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[SUGGESTION] Steam and Xon promotion.

#1
Well this game really needs a boost in promotion and be on Steam. I think the thinning of the herd is being noticed more and more by the regular player base.

Now from the stats there seems to be lot of players joining everyday but not too many are sticking around. Not sure why, my thought is that the current player base is quite experienced with the game and new players are get bum rushed out of the game.

I don't want to hear well your free to promote it, well if I had the resources and the skills/time to make promotional materials I would but I don't so on my part I run a set of servers that hopefully be around for a long time.

I know there is a new player server that doesn't allow experienced players to play but maybe we need some for minsta+hook, Overkill etc... Maybe a in game system that would disallow high ranking player from joining the new player server and then once the players get past a certain level they are also not allowed to join.

Maybe having a central YT/Daily Motion/or custom server say using Media Goblin channel that hosts videos made by players. With one channel it'll be easier to brand it and stick into peoples minds better "Oh yah need to check out the Xonotic channel"

Getting on Stream would put new player numbers fast for a time being but even if 70% of them leave that 30% could still be a huge boost to the populations and possibly the community gaining devs, video and art creators and etc...

I started a map repo site here http://www.killer.xxx but kinda ran out of steam/time to get more done on it and not sure if I even like the domain name anymore. In reality it would be much better to have it all under one site like xon.org or something similar that can be tied into with game videos/etc... but I guess not all maps are GPL/OS so hosting them for Xon.org might be a problem.

Although most of those maps predate Xon by many years it would still be an asset to say look there's 1000+ maps available for the game.

That's my 3hrs of sleep and 2.5 hours of driving to work this morning rant....
[MoFo] Servers - North America - Hosted in Montreal Canada - Admin DeadDred [MoFo]
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#2
Well, that's ultimately a decision the main developers have to make. But from my relatively uninformed point of view it seems like Xonotic is dying a slow death and will probably never reach the fabled 1.0 release.
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#3
So was talking with Mario about promoting the game and here's what we came up with regarding videos. I guess we'll make an official post once its full decided.

So there should be a main channel where all custom video from players are uploaded this way even through the channel is new it might get more exposure once people know about it and there's a central repo they can go to.

What will be needed is a video intro and outro template that a player/video creator can use in their videos. The intro would include the games logo and if the video creator wants it the server logo/name to promote them at the same time. This way all video will have a nice constant look for branding purposes. The video should not be longer than 3-5 min to keep people from having an aneurism from watching 30 min of frags in one video. Hopefully the short video will make people interested in watching other videos in the repo.

Youtube doesn't allow community channels where others can upload but there's a module for Drupal that allows that and I'm sure other CMS have something similar but I'll have to do some investigating. This would allow people to upload from the central page to the same channel.

We're also thinking of holding a contest for the video intro creation. Not sure what the prize will be but I can put up some $$ and Mario has a a few other ideas but well make an official announcement once we decided.
[MoFo] Servers - North America - Hosted in Montreal Canada - Admin DeadDred [MoFo]
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#4
Additionally to a central place to upload videos, we could also improve the demo player.
What we thought about is a 4th subwindow in the main menu, where amongst others the demo tab from the multiplayer menu could be moved to. A user could then upload his/her demos (ingame) to a central server, where everyone could browse and then download/stream them.
Additionally, if the demoplayer had a visible UI to control the demo playback, we would have a quite usefull video platform. AFAIK the basic commands are already implemented, but can only be accessed via console (or binds), so it would be merely a matter of the UI.

This could help us keep existing users and ppl, who just discovered Xonotic.

If the developers like this idea, I could refine this idea (and maybe even code a bit for this, but I have no experience with QuakeC)
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#5
Situation hasn't changed.

Here are some useful resources for people reading this thread, because at this point I think no-one is going to repeat the argument for the thousanth time:

Official thread and blog post
Forum search tool, because your idea is hardly novel.

What we need to focus our efforts on currently is not to release 0.8 on Steam, but to release it full stop. Situation is already complicated enough as it stands.

As for your video idea, do you see much demand in this domain? Do your ideas provide us more visibility than existing video platforms do?

Freddy: the QC part of your idea is by far the easiest, as it's just an interface. Demos are server dumps, not video files, and doing anything but play / pause / slow motion / speed up to a certain extent is nontrivial. If you don't mind your "rewind" button to replay the entire demo just to go five seconds back in time, then indeed playback control is just "a matter of UI". I would argue that it's convenient enough as it stands to make it a minor issue at best. As for the other part of this idea, that's a lot of work, we don't have developer time to focus on that.

