Arcen Games: PR and Marketing

[cupogoodness]

I'm starting this thread in hopes that those who would like to make suggestions to, chastise, or just give us their two cents on what we're doing as a company to get our games in front of as many eyes as possible, have somewhere to put their words and know they're being read. Obviously we're a small company with a budget that only allows us to do certain things in this department, so I'm always looking for creative (and frugal) ways to reach new audiences.

Some examples of items I'm continuously working on:

• Getting everyone excited about A Valley Without Wind.
• Expanding AI War's accessibility to new players (subreddit, variations of how-to's, peer instruction/assistance, etc.)
• Coming up with potential methods to get Tidalis in front of more eyes--casual or otherwise. (New portals for Tidalis Lite, revised trailer/screenshots, etc.)

There are just a million different ways that we can go about any of these items, and it can be surprising what exactly turns out to be effective and what ends up falling flat. So on that note we are, and more specifically I am, always open to discussion on the subjects of PR and marketing (I will not; however, discuss my personal fashion choices, as those are my own to make.)

Like I mentioned, if anyone at anytime has any suggestions or just wants to talk about what we're working on currently in the PR area, feel free to do so here. Thanks!

- Erik

[BobTheJanitor]

I mentioned this a few times before but since I haven't seen the game show up there yet: Try to get Tidalis Lite up on jayisgames.com. It's a huge casual gaming site, and I'm sure you'd pick up at least a few fans. Submission form is here: http://jayisgames.com/game-submit/

[eRe4s3r]

Getting everyone excited about A Valley Without Wind.

Well you could start by getting the guys and gals on this forum excited ;p So far i have no clue what kind of game A Valley Without Wind is going to be. Too many things are still "unclear" "undeveloped" or "kept secret"

While understandable this makes getting hyped for it nearly impossible. Even with all the current coverage and after reading all interviews I am not entirely sure whether I want to play this game when its done or not. I see the potential but i am not sure whether it is going to aim at children or adults.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm kind of waiting for AVWW to get into a playable alpha state before I start trying to hype up friends or other forums I frequent about it. I want to make sure there's something to talk about so I don't post somewhere about it and then watch that post vanish off the bottom of the page with no comments.

[cupogoodness]

@ Bob

That's a great idea and now on my list!

@ eRe4s3r and Bob

I understand where you're coming from. I see getting everyone excited about AVWW as more of a gradual process. The game is still very much a WIP of course, and as we're sharing nearly everything with our development at an early stage, it's understandable that right at the moment it's not going to get every gamer and their mom to look in our direction. Instead think of it as a slowly forming crescendo as we proceed through development. We want to have more people interested in the game when it hits alpha than we do now, and so on and so forth because hopefully playing and helping add to the game will create that need to share with friends like Bob mentioned.

So as far as what's clear and unclear to you in what's been revealed for the game thus far and how it personally affects your hype-o-meter, there's not a whole lot we can do other than continue to develop the game and show off our progress--hoping you get more excited as we move along. We know this method only appeals to certain individuals at first, and obviously we'd hope that the excitement really takes-off once players get a chance to get their hands on the alpha. All that said, there's plenty of things we can do more immediately to build the game's notoriety, such as getting featured on sites and publications. That way when we reach alpha, we have a few more of the "Hey, I've heard of that game" statements.

[Zhaine]

Getting everyone excited about A Valley Without Wind.

Well you could start by getting the guys and gals on this forum excited ;p So far i have no clue what kind of game A Valley Without Wind is going to be. Too many things are still "unclear" "undeveloped" or "kept secret"

While understandable this makes getting hyped for it nearly impossible. Even with all the current coverage and after reading all interviews I am not entirely sure whether I want to play this game when its done or not. I see the potential but i am not sure whether it is going to aim at children or adults.

Huh? I don't really think there's much more Arcen could possibly share or do to get people excited about AVWW at this stage! They've pretty much told us everything they know at this stage, short of stuff that's only in an idea or possibility state (which it would be a mistake to reveal in case it can't be delivered on).

Personally I've found this both fascinating and exciting and I think they'll win a lot of fans by engaging people this early. Of course, there are people who will only really get exciting when things are concrete and they can get their hands on something playable, and that's absolutely fine, but at this stage there's nothing than can be done to engage those people except let them know (and keep repeating) that the game exists and when they expect it will be playable. . .

For a small company they've done a lot of PR and interviews and that should be applauded. They've shared a frankly unprecedented amount!

I think accompanying the RPS interview with such an early vid when the graphics were still such a work in progress was something of a mis-step, but I think that's been recognised and the interview itself was great so it wont have done much damage.

[Ozymandiaz]

For what its worth, I really like the open and trasnparent prosess of AVWW development. But its been a while since the last video

[cupogoodness]

For what its worth, I really like the open and trasnparent prosess of AVWW development. But its been a while since the last video

There's definitely a reason for that! The guys have been working hard and we'll have a lot of new stuff to show off very soon. Also we didn't want to just release a video every week if there weren't significant additions from the previous footage.

