Well, this is a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, it is been a thoroughly enjoyable month that I will sad to see end - on the other hand it has been knackering and it can't finish a moment too soon!

To the people who are part of my HQ during this past month: A huge, huge heartfelt thank you. You went above and beyond my expectations, and more importantly, beyond the expectations of the game staff - for that you deserve more plaudits than I can possibly give.

To the Crewleaders who tolerated this never-seen-before crew, to the Leaders who backed it from the start and to the Leaders who overcame their initial misgivings: A huge, huge heartfelt thank you to you guys, too. It is literally no exaggeration to say this scheme would have been a total failure without your support; because the people we would have taken in would have had nowhere to go!

To the people who still doubt whether this crew had a positive impact and if so, to what degree: over the coming days, Squishy will be providing some data in terms of the advertising figures before and during the tenure in the Factory. In the meantime, there's just a few things I'd like to point out in terms of our performance during August.

At our peak, we had 6 recruiter/tutors.  This equates to 1.5% of the 393 made + ranks members of the game

• I am not sure what % of those 393 members have sponsorship/inviting powers
• We more commonly operated with 5 recruiters, and for a period of roughly 6 days it has been 4 recruiters.

With this number of recruiters, we have recruited a total of 27 members who have found another crew

• Of these 27 members

1. 9 have been made, or have made + points
2. 3 are inactive (with one having been shot)
3. 1 was killed for rulebreaking
4. 2 have committed suicide

In addition to those recruited who have since found other families, we have recruited a further 30 members who are still in our HQ

• Of these 30 members,  8 are still active and will be finding a crew over the coming days
• Of the remaining 22 who are inactive and will be eligible to shoot as per Squishy's instructions:

1. 7 never went past 5 units
2. 6 earned between 5-9 units
3. 5 earnt betweeen 10-14 units
4. 3 earnt 15+ units

Unfortunately, I do not personally have the data of knowing how many accounts became IA over August or how many units they had at the point of becoming IA.

Neither do I know how many total 'first character' sign ups there were, what % of them found crews, and what % of them are now on Level 25+. However, I would wager that The Factory consistently and repeatedly punched above it's weight and our numbers in terms of user retention and recruitment massively surpass the 1.5% that would be adequate considering the number of recruiters and teachers we had.

The reason I bring this up is not out of self congratulation, or downplaying the achievements of others; it is to put across a very simple point which is the most important thing I will take away from this experience. Make the new players care. Make them want to log in again and make them want to play. We didn't have an approach of standardised teaching; the vast majority of conversations I had with people in my HQ were OOC in nature.  I appreciate I'm on the verge of getting rambly here without really articulating my point properly; but I will say this:

We sometimes forget the nature of this game is so community centric, simply because we are so exposed to it. This doesn't have the features of some other games, but as every person here can tell you - if you stick around here long enough, you will get addicted. We all know that. Sometimes, it isn't the game that makes people stick around long enough, it's the people. Sometimes, the newb will log in the next day because they want to finish off the couple of conversations they were having; or because on the first day of the game they were already talking to 10 different people.

From my own experience and feedback from talking to these noobs is that this crew was a massively positive influence in this regard. Signing up, joining a crew (Family? Alliance? Guild? Faction?) and being relentlessly taught the game doesn't set this place apart from any other game they'll ever try. Signing up and being exposed to a much wider group of people from all over the site, and conversing with many different people gives them a unique experience - and perhaps more importantly - gives us solid, dependable additions to the userbase with new blood we actually want around.

</Ramble>

Will you be posting a list where the IA members are?