years! Crazy, right?), we have been graced by the presence of many wonderful and dedicated programmers. However, we have also had numerous problems finding reliable programmers who are willing to commit to projects long-term, or who disappear part-way through a project leaving partially finished features or bugs in their wake. It is an unfortunate reality of working with freelancers that they may not always have the same interest or availability that we do for a project.

Sadly, that is the situation we currently find ourselves in. We have a few bugs (one major bug with HPP) that need attention, and an arsenal of new features planned out, but no one to work on them. In the fall, after a long programmer drought, we finally had a long term programming contract which brought you some bug fixes and updates, but which unexpectedly came to an end when the programmer had some things going on in her personal life and stopped responding to us or fulfilling the contract.

Normally, I don't bring these pitfalls up, because it's part of doing business, and we just work to find someone else as soon as possible. But in this case, we have not yet been able to find anyone who is reliable or possesses the appropriate skills to work on HP, so we are sort of at a standstill and we have been for awhile. And that sucks for everyone because we can't do the things we want to do, you don't get the things you want, and everything seems stagnant and ignored even when it's not.

What are we going to do about it? I'm so glad you asked!

In order to make sure that this is never, ever an issue again, I have decided that I am going to learn to program for the game. I have picked up some basic skills over the years with HP, and have been working since January to improve them well enough to bring you what you need! So far, it is going pretty well :).

This is obviously not a quick solution, but it is a permanent one. So that's the important part! In the meantime, I will continue to work on finding someone who can do the stuff (more on that below) which I cannot yet do!

So, whether it's from me or because we found a programmer or a combination, things will be getting done!

And we will keep you all in the loop about what's happening! I am resolving to keep everyone more up-to-date about what is (and is not) being worked on.

Growing HP

While we are working on bringing you new and shiny things, we can focus on growing HP! Our community here is amazing, and very dedicated to the game, and I would love to make it even bigger and better!

One of the things we have been working on is our social media prescience. Tana (#28295) has been doing a great job keeping our accounts updated! If you don't already follow us on whatever social media you're on, you can find our accounts by clicking on the social media icons in the footer of every page.

Tana posts updates about the game, reminders about events, and some funny stuff to brighten everyone's day! If you do already follow us, make sure you’re liking and commenting on our posts. The more you interact with our page, the more of our stuff you will see :).

Another way we can grow HP's community is by improving our referral system. This is already a massively long post, so I will talk more about specific plans and gather suggestions on this from everyone separately.

HOWEVER, in the meantime, I am working on a referral page where you can get sharable banners, flyers, and track your referrals and referral points. I've linked it up in the header, under the Home tab, so you can keep track of my progress! There's not much to show yet, buuttt, there is a super cute under construction horse who would love to say "hello"!

What else can you do? Refer your friends who you think would like HP! Whether it's from other horse and dog communities online, your barn in real life, or on social media. Word of mouth is our strongest form of advertising! Or, if you know anyone who previously played HP, you could remind them how awesome we are!

What else are we doing to bring in new players? Currently, we are working on a campaign to bring back players who took a break from the game. We’re also working on improving our search rankings, and our social media visibility. If you have any other suggestions of things we could do, or places we could advertise, I would love to hear them!

Spring Layout

In March, I will be updating HP to our B-E-A-UTIFUL new spring layout :).

Here is a preview of the background art:

Animal Awards System

Time to talk new stuff! Yay!

This is one of our new features planned that I am particularly excited about. These would be similar to the player achievements that we already have, but they would be for specific animals and the little badges would be displayed on each animal's page!

One of the most frequent suggestions we get is to add more goals and rewards to the game and to showing/training, so that's the plan with this feature. Having awards on each animal would increase the incentive to train individual animals to high points and reach goals for them, and not just in general.

Some of the ideas we've had for possible awards would be for point milestones (1 mill, 2 mill, 5 mill, 10 mill, etc.), getting on the rankings, topping the rankings, being registered in clubs, winning the mascot contest (this would give a badge to all the previous winning animals and participants!), number of generations, number of first places in shows, top in specific breed, top of gender, etc.!

And then I was thinking, that in addition the decorating the animal's page with badges, each one you earned could also earn the animal additional points, and maybe eventually tie into the HPP system, too.