Suggesting ideas is great, and your ideas aren't bad, but they won't happen any time soon unless you personally invest your time in it to make them convincing. Otherwise they'll just rot with the other thousands of ideas we've received in this forum since years.


Let's be pragmatic and try and work with what we've got. Development time needs to focus on realistic goals. If it takes so much time to reach a 0.8 release, you should understand that redirecting that effort towards building a video platform from scratch or discussing and preparing a big PR move like moving to Steam is not a good idea.
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#6
(10-05-2014, 11:59 PM)Mr. Bougo Wrote: Situation hasn't changed.

Here are some useful resources for people reading this thread, because at this point I think no-one is going to repeat the argument for the thousanth time:

Official thread and blog post
Forum search tool, because your idea is hardly novel.

What we need to focus our efforts on currently is not to release 0.8 on Steam, but to release it full stop. Situation is already complicated enough as it stands.

As for your video idea, do you see much demand in this domain? Do your ideas provide us more visibility than existing video platforms do?

Freddy: the QC part of your idea is by far the easiest, as it's just an interface. Demos are server dumps, not video files, and doing anything but play / pause / slow motion / speed up to a certain extent is nontrivial. If you don't mind your "rewind" button to replay the entire demo just to go five seconds back in time, then indeed playback control is just "a matter of UI". I would argue that it's convenient enough as it stands to make it a minor issue at best. As for the other part of this idea, that's a lot of work, we don't have developer time to focus on that.

Suggesting ideas is great, and your ideas aren't bad, but they won't happen any time soon unless you personally invest your time in it to make them convincing. Otherwise they'll just rot with the other thousands of ideas we've received in this forum since years.


Let's be pragmatic and try and work with what we've got. Development time needs to focus on realistic goals. If it takes so much time to reach a 0.8 release, you should understand that redirecting that effort towards building a video platform from scratch or discussing and preparing a big PR move like moving to Steam is not a good idea.

Ok forget about Steam for the moment but this game needs some serious promo as the player base has dwindled and new players are not sticking around. I actually dont want to start another domain BUT a communcity driven YT channel could get serious exposure then just personal frag videos all over YT. There would be no reason to not link to it from Xonotic.org and obviously vice versa.

Anyways I'll put up $100 for a contest for creating a Intro/oUTRO template so players can use it in their videos. If we can get lot's of nice but shorter Fag/Gameplay/Tutorials that look consistant then that would help with the YT chan branding.
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#7
As a matter of fact, I am working on a Xonotic video intro that is supposed to be usable for an official trailer but could of course also be used by other people for fragmovies. It probably won't win any contest but even if it did (probably because of being the only submission), I wouldn't accept any price money for it ;o)

I'm learning a lot about blender lately...
My Xonstats Profile
Latest track on soundcloud: Farewell - to a better Place (piano improvisation)
New to Xonotic? Check out the Newbie Corner!

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#8
I don't understand why everytime, when putting Xonotic on steam is mentioned, it is assumed that it has to be fully integrated in Steamworks. Can't it just be published there without Steamworks integration for now (just download/update/launch) and add the integration later? Or is Steam not flexible enough for this?
I think this will already attract new users, without changing the developement.

Mr. Bougo: I know that demos are no video files. The thing is that recording the demos is easy for every user. On the other hand, recording a video can be a pain in the .... sometimes and it is not helping that Xonotic only supports lossless Videos or ogg-files. Both are not practical these times.
Regarding the playback options: I don't know the actual implementation, but can't the demo-file be read backwards? This would lead to a simple vcr-like rewind-function. Additionally isn't it possible to just skip some timesteps of the demo-file so that you can jump x seconds of the demo? I never thought of a videoplayer-like timeline running at the bottom that you can click to jump to that frame.
The idea of was inspired by PS4 with its "share" button and LOL or DOTA with their streams. I think these help them to keep their userbase.

I can understand if this is to much work now, so I thought of another way to increase the popularity: The Xonotic website did not really change much since the time I started playing (2years ago). The last stable release is more than 1 year old and the blog rarely gets new posts. This makes the project seem dead on first glance. So my suggestion is that there should more releases, but with fewer new features (something like mozilla did when they switched to firefox 4). This project is alive, so why not show the improvements and small new features?
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#9
I wasn't even thinking of steamworks, as I have no idea what that involves. What takes time is considering whether we want to be on steam at all, what the requirements are, whether it is compatible with our licensing terms, etc.

