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How would you advertise Champions Online?
spinnytop
Posts: 16,450 Arc User
Not where. We can all list off a dozen places where, but that's not the important part. The important part is how.
Given realistic circumstances how would you convey to someone casually glancing at your advertisement the depth of character building that CO possesses?
How would your advertisement pull their eyes away from the no doubt nearby bigger-name advertisement that is likely to be making the same claims?
How do you sell the graphics to a generation mesmerized by next gen graphics?
Realistic circumstances means it's likely to be a standard-sized banner on a website. TV commercials are unrealistic, as is any sort of official professional blog (we already have sites talking about our "content news" and it's unlikely that a big-name siteis going to do a piece on a five year old game... unless it's to trash it with four year old information of course).
The suggestion to advertise the game comes up frequently, but whenever I picture these advertisements in my head, I also picture the average potential customer glancing at it briefly and then never thinking about it again.
Feel free to break any of the rules I've set forth because I know you will anyway
Given realistic circumstances how would you convey to someone casually glancing at your advertisement the depth of character building that CO possesses?
How would your advertisement pull their eyes away from the no doubt nearby bigger-name advertisement that is likely to be making the same claims?
How do you sell the graphics to a generation mesmerized by next gen graphics?
Realistic circumstances means it's likely to be a standard-sized banner on a website. TV commercials are unrealistic, as is any sort of official professional blog (we already have sites talking about our "content news" and it's unlikely that a big-name siteis going to do a piece on a five year old game... unless it's to trash it with four year old information of course).
The suggestion to advertise the game comes up frequently, but whenever I picture these advertisements in my head, I also picture the average potential customer glancing at it briefly and then never thinking about it again.
Feel free to break any of the rules I've set forth because I know you will anyway
Post edited by spinnytop on
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If you want realistic, maybe consider that traditional advertisement isn't as effective as people think it is. Who talks about CO may be more important than any ads Cryptic can make. Or just having someone actually update the damn CO YouTube channel on occasion. Seriously, Atari is still on most of the old videos. How long has it been since that buy out?
I hear Terraria and Minecraft are super popular and their graphics suck. Who plays a game with icky 16-bit graphics now-a-days?
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
2. run a long list of other games.
3. " and yet they are still playing Champions"
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You know? Legit idea. Technically I feel like it'd be best if we get people who livestream other more popular fare, and have them do CO mixed in there. Do it guerrilla style, sneak the game in with games that draw more attention.
I think Sterga's right about the banner ad thing. Getting some gaming sites to actually play the damn game again instead of relying on 4 year old data would be a great start. If we got reviewed now, for our own merits, I'm sure it'd end up that we're a fun game with great customization and a little bit of age showing. As well, yeah. Video ads. Gameplay is really active and dynamic, we should be showing that off. The few video ads I've seen for CO involved static players standing back firing at something, that sorta deal. We've got fights like lemurian invasion, where you gotta fly around like a crazy person shooting down enemy fighters. Hell, even Zombie Apocalypse is more dynamic than most anything we've seen.
We used to do fan made ads... Why don't we do another one? A few of us can vid-cap.
RIP Caine
You get a lot of game for $0 bucks with Champions Online I dont see why people wouldnt recomend it. Aside from Team Fortress its the best free online game out there.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Implement "clothing explosion" aura.
90% off! gif banner ad
with heroes and heroines, worms, robots and beasts having their 'normal' clothing blown off leaving only 90% of their 'skin' exposed, using suggestive camera focus.
Run the ads for a year, like that horrible pixelated game with those "Ready to serve you, M'lord" breast-centric ads did and do whatever it takes to get back on the front page of Steam, like maybe an occasional one day only "Log in, get free gold sub for a month" deal.
Game is too expensive and micro transactions are a major turn off when Steam or Gog.com are offering full games for the price of an aura slot and new full games for the price of a 50% off free form slot, while EA and other vendors occasionally give whole games away for free.
Selling features for the price of full games just doesn't seem to encourage people to stick around. Having suggested auras as a means to add value to the account, I find I don't want to even buy aura slots knowing there's a high probability I won't be playing the character nine times out of ten (currently as silver) or fifty-nine times out of sixty when I was still gold.
Twelve dollars for a full set of slots, per character, times ten characters is $120.
Maybe new players to the game go a little crazy like I used to with costume slots that I no longer use, and character slots when I was less informed about gold sub benefits. But relying on craziness and ignorance hasn't really pushed this game's user base to encouraging levels, although it seems to have won some favor with the developers. Thanks devs.
I should mention my whole family uses ad blockers on our browsers now, so I wouldn't even see my awesome 90% off sale ad if they went that route
Maybe advertising the game in other Perfect World game's by putting super hero costumes in those games would put people in the mood for more hero stuff. Maybe some kind of crossover event like "Mechanon Menace against MetaMoon IV" in STO or "Venture Versus Viper" in Neverwinter or "Defender Penetrates Perfect World". Ideally though they'd want to keep their IP separate from these other IPs, so the easier thing to do would be to ask the user base to suggest their own characters for the crossover, since Cryptic owns the characters, but they are never going to get any use outside of this game since they can't compete with Marvel/DC/Image in the movie/TV industry.
that was Evony online. and the campaign won Worst Internet advertising campaign.
That was pay to win game.
besides the explosive clothing aura would be in breech of the costumes guidleines. Just like all the long hair, belt and boots... females.
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Youtube has never effectively advertised anything to me. For perspective: I don't watch television, I watch Youtube, and I have some sort of Youtube video going pretty much all day long. Youtube just doesn't draw my attention to videos that advertise things... and even if it did, I wouldn't go for the same reason that any time a commercial came on on tv I would stop paying attention to the tv.
