Subspace - Continuum has been Greenlit on Steam!

[roxxkatt]

i agree that it should be a main priority, but then again it's different people focusing on that project and the marketing efforts. however, even if we get on steam, there are several issues we have to tackle before making it a reality -- the new player experience, after all, is currently a huge mess.

and how much progress has been made so far

[Turban]

and how much progress has been made so far

regarding the new player experience and retention rates, not much, in truth -- hence why i'm going to focus on that one right now. we're setting up a local chat for the marketing team, for both players and staff, and we will try to put some pressure to hopefully finish the tutorial in a timely manner which is almost done as far as i can remember. it was tested by several players and staff members in the dev zone, and only had few remaining bugs that probably should not be too hard to fix.

there is an advertisement campaign starting soon on facebook, and we have our ways to track the page visits, download conversion rates and new players. i'm not too sure how it will go, but it's still better than nothing.

[kthx]

Do people even use facebook anymore?

[Turban]

not too sure, i'm still relatively interested to see how it works out even though the better option would be focused marketing, taking advantage of sites which have a good demographic of gamers that enjoy playing indie and retro games. this could be done by any player though, on a smaller scale, by joining a forum community and getting others involved in the game -- something we did in the past, myself and wark included.

[kthx]

I literally had a game developer on kongregate/armorgames who now owns his own flash gaming website and has over 25 million players who have played his games who agreed to promote our game in one of his upcoming games for 1000 dollars. He was willing to help out because I explained the situation to him.. how we don't make money and how were an old game struggling for players. 24 who was in charge at the time blew the guy off, didn't return emails to him and all I could do was sit there and apologize until he ended up pulling his offer away. If you promise me you won't dick it over turban I will try that again with another developer.

[Shadowmere]

In regards to Facebook ads; with a dollar per day investment, 6 different pictures/ads rotating, linking to trenchwars.org with a very short description, the promise was 2k-6k views a day.
We only just started them yesterday but the Facebook ads campaign system has some good statistics to see how successful it really is.

This was done as the first step of our new marketing. No money was taken off of donations.
It was pretty much the easiest choice in terms of accessibility and getting things off the ground.

And no, I had no part in it.

EDIT: Just looking at the statistics now, out of the 6 pictures our "image #2" seems to draw the most attention by far. I can't grab it from the ad campaign site, but I'll link it here later.

[Turban]

I literally had a game developer on kongregate/armorgames who now owns his own flash gaming website and has over 25 million players who have played his games who agreed to promote our game in one of his upcoming games for 1000 dollars. He was willing to help out because I explained the situation to him.. how we don't make money and how were an old game struggling for players. 24 who was in charge at the time blew the guy off, didn't return emails to him and all I could do was sit there and apologize until he ended up pulling his offer away. If you promise me you won't dick it over turban I will try that again with another developer.

I remember that one, it could have worked at that time or at least had a long-lasting impact in terms of more player hits -- granted, I would still want to do some research on how often advertisements on flash loading screens get clicked, and using facebook as the first test we can also figure out which kind of images seem to attract the most hits etc.

[Morh]

About why the web page never happened, and never will happen: They noticed after making the page, that they couldn't get it to work with the bots. The backend of the page (joomla?), were not compatible with existing TW coding. I don't remember who told me this, were quite some time ago. Smart not to check things like this out before putting all that time and money on it. Btw didn't someone accuse 24 for buying a TV for this money? LOL

[Ephemeral]

Turb,
And please don't roll out the 'no one is willing help with web development' crap. I offered to help code many times (free of charge) with zero results. At one point I had a staffer commit to me to get me a log in and password after being 'approved' but they simply faded away never to be heard from again. After offering to help over 4 times in as many years I gave up. Now when I see anyone use the excuse used that 'no one will volunteer' it pisses me off.
Eph

[Turban]

aye,

however I haven't said a single time that we have a shortage of volunteers, but rather that we are lacking in the developer department in terms of people who have given appropriate access levels to actually help us in a meaningful way -- such as helping with the now stalled website project. sadly i'm not closely affiliated with the developer department, but i can say our mentality of protecting, and even outright refusing help (even if it is to protect some encrypted data such as player passwords) is not really helping us at this point in time. it's something that has been brought up multiple times in the past, on these forums and in-game, but it's also something that is likely to never change unless someone else gets full authority over the web access levels to decide who is allowed to help rathe than the current weird secret hand shake system where only the very selected few even stand a chance.

[Shadowmere]

This is a preview of the ad on Facebook we're running.
This particular picture is the most popular one in terms of web clicks off of it.

[the block]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1374[/ATTACH]

This is a preview of the ad on Facebook we're running.
This particular picture is the most popular one in terms of web clicks off of it.

Is there anyway to change the part of the ad that says "Download it for free now!" to something that confirms the game is 100% free to download, and 100% free to play? Since we're now in the era of freemium gaming and microtransactions where developers try and get you latched onto their tit and milk you for every cent you'll willingly hand over, I would immediately assume "Download it for free now" meant just that, it is free to download, but is it free to play? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I think 100% free no strings attached should be hammered home in some way. Otherwise I think the ad is great and I think Facebook is the perfect place to be advertising it.

[up in ya !!]

Marketing update

Hello players. I would like to announce a new marketing team is being assembled in order to thoughtfully put our game in front of the correct faces for maximum exposure. Once things start to roll we will be sure to keep you up to date here and in Face Book. As for now, started a FB campaign 4 days ago. Funded by me until it takes off and grows, then we can increase exposure. Out of the 6 ads running the one bellow has the best results. Game play does better than a logo. Friends with connections are being approached in larger venues, Twitch and PC Gamer.

[Godzero]

Seems like a step in the right direction after running those banner ads on 420chan

Interesting to see the People Reached stats too

[Ravos]

Finally a good way of advertising.
Good Job Upster!

Now lets get those damned new players!!!!