Marketing Plan Plan

[PicassoCT]

If i searched right, that was all Atlantais work, but then Fuseboxxy appeared and snaped the search button

Srsly, besides vincent, irrgiation, public order, the streets and sanitation what have the AFs ever done for us?

[SinbadEV]

AF do you ever do anything besides complain on the forums?

Yes, I did a LOT of things.

I think he meant to say:

AF do you ever post on the forum other than to complain?

It was still rude, but not as rude as you took it.

[SinbadEV]

Anyways, dont advertise spring as an engine, especially not with BA, because then your tarring ALL of spring projects with the TA stigma. Advertise the engine to developers, or advertise individual games mentioning they run on the spring engine, and provide links to where they can find more. Its far mroe effective, it gets them engrossed finding out about what they could be playing, makign them far mroe likely to actually play it

I agree with this and think that it is an important point that I was trying to make.

[AF]

Indeed, we want people to explore and invest their time. Then they feel they need to follow through installing and figuring it out to justify the time they spent ooo'ing and aaah'ing at the artwork and videos.

Its too easy to get lost in what we currently appear to have. We have to dig deeper and discover what we actually have, and think about what we actually want.

• Its bad to advertise the engine as a bundle of games because its innefficient and gives us no advantages, it just gives us a bad reputation for quality fo consistency.
• Generic marketing for generic people gives generic results.
• Specific marketing of specific games yields bigger results. Just look at kernel panic, that's had more articles about it than the engine ever has. I cant think of one publication that has made a fuss over spring. Starwars IW on spring, Kernel panic on spring, Gundam on spring etc, that's what they want tot alk about, they cant sell an engine to their readers, most wouldnt know what an engine was.
• The work needed to make things massively better isn't large, and for the most part is mostly done, its just that nobody wants to do the last bit.
• Most RTS players never go online
• Of those that do, there's a large segment that wont go online till theyre happy they can trounce the AI or at least learn the tech tree enough to get a feel for things

My reccomendation on what to do:

Add a shortcut to the start menu entitled Singleplayer, which launches springlobby with a command line parameter that then makes the lobby go straight to the singleplayer tab. Another parameter to define a game and map to preselect would also be good.

When this has been done:

Prepare installers and promotional media for a handful of specific games that are considered complete. They must have some kind of web presence that users can be sent to ( this site does not count, moddb etc count but are suboptimal, so long as the user can download from this site and its kept upto date ). Examples include Kernel Panic, BA, and The Cursed.

Then, make a concerted push to advertise these games. Not together as that would dilute and confuse. Pulling in users for any of these individual games should help all games under the engine. Make a note that these games run on the spring engine and provide a url to this site, but dont make it the prime message, and dont mention other games, just say that there are other games without mentioning their names.

As soon as you mention one you immediately slice through the audience to specifics. Mention Starwars? Oh but this percentage dont like starwars! Well what about BA? But these people tried TA and didnt like it, BA doesnt appeal! Wait but Gundam! Nooo these people dismiss it as stupid manga because they're a load of douches

[luckywaldo7]

Hasn't springlobby been starting on the single player tab since, like, years ago?

[AF]

Its a setting, its poorly executed, and the users dont know that spring lobby has a singleplayer tab until they decide they want to play online and click on it.

[koshi]

It's a setting alright, whose DEFAULT is the singleplayer tab at least since 2009-08-07. Go check your 'facts' before sprouting misinformation AF

[PicassoCT]

If its not complete, than just dont call it that way. There are plenty of enthusiast out there ready to take every comercial crap with a cup and swallow it- name the fact, call it Spring Beta, or a Mod Alpha, and you will get company.

Also a reminder Program would be cool. Sort of If you disliked this program, but would like to check back later, when
() pathfinding is fixxed.
() sound works optimum.
() graphics have improved significantly.
() a full singleplayer with tutorial exists.
() better anything.
() time of your choice has past.
.... until then keep my map and mod files around, and regularly look if this demands are met.

Let the users select which point is to be met in the future, before they want to be offered a new installer again. If the users have a voice to vote, this would also kill this sort of threads, because that little tool would spit out the statistics you longed for.

Just why not this? If you are right, then peoples voice will tell the same.

[Hobo Joe]

Anyways, dont advertise spring as an engine, especially not with BA, because then your tarring ALL of spring projects with the TA stigma. Advertise the engine to developers, or advertise individual games mentioning they run on the spring engine, and provide links to where they can find more. Its far mroe effective, it gets them engrossed finding out about what they could be playing, makign them far mroe likely to actually play it

TA related things, including BA, are what keeps Spring going. And considering the very integrated state of Spring (everything in the same lobby), it would be misleading to advertise a Spring game without explaining what Spring is and how it works.

Once again, if you want it advertised like that, do it yourself. I'm not going to sit around for the Spring forums review process which as the consistent end result of NOTHING HAPPENING. You have strong feelings about how Spring is advertised, so why don't you do something about it, instead of telling other people they're doing it wrong.

