FreeGameDev

I've been wasting some of my time playing those new cell phone games. One thing I payed attention to is the whole Marketing Concept they use to let people know about new stupid cell phone games. Right now, the biggest problem in free software seems to be there are a lot of free software games in development, but no one knows about it. The developer eventually just gives up and the dead project sits somewhere never to be heard from again.

I think that we should turn to the dark side of the marketing force.

So, to begin with I will list the stuff cell phone games do to market themselves and how we could apply that to free software games.
1. Characters - Free software has Tux and Battle for Wesnoth, we should make stupid games based on things like this such as minesweeper using battle for Wesnoth art and market it as a revolutionary new game. Whenever people look up stuff like Tux, it should come up with a list of several different tux games in each genre.
2. In game ads. Instead of you know, paying for ads in games, we should just add more ads for either completed games or games in progress on the title screen, or shortly after you start each game. So, like the normal title screen usually has things like game modes, load, select your character etc. It should also have a list of several other cool free software games you never heard of it. They don't even have to be playable, (ideally they should compile and run, but even if it just redirects to a website with some concept art and coming soon it would be an improvement. And before you say we should have patch to take ads out, you have to think of marketing as a service, now you know about all the stuff you didn't know you needed.
So between number 1 and 2 we should be able to develop a lot of games and let people know of their existence, as well as get new developers to join partly done projects.

Tow the party line and report capitalists to your nearest Ministry of Truth.

Just spend millions of dollars on advertising instead of developing games. That's how all proprietary games do.

Actually, come to think of it, we should have two different buttons on the load screen, on that features the same characters, but another game genre (ie, the Battle for wesnoth minesweepr, or the Tux rpg) or the same game genre as the playable game (so, like flare also having a button for other action rpgs, ie, crossfire,) or even games of a similar but slightly different genre (ie, a turn based strategy game with a button for a real time strategy game)

Also, we, as a community have to quit demonizing marketing, I know demons are cute and all, like the bsd demon, but you know what I mean. It would be better to look at small business marketing strategies where people either spend little to no money on marketing and are focused on getting the most exposure for the least amount of time and money put into it.

I'm the biggest anti-capitalist you will find around here, but I think there is something to these ideas.

I think this because I wouldn't even call this ads or marketing, because we're not talking about profit here. I would rather call it simply something like "references to other projects" -- they could be turned off with a single button, but many people would probably prefer to keep them on, unlike with actual ads, because they'd be good for them, and wouldn't try to be intrusive. It's like the list of related topics under each article on Wikipedia, they're good for everyone. It could even help connect the community more. Though this needs to be carefully though through of course, it has to be completely optional, in menu only, mustn't introduce a dependency on the Internet connection, performance issues etc.

It's still advertisements, and IMHO advertisements don't ruin games. Let's call them what they are.

F-Droid has a few apps with ads, "notably" the Gloomy Dungeons games, which advertise what I believe are commercial games by the same developer, or at least used to. He doesn't use any proprietary APIs so the FLOSS games are FLOSS, but ads are ads. It becomes a problem when the advertisements are as obnoxious as web ads, with all the flashing lights and popups and viruses.

I'm not a big fan of trying to put proprietarity out of business or of the e-begging that a lot of apps do now. But I have no objection to libre games full of ads to similar libre games.

With everything a statement of goal is crucial, everything else follows. If this is something whose first and only goal is to help the user and free projects (whose goal is to firstly help the user), then I'm in for it. Any halfways with any attempts at any profit and benefit to anyone else than the users or any kind of shady manipulation that ads by definition utilize I will oppose. That's why I wouldn't call it ads -- an ad is inevitably a lie, and that I don't support. I tend to rather not support this, unless I see a 100% alignment with what I am saying.

Dunno, the bait-and-switch is kinda kinky. I'd sooner put up with banner ads for soap than pleas to donate.