Demo files can't be read backwards, no. You can see them as a log of the conversation between client and server. Straightforward to interpret in the forward direction, because that's how the game usually behaves. But backwards is a whole other story, and so is skipping over segments of time rather than speeding over them.

Your suggestions on communication and/or a video platform make complete sense, but neither you or I know who has time to spend on this, and whether or not it matters more than what anyone is doing right now.

Related to this I think, is how Samual has avoided for quite some time now to address and reconsider his position as a lead design. I see this as a real problem this project is facing, and I'm baffled that no-one is talking about it at all.
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#10
(10-06-2014, 04:03 PM)Mr. Bougo Wrote: Related to this I think, is how Samual has avoided for quite some time now to address and reconsider his position as a lead design. I see this as a real problem this project is facing, and I'm baffled that no-one is talking about it at all.

I think part of the reason why no one is talking about this is that there is no one that would consider him/herself in the position of being a spokesman of the Xonotic team.
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New to Xonotic? Check out the Newbie Corner!

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#11
(10-06-2014, 02:08 AM)Halogene Wrote: As a matter of fact, I am working on a Xonotic video intro that is supposed to be usable for an official trailer but could of course also be used by other people for fragmovies. It probably won't win any contest but even if it did (probably because of being the only submission), I wouldn't accept any price money for it ;o)

I'm learning a lot about blender lately...

Sounds good, wish I had the time to learn 3d software besides NetRadient last one I got pretty good at was Bryce 3D Tongue

I was thinking that the contest would cause a bit more activity in the community. I could split it into 2 prizes do say $50 for a couple fo submissions.

I got a YT channel set up but what really sucks is YT pretty much killed all the channel customzation that you use to be able to do for layout/colors and background images Sad The chan will be www.youtube.com/xonstream
[MoFo] Servers - North America - Hosted in Montreal Canada - Admin DeadDred [MoFo]
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#12
Well i fully agree the video part, i also have my video channel totally about xonotic:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TentClan

Last few videos:

Blockspace inverted: CTF full play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhgFOpRemw
Skybowl: FT full play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esDLON_ARg4
Tron: CTF only 1 cap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwKqL8rMykI

What i plan to do is convert a bunch of demos of when i having fun, and then program the release every week or so, depending on how many i have converted.

I agree that having a standard template for the tags/text/intro/outro in all the videos would be a great idea.


I'm using this as right now:

Tags:

Xonotic, (Mutator, for example: Minsta + Hook), (Map Name), (Clan Name), (Type of play), (Name of player)

Text:
Mapname [Xonotic version] Gametype (as title)

Server:
Map:
Client:
Perspective:

Small Description:

For example:
Blockspace inverted [Xonotic 0.7] Minsta + Hook

Server: Super Mario Bros. USA
Map: Blockspace Inverted
Mode: Capture the Flag(CTF), Minsta + Hook
Client: Xonotic 0.7
Perspective: Ari(tent)

A total aereal fight, unleashing hook gameplay every second

IntroSadstill missing)
OutroSadstill missing)

I think maybe adding a download link in all the videos and some standard branding, consistently uploading videos about different gameplay on diferent gamemodes/servers would help a lot to spread the word.

Also, converting demos to videos suck big time, specially for long ones, the tools work, but it takes too much time.

I'm using a small vps(Debian 7, transip, gnome, Xonotic 0,7) to play with the demo->video process , i'm half sucessfull at that right now, i have a remote connection with size 1024x768(host built in function) and when using nexuiz demo recorder with 1280x720 on config.cfg after the process is done it makes a video of 1024x720.
I tried to vnc into it to get the full resolution without success so far:
Quote:Loading OpenGL driver libGL.so.1
Xlib: extension "XFree86-VidModeExtension" missing on display ":1.0".
Couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered, Depth visual
Desired video mode fail, trying fallbacks...
I need to increase the size allowed on the default connection/ bypass the size limitation/fix that error to use a vnc connection with bigger size
The plan is to have the vps processing a batch of demos with nexuiz demo recorder(it took around 10-14 hours to process the 13 minutes of video of blockspace inverted) and with the video fully done.

Then adding intro/outro/standard text/tags/standard title and after that doing a easy upload.

