Rin

Tried to add a little spice with the flag but it didn't really work out, still really happy with the artwork done by Sashachii!

She

I'm not a first gen. This is my third player.

thanks, teammate

!

happy crisis

crisma

crimmas

Raffle raffle

Week ending 12/10 1) Unfortunately, the Americans didn't make it to the dance this season. What are your player's plans for the offseason? 2) Are there any offseason tournaments or activities you particularly enjoy? 3) What's the biggest need for the Americans heading into the offseason, in your opinion? 4) With the VHL Playoffs live, who's your pick to take home the Continental Cup? 5) What's your favorite playoff tradition in all of hockey? 6) If you could accept a sponsorship from any company, what would it be?

Week ending 12/3 1) The Christmas season has officially begun! If you celebrate, what are some of your plans for the upcoming month? If not, is there something else that makes this a special time of year for you? 2) At the time of writing this, Jasper Davis is in a three-way tie for first in points scored with 89. Be honest, will you (or would you, for prospects) feed him the puck a little more than usual to help him take home the scoring title? 3) What about our game needs to change to make the playoffs a realistic goal? 4) What are some of the little things within VHL locker rooms that make the overall experience better for you? 5) Now that we're in the season of gift-giving, what NYA merch makes the best gift for loved ones? 6) What's your pre-game ritual?

I will gladly fly my team flag so elitist Canadian hockey fans can bully me for enjoying a sport Joking aside, I think it's a great idea

this is based af Would league commissioners not suffice for this kind of perspective? Would they not be close enough to the GM situation to represent them?

"The Beauty and the Beast" I can absolutely get behind this

It's been a hot minute since I did anything graphic-wise, de-rusting with an image to accompany pressers

Absolutely-- this is a good spot to mention that I don't necessarily think that everyone needs to be doing things the way I did. Everything about how I approached Houston was both different and contained within that team; it gave us an identity and a reason to play for Houston as opposed to anywhere else. If that wasn't a good match, then incoming players had the option to accept a different offer or request a trade elsewhere- both completely fine options if the vibes weren't there. The goal with Houston was to specialize in engaging a specific type of person (and to create the environment I would have wanted as a new player), and in that case I think we succeeded. This is definitely the greater takeaway from my anecdotal rambling. I feel like it's way too easy, as a player, to feel more like a pawn in the chess game of GMs rather than an individual helping to create a whole.

So when I decided to drop ~450 words on a .com article last week about recruitment, I should have stopped myself and kept that writing off to the side in anticipation for theme week. I was entirely convinced that this was coming, and didn't heed my own foresight whatsoever. Now, I face the consequences of my own actions. So while my primary thoughts on recruitment are summarized here, I'll use this media spot to dive into some thoughts on the back half of recruitment- that is, player retention. I've been vocal in saying "oh, the 13-14 year old EA sports crowd doesn't wanna write essays, so they leave" but that doesn't mean we can't do our best to keep them here anyway. I want to harken back to the before times, where I was a hyper active member that was chosen a few times to be the general manager of the Houston Bulls. I was put in a unique position to set the tone for an expansion franchise right out of the gate, though I'm sure the management and handling of the Bulls has changed drastically as ownership has passed between hands. Knowing that the #1 goal of the VHLM was to retain players, I set out to set the Bulls apart and really try and focus on the roleplay/immersion aspect of the league. At the time, I was of the opinion that this sort of an approach was really lacking throughout locker rooms. I know most everyone at this point votes on captains and reserves jersey numbers, but I wanted to take it a step beyond. I had team members submit and vote on various options for goal songs, then edited the winner into a video to "hang up" in the locker room. I'd link it here if I still had it, but I think it's lost to time. Early on, I mocked up a "jersey reveal" featuring some of the inaugural members of the roster, and was quick to get people some graphics and sigs featuring their chosen player and number in a jersey swapped Houston uniform. Making some pretty graphics and putting together a goal horn were just the initial, smaller parts of my retention plan, though. I really set out to engage my players and encourage them to do whatever it is they wished to do creatively. When a few players started to really buy in, writing over-the-top articles back and forth about their players and interactions within the fictional world of the VHL, I made sure to start including stories within the articles in weekly pressers. It got to a point where the team was collaboratively writing narratives that would last a few weeks, with users responding to each other through their articles and then having to face the media about them when it came time for the weekly press conference. A lot of it was over-the-top goofy, like the time a player's smell caused the entire arena to be shut down for an emergency cleaning, but everyone was having a great time without even checking the results of the sims. That's the kind of focus I really wanted to push with my LR, and I'm happy to say that we definitely got there (especially when the on-ice product wasn't all that much to write home about). Looking back on the tenure as a whole, there are a good number of names that went on to hit the big leagues and find success in their own ways. Eventual cup champs, hall of fame players, taking up league jobs and being positive, active contributors to the community as a whole. I'd like to think that a big part of that was a good first impression from their early days as a VHLM signee/draftee. First impressions are everything, after all. So before I get too rambly, I'll go ahead and wrap things up by re-stressing the need for good team-based engagement in the VHL, especially when it comes to lower leagues. There's a lot more to the VHL than just upping stats and checking sims, and I wish more squads openly embraced that the way some of our rosters were able to to in Houston. I've especially thought back to those days while reflecting on my current VHLE situation- a completely dead LR which is written off with a dismissive "nobody really joins their E locker rooms, anyway." It's a shame, because that kind of an attitude is what would honestly drive me to give up and stop participating in the VHL. If I wasn't on my 3rd player already, familiar with the league and how it runs, I would feel a lot more discouraged and ready to quit.