Grand Championship Showing

We talked about this some in the forums before, but I cannot find the thread to save my life. So, as a recap, we have plans to add another, more complex level of showing. The idea is that they would be for established animals to enter, and would earn points and maybe even HPD, and possibly tie into clubs.

This is something which needs to be fine tuned plan-wise, but my initial thought is that these shows would only be held once a month, and you would need to be an upgraded player using your breed specialty to enter, and only animals who were at least a certain age, with a certain amount of points and entered shows under their belt, registered in a certain number of clubs, and if we did the awards system first, with a certain number of badges earned could enter.

And then there would be an entrance fee to go into a winning pot, and the winner of the show would get a portion of the HPD from the pot, as well as everyone getting points for their animals.

So the shows would be rare, and they would be for accomplished animals only, but would be extremely rewarding for those who place. Like the World Cup or Kentucky Derby, but on HP :P.

It would add a level of complexity to the game, as well as another goal to work for, but would not complicate the gameplay or change the basic mechanics of the game.

Again, I would love thoughts and suggestions here!

Breed Embassies

This is something that would not be programming-based (or very minimal programming), but instead would focus on communities of breeders on the game.

Basically, we would designate an established breeder of each popular breed on the game as that breed's ambassador, and they would be the place to go if you were looking to buy, sell, get backups, start the breed, need stock photo suggestions, etc.

It would be similar to studbooks or breed registries in real life, and would be something that would be easy to add to, or add more concrete programming features to later if it is successful!

I have been playing with some code to bring an actual listing for these to life, so I will update more once I figure out what direction I can go with that.

Advertising on HP

We've decided that the time has come to put a couple of ads on HP on a trial basis. We have talked about selling custom ad-space before on this thread, and in general most people agreed that it was a good idea.

We have a high volume of traffic, which will make ads a worthwhile endeavor. Having ads on the game would increase our funds for things like new and improved programming and layout design, taking out ads for HP to bring new players in, better servers, potential app development, etc.

I do, however, understand any hesitation to having ads on the game, because they can be ugly and annoying. BUT there will not be any pop-up, audio, video, float-across-your-screen-and-block-everything types of ads. I promise, because I hate those just as much as everyone else, and I spend A LOT of time on HP so I don't want to look at them either :P.

I also do not plan to (and will never plan to) plaster a million ads all over the layout. I like that HP is pretty, and I will be selective about which pages ads go on. Because, again, I think excessive advertising is annoying just like everyone else!

Where do we plan to start? I am trying to get approved for Google Adsense at the moment, because they give us the freedom to place ads where we want them, and to control the content of the ads. Whereas many other advertising networks want ads “above the fold” or in the header, and offer no control over the types of ads shown, which I am not in favor of for HP.

I will likely start with placing an ad in the footer to see how it goes, and then going from there. I have a couple of other places in mind where I think ads would fit right in, such as here, here, here, and here.

Offering custom ad space like we talked about on the forums previously would also be an option, but I think it would be wise to start with a program like Adsense so that we can optimize as much as possible and make sure it all works out before any time is invested in selling the space to individual advertisers.

But, I want to reiterate, that I will not ever do anything which is harmful to the game, gets in the way of gameplay, that our servers cannot handle, or that significantly impacts the quality of gameplay. I promise. That's why I try to talk to you all about major decisions before they happen!

Newsletter

We are finally going to start a newsletter for HP! In the next week, I will open up sign-ups so you can subscribe to it if you want to and our first newsletter will come out in March :).

This will be email-based, and sign-ups will be optional (as in you will not automatically signed up for it, and can unsubscribe whenever you want to), and each month we will send out a newsletter with an overview of game updates, a featured animal/helpful player of the month, some articles from players, and sometimes we will have exclusive coupon codes and giveaways for email subscribers!

It will be the perfect way to get HP updates right to your inbox so you can stay up-to-date even if you're on the go :).

Misc. Notes from My Desk

If you haven't checked them out yet, we put in more profile controls in the fall for you to edit what types of messages and notifications you get from the game. You can see and edit these by going to Edit Profile under the Home tab.

You can also subscribe to forum topics and get a message whenever anyone replies to it at the top of the thread!