Maybe using the standard php builtin function to mail videos to youtube to have everything fully processed from a webpage and using a processing schedulle to upload videos [x day at time]
Maybe friday nights or something like that

It will be perfect to have the demos of the cups like reversion cup and such to upload them for everyone to see
[Image: 9074.png]
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#13
Ok so on the channel we can have a few groups of videos. Frag videos custom made, full game/tournament play and help videos? Just have to figure out how to have the intro/ingo all the same style.


(10-06-2014, 11:04 PM)Ari Wrote: Well i fully agree the video part, i also have my video channel totally about xonotic:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TentClan

Last few videos:

Blockspace inverted: CTF full play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhgFOpRemw
Skybowl: FT full play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esDLON_ARg4
Tron: CTF only 1 cap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwKqL8rMykI

What i plan to do is convert a bunch of demos of when i having fun, and then program the release every week or so, depending on how many i have converted.

I agree that having a standard template for the tags/text/intro/outro in all the videos would be a great idea.


I'm using this as right now:

Tags:

Xonotic, (Mutator, for example: Minsta + Hook), (Map Name), (Clan Name), (Type of play), (Name of player)

Text:
Mapname [Xonotic version] Gametype (as title)

Server:
Map:
Client:
Perspective:

Small Description:

For example:
Blockspace inverted [Xonotic 0.7] Minsta + Hook

Server: Super Mario Bros. USA
Map: Blockspace Inverted
Mode: Capture the Flag(CTF), Minsta + Hook
Client: Xonotic 0.7
Perspective: Ari(tent)

A total aereal fight, unleashing hook gameplay every second

IntroSadstill missing)
OutroSadstill missing)

I think maybe adding a download link in all the videos and some standard branding, consistently uploading videos about different gameplay on diferent gamemodes/servers would help a lot to spread the word.

Also, converting demos to videos suck big time, specially for long ones, the tools work, but it takes too much time.

I'm using a small vps(Debian 7, transip, gnome, Xonotic 0,7) to play with the demo->video process , i'm half sucessfull at that right now, i have a remote connection with size 1024x768(host built in function) and when using nexuiz demo recorder with 1280x720 on config.cfg after the process is done it makes a video of 1024x720.
I tried to vnc into it to get the full resolution without success so far:
Quote:Loading OpenGL driver libGL.so.1
Xlib: extension "XFree86-VidModeExtension" missing on display ":1.0".
Couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered, Depth visual
Desired video mode fail, trying fallbacks...
I need to increase the size allowed on the default connection/ bypass the size limitation/fix that error to use a vnc connection with bigger size
The plan is to have the vps processing a batch of demos with nexuiz demo recorder(it took around 10-14 hours to process the 13 minutes of video of blockspace inverted) and with the video fully done.

Then adding intro/outro/standard text/tags/standard title and after that doing a easy upload.

Maybe using the standard php builtin function to mail videos to youtube to have everything fully processed from a webpage and using a processing schedulle to upload videos [x day at time]
Maybe friday nights or something like that

It will be perfect to have the demos of the cups like reversion cup and such to upload them for everyone to see
[MoFo] Servers - North America - Hosted in Montreal Canada - Admin DeadDred [MoFo]
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#14
May I just ask who gonna produce these videos on the channel?
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#15
(10-07-2014, 12:44 AM)machine! Wrote: May I just ask who gonna produce these videos on the channel?

Well I guess we'll be having a contest to create a intro/text templates so which ever player that wants to create the videos can use them to be on the channel. Mostly to get a brandable consitant look. Obviously there wont be that many people but I think even with 3-5 participating we can get submissions on a regular basis. This is a start so we can still adjust things as we go.
[MoFo] Servers - North America - Hosted in Montreal Canada - Admin DeadDred [MoFo]
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#16
Yep, different playlist/categories should be enough, or something like that.
Maybe even different channels, depending on the parameters, since youtube let's you email to upload, it would be easy enough to send to different custom channels with the right config
Full Gameplays/Frag Videos/Short parts of gameplays/Tournament/Tutorial and Help/Non Gameplays(things like xonotic bot orchesta and such awesome things that are not directly fragging)

On a side note if you have not watched yet the Xonotic bor orchesta do it now! http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0A17A03B7BC71AB1 (http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=2145)

I think the perfect text would be something like this:

Text:
Mapname [Xonotic version] Gametype (as title)

Server:
Map:
Client:
Perspective:

Small Description:

Download Xonotic now at: http://www.xonotic.org/download/

Also i think we also need to update Xonotic media page(last update 2011)

(10-07-2014, 12:44 AM)machine! Wrote: May I just ask who gonna produce these videos on the channel?