And yes, I was talking about your forum posts, every post I see of yours is complaining about something or telling people they're doing something wrong. Every post of yours in this thread is a prime example. I'm glad you accomplished all those things, why don't you keep contributing? You spend a great deal of time investing in your infallible opinions on everything Spring related, telling everyone else how they can do things the best way, YOUR way. Stop telling and start doing.

[smoth]

Joe what are you so Preoccupied with wanting me to be pissed. I don't understand it. Again ba is not the driving force of spring just the stagnat pool where people feel comfortable. It has little to do with rhe engine development. I didn't say your post was invalid I am say do not post that crap here i don't care about SA fora is said here in case you missed In your slim of the post I said here

[AF]

Ive been here 5 years and seen lots of people attempt what your planning. It obviously didnt work as good as you hope it will, lets try something else for once.


And Koshi it isn't misinformation. There is no singleplayer item in the start menu, players dont know springlobby even supports singleplayer till they decide to play online, and from what we've seen, new players will attempt to run spring.exe first. Your singleplayer functionality also has poor defaults ( it has none at all, it doesn't even preselect the first mod and map in the dropdown ).

[koshi]

Gah, I'll just heed some advice I've been given recently and stop arguing, you just ignore whatever doesn't fit your view and twist the rest.

[AF]

That's exactly what you did. I was quite happy to go hooray that's a little bit of the work done already and we haven't lifted a finger.

Eitherway it would be a huge help if springlobby autoselected the last loaded mod or the first one, and I dont see the command line option there, and what about people who've changed the setting and thus breaking the singleplayer shortcut?

[Hobo Joe]

I have no delusions about it. I'm sure it will only gain a few members but I felt like doing something. It's not like I think it will suddenly make Spring boom, it was more a matter of attitude.

I'm sick and tired of how anti-proactive these forums are, people on here insist delaying everything until it's done just the way they want it(Granted, not everyone, but the most vocal members, AF in particular) and so nothing ever happens, particularly where marketing is concerned. New players are new players, no matter what game they're playing, they're new blood, potential developers and advertisers.


And besides, I enjoy BA and want other people to enjoy it as well. Sue me.


In regards to single player, I made an installer that only makes start menu entries for SpringLobby and settings. SpringLobby is called simply "Spring Lobby", not 'multiplayer lobby' or anything like that. My point being that it's a very small obstacle and one that is easy to get around, we just need more installers and more focus on making things easy for newer players.

[SinbadEV]

lack of "Full Screen" isn't the problem with the lobby, the problem is that the single player experience looks a lot like using an un-signed in lobby.

What I think would be best is something very much like the old "Spring SP" when it was a menu when you could choose your game, map and assign AI to other teams... I ideally this interface would have the following.

Command line start-up to choose the "game" to be presented... it would probably be good to make this read an XML/Text file defining what to show in the interface so that stuff didn't have to be inferred from the mod-files and a list of "approved" maps, "mutators" and AIs could be presented.

The interface would have a relatively simple way to "switch games" which would be populated by the XMLs or text files or whatevers that are in the right directory... button would only be available if two or more games are installed.

The interface would have a button for "Skirmish" or whatever we want to call it that would open up an interface for choosing a map and assigning AIs to bot slots and start a single-player game.

There may also be button(s) to start any other "special" core-game types, like "Chickens" or "Spawner" or "Defence of the Core" which may or may not then prompt the user to choose a map.

There would also, ideally, be another button to go to a game specific version of the missions/campaigns page from ZK (as such, this special interface might be best implemented as a special case of the ZK Lobby)... finally there would be a "multiplayer" button... this would present a warning indicating that you are about to start the multiplayer lobby or whatver and to choose which installed multiplayer lobby to use.


in addition to all this stuff there should be help buttons spread throughout.

[AF]

more focus on making things easy for newer players

And yet you attack me for wanting 1 small thing which would only take a small amount fo time? The springlobby developers could do my request in under an hour, and Id do it myself only I haven't the setup to build it myself.

Its not like I made a blanket statement, I said what was wrong, I said what needs doing, I said how to do it, and then what to do next. I explained why what you intend to do can do more harm than good, and explained how numerous people before you tried exactly the same thing and got nowhere.

You don't need to sit on your arse until somebody says yes we've done it now lets try the old method that never worked anyway. There are other ways of marketing spring, and those have shown promise for other developers. Just look at Smoth and Zwszg. Theyre getting plenty of attention and they're not advertising spring, they're advertising a game, singular, one game.

If you want to advertise BA then good, advertise BA, but dont mix it up with other games unless your trying to attract developers and game makers. If your after players, tailor your marketing plan for BA to maximise effectiveness. Afterall what harm can more BA players do?

[KaiserJ]

what a load of shit

[Jazcash]

All I can say is: TASClient <3

[knorke]

I still think the engine should also be advertised to developers, ai coders and the like.

[AF]

I still think the engine should also be advertised to developers, ai coders and the like.

I agree with this completely =] Please don't take my posts on game advertising and advertising the engine as a game as applying to this. Infact there's no real major stumbling blocks that need lifting in this respect, so I say run with the wind in this direction.