OpenRA Marketingplan part III - executing the plans

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noobmapmaker
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OpenRA Marketingplan part III - executing the plans

Post by noobmapmaker »

A new thread to clear things up since we're entering a new phase: execution of the plans. If you want to read back (many interesting comments have been made) see Marketingplan part I - gathering ideas and Marketingplan part II - shaping ideas.

So in this thread we'll be organizing the execution of the ideas. You can help us in several ways. Even an hour of work helps alot. Scroll down to see what's needed.

A link to dropbox for various graphic assets, provided by SoScared. Edit: also added the battlefield images provided by Murto and added all ad designs sofar in a folder.

Want your replay cast by Generals Gentlemen for $10? See here.

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.
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
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.

Strengths/Opportunities of OpenRA

Strengths (what we'll communicate)
- It's free
- It's Open Source
- 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
- Does the name OpenRA cover the content correct? PizzaAtomica suggested OpenCnC
- ....

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)

Facebook
- 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.

At this time several things have been set into motion

A google spreadsheet is opened where we gather gaming forumlinks, relevant subreddits and the written newsitems. People who join the execution of the plan will get editingaccess to it.

The Reddit Marketingplan

Reddit has many relevant gaming-subreddits, sometimes even with millions of subscribers. When we have finished our content (newsitem + image and newsitem + SoScared promo video) I will start posting it in the gathered subreddits. Across a week of time I'll first post the newsitem + image and in the next week the newsitem + video. Let's see if that makes any difference in subscribers to r/OpenRA or users in the OpenRA client. When those threads are posted I'll post linkes in a dedicated thread here on Sleipnirsstuff to ask you guys for upvotes.
When there is a new newsitem (new launch, playtest or whatever) the proces repeats.

What we need for this to succeed:
- Casters, streamers and whoever: please post your content on www.reddit.com/r/openra
- The-Zoidberger is writing a juicy newsitem on the last release (we'll post it here to optimize it)
- If you got a redditaccount and 5 mins of time, please upvote the posted threads
- If you are a graphic designer and your eyes hurt when you see my design, step in and help to make a better one.

The Gamingforum Marketingplan
There are many many gamingforums on the internet. Some in foreign languages, some on English and also there are big forums with a seperate gamingsection. We want to gather a list of those forums. I have searched for the Dutch gamingforums, but its substantially harder for me to find Russian, French, etc gamingforums. Once the list is getting big I will start making accounts on all those websites and post the news + ad image or news + video there.
This plan will probably start in a couple weeks or so (but we can prepare already).

What we need for this to succeed:
- We need people who speak German, French, Russian, Spanish, Arab or Chinese to translate the newsitem (I can do the Dutch translation)
- We need people who are willing to google "Games Forum" in mentioned languages. Save the URLs from every big gaming forum in an excelsheet or get editing-acces to the google spreadsheet and add them there. In one hour you should be able to find 10-20 big sites or so, easy!
- I'll sign up to all those websites and post the newsitem + image or news + video.

The Gamingportal Marketingplan
There are many online gamingportals: websites that list free games. OpenRA should be on those too, and they should be happy to be able to link to this game.
This plan will start somewhere in the next couple weeks (but we can prepare already).

What we need for this to succeed:
- Help us by listing all the relevant gamingportals you can find
- Graphic design: many gamingportals have images to accompany the game. We need a seducing image.
- When we've got it ready we'll have to contact the webmasters to have OpenRA listed.
Last edited by noobmapmaker on Tue Feb 09, 2016 9:00 am, edited 9 times in total.
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noobmapmaker
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Post by noobmapmaker »

So with my mediocre photoshop skills I made this. What are your thoughts? What's good and what is bad?

IRC feeedback: Its = it's and no mention of D2K & TD and It's a big wall of text
Also: sometimes I've used capitals and sometimes I haven't. Should be the same everywhere. And in general it is a very busy image, with lots of text and things going on. I'm afraid I wont be able to do it any better. So please design and post your awesome OpenRA ad!

Image
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JOo
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Post by JOo »

im really sorry , but this looks absolutely horrible ... 2/3 of the picture is "text" ... and it shows only red alert ... i really dont want to be mean , but we would need something way better then that ... also , someone else on irc said , that we should mention that it is free

funny fact (think ive heard that from Nyerguds one time) :

speaking about marketing ... Westwood faked their screenshots for the press .... they photoshopped some nice "fire-explosions" in ... here is one of the screens :

(we should do something similar)

Image

noobmapmaker
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Post by noobmapmaker »

JOo wrote: im really sorry , but this looks absolutely horrible ... 2/3 of the picture is "text" ... and it shows only red alert ... i really dont want to be mean , but we would need something way better then that ... also , someone else on irc said , that we should mention that it is free

funny fact (think ive heard that from Nyerguds one time) :

speaking about marketing ... Westwood faked their screenshots for the press .... they photoshopped some nice "fire-explosions" in ... here is one of the screens :

(we should do something similar)
No problem, it was just to set a bar. Better ads are more than welcome! And indeed one that also shows D2K and TD.