We were having a discussion of how to submit and who on irc: http://pastebin.com/4VprEv6S

At least i have the idea of having demos submited and then converted to youtube and back into the xonotic web by a mostly automated medium, for the moment i plan to convert some of my own demos and upload them in a consistent basis
[Image: 9074.png]
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#17
And who is thr audience, I fail to see why a channel/site with tons of random videos would increase awareness when nobody is looking for Xonotic videos (as shown by the low viewer count on the most popular Xonotic videos).
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#18
(10-07-2014, 02:05 AM)machine! Wrote: And who is thr audience, I fail to see why a channel/site with tons of random videos would increase awareness when nobody is looking for Xonotic videos (as shown by the low viewer count on the most popular Xonotic videos).

Well thats why were discussing it there. Having a consistant desingn/feel with the intro to them is important to expose the Xonoticbrand and build the channel as a Xonotic video portal, hey its better than doing nothing and if there's enough sumbission it'l show that the community is active.

Obviously this isn't a buit it in one day project. If we expose different aspects of the game instead of just frag movies and game play that could lead to people exploring more of the videos.

The current xon website is outdated by over a year with nothing new, content is king on the web and if there' s nothing new obviously no one will want to come back.
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#19
I think i could give a nice breakdown of the target audience:

a)Xonotic users
-Demo submiters, i like to see my videos once in a while
-Friends of demo submiters, i like to show off the things i can do with xonotic from time to time, as you could see in my channel
-Xonotic users looking xonotic videos for bringing friends into xonotic (example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAq_F8Dp4CU) i like this example specially r3mix was looking for a video of xonotic, he appeared on my video
Quote:I searched 'minsta hook' to find a video like this while trying to convince a friend to download Xonotic. Turns out I'm in the video.
-Map Creators, if you create a map, have a demo and upload it you can make your map apper at youtube easily
-Bored xonotic users looking xonotic on youtube for a random cool video

b)Former xonotic users (And people that never made the switch from nexuiz)
-People that played xonotic on the past but though that the game was already dead(to be fair some parts of the web have not been updated in the last 3 year so that's a fair thing to believe)
-Nexuiz players (why should i download xonotic if nexuiz is good enough?) Well the point here is that xonotic can be updated legally and it is being updated if you look at git logs from time to time
-People that forgot about xonotic etc...

c)Users from other games like quake, quakelive, etc...
-We can show off our cool and mostly unknown features, like invasion, totally aereal games, mixing game style, ponies, extreme and total customization and stuff like that, some people may like that
-Baffled people after seeing our most stupid videos and wanting to try that

d)Other gamers
-Well as in c) some may want to try to see what's this game about after seing a short video, you can't think of what you don't know

e)Real media/Popular youtubers
-As a foss game, i think most if not all the videos are going to be licenced under attribution licences instead of the standard youtube licence, if you can reuse the content and want to report about something reusable content is attractive
-Phoronix and sites like that, people wanting to promote free software, if there is media available they can grab it

f)Developers and people that want to experiment with things
-Xonotic bot orchesta for example is a great example of not game related things that you can do with xonotic, some people may get interested
-I remember a thread of xonotic being used in a cool 3d experiment, if people can see that we are a foss software that does cool things maybe they will use it for its own experiments.

g)Other
-Well sometimes you click on the recomendations of the youtube, some people will fall in here, some may even like it Smile

Also that's a way of getting more visibility without worrying about the licence terms, the extra development and hassles of the style that steam and similar platforms imply.
[Image: 9074.png]
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#20
Here's a nice simple intro in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leMVrAM8F3Y
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#21
Actually, the reason why we are not on Steam, and probably never will, is the Steamworks license which is inherently incompatible with the GPL our engine is based on.

As we can neither change Steamworks' license, nor the GPL on the engine without rewriting the entire game (yes, DarkPlaces still contains stuff copyright by id Software), Steamworks is out of the question.

One alternative might be the free "OpenSteamworks" library, however, it is generally considered illegal by Valve and would lead to us getting kicked out of Steam pretty soon.

We however COULD release on Steam WITHOUT using Steamworks. However, this will lead to permanent pressure to finally support Steamworks (e.g. to show achievements on Steam), which we - as stated - outright can't.

Also, even if we could, we would end up with two separate statistics systems that can't be kept in sync with each other, as players who downloaded from our own site can't use Steam's statistics systems, and Steam's can't be synced with anything external. We really don't want to divide the already small enough player base by two separate statistics systems.

