Getting more gamers!; A thread to try find a way.(Promotion)

[Jasper1984]

@Nemo, on the one hand, yes i did look superficially, on the other hand, maybe that is the point? People might not go to 'contact' when they want to learn about the game. They might go to 'guide', there they find unit guides.(Too deep into the subject too fast.)
And where did you get the idea that i liked CA's website better? I did say 'maybe' it should be higher on the list.

@Argh, no i am not, ~1year player and on the forum(but haven't been here for a while.) I guess i am not a creator here either. (All i did it try to make the ak+1 but failed at the texturing bit. But i have my own projects outside spring also.) Maybe i should have only asked if a 'promotion document' i s a good idea, now i may seem belittling of your websites and features, by talking about them with respect of retaining new players.)

I guess i should have done some research before heading into the Gaza strip of long toes. I do appreciate that you made all this, of course, with your investment in your mod/game and it being underplayed. (And BA being overplayed.) But i also think that there just are not enough players to regularly have games of all of the good mods. Which is exactly why i think we should try get more players.

[Caradhras]

SOS - same old shit

Hell, Jasper is right in the first place.
When I start my lobby, I normally just see empty autohosts, if I open a game by myself it takes ages until someone join. If this happens anyway.

Then sometimes something happens and all you can get is a 8vs8 on autohost xyz.

We need more fucking players! Stop arguing around, I did this, you didnt do that.
And its true, we have very few beginners and they are easily discouraged.

So, be serious! What things can be further done? I am willing to contribute with my limited skills and resources.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Supcom had a nice feature in it's lobby - a big shiny button called 'play now!' where you would instantly join a populated game waiting for players. I don't remember if it matched according to rank or not, but that would also be a potentially good feature for noobs (so that they aren't autodumped in a high ranking game).

[Gota]

Oo
This feature already exists...at least in TASclient.
There can't be any serious talk of a bigger community until:
#1 The Spring exe is put in some directory and not in the main spring folder,or some other way is used to make sure players will get into the lobby first.

#2 player profiles,email verification and renaming limts(can rename every 24h,for example).

#3 autohosts become "on demand" and not exist in the lobby.

#4 many more maps are downloaded as a default when you install spring(you don't have to choose to download them they are marked by default).

[AF]

Supcom had a nice feature in it's lobby - a big shiny button called 'play now!' where you would instantly join a populated game waiting for players. I don't remember if it matched according to rank or not, but that would also be a potentially good feature for noobs (so that they aren't autodumped in a high ranking game).

I implemented this in AFLobby/Battlehub the button witht eh big random dice, and IIRC satirik took note and copied, but I dont know what happened. Or was that spring lobby =s

[Warlord Zsinj]

Shows how much attention I pay

But really, a button like that is meant for noobs, anyone who knows what they are doing will likely be more discerning when choosing a game, so it needs to be pretty big and shiny to be attention grabbing. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say it should be an automatic pop up when you start the lobby for the first time, with a big button that says 'let's get started!', and a little 'do not show this when I join' checkbox.

[Pendrokar]

I just inspected my Trailer on youtube that has 50k views(It is not much as many as think of it!) and you know what:
People find my trailer by searching keywords "Total Annihilation; Total Annihlation 2; Total Annihilation Spring". Of course no one will find it by searching "Spring". It might need a rename because of that!
Also they find it by related videos which are either OTA or Spring related.

[Gota]

I just inspected my Trailer on youtube that has 50k views(It is not much as many as think of it!) and you know what:
People find my trailer by searching keywords "Total Annihilation; Total Annihlation 2; Total Annihilation Spring". Of course no one will find it by searching "Spring". It might need a rename because of that!
Also they find it by related videos which are either OTA or Spring related.

Or SupCom related.

[smoth]

you know israel has one of the largest armies on the planet and people in gaza are mostly civilians..

The point is you looked in the SPRING COMMUNITY for this crap. Not outside. I have 94 people watching the development of gundam, with over 25,000 visits here: http://www.moddb.com/games/gundam-rts

Most of my players are not going to come from this community and pulling people to come play ta projects and then thinking they will come play something is is ridiculous. It is only through the pea soup thick haze of "oh I remember that game it was awesome." That is just going to pull more people in for content that spring should try and get rid of.