Another thing we recently did was revamp the rules! They are much more streamlined now, and we took out quite a few things that no longer really apply to the game. So, if you have not checked them out, you can click here to see them!

Also, this is a small thing, but I worked on the Credits and Staff page this morning to streamline it and make it pretty, so if you would like to check that out I would be oh-so-pleased :).

Lastly, I become aware the other day that when you buy extra energy from the regular store, and then buy permanent extra energy from the cash shop, it gives you 100 energy for life. That’s not how it's supposed to work, because permanent extra energy is just supposed to give the animal an extra 10 for life, and then you have to continue buying the extra 10 each week to get 100. So, I will be exploring options to either fix this, or price it accordingly since it's currently priced as an extra 10 shows, not an extra 20!

Soo, THANK YOU for everyone who read this! Please give me any feedback you have!

I will be posting about individual topics, especially for new features, as they come up. So there will be more chances to discuss everything, and offer comments and suggestions on those! So, I have talked your ears off enough for one day. Have a great weekend, HP!

TL;DR here's an audio version of the post if you’d rather listen than read, or if you enjoy listen to me ramble :P Click here for audio!

-Sam

Im excited about everything!

I wish i could be the paint horse ambassador, but i dont have a bajillion paints lol

Is there any way to dedicate a new page for ads or are they going to be on every single page we click on?

 What about ads on the enter shows page? It's not an up front page but it is a page EVERYONE visits and the layout on the enter page isn't already 'busy'

Just a suggestion ;)

Breed ambassadors I think should be put to a vote

not just someone who has a ton of a certain breed and what not :)

but I love this state of the union address!!

I'm very excited for some of these new things!

All sounds pretty good to me! I like what Maharet said, I agree that the ambassadors should be voted on. I think it'd b cool to be an ambassador..... I'm starting to see the perks of breeding rare breeds, I think I'm the only active breeder of English Shepherd dogs. Things are looking pretty good for me right now lol.

 Love this! :) Also love the tl;dr version, although I read it lol.

I agree on voting for breed ambassadors, although in some cases, it will probably be an obvious choice if there is only one breeder. But that's okay, everything has to start from somewhere! I'd be happy to be the Finnhorse ambassador :D 

I loved everything else in this update, it made me so happy to see that HP is still a happening place :) can't wait to see how everything progresses and what kind of ideas others come up with!

So excited for horse achievements...!! Hope it becomes a reality soon! Thanks for the transparency, Sam! 

like everyone else I'm excited on most of the planned things for HP, love the idea of horse achievements, ambassaders sound great too, but should be voted oneven tho I have lots of certain breeds and some rare breeds as well

PS: great job Sam I listened and read it

Thanks, everyone! :). I'm so glad you're excited!

Aza - For ads, they will have to be integrated in the game in order for them to be effective, not just on one page alone. The more times they are seen, the better the income from them will be. That being said, though, I'm sure after we get them up, we will do some moving around and trial-and-error type of stuff until we find the best place for them. A good mix of out of the way, but still effective, you know? If they slow down page loading or something, I will re-evaluate, for sure.

Blair - The enter shows page is a great idea!

For breed ambassadors, I think voting is a good idea! Maybe those who are interested can submit their names and then people can vote? The only requirement we had tossed around for being the ambassador (besides actually breeding the breed, obviously :P) is being on at least the second generation of the breed.

I figured they couldnt be on one page

Yeah I like the voting thing.. and maybe changing of the job if someone goes on hiatus or something?

With the programming upgrades/changes will the image bank be on the agenda? It seems like it needs some tweaking.

Insom, if the person does on hiatus the breed embassy duties would definitely be moved :).

Sass, do you have specific upgrades in mind for it?

I will totally scramble for the opportunity to be a breed ambassador for Icelandics. Even if mine are... Lackluster at the moment. 

Link Tree

This was the longest bestest read i have had for a while. I cannot wait on the animal achievements!

ASBs represent! xD

Thanks for posting this Sam!

You have a soothing voice. :0)

*raises hand for Andalusians and Boxapoints*

I have a few breeds and if no one takes them Ill give it a try,

Marwaris, Wolves, or Shelties