So yes, that is why no Steam for now. If we could somehow beforehand make clear that xonstat is going to be the authoritative statistics system for Xonotic, and magically nobody would ever complain about "WHY DON'T YOU USE STEAMWORKS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE MORONS", then yes, we could also release on Steam.
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#22
So the audience are the 10 people browsing the forums, the 7 players adding pickups and the 30-40 minsta players? If the point is to raise awareness the first audience should be new people. I doubt videos of minsta hook would attract any QL players for instance, because it's completely different from a normal arena shooter (with items) and they wont search for such videos anyway. I'm sorry I am pessimistic, I'm all for advertising Xonotic, but this way seems outright counter-intuitive to me.
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#23
Well, the point is having a lot of videos of every game mode, so we can cover all the possible audience, also the possible audience as described on my post is not ordered on importance basis, just a quick breakdown on basis of what i though is the different posible audience, i think maybe c), f), and e) could be where we should focus our efforts

I have mainly minsta + hook demos, some overkill and maybe 3 or 4 demos of weapons but that's mainly because i suck at weapons.

The point of allowing to submit the demos and then converted to youtube and uploaded is to have more video variety without the hassle to convert the demo to a something.ogv(with the subsequent wait for the demo to be processed) and then uploading that to youtube with the subsequent bandwith wasted(i have a slow connection and uploading videos like that from my pc really suck) instead a 3-15mb file is something that almost everyone can upload, i know because a i have a bunch of demos that i said someday i'm going to process that into a video, and well i may have 5gb of demos that most certain i'm never going to convert to a video, but if i had the tool to upload the demo and then posted directly to youtube i would have done that, at least my channel would have way more videos than the 13 it has now.

And i bet i'm not the only one who would like to convert its demos to a video and upload it but does not do that because of the annoyance of the process.

What i'm trying to find is ways to upload videos representing xonotic or some other ways to advertise the game that does not require that much effort to do, because being truthfull most of us will not do if it annoying to do, and doing that almost automatically, because well that requires less effort for everyone.

In the meantime maybe a post on the forums asking for demos after the vps is fully setup with the right resolution until everything else is done or something like that for testing the idea is the way to go as i almost have the vps that converts demos almost ready.

I think we can agree that Xonotic needs more advertising, so if this way seems like an unsucessfull try to you, what else can we try?

On a side note, it would be nice to have the media page updated to 2014 http://www.xonotic.org/media/ it's something really easy that most of us could do right? Adding some extra videos and screenshots would take at most 1-2 hours of time and that includes the time finding the media/editing the web page/deciding if you like it.
[Image: 9074.png]
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#24
You can't really make Xonotic popular by putting hundreds or thousands of gameplay videos online. Unless you manage to convince popular Let's Players to play the game. Players that are trusted for their judgement and already have a large audience. We have seen that happening in the past. Unfortunately, hardly anyone who tried the game then stuck around. (Please raise your hand if one of those people was you!)

It's a mistake to think that putting a huge amount of content online will automatically create a target audience. I have been in this internet thing for a while now, and it really does not work like that. It's already very hard to 'market' a commercial game with a budget. And altough Xonotic is free, that also means less (almost no?) funds to make an impression. Whatever you make has to be of excellent quality. For example: CTS/Defrag is one of the more popular sides of Xonotic, and Packer's server automatically converts record times from demo to video and uploads it to YouTube. It's great for anoraks like me to watch a record they did, but other than that they hardly have any viewers :p

Basically I think that for general promotion a couple of well made videos should be enough. They are also more likely to be picked up by other media. But we have not even managed to do that very effectively so far. The video that Fisume made has a healthy viewer count on YouTube I think, but I also think it uses copyrighted music that makes it harder to be used 'offcially'. It's a shame, because I think it's exactly what the game needs in terms of promotion. That video screams TRY ME I AM AWESOME in every which way possible. You really only need one or two of those video's to make people try the game and then that should be enough. The game should then 'sell itself'... (ungh..)

So as something of a conclusion, at least for me, I think the limited amount of time and effort is better used for 1 thing that is very well done, instead of a lot of things that are half heartedly done. Because honestly speaking, if you're not willing to invest time and effort in making the video itself, the potential impact it will have would likely be very limited. Just another random gameplay video is not going to convince a lot of people to play the game.
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#25
Oh look people coming out of the wood work. At least were getting the discussion going....
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