On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Discuss ideas about promoting Genesis and inviting more players into the Genesis community
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Targun
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On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Targun » 05 Aug 2011 00:00

Hello,

Since Genesis is preparing for the promotion campaign... I have just experienced something quite astonishing... I mentioned several times a polish MUD that was set thanks to the kindness of Genesis' admins who allowed to built it on 'our' mudlib and driver (then heavily modified). Just a few hours ago it started its own campaign... The results so far are... above any expactations.

http://arkadia.rpg.pl/ - to the left there are statistics. From the top- players online, new chars created in last 14 days, new chars crated last 12 months.

The advert?
http://kwejk.pl/obrazek/331702/%C5%9Awi ... mmer!.html

What is kwejk.pl? It's a very popular portal with... virals(!). (Photos/pictures/art usually with funny or touching descriptions). In case someone didn't notice an advert is just a photo and a log for each domain (based on the same series of books as The Witcher- http://www.thewitcher.com and Warhammer).

Usually the mud is played by around 50-70 players during day hours and ~100 at peak hours, with almost dead periods during 3-7 A.M. Triggers or any other functions that would prevent your char from logging out (idling) are forbidden however, so these are more or less numbers for active players. Currently 4 hours since the promotions started there are 270+ Players Online and 500+ chars created.

I have no idea how it will work out and whether this will provide stable playerbase, althouth the response from completely random group is huge so far.
Last edited by Targun on 05 Aug 2011 02:06, edited 5 times in total.

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gorboth
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by gorboth » 05 Aug 2011 00:51

Thanks for this very helpful and encouraging testimonial, Targun!

A lot has happened that I need to post about with our own game, too. I'll do that quite soon, everyone!

G.
Mmmmmm ... pie ...

Targun
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Targun » 27 Sep 2011 16:18

A little update. I made a bit of research, as I do not actively play the mud mentioned in my first post. The advert was completely player initiative. The idea behind is; 'brief expositions in the high traffic areas of the internet'. The action took 24hours and resulted in:

*3.000+ new characters created
*Avr peak hours playerbase increase in an amount of ~30 players online 4 weeks since it took place.
*There were hardly any 'infrastructure' and 'hard coded' features added/preparations made by the wizards, other than already existing (mainly short tutorial similar to the one in Genesis- teaching you how to use torches, darkness, climbing, keys etc.).

A bit off topic. Please make the font larger on the Genesis Webpage. The only reason I didn't take the effort of reading pretty much any of the content on the webpage is-the text is too small. I don't wear glasses and my sight is fine. Despite the fact it's highly inconvienient to read, your subconscious tells you not to read anything that tiny. See the adverts when they are obliged by the law to add some *star marked info, which tells you that what you just heard is a bunch of lies. Compared to the link I gave you in my first post, Genesis site looks 1.000 times better, but being monochromatic it just can't force people lean towards their screens and read A4 page content in font 8 or 10. No can do.

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Kitriana
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Kitriana » 27 Sep 2011 18:11

Can you be a little more specific on what you mean by "highly trafficed areas of the internet".... I'm sure many of us would be happy to do our due diligence. But some ideas would be great...

Kit's player
If something I wrote sounds confusing ... assume you misunderstood it.

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gorboth
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by gorboth » 27 Sep 2011 18:43

Targun,

Thanks for this great info. Your point about the font size is well-taken, and I'll look into that. It can be a trade off in terms aesthetics, because once you get the font too big, the site can start to look a little goofy and unprofessional. I'll try some different approaches and see what works.

I will also be interested to hear what you have to say to Kitriana's question. The paper campaign we are currently running is simply phase 1 of promotion. Phase 2 is what you have described - banner adds on the correct sites.

I'd love to know ... how much did it cost to place these adds? Where were they posted?

Thanks!
G.
Mmmmmm ... pie ...

