The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Open S

Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Andrettin » 18 Dec 2015, 09:44

charlie {l Wrote}:
Andrettin {l Wrote}:Then the question is: how to do marketing (without spending a ton of money)?

Create update logs (videos or blogs etc) on your website or forum of choice. Post those updates to popular sites and forums such as reddit or the ubuntu forums etc. It doesn't take long but it'll get many eyes on your updates. It is how I popularized Free Gamer.


Which subreddits or forums would you suggest for doing that?
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby charlie » 18 Dec 2015, 10:30

Andrettin {l Wrote}:Which subreddits or forums would you suggest for doing that?

I'd post to the most popular distro forums. I used to post to Gentoo, Ubuntu. You could also post to Fedora, Mint. Most of these forums having a gaming section. Also LinuxQuestions.

Subreddits would depend upon your game. I'm assuming Wyrsun, so perhaps r/warcraft2, r/opensourcegames, r/RealTimeStrategy.

Perhaps there's a Warcraft I/II modding community that's worth posting updates to as well? At the end of the day, you'll quickly learn which places work as you'll see the views (and, if you have access to stats, which ones are generating referrals).
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Duion » 18 Dec 2015, 13:36

Then it gets deleted becasue "No self-promotion allowed" even though in some subreddits people do almost nothing else than self-promotion. You don't get that much attention if you make it through the doublethink requirements and post some self-promotion there.
I could not find any forum that generates significant referrals, it is wasted time, all you can do is create a catchy product and at some point it will promote itself, you have to get it posted here and there so people will find it, but there is not much more you can do.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Andrettin » 18 Dec 2015, 14:45

charlie {l Wrote}:
Andrettin {l Wrote}:Which subreddits or forums would you suggest for doing that?

I'd post to the most popular distro forums. I used to post to Gentoo, Ubuntu. You could also post to Fedora, Mint. Most of these forums having a gaming section. Also LinuxQuestions.

Subreddits would depend upon your game. I'm assuming Wyrsun, so perhaps r/warcraft2, r/opensourcegames, r/RealTimeStrategy.

Perhaps there's a Warcraft I/II modding community that's worth posting updates to as well? At the end of the day, you'll quickly learn which places work as you'll see the views (and, if you have access to stats, which ones are generating referrals).


Thanks! I do post in /r/RealTimeStrategy and /r/OpenSourceGames. It has helped posting in those communities, but I am wary of posting each update on /r/RealTimeStrategy as that could be considered as too much self-promotion (for /r/OpenSourceGames that's probably fine, since it's purpose is to display open source games and OpenRA - for instance - posts many of its updates there). Either way, it doesn't seem to make a particularly big impact posting on them, though it does make a difference.

Duion {l Wrote}:Then it gets deleted becasue "No self-promotion allowed" even though in some subreddits people do almost nothing else than self-promotion. You don't get that much attention if you make it through the doublethink requirements and post some self-promotion there.


Yes, that's an important concern. I had a post removed from /r/IndieGaming because of that.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby charlie » 18 Dec 2015, 16:40

Yeah, that's perhaps why reddit isn't always the best place (other than specific subreddits like r/opensourcegames or your own r/game subreddit).

Forums can be better because you only need a single thread, but posting to the thread brings it back to the top of the list - so you are not considered to be spamming the forum but you get lots of visibility. I had more success with forums than I did reddit-likes (used to post to www.fsdaily.com for example before it died a slow death).

You could try more general gaming forums such as Rock Paper Shotgun's forum.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Duion » 18 Dec 2015, 18:10

Another thing with promotion is, that if you want to promote a rare niche product like free open source games, you will need thousands of views until there is actually someone interested in it and stays. So if you don't get thousands of views, it may even be more efficient to just tell your friends.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby onpon4 » 18 Dec 2015, 18:18

I'd have to say I agree that promotion is difficult, and expensive. I did my absolute best with ReTux's crowdfunding campaign, and I got some people's attention, but for the most part, it was funded by people I know pretty well from the Trisquel community, and nowhere near enough for it to be a marked influence on my actions. Of course, this isn't necessarily the same as the number of people who would be interested in a gratis game, but the point is, this experience showed me first-hand that there's a damn good reason publishers have so much power.

It's over-simplistic to say that you just need to make a post on Reddit. No, that's not good enough. You need to get millions of people to see what you're promoting, because only a small fraction of them will actually be interested. And realistically, you're not going to be able to do that very well without paying for advertisements.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Duion » 18 Dec 2015, 19:01

There is a reason brand names are sold for millions, just the name, consisting of regular letters, because there are already millions of people knowing the brand name.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby themightyglider » 24 Feb 2016, 11:09

Another problem with many open source games is that they look some kind of ugly.
I mean they maybe catch ones attention at first but then the person sees a few screens and turns away.
Because of the many good looking (commercial) indi-games that have been released in the past few years, the people expect even small projects to look nice, I guess.

On the other hand open source games maybe attract good coders but mostly fail to find talented artists. The idea of creating content and sharing it to everybodys value seems still to be stuck with computer nerds, but it would need art (and audio) affine people as well to make good looking (and sounding) games.
But I hope that maybe pages like opengameart.org maybe will change this circumstance some day. It would need a platform where coders, artists, writers and so on can come together under the banner of free culture.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby leilei » 26 Feb 2016, 02:05

I'm the reverse. I'm doing an art project and it hasn't really attacted programmers to help test/fix the bugs and make my wishlist come true, so I have to code in little spurts to keep myself art focused (which is the most important part)

I wonder what's behind this:
- my irc/mailing list abstinence?
- the fact I use Windows primarily to develop?
- the art direction not being of typical OS mascot fare to act as a GNU promotional game?
- "invented here already" syndrome?
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby onpon4 » 26 Feb 2016, 03:40

None of the above. It's simple: all the programmers have their own projects they're working on, the same way you're not helping the programmers with art because you have your own project you're working on.

The solution is to hire a programmer, the same way the solution for me when I need art done is to hire an artist. Or you could barter services, if you find a programmer who needs an artist for his project.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby themightyglider » 26 Feb 2016, 06:56

None of the above. It's simple: all the programmers have their own projects they're working on, the same way you're not helping the programmers with art because you have your own project you're working on.


Thats kinda true.
I think the most projects that are started by one person stay one person projects because everyone else want to work on his/her stuff as well. Thats some kind of problem with creative people. :|

But I can't critisize this attitude because I have the same. I see some nice projects very often and think that I should contribute something But then I approximate the time it would need and decide it would be better to spend this time on my own project.

Paying someone to do something on your project is no real option for the most projects as well because 99,999% of open source games are just sparetime projects and almost noone is willing to put tons of money in something that isn't drafted to bring money when it is done.

For me this whole thing feels a bit like a hen egg problem and hard to solve.
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Re: The Gaming Paradox: There just aren't enough Free and Op

Postby Vandar » 26 Feb 2016, 12:56

themightyglider {l Wrote}:I think the most projects that are started by one person stay one person projects because everyone else want to work on his/her stuff as well. Thats some kind of problem with creative people. :|


In my first big project, I was desperately looking for artists and programmers to help. 3 years I worked alone, then a first joined, in the next years some more.

My findings:

- Your project must show some maternity, people join once they believe in the future of the project, not before
- You must beg for help, always and everywhere
- Prepare to do the core of the project all by yourself
- It helps if you can offer something. In this case I offered each helper a place in the game where they could show off with some graphics and a message that the player will see when they inspect the place. I offered to make graphics for those who could not make their own. Not all wanted it, but at least I could make an offer. An offer always shows good will.
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