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VO needs some good ads out there...

Jan 19, 2014 TheRedSpy link
Q) I am not exactly aware of what the devs have running to advertise VO?
A) At the moment, nothing substantial

Q) Who sucks at paragraphing?
A) Sieger
Jan 19, 2014 Pizzasgood link
"You know these annoying pop ups [...] Make some of those!"

Jan 19, 2014 TheRedSpy link
Web marketing has little to do with mere pop-ups these days, thats only a small fragment of it that only few companies actually need to utilize to sell a product.
Jan 20, 2014 Snake7561 link
A few, dedicated subscribers is better than a horde of idiots.
Jan 20, 2014 TheRedSpy link
I guess it would really suck if we had a horde of dedicated idiots wouldn't it...
Jan 20, 2014 Sieger link
Accidental deletion of my first post, here my point summed up again:

1: VO playerbase is small. Awe.
2: Most of the android people, that seem to be the only source that we gain members from don't stay.
3: VO should try to advertise themselves better PC wise. ---> more PC players
4: That'd be super awesome...

TRS - Your infamous magic deleted my bad paragraphs (actually I just wanted to edit them lol).
To your point: What is that "not substantial" thing?

Pizzasgood - You didn't quite get me. We need to annoy others with out Pop-Ups. What the heck do ya got against annoying VO Pop Ups on other people's Forums?

Snake - These few dedicated people won't play forever...
Jan 20, 2014 TheRedSpy link
substantial
/səbˈstanʃ(ə)l/
adjective
1. of considerable importance, size, or worth.
"a substantial amount of cash"
synonyms: considerable, real, material, weighty, solid, sizeable, meaningful, significant, important, notable, major, marked, valuable, useful, worthwhile
Jan 20, 2014 Sieger link
Rather than responding to your immensely unfriendly behaviour and hate against me, a poor foreign non native speaker I shall make my question more clear: Why do you consider the devs efforts as non substantial? I wanted confirmation as I can't imagine they do norhing.
Jan 20, 2014 TheRedSpy link
Oh no, they pretty much do nothing most of the time. They have an occasional burst of advertising every now and then. For instance Incarnate will send out some press releases to his mates at massively or some other site and they will reblog it. He also did the kickstarter which was a big marketing event which allegedly took up all of incarnates time for a few weeks.

What they should be doing is sorta what Phaserlight is doing at the moment but maybe with a little more gusto and a little less fanaticism; making sure they get coverage on every thread where people ask for "other space games" or like on the star citizen forums every time someone asks "what should I play in the lead up to star citizen" phaserlight or I will usually post a youtube vid that we've made showcasing VO and answer any questions. You then take those backlinks and run them into a campaign targeting those communities with special offers and run that alongside some targeted search marketing and social media campaigns.

The modern internet marketing mix is much more sophisticated than just banner ads. That's how people advertised in the late 90's when every site was brochureware. These days internet marketing is more involved than that. Guild software should aim to hire an employee that can do this for them in-house as well as maybe community support and the occasional events. At least that is my impression as an outsider. I'm sure if you showed me some actual business documents like a P/L statement or something i'd have a more informed and potentially different opinion on the matter. It just seems like they're intent on spending all the money on development and virtually none on publishing the game, yet the so-called "lead developer" spends all of his time doing publishing work and very little actual development.

Also, If you speak english as a second language, how is defining a word I used not helpful and by extension unfriendly? Unfriendly would have been posting this. :P
Jan 20, 2014 Pizzasgood link
"What the heck do ya got against annoying VO Pop Ups on other people's Forums?"

Oh, nothing much, only that I am actually a decent human being.
Jan 20, 2014 Phaserlight link
Here's a little custom search I sometimes use to tap in to buzz around the net regarding Vendetta Online (the "-site"s are so that websites with "Vendetta Online" in a sidebar somewhere don't proliferate in the search results. I'm trying to get as many "real discussions" about Vendetta Online as possible).

The next step for me is to determine whether or not it's worth intervening in the conversation. Usually the answer is "no", unless someone is spreading misinformation about the game or there is an obvious error I'm able to correct.