Gub
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Gub » 28 Sep 2011 00:13

EDIT: Fixed typo

I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with sites like reddit.com or digg.com, but their user base is very techy/nerdy/gamers. Reddit has a subreddit for MUDs. These kinds of users may be perfect to advertise to.

http://www.reddit.com/r/mud

I don't think I'd advertise just on that sub-reddit, it seems to be full of MUD advertisements. At 20 million unique visitors on the entire reddit site, even a very tiny percentage could be fantastic.

Just some of the recent posts on the MUD sub-reddit:

A user developing a MUD application for "computer, kindle, and 3DS"
http://www.carbonatedblog.com/2011/09/bananananana.html

"So glad to see I'm not the only MUDer on Reddit. Here's a love letter to MUDs I wrote last year."
http://www.veterangamers.co.uk/blog/?p=796

"Looking for a MUD with complicated and powerful gathering and crafting system"
http://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/j9 ... _powerful/

A small list of mud commuties we also may want to advertise to (recommended by Redditors), this list excludes the usual suspects.
http://www.mudbytes.net
http://boardgamegeek.com
http://mudlab.com

I like advertising to a group like reddit because they aren't necessarily "MUDders", they won't be accustomed to jumping from one MUD to another. Also "MUDders" are like old-dogs, they know what they like (SMAUG, Diku, LPmud) and they don't want to change. There's also a large possibility that a lot of users have forgotten about MUDs, and they'll see the advertisement and just want to try it out for nostalgia. An advertisement campaign based around techy-users who may be new or returning to MUDs is advantageous for us. I think those users will be easier to keep.

Of course a site like reddit probably charges pretty high for advertisement. Still worth looking into!
Last edited by Gub on 28 Sep 2011 18:18, edited 1 time in total.

Gub
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Gub » 28 Sep 2011 00:19

Oh heres a really interesting discussion on advanced MUD design. A little of topic.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/iy ... mud_today/

Gub
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Gub » 28 Sep 2011 00:22

Ok last comment. If you guys want to do a promotion on the sub-reddit, I'll make a write-up and then link it. If people make accounts we may be able to upvote it close to the top.

Targun
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Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Targun » 28 Sep 2011 11:56

Kit

Well, they had their advert on one of the popular polish services with funny or interesting pics/videos/graphics etc. Probably quite unintentionally well aimed, as such services are visited by people seeking leisure, or those who have some time on their hands/ are bored at work etc. The one they used was http://www.kwejk.pl. From what I've learned, they are waiting to see what growth of playerbase it provides. If succesful they're aiming to launch such brief campaigns every 3-4 moths, until the number of fresh players is high enough to stimulate the flow of newbies through inviting their friends.

Just for the record. I'm not convincing anyone here to any specific type of advert. Only letting you know how one of them worked out on the MuD that is quite similar to Genesis. Gub though has a point here. Advertising to mudders is one thing- but unless you get a recommendation from a friend, people are probably unlikely to swap to the new one from mud they are playing. Some of them want to try out new ones for sure, just out of curiosity, but reaching people who never tried muds is imho at least as important.
Edit (Gorboth): I'll try to contact the person responsible for placing the advert (the one with coinies ;)) and let you know.

Greneth

Re: On Promotion- Perhaps Quite Important

Post by Greneth » 28 Sep 2011 17:54

gorboth wrote:Targun,

Thanks for this great info. Your point about the font size is well-taken, and I'll look into that. It can be a trade off in terms aesthetics, because once you get the font too big, the site can start to look a little goofy and unprofessional. I'll try some different approaches and see what works.

I will also be interested to hear what you have to say to Kitriana's question. The paper campaign we are currently running is simply phase 1 of promotion. Phase 2 is what you have described - banner adds on the correct sites.

I'd love to know ... how much did it cost to place these adds? Where were they posted?

Thanks!
G.
Speaking of where to post, simply typing in dragonlance, tolkien forums should give you a great place to start. From there you could simply make a post in the misc section or contact the admin and see about placing a sticky note for a fee.

Also contacting the main websites of all domains that are not original and seeing about placing an ad or even something in the update notes about us is another.

Last but not least is focusing on the themes we have and visiting the roleplaying forums and inform them that they can do the same thing in game form with us.

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