Hire a marketing team - please.

[Supreme]

Also have a short text saying something along the lines of:

Dont feel like reading right now? Feel like getting right in the action?

Start up trenchwars (+how) press escape 1 and start shooting up other people! (esc 2 to 8 for other ships) Every other ship is another person!

arrows for movement
control = bullet
shift = thrust

(for other ships:
tab = bombs
shift tab = mines)
shift control = repel

Ps: If you dont understand something you can always ask our staffers by typing "?help" and your question.

[kthx]

For anyone saying that people log into the game and are astounded by how complicated it is.. keep in mind its the exact same fucking control settings as like 90% of all PC games out there.

You move with arrow keys wow thats hard to figure out.
You shoot with control and there are 8 ships that fire differently wow thats like every other fucking FPS game that has multiple weapon selections IE every fucking one of them.
Wait Wait you have to "hold" a "flag" in the base to win the round.. that sounds vaguely familiar for some reason.. oh yeah king of the fucking hill thats in every single fucking game out there that has a multiplayer mode.

Maybe the problem isn't that people login and find this game so fucking complicated considering literally retarded people like violence managed to learn how to play it, maybe its that nobody fucking downloads the game because we haven't bothered advertising it for the last two fucking years with the excuse of "were going to have a big mother fucking advertising blowout and drop 5k in a day" because that makes much more sense than actually working on this shit day in and day out.

So in closing.. our three biggest problems are laziness, ignorance, and ego. Staff members are too lazy to actually proactively work on helping the zone and the people in control of the money are too ignorant to see that they waited too fucking long for something like a purdy website to make things better, and staff in general especially the people in control of this whole advertisement shit are too fucking egotistical to admit that it isn't the game itself or the "complicated gameplay and controls" that make people not understand it its that they screwed the pooch so fucking hard that only the dregs of online society even bother trying to DL the game.

Do what I said and fix the game already. It shouldn't have taken two fucking years to do.

[Reab]

so, where are they told they have to hold a flag, or that base is at north? It's not hard to put a direct link to the website as soon as someone clicks the install button. What's good about advertising if we can't keep the guys in the game. Little things like that can make a difference.

But you are right about the rest. Even Mage+ managed to learn how to change arenas.


Kthx' idea was awesome, you guys should go with that.

[Supreme]

Oh yeah, im sure people will know escape q exits the game. Or that escape A shows different arena's. Or .?go function. Etc.

Though, just like Reab, I agree witrh the plan. I just think most people that do download the game are offset about its complexity with those things..

[kthx]

Look the basic idea of the game which is pub isn't that hard to understand, generally hitting escape makes you quit a game, or atleast pull up a menu that tells you how to quit (diablo 2). This games buttons for MOST things that a new player would need to know are very similar to every other game out there. Yeah some sort of tutorial would be nice if it was on the website and the player wanted to learn more.. maybe tempt them with joining ranked leagues and squads full of players etc. Like I said.. over the course of the first month does someone really need to leave pub besides going to a hosted event that tells the player what to type ?go blahblah.

[Creature]

So what do you suggest we should do with that $ then marketing wise, Creat?

Pay $5 or $10 for internal referrals.

Minimum played time like 10 TWDivisions games, develop a system to track new players submitted through a referral system. This also ensures they automatically have a built in help system via their friends and will quickly be submersed into the community, which is the #1 reason people play this game. Look at the number of players that have become notable as a result of someone showing them the game. Many players have siblings or friends who introduced them to the game and kept them playing. I would practically gurantenee that each of them was shown the game by a friend. Not only that but this automatically gets people into TWD and the competitive space that keeps players developing and playing.

What marketing $s shoudl be used for is replicate an already known method of success rather than trying to advertise.

You won't generate enough eyeballs through advertising that will actually stay on Trench Wars. You are better off providing incentives for players currently in the game to evangelize and push the game.

[Cancer!]

NOTE: this post is sloppy, i'm a littel drunk. hwoever, its close to the mark and so i'll let it stand.

fact: social media and online gaming are the most popular online activities.

metacurrency + intenet game + social network = cool

fact: this game is teh longest running massive multiplayer internet game, it has its own in-game currency and its own in-built social network. we have players here that can boast that htey've been playing this game for 15 years+. what other game can boast that?

nobody coudl argue against hte fact that the game is in decline. it's gradual and its not entirely immune to just reaching an endpoint and basically going kaput! this game has the potential to be amazingly successful again, its not broken as such, it just needs a little tinkering.

so given the rapid decay/turnover of players, innovation is necesary, and the current leadership is not working. i believe the problem of operations should be addressed first of all, and then look atm arketing. if operations arent' democritised and opened up then we risk hollowing out the community. tghe current group of hidden "leaders" lack legitimacy, they do not provide good services, and they simply exert their control. the result is to the detriment to the players. the raeson we keep playing is not because the game is run well bu because WE LIKE THE GAME.