This is less aggressive than what TRS is suggesting, but it's a start.
Jan 21, 2014 incarnate link
VO should try to advertise themselves better PC wise. ---> more PC players

We agree, but we don't have much in the way of money to pay for traditional advertising. We do spend a lot of time working towards specific marketing goals to try and get as much free "buzz" and coverage as we can, along with support from partner companies on mutually beneficial goals.

The timing of these goals has to be specific, because we need to do something really "newsworthy" to get attention in the gaming press. Unfortunately, we can't do this very often.
Jan 21, 2014 vanatteveldt link
Have you considered getting a social media manager intern (possibly even unpaid). I work at a university communication science department and many students are (1) very interested in social media and social media marketing and (2) not able to land a good job immediately. If one of them has an interest in gaming, s/he might be interested to spend time and effort to help VO in return for CV building. It will cost time to steer and supervise an intern of course, so the question is whether that is worth it
Jan 21, 2014 Kierky link
Nice ninja edit there Incarnate.
Jan 21, 2014 incarnate link
Have you considered getting a social media manager intern (possibly even unpaid).

Yeah, we may look into that. The time-vs-return is an issue, as is the delicacy of how to handle PR at times. We really need a pro.

Nice ninja edit there Incarnate.

Ok. I still meant what I wrote previously, but I have no time to deal with related BS, and chose to just delete everything.

Back to topic.
Jan 24, 2014 UncleDave link
The best way to advertise right now is probably through Youtube and Twitch "superstars". I'm not saying sink to the level of PewDiePie, but if you were to offer swag and ingame benefits to a Yogscaster or two, gave TotalBiscuit a prod and a pat on the ego... combine that with a milestone patch and a schedule of events and you've got yourself a nice chunk of players.

Seconding the social media manager idea, because Inc, you're not a one man army. There's just no way you can be expected to do all these jobs at once, and it's worrying, to me at least, how much stress it has to be putting on you. There's got to be a point where you say "go big or go home" and take people on for the business roles despite the financial risks involved, because the alternative is you seeing your health suffer further.

You're the creative director and mastermind behind the project, those are the parts you love, those are the parts you're really very good at! Do more of that and leave the boring business shit to someone else.
Jan 24, 2014 abortretryfail link
I'm still surprised people watch Twitch at all.

Just to add some perspective on the topic of a "social media manager:" My employer has been through a few of these recently, both in-house and contracted out to an advertising agency and nearly every time things tended to drift towards driving silly artificial benchmarks for success that had no real business value (Facebook "likes", Twitter followers, "eblast" click through conversion rates)

It's something you have to stay on top of or things can get out of hand.
Jan 24, 2014 incarnate link
There are definite challenges to social media people, and lots of BS out there. Still, a lot of promotional things just really require the dedication of time to engagement strategies and followups.

There's got to be a point where you say "go big or go home" and take people on for the business roles despite the financial risks involved, because the alternative is you seeing your health suffer further.

I.. totally agree :). My well-being suffers greatly under a number of burdens, but the biggest is unfortunately our finances. I think people sometimes believe we have more financial flexibility than we do. We already "went big" when we hired Curt and pushed up our burn rate. It was an important step to make.. he was available, it was a decision that had to be made quickly, and we needed to have someone on graphical content to make the game that would be able to appeal to the larger gaming press and PC-gaming-world at-large (a real tradeoff in game marketing). A big part of my VO 2.0 goals I've been working on for a few years.

I've been able to keep things afloat, with this burn rate, thanks to juggling some of our corporate relationships and funds we get from there. But those are hit-or-miss, and lately there have been a lot of misses. So, part of where we are is.. having enough time to reach the next jolt of revenue (from a corporate deal, or perhaps from an internal crowdfunding round in the coming weeks, or a F2P iphone build, etc).

Staying afloat is a big balancing act of figuring out exactly "how big" to go, and when, and now is not the easiest or most flexible time for that.

(People should not assume from this post that we're like.. about to instantly expire, either, just that I don't have a lot of breathing room for additional expenditures).