The goal that was stated was: to write a marketingplan for OpenRA. A plan that describes in a concrete fashion how we can reach a bigger audience and convert their interest in more users in the most efficient way.
Please note that the scope of this thread is about 1-3. All ideas to facilitate and consolidate users (tutorials, ingame news, tournaments, different languages, unit encyclopedia, noob tournaments, client enhancements/polishes, etc etc) are about 4-5 and they should either be posted as a new thread or github issue. Ofcourse they can be mentioned, just not in depth discussing about it.Some levels of attaching a user to OpenRA:
1) A person has to learn that OpenRA exists
2) A person has to download the game
3) A person has to try the game
4) The player comes back more often
5) The player tells others about OpenRA/Invites others
Strengths/Opportunities of OpenRA
Strengths (what we'll communicate)
- It's free
- It's constantly developed (gets better with every new release)
- Dedicated community
- Regular HQ casts and streams
- 24/7 Multiplayer action
- Many supported platforms
- Attractive to Modders
- New Mods to be released: Tiberium Sun, Crystallized Doom and others
- Nostalgic gaming in a modern and userfriendly fashion
- C&C is legendary, it's the genesis of modern RTS gaming
- ...
Opportunities (stuff that is out of scope of the marketingplan, but relevant and food for thought)
- Provide multilingual support for foreign players
- Is www.OpenRA.net seducing enough for visitors to try the game?
- Provide a good experience for newbies (tutorial, noobserver, etc.)
- Provide an even better service for regulars (profile, badges/achievements, eliteservers, autoupdating, etc.)
- Integrate the various OpenRA services (replays, forum, resourcenter, etc.) in the client/website
- ...
Targetaudiences
Current demography:
OpenRA User statistics/charts from 2013 ModDB (81+% men, aged between 15 and 34, Europe/US)
Which groups (usertype) are most likely interested in OpenRA?
- Gamers (RTS)
- Casual gamers to some extent
- People who have played C&C back in the days
- Modders
On one hand it's good to target the current demography even more. If this type has shown interest in the past, then their peers probably are interested in OpenRA as well. We have no way reached >1% of European/US young men so that justifies putting effort into reaching that targetaudience.
On the other hand there are chances outside of this demography. I am mostly thinking about non-western young men (Asian, India, Spanish and Arab gamers). Their numbers are huge and as far as I know those kids and men like RTS as well. A problem could be their English. Many speak and read it, but many don't. Before we reach out to them OpenRA should make sure www.openra.net and the client itself is userfriendly to non-English speakers.
As for the casual gamers we may have to ask ourselves if OpenRA is welcoming enough to them. They are the type that need to learn the game, that get turned off if the learning curve is to steep and when they get destroyed in multiplayer right away.
Reaching our Targetaudiences
First we'll have to establish which targetaudience(s) have most potential to join OpenRA. Then we'll connect channels to them and what message. Our message can have many forms: written word, game screencaps, ad-like images, moving image (gif, video) - or combinations of these (image > text and image + text > text).
What is the best message, based upon their demands and our strengths?
- SoScared's excellent promotional video explains a whole lot of what OpenRA is
- Young gamers don't have alot of money, communicate that it's FREE
- OpenRA is nostalgia, but enhanced: balanced, userfriedly, more modern UI, promotion, modding, etc
Targetaudience: Real Time Strategy Gamers
Channel:
- gameportals for free games, the strategy section
- relevant lists (Top X games)
Message: The genesis of RTS is back: balanced and with a modern UI
Targetaudience: Casual gamers
Channel:
- Facebookgroups
- gameportals for free games, the strategy section
Message: Check this awesome game, watch this tutorial and play a quick game online or vs AI
Targetaudience: People who have played C&C back in the days
Channel:
- gameportals for free games, the retrogaming section
Message: C&C is back, but better!
Targetaudience: Modders
Channel:
Message: OpenRA has a nice modding community and modding is easy & tons of fun!
Targetaudience: Countries with alot of online gamers, but few on OpenRA (China, Japan, Brasil, Russia, India, South Korea)
Channel:
- Non-English gaming forums?
