Increase the population of tw...yet another idea

[Dreamwin]

magi koz, no betting. Just 'x' buy-in tournaments.

[Vehicle]

Rather than go through all the trouble to have monthly competitions, why don't you just offer a cash prize for the winning squads of TWL? A TWL Op could easily gather PayPal information from the winning squad(s) and distibute the money.

There are also a couple benifits for the community in adopting this. First, and my personal favorite, is more, smaller, squads. People will be encouraged to keep their squads small to maximize thier profits.

Second, and most obvious, it will create a more competitive atmosphere. Players will be more inclined to come online on non-game days to make sure they're not rusty. Games will be even more competitive, possibly leading to higher viewership (people in spec) and, thus, more people on the server which (theoretically) would pull some players from other zones into TW.

Third, consider passing this advertisement (as per the one stickied to this forum): "Meet people from all over the world, and kill them." Now consider this slogan: "Meet people from all over the world, kill them, and compete for cash prizes." You decide.

Fourth, new players will be more inclined to stay inside of TW and to play more often in an effort to get good enough to be recruited for a squad or to make enough friends to create their own.

Those are all the obvious upsides and while I'm not at all saying this is a full proof plan, I think it's a logical step.

[Static Burn]

Rather than go through all the trouble to have monthly competitions, why don't you just offer a cash prize for the winning squads of TWL? A TWL Op could easily gather PayPal information from the winning squad(s) and distibute the money.

Lets say you have at least 8 people on TWLJ/TWLD squads and 12 on TWLB squads, then you need prize money for 28 people. That means $560 for $20 per person or $1120 for $40 per person. I don't know about you but a chance to win $40 isn't much motivation for me to play any extra for the 4+ months it takes to complete TWL. Where would you get that kind of money anyway... And if you had that money it would be better spent on some kind of internet advertising for the game I would think.

[Galaxy Turbo]

Money for winners of TWL I am not sure about, if you had all that money and distributed it to every player there's not much in it. Maybe if you took the best 5 players in squads or something then that might work out, it'll encourage competition not only outside the squad but intra-squad competition.

Then again you could always spend this prize money on proper advertising, I don't know.

[Vehicle]

True, in retrospect that would be rather costly. But you could let the community vote on the most influential players of each league and reward each of them some dough.

[Dreamwin]

TWLD and TWLJ money leagues. 5 per team. if prizepool would be like 2500$ = 500$ each.

[Purple Heart]

True, in retrospect that would be rather costly. But you could let the community vote on the most influential players of each league and reward each of them some dough.

When it comes down to votes, people usually turn it into a popularity contest moreso than a actual skill contest. People will be voting for their "favorite" player, not the "most skilled" player.

Lets say you DO gather around $2500, thats enough money to get some small time advertising done which can have a MUCH greater effect than just giving money to players, who will end up using it to buy a candy bar a day, giving nothing in return to TW.

There needs to be more thought put into this, but then again I guess thats why it's on the forums, for everyones opinions to get combined in.

But anytime you put money into something, it better have results; if not you have allot of angry donaters.

[Stompa]

The grand prize should be a Nissan Sentra.

[Money]

only way i could see this being a fair event is if there was a lag limit of ohhhhhhh

150ms high and .5 packetloss.

[Heroin Bob]

The grand prize should be a Nissan Sentra.

i have a 1993 you can use, its an XE even!

[CaptainPoopface]

I think almost all the money we might theoretically raise should be geared toward advertising. Prize money won't necessarily make people want to get into SS, become good at it, stick around, etc., like we want them to. Prize money is for vets who already play a lot and want to raise the stakes.

I worked heavily with Google AdWords in a previous job. The way it works, you bid on a keyword or phrase, and based on your bid (among many other factors), your little ad appears at a certain position on the Google search results page. You pay Google $0.75 (or whatever your bid is) every time someone clicks your ad. Generally, higher bids yield a better position, where you get dramatically more clicks compared to lower positions.

It's a surprisingly complex system, but it boils down to this: Catch someone's attention quickly, link them to a sexy landing page where it's very clear what to do next (i.e., giant green button that says "Download Continuum!"), and get them playing as soon as possible. So we would need someone to make a sexy landing page (the current SS download pages are definitely not sexy), and we would want people to have a blast the first time they play it. That means suggesting that they play during peak hours in purepub (the most fun pub game IMO), and maybe put a special character by their username so veterans/assholes cut the new people some slack and don't immediately get up their ass about being noobs, idiots, retards, etc.

As a free alternative to Google AdWords, we could launch a Google bomb on keywords like "free MMORPG." This is necessarily a grassroots effort.

It would also help if we made a 30, 60 and/or 90 second video showcasing the great times to be had in SS, and put that on the landing page. Show a one-shot kill with warbird, a nice teamfer with a rocket jav, a turret, a good flag room brawl, etc. Also put it on Youtube and post it as a video response to MMORPG videos, space ship games, etc.