i say that rather than a small team of unelected "leadres" deciding how the game is improved and run, the game shoudl be improved and run by the community. if somebody wants to make a new map or modify game textures or whatever, it should be easy, and it shoudl be encouraged if they are so inclined. make it easy to modify the game - include a map editor in the continuum client itself, make it easy to test out new levels, this level fo pariticpatino shoudlnt be hard you know.

we have a a lot of community advocates here. we need to grow the game getting everybody involved in the communtiy that wanst to partiipate for the benefit of the whole game. SO BUILD THE ECOSYSTEM OF PARTICIPANTS. identify volunteers and reward effort with recognition and perhaps monetary rewards. the community HAS the funds. oR DOES IT? hoarding funds/stealing funds is an issue. trust is an issue. the game should be OWNED in large part by the players and ctonirbutors. all financial decisions and operations should be based on PARTICIPATION. you could even have a license fee of a small amount of moeny to keep the game running, volunteers are exempt, to pay for on-going expenses.

spacebux: the spacebux money system is not stable. stablise the money system. either $10 buys you X amount of spacebux or not. make it explicit as a model. you get spacebux for financial contribution. altnernatively, make it so you can't buy spacebux with real money. or ADD instability to the monetary system. occasionally have a lottery or make it so players wallets careen into oblivion with some kind of in-game interaction. random luck determines your future. have new methods of gamblign like a lottery: sometimes a player wins big. here's a potential thought: make it so you get spacebux for referring a friend. or make it so spacebux translates into status which improves the weight of a players status or power. or continual success with makign spacebux yields advancements in skills and levels - unlocks new weapons structures unavailable to lower levels blhab blah yeah.

what about rent a space? sell aggregations of unused serveer space for spacebux in the game for level making or for people to creat ea home for thesmselves. bascially, build a set of cunctionality tino the client itself that enables people to biuld their own maps and have aeras on teh server. or have quests.. you get points for.. your quest is.. your reward is... you know? a quest could be the equivilent to an attack on an enemy squad on their home turf. you hav to drain the enemy of their bank account. you tag the enemy with your own banner. you disable their ability to buy new weapons. etc.

competition: contesets between indviiduals/squads should be allotted time periods with a given objective. kill x amount of palyers in 20 minutes in base or wbduel, etc. tournament achievement sshould translate into special recognition (spacebux, real cash, emblems, new weapons, leadership positions, etc). squad loyalty shoudl be rewarded. focus it on tournament play. eliminate squads that lose. squads must compete for survival.

marketing...

seed interest. start it off in facebook, twitter, purchase ads on reddit, feed subspace blogs, incite conversations on other forums. facebook and twitter are basically lik eblogs. create profiles of targets and engage other teenagers on these networks about a fun and easy onling game. we need people to pay attentino to us. how are they going to find us in the real wordl? is it going to be reluctantly through an ad on a blog they read, or through a top 100 cool retro games post on a site, or maybe more likely they find an online identity of someone who plays the game...

okay thats all for now, this is turning into an essay, and essays are long and annoying to read.

[Fit of Rage]

I'm pretty much caught up on this thread but I don't have a clear idea as to the current status of things. Would someone (24, diakka, Jason, I don't really care who) be able to provide a summary/current status of both the website development and the marketing plan which will be implemented after it's finished?

[Tone]

[kthx]

Supposedly the website was going to be done in a month, but that was like a month ago so. Its retarded these guys don't post something.

[the_paul]

I know I'm not supposed to disagree with other staffers but fuck it, I completely agree with Wark. Every single staff meeting I attend I push for this, to have a weekly or biweekly status update. Even if the update is that there is no update, at least there's communication. It's like paying someone to build you a house, and they never tell you anything about it at all. The people handling the money here wouldn't be happy if they were put in a situation like that irl, so I'm not sure why they are acting like its perfectly ok here. A paragraph or 2 every week or couple of weeks should not be too much to ask when the people who fund the project clearly want it. It's stupid.

[D1st0rt]

that's from sacrifice of angels, right? baller episode, season 6 was really great

...and not in a psyops disinfo bot kind of way either

[Turban]

I know I'm not supposed to disagree with other staffers but fuck it, I completely agree with Wark. Every single staff meeting I attend I push for this, to have a weekly or biweekly status update. Even if the update is that there is no update, at least there's communication. It's like paying someone to build you a house, and they never tell you anything about it at all. The people handling the money here wouldn't be happy if they were put in a situation like that irl, so I'm not sure why they are acting like its perfectly ok here. A paragraph or 2 every week or couple of weeks should not be too much to ask when the people who fund the project clearly want it. It's stupid.

+1

not that it matters what i say on these forums, i've always been the type that's not afraid to disagree with something, especially retarded ideas that make no sense in the first place. i'll continue to do this until we can start doing shit properly, whether i'm staff or not.

[Tone]

that's from sacrifice of angels, right? baller episode, season 6 was really great

...and not in a psyops disinfo bot kind of way either

AirDate: November 03 1997

SubSpace V. 1.0 beta: November 30, 1997

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_%28video_game%29

[soup]

the paul has a good idea


but I would axe him from staff because he disagrees with you