User:Daevaorn/Publicity campaign

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This page is a (for now semi-private, in user namespace) collection of resources and ideas for bringing more players into the game. I think that over the last five years PS has lost its critical mass in terms of players and thus cannot bind newly arriving players for lack of immersion and RP-social bindings. Waiting for any major game changes like the Unreal port would IMO rather worsen the situation than solve it. Thus this collection and effort. I hope to provide a starting point here that will eventually allow others to join in and further the project by making it more publicly visible and improve the game's reputation.


What can I do?

Hello, wanderer of the wiki world. If you chanced upon this page, be welcome. If you now think about the cause and find it a good one, you may want to join in. Go have a look below and see if there are any ideas that suit you and that you could work with. Or maybe you have your own ideas and want to add them, too. If however they should somehow conflict with or change considerably what was outlined before it may be good to discuss the proposal first with others working on this page, before adding it to the general outline.

What we should learn from Minecraft

Yes, I know, MC is commercial and not to be compared to PS in that respect. But what the two games do have in common is that they are "indie" created by a small team and suffering from the same drawbacks in terms of graphics and other man-power-intensive aspects of game design. Still MC made it to the #1 of the Hall of Fame of game creation. So what do we learn from that..?

I think while it is a great idea, to put PS on new and stable feet with the Unreal port, it is not something that serves as a selling point while still in progress. It's tedious and will take time, so it's not for marketing. Those efforts should stay beneath the hood, figuratively speaking. It's something for the Dev Q&A not the front page.

We must not chase the industry in terms of GFX and eye candy, instead we need to focus on the strength of the game when advertising, and while it mostly was much closer to industry standards compared to MC, the strong point is its unique world, its marvelously thought-out background story with its minute details, some loveable quirks and impressively rich cast of personae. It's the freedom of RP - elegantly supported by game mechanics. It is different from the indiscernable mass of industry crap out there. It is innovative in its core, like MC was. Thats front-page news! --Daevaorn (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2019 (CET)

Roadmap

Any effort should be well-timed so before we start a concerted effort it would be good to have the steps in the right order and timed at least roughly for maximum effect. To put it in a very rough summary: If we gain for example new players with some means below, it would be good if someone was around to welcome them ;-)

(The cycle can of course be repeated in an agile manner!)

Collection phase

We need to collect ideas and resources/platforms that we can utilise for our purpose.

Revision & planning phase

In a second step we should revise what has been done and written before. We should adapt to that so that we can steer clear of prior mistakes or even them out entirely. New things need to be planned carefully.

Creation phase

Particularly for new ideas that haven't been started by older player generations we need some time and effort to get things rolling. That should only happen after the two previous phases have had some time to simmer.


Text-based presences

This section is meant for the classical "press & social media" approach of things mainly focussing on text- and image-based productions, comments, blog posts, reviews and the like.

Existing

Since PS has been around for quite some time, there's already a lot of stuff out there that we need to consider too.

Negative

Particularly some disappointed leavers have created quite some bad publicity over the years which is a problem as the internet doesn't forget. So we should identify spots in which the image has been tainted and try to rectify the image and clairfy opinionated posts.

Mixed

Not quite as urgent but still a potential resource if we can tip the scales in favour of PS here:

  • slant.co Possibility to comment. If you do so leave a signature with --~~~~ in these brackets ()

Positive

If there is already a positive presentation of PS in a place, what can we do to make it gain more visibility again? Can we add a new comment to make it appear on top of a list?

Potential

Here we can add potentially new places of publication that can be used to make PS known more widely. However, posting here should not start until we have collected enough material below and laid out a basic strategy. As opposed to working with existing material this could mean a waste of potential if not used to a maximum of effectiveness.

Strategy and content

In this chapter we collect material for working with online presences, i.e. articles, opinions, reviews to use in old and new channels of publication.

Sample comments

Use these as a basis, but please don't just copy & paste, but add your own words and opinion. Take it as the broth and you add the spices.

  • In PlaneShift you dive into a unique world with a marvelously thought-out background story in minute details. As with every OS-products there are some minor quirks of which you'll learn to love the better part. Then there is and an impressively rich cast of personae and unique races. The game provides the freedom of traditional and true roleplay (not just massively online hack & slash) - elegantly supported by game mechanics. It is different from the indiscernable mass of industry gruel (to avoid other four-letter words) out there. It is innovative in its core! --Daevaorn (talk) 07:37, 30 December 2019 (CET)

Video presences

Existing

What channels do we have control over and which ones can we comment on?

Negative

Mixed

Positive

Potential

What new means of video publication should we consider?

Strategy and content

What types of videos can we create that present PS in the best way possible?

General thoughts

Since it is not feasible to publish everything we can possibly create with such a project via YT:PlaneShiftOfficial we need to raise the importance of our positive portrayals by linking them up heavily. Interconnection will make things easier to find and raise the scores of each individual channel and video. The official channel should promote our campaign contents, once they have reached a certain standard (numbers, quality) and vice-versa.

"Stories from Yliakum"

The Let's play style of things is suitable to action-packed games like shooters and the like. The PS-experience on the other hand is a slow one and not suitable to be delivered as a video in real time. That's why I would discourage a focus on this style of video-presentation, even as popular as it is. Instead I think of scripted material that creates little story lines from and about our beloved game world that not only show the content, but also explain the background and put a focus on the immersive RP-experience the game offers. This could serve to point out our strong points.

Possible content will be:

  • Video-shortstories of PC's adventures
  • Video-shortstories about Yliakum's lore
  • Documentaries, maybe including live video material of an interview (done remotely and asynchronously) with some devs?

Everything should be well-branded with recognisable character and recurring logos and themes.