- Erik

[x4000]

There was a lot of "interior plumbing" that had to happen for some of the new stuff, and that left things that looked kind of rough on the surface, but which were really cool technically.  We've learned not to show videos of that sort of thing until the visuals are polished, too -- once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

BUT, we should have something for you this week; the visuals aren't done for indoors yet, but they are far enough along that they are worth showing.

[getter77]

All that comes to mind at the moment is getting on the Immortal Machines podcast and one or more video features with TotalHalibut  (TotalBiscuit) on his Youtube channel outright or the Hydra-like construct he is in with for greater visibility of all things.

http://www.immortalmachines.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut  http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGameStation

[x4000]

Oh, yeah -- I know TotalBiscuit / TotalHalibut, actually.  When the time is right, I will definitely have to hit him up for AVWW -- I think he'd be interested in it.

[Riceisnice]

hmm i stuck with minecraft because of some arts from some web comics/reference, maybe someone of them is so excited in your games that he like to make a reference in his comic, sure the little artist don't get so much viewers but it's still maybe an interest for both
http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=678 and some more pages continued, just as an example.
If it not allowed to link something like that you are free to change the whole text above ( delete it completely for example, some forums are critical by this :S ).
it was done just to show people how awesome it could be to play it with a big portion of humor, besides it's fit as a filler for the story arc.
AVWW, A valley with wind the new webcomic/movie  like clear skies I&II for Eve online ^^


on the other hand i landed here because of a friend who like AI war, and i tried the trial version of that and i stayed here until now after a year of ghost reading  & the bug tracker,finally now as a registered member  on this forum .
It gives so much different games from small companies or developer, that the market here is crowed complete [ tidalis in my opinion, but i don't know it exactly never given it a try, just the pictures].
It must shine, or get a mention from different sources than just Propaganda from friend to friend. There was the RPS interview interesting besides the early stage of AVWW if i get it right in my remembrance.
anyways i don't know what moves are good or wise, i'm just somebody who likes games from developers who are not in THAT big companies like Blizzard / EA ect.[ hopefully a long way until they will catch you  ] , the games fell all the same by them. unfortunately  the little ones will get eaten by the big fishes  in time.

i still don't know if i should resurrect this topic with that W.O.T. [wall of text, not world of tanks] of "broken english"

besides this, i get cooky of that "on" by "on this forum" is it correct or is my intention right it should be"in this forum"? :-S

good morning on the other side of the earth o/

[chemical_art]

whoa...didn't know this existed...

might get back to you once I learn how you hopefully will re-release avww so buyers burnt out from Diablo III will try it again.

[Pepisolo]

Just noticed this thread. There are still a few days left for the Indie Royale Bundle. Any ideas guys on how we could spread the word about the bundle a bit? Any Let's Players that focus on gaming bargains for example that could be contacted? I've only really been able to post one significant bit of news about the bundle on a bargain hunting site that I like. Spreading the word is tricky...

[x4000]

Yeah, when it comes to bundles that is a tricky thing because it's not "news" in the same way that a new game release is news.  And it's not something that an LPer can showcase like... doing an LP.

There is another email blast coming up from the IndieRoyale folks themselves, and we've gotten some pretty solid press from our end as we went before.  But beyond that I'm at a bit of a loss, because Arcen can't go astroturfing other forums, and we also can't ask you guys to do it.  Or even imply that we want you to, because we really really don't.

The main thing that can be done -- only thing really -- is make any forums that you are already a part of, and which have a thread or subforum related to deals, aware of this deal.  If it's a place specifically for sharing deals, then great -- that's news, not astroturfing.  If it's unsolicited on some other random forum, then as you say that is "tricky."  I would actually go further than that and say it's an outright no-no, but that really depends on your standing in the forum and the type of forum itself.  If you're on there posting all the time and the news is relevant and so forth, then great. 

For instance, I sometimes post about deals on here for people I know, or we tweet about them.  Cool, because it's our forum.  And players post all kinds of things -- deals, kickstarters, whatever -- in the Off Topic forum, because it's typically stuff of interest to this community and so that's great.  It doesn't cross any lines because that's what that subforum is for (talking about whatever), and it actually benefits Arcen because we remain a meeting-place where our community can talk about things unfettered by wondering if they are breaking some kind of taboo about talking about a game not made by us.  And I also like it because I find out about some cool games that I would like that way.   You guys have similar tastes to me, no surprise.

But when another developer comes in and is like "check out our game" on the off topic forum, and that's their first post, that is less than impressive.  I'll admit when AI War was just coming out I went around and did a lot of that.  I'm actually still banned from the Gamespot forums for posting two responses to "what is a good game of this sort" and mentioning my own game with a link.  Boom, insta-ban with no warning.  Anyway, so when I didn't know any better I crossed some lines that I regret now, as well.  So for that reason it doesn't really bother me as much when other new developers come and post about their own games, because I'd be a hypocrite if I did.

Tricky, as you say!