This is exactly what capped TPE is. No user can earn more than 12 capped TPE per week, and very few (if any) receive "special perks" to put their earning potential above other members. Whether you earn 12 capped TPE in 2 hours or 7 days, you still only earn a max of 12.

NEW YORK AMERICANS PRESS CONFERENCE (We REALLY need a cute graphic for this) 1) Happy theme week! This season's theme is, fittingly, "Recruitment." Do you plan on submitting something for theme week, and if so, what's your idea? 2) Speaking of recruitment, how were you first introduced to the VHL? 3) How big of a hockey fan are you? What first got you interested in the sport? 4) For those in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! Seeing as we are the New York Americans, how should the team celebrate the holiday? 5) How does your player like to spend their days off? 6) In your opinion, when SHOULD the Christmas season officially begin?

This is a great thread.

Hello! I'm Mr. Recruitment Opinion Man #473, and I'm here to claim some TPE for a thought I've already posted elsewhere on the forums. Joking aside, I do want to just openly think about something I mentioned in one of those threads that blew up. When it comes to bringing in new members, it feels like we tend to gravitate toward hockey-centered communities first- EA NHL advertisements being a pretty big one on that front. Of course, it makes sense to advertise our hockey sim league to hockey enjoyers- it's one of the most important connections we can make with incoming members. I like hockey, they like hockey, we like hockey, so let's do that hockey. But aside from that...all of our activities center around things that an incoming hockey fan likely won't find appealing at first. Writing essays, photoshopping graphics, checking the daily text-based sims, and arguing over how our processes should be changed are all internet nerd activities. Better yet, they're all roleplaying activities more than anything. We sit square in the middle of a Venn diagram of roleplayers and hockey fans, and we honestly skew closer to the roleplaying side of things. I'm an internet anime nerd, I have no shame in admitting I've been fairly active in RP circles. Not so much these days, but I used to be huge on FFXIV where the roleplaying community has always been prominent. Everything we do here reminds me of similar stuff that RP communities typically do- we create our own characters (players), write about them, design or represent their appearance in some way, and then work together with others to expand out some kind of world for them to inhabit. While a lot of our writing and discussion can skew more towards meta discussion than outright worldbuilding, I'd argue that changing rules and designing gameplay systems is still worldbuilding in its own way. So just some food for thought, I don't really claim to have answers about what to do or what not to do when it comes to advertising and retaining new members. I can offer up the thought that we're a lot nerdier than we're willing to admit sometimes, and maybe we should let that factor in to how we approach our outreach. Some 13 year old playing EASHL on XBox isn't likely to enjoy writing Media Spots or answering presser questions, but a D&D player with passing familiarity or interest in hockey might be willing to explore a new interest by combining it with something they partake in and enjoy. Reddit was an effective recruiting tool, after all.

NEW YORK AMERICANS PRESS CONFERENCE (We need a cute graphic for this) 1) At 30 points, the Americans are hypothetically one good stretch away from being in a playoff spot. Do you think we have that kind of a run in us? 2) After the most recent defense-heavy draft, what would you consider the team's greatest needs? 3) With those needs in mind, do you think they can (or should) be addressed at the trade deadline? 4) Does your jersey number have a story behind it? If so, what is it? 5) Does your player model their game after another player? Maybe one they grew up watching, or a peer that they want to emulate? If so, who is it? If not, who would you consider a good comparable? 6) If you had the choice, what would the Americans goal song be?

Yeah, this is a pretty based take. Running an ad on EA NHL channels hits a demographic of teenagers that play video games. Bring them over to the VHL and inform them that they're going to need to write essays and put together decent graphics in order to make their player better and you run into a retention nightmare. Combine that with the letdown that they can neither watch the games being simmed, nor can they directly impact them in any way, and you've got an incredibly hard sell. It's a good idea if you're looking for pure numbers, and you're certainly bound to find some needles in the haystack, but the literal ONLY commonality between us and EA NHL players is "hockey good."

I certainly don't envy the task of recruiting players-- we're essentially trying to hit the middle of a Venn diagram consisting of "sports enjoyers" on one side and "roleplaying nerds" on the other. We live in a niche within a niche