- Non-English famous youtubers?
- French people can talk French here: http://openra-fr.ytu.fr
Message: our strengths in their languages
Channels
OpenRA.net Analytics (similarweb.com): last 3 months mostly visitors from US/GER/HUN/UK/RUS, 13% referrals (pr0gramm.com, majorgeeks.com, modDB.com) + 8,5% social media (Reddit, Facebook, Youtube)
- Post on relevant Facebookgroups (gamergroups and such)
- Keep our Facebookpage up to date
Game lists and gamingportals
- Reaching the top of frequently viewed lists (e.g. Indie Top 100 ModDB)
- Getting mentioned on gamingportal sites in the RTS/Retro section
- Steam
Youtube - and Youku?
- Youtube: casts
- Youtube ads.
- Youtube: ask youtubers with many followers to play OpenRA
Reddit - r/OpenRA stats
- Reddit ads for Reddit.com/r/openra
- Post relevant news to relevant subreddits
- Reddit.com/r/OpenRA could be a valuable channel to direct users to www.openra.net
Relevant gaming Forums
- Post news about OpenRA on relevant gamingforums
Upvote Army
Several sites (like Reddit, Youtube, 9gag) have an upvotesystem that make content with upvotes more visible to other users. Once we're posting content other current OpenRA players can help by upvoting posts.
Other
- Person to person marketing: Invite-others function
- E-mail Newsletter with news, casts, etc and share-button
- 9Gag (examplepost with oppurtunities in the comments)
Timing
Many mentioned that timing is important, I definetly agree. The marketing needs a proper spread across time (don't fire all our rockets at once)and some aspects must be marketed at the right time (e.g. when a new mod is officialy launched). Doing things hastily may result interested people taking a look, getting turned down and those customers are lost forever.
Some of the ideas are things we can do right away because they are free, do not require other actions (e.g. designing ads). Other ideas need some preperation and some need carefull preparation and timing. Before we do anything we'll ask for permission from the OpenRA development team.
Measuring Results
When we execute plans we can try to see if it has results by keeping an eye on the OpenRA player statistics.
Also the activity on reddit.com/r/OpenRA could be an indicator of increasing users (loosely assuming that more subscribers means more OpenRA users). We can keep an eye on the subreddit stats of r/OpenRA to measure effectivity.
To Do List
- design ads for channels (graphic design)
- write proper descriptions of OpenRA to accompany links to www.openra.net (writing)
- write (forum)news items (writing)
- asses forums, gamingportals, gaminglists and other relevant sites (surfing the web and note down every relevant url)
- sign up to assessed forums/sites and regularly post written news and relevant images
- contact webmasters of gamingportals to have OpenRA added
- translate content of our ads/news/descriptions in different languages (translation)
- asses which Let's Play-youtubers are suited to play OpenRA
- contact those youtubers
- ... what else?
Participants
Post a message if you want to contribute by taking up an action. Please tell which action you want to contribute to and what you are good at.
- The-Zoidberger - write newsitems and other writingduties
- NoobMapMaker - surf the web and collect URLs of relevant Forums, Gamingportals, etc
- [...name...] - surf the web and collect URLs of relevant Forums, Gamingportals, etc
- [...name...] - translate news and other writings in Chinese/French/German/Dutch/Arab/Russian/Hebrew/Spanish/Japanese/Korean
- [...name...] - translate news and other writings in Chinese/French/German/Dutch/Arab/Russian/Hebrew/Spanish/Japanese/Korean
- [...name...] - post the newsitems on forum/subreddits/
- [...name...] - contact webmasters to add OpenRA to their gamingportals
- [...name...] - graphical design of eyecandy: ads and images to accompany news/forumposts
- [...name...] - post news/content on the OpenRA Facebook page
- [...name...] - make a list of well known Youtubers who might want to play OpenRA
- [...name...] - ...what you think is needed, and where you are good at
Keep brainstorming about all the suff I've written above. Everything is open to debate, it can be worded better or the information can be more complete/enhanced. And as Zoidberger mentioned it may be good to open a google doc where we can work and edit online.