Thread:Aximillio/@comment-3400522-20130416143602/@comment-6042046-20130417163715

500! Er, I mean, 250 is a decent length.

I've settled on writing the hyperlink notice like this: [Find the rest of the story at http://www.fallenlondon.com]

The sentence is in brackets so people will know it's not part of the original text. It's also pretty faithful to the original.

@Aximillio
 * nod* There's a handful of people who'll randomly find FL snippets through a search engine, read the page in full, and be intrigued enough to visit the homepage to start the game.

From a business standpoint, one new consumer is valuable, and not merely from their single contribution. One consumer is a potential lead to dozens of other new consumers if that first consumer recommends it successfully to their acquaintances and then those acquaintances recommend it in turn. FL is already doing this through Facebook and Twitter, and now they're strongly hinting that they want their homepage mentioned in other places, too.

I believe only a minority of new players will reach FL this way, but you never know about those people... One of them might be a gaming magazine editor or someone else in a position of pull; if they give FL a try and a good review, it'll bring in many more players.

The wikis are the best websites for previewing FL's content. There's a possibility potential players will read through portions of the game on the wikis first before their decision to register an account. Making FL's homepage more prominent here doesn't hurt us any, and it might help FBG. Admittedly, most of it is sheer chance.

In summary: I was initially super annoyed by the copy-forced hyperlink, but I've mostly gotten over it. I have no qualms about including it on relevant story pages here, but I wish it would go away from the game's script.