I've made a map that can be used to make attractive images: http://resource.openra.net/maps/8476/
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Nolt
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Post by Nolt »

What about making gifs instead? We could show that gif from SoScared's stream where a dog goes on a killing spree for example.
Image
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pulse
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Post by pulse »

Contribooting ;)

Image

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JOo
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Post by JOo »

@Nolt : i dont think a gif showing a the dog on a killing spree (which is just a not finished feature btw) isnt really of any interest for potential players ...

we talk about advertising CNC , RTS ... WAR ... our ENGINE , and showing a gif of a not fixed/broken feature is not gonna help showing "OpenRA" in a good light

@pulse : i like ! this is already better

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raymundo
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Post by raymundo »

As far as helping I soon will be making updates to the wiki page about units and such. There should be an ingame encyclopeida that is tied to unit information in the yamls so that if a units stats are edited in a new release it is viewable immediately by the players.


I think the best way to display the game is highlight reels casted by players like fiveaces or soscared, they provide entertaining and informative commentary. Casting full matches is great and should be continued but perhaps we should crwate a video series like greatest yak crashes, or biggest infantry swarm etc. Obviously we could create these scenarios in debug, but if we could take the excerpt from a real match and then show in the same clip how it led to victory this would be more exciting and genuine. These type games start slow, literally in the beginning with a single mcv, with regard to the time it takes to learn all of the unit/builds, if we could show outsiders those bits of the game whiche make us grin like school children those moments are something 95% of them would never encounter. Competitive gameplay is a serious thing but it also needs to be entertaining!


@noob I really appreciate your effots, you've put together a nice draft! The visual aspect of the game isn't the best so I think an image alone wknt sell it, also that seems very cheesy no offense. The visuasl compared to other games is neat and clear which leads to better gameplay, the gameplay here is what need to be sold imo.

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Sleipnir
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Post by Sleipnir »

raymundo wrote: As far as helping I soon will be making updates to the wiki page about units and such. There should be an ingame encyclopeida that is tied to unit information in the yamls so that if a units stats are edited in a new release it is viewable immediately by the players.
IMO encyclopedia entries that are tied directly to unit stats are going to be far too detailed and specific to be much help to new players, and also risks scaring them off.
If i'm coming fresh to a game I don't want or need to know that rocket troopers do 27 damage per 2.5 second reload interval against engineers that have 60 health... I want to know that rocket troopers are strong against vehicles, buildings, and aircraft, and that engineers can repair or capture things!

The unit descriptions in the original game manuals are a good example of what the entries should look like, and it was our plan (if anyone ever took on implementing the encyclopedia feature) to use these as the initial content for the entries.

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raymundo
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Post by raymundo »

Point taken, should be as simple and user friendly as possible.

What about listing things such as speed, armor type, vision range, attack power, what tyoe of units it can attack, attackable by, ability to detect spies (like radar dome), etc.? Maybe create a drop down button with expanded information for people who want more stats?

It needs to be simple but informative, so it must be determined what is included.

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Murto the Ray
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Post by Murto the Ray »

Specifications such as speed can be dumbed down to terms such as "Slow", "Medium" and "Fast".

noobmapmaker
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Post by noobmapmaker »

pulse wrote: Contribooting ;)
Much better! It would need the newsitem to convey the information we want to convey, but in general it's a nice, seducing action image!

I've uploaded some images/assets I have recieved from SoScared to dropbox, link. Also it was quite hard to find good action images like the one J0o posted. So if anyone has awesome Dune2K, Tiberium Dawn and Red Alert images... share them!

*edit: Pulse: could you perhaps also make one that conveys the listed strengths (and the 3 mods)? I think it is possible to list them, which is quite a bit of text, in a clean way.
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pulse
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Post by pulse »

One more attempt from me

I just wanted to go for a clean simple look. You can always just attach a box to the bottom or the sides and fill that with text, I think.

Image

noobmapmaker
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Post by noobmapmaker »

Thanks for your images, Pulse! Good stuff!

Edit it in some of the strengths. Also wanted to add icons to show that it the big OS's are supprted, but somehow I cannot do it without getting them pixelated...

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pulse
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Post by pulse »

Not sure if this will work :D

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