Before people will watch streams and videos of a game they don't know about, you have to inform them that the game exists and get them interested in watching to begin with. I have used youtube videos to take a gander at a game when I was interested in trying it out, but before I ever went looking for that video something had already gotten me interested.
So add-on question for those using streams/videos as their form of advertising: How do you get non-CO players to tune in to them (instead of the dozens of 360 no scope cod videos and streams)?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
'Nuff Said.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Covered that. Also stream popular stuff people already know about and do wanna look up. I just tracked down a copy of "this war of mine", for example.
There's also reddit. I got the CO sub, but there's no real content to share about it.
I really am not sure viral marketing even needs much of a defense. Far as I'm concerned it's really our only option. There's a danger in saying "This never works for me" because you're just one person.
RIP Caine
Yeah, but people have been making youtube videos of CO for years now. I, as a person who plays CO and watches Youtube religiously, haven't ended up watching the vast majority of them. I may be one person, but I'm square in the crosshairs of being one person who should be extremely likely to be watching these videos... and I probably don't even realize that the majority of them even exist. So what chance does a non-co-playing casual youtuber have?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I didn't say anyone would be naked, is Hulk naked? No, his costume is always ready every time he pops a Banner.
Also, creating a YouTube or Twitch channel that you expect to get views is not easy. It takes a lot of time and networking. There is no way anyone is going to make their channel with just CO. It would have to be a variety channel with other games. Which means being involved in other communities.
Basically, the best way for Cryptic to advertise CO is to make an awesome / polished game and show they care about it and the community.
PS: This is how you deal with corruption.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
1. You bring back "Refer a Friend" since it gives people a FULL demo of the game. Then if they want to drop the cash they get Gold but if they want more "demo" they can go Silver and maybe either micro-transaction what they want or go Gold/LTS.
2. You get the CR involved in the process about this discussed Youtube/Twitch/Whatever stuff and run contests and such for the best videos and feeds...then you put them, the runner ups, and the honerable mentions(heck, the more the merrier) on the official channels and the social media stuffs so the STO/NW people see it. As the Cryptic Games people start to see these things then they will "like" them which will show that they liked them and spread the links through those networks.....like how my wife liked buzzfeed junk on Youtube all the time and it suggests to me that I look at those things because she liked them and we are subscribed to each other. The point is...get this rolling(ontop of Taco's linking abilities which is just more exposure) and it will spread just because of the nature/design of these systems. :cool:
2b. In the information of all of these things you put...
-Try for Free <Link to Referral/Demo>(Let the authors put in a link specifically to get credit for referring these people).
-Or-
-PLAY for Free <link to F2P(aka normal webpage)>
Slap both of these in the info/description sections so people see 2 options which both don't require cash...like the old PSA Drug Dealers you offer them 2 "tastes" for free and then show them how they can "enhance" the experience with varying amounts of cash. :biggrin:
P.S.: If this is going to work then someone needs to PLEASE murder the stupid Streamlined Creation stuff...and the old "OMG, POPUPS ATTACK" stuff from On Alert and such too.
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
The community here has a lot of power and there's too much potential in the game, but there's just no way we can keep going on our own. If PWE invested more into CO, I would guarantee it would be worth their while to look toward the community's strength and play on it.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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This is a brilliant idea that's a shame Cryptic hasn't done. Honestly, it's disappointing that they didn't make trailers for Mechanon/SOCRATES/Lemurian Invasion. I mean, I didn't play CO until after CoX closed but I actually (vaguely) remember the official Hideouts video. These don't catch everyone but there is worth and new vids would be good for general "this game is still alive".
As far as fan videos, my biggest problem ironically enough is lack of professionalism. Ranging from lower capture quality to rambling and casual profanity, they can wind up annoying despite otherwise being an excellent resource. Fan vids for some games are a great thing to have and provide at least some advertisement, even if it's limited.
-Sterga
Lemurian Invasion
Fatal Error: Ok, there were like 13 videos on this subject but none of them screamed "trailer" so I didn't list one.
Still, 2 out of 3 isn't bad.
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
That inspiration would be shattered by the realization that those players only stand around and do nothing all day...
Actually, if you didn't know him... you might think he actually is an npc.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Solution: Make a trailer of a black and red character spamming bleeds in the Desert, voiced by a chain-smoker or an Austrian - maybe both, and set it to uplifting orchestral music punctuated with very jarring BLAAAAARRRREEE sounds and fade to blacks.
Well we do have a desert...
And a soldier class...
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
RIP Caine
A more active presence on social media.
Ads on websites like ENworld and RPGnet.
Offer benefits to those amongst the playerbase who put ads in their blogs, webcomics, etc.
I have lived the refer a friend, and recruiting in the past, it did not work. For any organized effort that players can attempt, CN has to do its part on it, if not it will be void effort.
We can pour water into the bucket, but water doesn't stay in the bucket very long.
Nice sentai video btw.
I was thinking of making some comics that are Riffing the Game-Logic of CO (like why are my Pets not Attacking and why is Vikorin's Golems Throw me back and forth like a Tennis ball... in a Comedic way)
And it was so horrible that apparently spawned Parodies
I have the idea to take the Banner we got with Witchcraft that says "Subscribe today and Go Freeform something something" and just for Giggles~
Defender is ready to Penetrate the other side... of the Building
Not to be confused with the "OTHER" Champion game. . .
uwu ...s'a good day to log on to the forums...
My super cool CC build and how to use it.