What we have been doing is developing smaller outside communities who are interested in our projects. For myself I know this is the way to go but for say IW or '44 I don't know the direction they want to take things as it is their choice and I am not privy to all their conversations.

It is good to promote spring AS AN ENGINE that is easy to work with and very potent when it comes to making the rts fantasy that you always wanted. I do not really think general spring promotion should be about any specific game. The games should just show the variety of possibility that the spring engine is capable off. Which right now there are many examples. You should have done your homework and looked at all the projects that can represent that. We have a mod forum with all that crap in it so there really is no excuse for ignorance. shit, if you looked at art and modeling you should have at least mentioned IW or 44, I can understand not mentioning gundam I seldom give you guys info on the progress but s44 and IW... there is no excuse.

[Gota]

you know israel has one of the largest armies on the planet and people in gaza are mostly civilians..

i do not find your allegory amusing(if thats what you meant).

Replace GAZA with Iraq,Israel with the US and "one of the largest armies on the planet" with "the largest army in the planet.

you know...Iraq never attacked The US..
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS YOU HYPOCRITE.
the end.

socialist ****..

[caldera]

#1 The Spring exe is put in some directory and not in the main spring folder,or some other way is used to make sure players will get into the lobby first.

+1

i remember when i downloaded spring for the first time i just started spring.exe and thought "wtf i have to uninstall this shit immediately..."

[Pxtl]

Right now, when a new player comes to Spring looking for mod X, this is what happens:

1) They look for single-player and find none.
2) They look for a game online of mod X, find none.
3) They see that everybody is playing BA online. They download BA.
4) They go get their ass kicked in a few BA games and are told to spec moar.

at that point they either become another BA player, or they give up.

Now, I don't hate BA, but the fact is that the above use-case is a problem. BA in particular has a vicious learning curve, which means it probably scares off more players than it keeps.

So really, what we should be talking about is how to fix the above use-case. Spring does get some promotion - PURE hit the top of a lot of news sites, and Spring is often mentioned in F/OSS gaming articles.

[Jazcash]

Because the Spring Engine is not owned by a specific company that makes other games and is just a self supporting project upholded by members of the community. There is nothing to depend upon that will keep Spring updated and running smoothly for the future.

Also the fact Spring is not owned by a developer will not help in promoting the Spring Engine including the fact we don't have strong advertising power.

I'm thinking we should give Spring a motto or feature that no other RTS games offer. I know there are many but we need a specific feature that will draw players in. I'm thinking, the fact that the Spring Engine is an Open Source project will be our main attraction.

Spring Engine - The open source RTS engine

Oh and I suggest we get a decent Dev and Admin team together and listed so people actually know who is in charge of the project and who keeps it all together. Oh and before promoting the Spring Engine, I suggest we get all the popular bugs fixed.

[Gota]

There is nothing you can do about a project that has no users and wants to get new ones...especially if the game does not rely on any known stories such as the gundam universe or Star wars etc..

The only way a game can get players is if it's actually really good and it trying to get noticed..
And if all those are true than it will get players...slowly...
A game without any emotional ties to the player like a massive advertising campaign or an already established background story that is well known will have to be patient...

[Caradhras]

i think spring has to finally get into the official repositories of debian/ubuntu/opensuse/fedora distributions.

Spring is the only serious strategy engine running natively on Linux. Make profit of it!

I think, we should not think about getting people who are already aware of Spring to actually play it, but instead we should maximize the amount of people, who get in touch with Spring!!!

Linux users are normally much keener with new software and aware that it isnt done with "click to install". They arent this easily discouraged.

We should stop focusing our marketing efforts on Windows DAUs! The DAU is not interested in strategic possibilities of the Engine, they play Moorhuhn and Deer Hunter, but no strategy games with a gazillion tactics.

[Jazcash]

Games today are about online gameplay. Not stories, players don't care about those although they give a game a design plan and a clear objective.

[Pxtl]

Games today are about online gameplay. Not stories, players don't care about those although they give a game a design plan and a clear objective.

The single player story-mode gives the new player an experience beyond getting their ass handed to them online... repeatedly. It lets them learn the game gradually, and it lets them win something. It also gives them something to do when there is nothing happening in the lobby.

[Forboding Angel]

Sigh, same old same old. Does anything ever change around here?

[SwiftSpear]

MTR MTR!

[Caradhras]

its all futile. no one listens...