If possible, it would be nice to make a tutorial arena, where a jav robot fires a bomb to kill a dummy ship, shoots butt bullets to kill a dummy ship, and activates a rocket, then invites the new user to do those things. Same with all the ships, maybe some fundamental strategy tips for each ship, and the basics of flying. Making things go boom is a very satisfying experience and a good way to get people addicted if we make the first few boom-booms easy.

[Pressure Drop]

money would be best spent in advertising, the game needs new blood rather than a one off increased interest from former players.

attractive banners on freeware multiplayer online game sites and voting places might be good use of the money.

when the tw.org site was reworked it really should have embeded some videos of TWL action and some events ... this would give a better idea for a random person checking out the site what it looks like. The current screen shots up are piss poor not showing any action have no comments and leave you with no idea what the game is about at all ...

also bring back the clocks that show the comon timezones across the world ....

[Vehicle]

I think almost all the money we might theoretically raise should be geared toward advertising. Prize money won't necessarily make people want to get into SS, become good at it, stick around, etc., like we want them to. Prize money is for vets who already play a lot and want to raise the stakes.

I worked heavily with Google AdWords in a previous job. The way it works, you bid on a keyword or phrase, and based on your bid (among many other factors), your little ad appears at a certain position on the Google search results page. You pay Google $0.75 (or whatever your bid is) every time someone clicks your ad. Generally, higher bids yield a better position, where you get dramatically more clicks compared to lower positions.

It's a surprisingly complex system, but it boils down to this: Catch someone's attention quickly, link them to a sexy landing page where it's very clear what to do next (i.e., giant green button that says "Download Continuum!"), and get them playing as soon as possible. So we would need someone to make a sexy landing page (the current SS download pages are definitely not sexy), and we would want people to have a blast the first time they play it. That means suggesting that they play during peak hours in purepub (the most fun pub game IMO), and maybe put a special character by their username so veterans/assholes cut the new people some slack and don't immediately get up their ass about being noobs, idiots, retards, etc.

As a free alternative to Google AdWords, we could launch a Google bomb on keywords like "free MMORPG." This is necessarily a grassroots effort.

It would also help if we made a 30, 60 and/or 90 second video showcasing the great times to be had in SS, and put that on the landing page. Show a one-shot kill with warbird, a nice teamfer with a rocket jav, a turret, a good flag room brawl, etc. Also put it on Youtube and post it as a video response to MMORPG videos, space ship games, etc.

If possible, it would be nice to make a tutorial arena, where a jav robot fires a bomb to kill a dummy ship, shoots butt bullets to kill a dummy ship, and activates a rocket, then invites the new user to do those things. Same with all the ships, maybe some fundamental strategy tips for each ship, and the basics of flying. Making things go boom is a very satisfying experience and a good way to get people addicted if we make the first few boom-booms easy.

This. Except for putting an icon to distinguish players as newbs as that would have the exact opposite effect you want to achieve. Players would just hunt the newbies.

[FireFlash2K]

Quick and easy way would be to post a blurb on sites like Digg.com and Reddit.com, then bombard the post with upvotes to get it to the front page for a few hours. I think it might've been done before (without success of getting on the front page), but it wouldn't hurt to try it again.

- FF2K

[Jeenyuss]

I think almost all the money we might theoretically raise should be geared toward advertising. Prize money won't necessarily make people want to get into SS, become good at it, stick around, etc., like we want them to. Prize money is for vets who already play a lot and want to raise the stakes.

I worked heavily with Google AdWords in a previous job. The way it works, you bid on a keyword or phrase, and based on your bid (among many other factors), your little ad appears at a certain position on the Google search results page. You pay Google $0.75 (or whatever your bid is) every time someone clicks your ad. Generally, higher bids yield a better position, where you get dramatically more clicks compared to lower positions.

It's a surprisingly complex system, but it boils down to this: Catch someone's attention quickly, link them to a sexy landing page where it's very clear what to do next (i.e., giant green button that says "Download Continuum!"), and get them playing as soon as possible. So we would need someone to make a sexy landing page (the current SS download pages are definitely not sexy), and we would want people to have a blast the first time they play it. That means suggesting that they play during peak hours in purepub (the most fun pub game IMO), and maybe put a special character by their username so veterans/assholes cut the new people some slack and don't immediately get up their ass about being noobs, idiots, retards, etc.

As a free alternative to Google AdWords, we could launch a Google bomb on keywords like "free MMORPG." This is necessarily a grassroots effort.

It would also help if we made a 30, 60 and/or 90 second video showcasing the great times to be had in SS, and put that on the landing page. Show a one-shot kill with warbird, a nice teamfer with a rocket jav, a turret, a good flag room brawl, etc. Also put it on Youtube and post it as a video response to MMORPG videos, space ship games, etc.

If possible, it would be nice to make a tutorial arena, where a jav robot fires a bomb to kill a dummy ship, shoots butt bullets to kill a dummy ship, and activates a rocket, then invites the new user to do those things. Same with all the ships, maybe some fundamental strategy tips for each ship, and the basics of flying. Making things go boom is a very satisfying experience and a good way to get people addicted if we make the first few boom-booms easy.

needed to quote this.