Promotional ideas

[Cherek]

After what seemed like a slight increase of players for awhile, it seems to suddenly have dropped again. What did I miss? Did some big game get released? Skyrim, Call of duty, Battlefield? Or have I missed something else?

Anyway whatever the reason I think its time to do something more. We had a really positive feel going a few months ago, I think its time to get back to it!

I admit I havent been doing much in terms of promotion either, but its never too late?

Anyone have any good ideas for free (or almost free) promotion?

My ideas:

- Create a list of forums to target. Could be any type of forums really, but preferable with people we think would be interested. Then we could mention Genesis here and there, see if we can get some discussion on text games going. Perhaps pretend to ask for a text game, and then someone else from here "happen" to answer... well you know, that type of advertising. And yeah it does work. I have sucessfully tried it in some other web projects.

- Banner trades. I am not sure if we have some banners yet, I dont think so. But with our nice drawn graphics I am sure it would be very easy for someone, like myself for instance, to fix some. We may not have that much traffic on our site, but I am sure there are other small sites out there that would be willing to put ours up in exchange for theirs. However, once again, a list is needed for web pages to contact. The best is of course if there is some type of personal contact. I am sure there must be people here who frequently visit places where our banner might fit.

- Facebook client. Thats probably the thing that could bring in a whole bunch of new players. I am gonna look into where we stand on that. But it would be interesting to hear of other experiences when it comes to promoting through Facebook. Say we have a client up and running within Facebook. Then what? How do we spread the word?

- Some type of in-game event where us the current players are rewarded for bringing in new faces. or rewarded for spreading the word. Dont know how it could work exactly but people do anything for a little quest experience. And why not reward those who help out. Anyone have some ideas on this?

Anyone have more ideas? Anyone have more experience on advertising for free? (Or possibly some very cheap way.). Banners on big sites are usually very expensive, and we most likely dont have even close enough money to make it worth it. On the other hand, we dont need a huge number of new players either. So... no suggestion is too small!

Lets try to get some ideas going. Dont be shy.

[Alorrana]

donno what it is.. but it seems like the promotion failed..

but good ideas.

Im pretty blank my self.

[Makfly]

Did the promotion even start?

It's been awfully quiet after the release of the website.
I dunno, maybe the website was the promotion event?

My initial thought is that hedging it all on one person and not having complete transparency is a mistake. When there is a sign of enthusiasm around the idea of promotion, you really need to do everything possible to nuture and rekindle that fire. Long long periods of silence, very little clarity and perhaps even less inclusion and possibility for "self-leadership" is a killer.

...Sure individuals are free to just whip up their own promotional efforts, but I think very few would if it wasn't coordinated with the main effort.

So my idea for gaining momentum again, is to lay it all out there. Put things up on the forums and let _everyone_ in on it, so many people can contribute, and not have the bottleneck of 1 person, except for doling out money when needed.
It's a bit like the website, it took forever because everything had to go through 1(?) person, and the Admin was basically looking for 1 person from the community to take on the whole task, instead of engaging in some crowdsourcing.

[Cherek]

Did the promotion even start?

Alot of things were done to make it possible to promote. But except from the paper posters no. It has not started. We better get it started though which is why I asked for ideas on how to promote. I think that is a big hurdle too, nobody really knows _what_ to do?

So lets brainstorm was my idea.

[Rhaegar]

In another thread I mentioned that I had the "giveaway" idea (so far unsuccessfull but you never know). I believe that our beloved admins could enhance this idea by contacting sites like gog.com (the guys there are really nice) to get better prices.
The idea is simple: get people to try Genesis for a while (for whatever reason) and hope that some of them are going to stay.

[Cherek]

Rhaegar: Would we need to pay the site(s) to have them show our game?

[Rhaegar]

It's not like that. My idea was to create some form of limited-time tournament for newcomers and use extra cash Genesis has leftover to finance out-of-game rewards (I don't believe people unfamiliar with the genre would like to give it a shot for an obscure reward in the game they don't even know if they're going to enjoy). Here came the idea of GOG, they sell old games updated to modern standards (as in: you can install, launch and play them on W7 64bit) at great prices. I believe the most expensive games on their site are $9.99.

My original idea I posted on another forum (but it failed), where I wanted to sponsor it out of my own pocket just to test it out:
1 week time, the person who manages to grow the biggest char at the end of the week is going to receive a game of their chosing from GOG (they have the "gift" option).

I didn't really think it through though. Not that nobody was interested but 1 week grow challenge is a bit unfair as it promotes people who spend the most time in the game, usually grinding. If someone was to join at day 5 he would be screwed.

I still think the overall idea is good. It just needs some more refining, especially in coming up with suitable challenges for newcomers (scavenger hunt type of event perhaps).

Edit: It's worth a try. If it would work then maybe an automated system for such things could be put in place, generating such event once a month. With what Genesis has saved up for promotion right now, assuming each such event would have attendance and every time the winner would pick the most expensive game on GOG it's ~10 years of running monthly events like that.

Perhaps a deal could be made with GOG: they provide a link to our site informing that you can win GOG games there. Mutual agreement beneficial for both sides.

[Cherek]

Rhaegar: Interesting idea! Just the types of ideas I wanted to collect in this thread.

[Cherek]

I was thinking some more myself too.

How about some type of monthly recurring event for current players. Where you score points for doing promotional work. For instance, putting up paper flyers 20 points. Mentioning Genesis on another forum 10 points, voting on one of the mudpages 1p, setting up a banner deal with a web page 50 points, getting a friend to create a char 20p... etc.

Well something like that. Rewards for the best performers would perhaps be some type of pin (like the one you got for donating money once), as well as quest experience of course.

At the end of each month winners are announced, everything is reset, and the event restarts. Of course we'll update the top list continuously to keep the competition going.

Well something like that.

[Arcon]

There has been a lot of activity on this forum the last week or so and that is great. We have seen plenty of excellent ideas and suggestions but all of that is good but NOT ENOUGH!

We could make Genesis into the game we all dream of and still it wouldn't be enough. We need to make it known to OTHERS. We need to promote ourself. Yes OURSELF, we are the game, all of us, the players and the wizards.
Nothing else should matter, unless maybe the guild updates. *cough*

We need new people and we need them today.

Gorboth came up with a good idea, I like journey quest and if we could get some of them to promote us it would be great but we need more ideas as well. Where is the Arch of PR?

What ever we do we have to do it now or kiss genesis Good Bye.