Ideas to help TWP improve its visibility

81

That’s fine… if you already know that you want to play the game (and you subsequently know that game even exists).

Let’s Players advertise the game to people who likely never heard of it. I’d say they do more good than harm, at least for TWP.

They would especially hurt games which are very short and linear. TWP is non-linear enough so that people would want to try other things then the Let’s Player and it’s long enough to make them decide if they want to buy it before the Let’s Player is through most of the game.

There are even people out there who would buy a game just because they liked watching it, without intent to playing it (but I don’t think many do that).

Those people subscribed to them like that.
I personally find most of the well-knowns I’ve seen quite annoying to watch/hear.
But I’m glad to have something like this available. Most game trailers show all kinds of stuff but no gameplay whatsoever. That’s what I like Let’s Plays for, to see actual gameplay.

82

I’d say which are only narrative, without puzzles.

83

It would also hurt games with simple and linear puzzles which would be spoiled by the Let’s Player.

But it would help if it’s apparent there may be multiple solutions or puzzles which are randomised in some way, making it challenging solving them again (by yourself). Like sliding puzzles, wooo!

84

It’s time to bring back mazes!

85

I like mazes! And drawing maps! But I’m in the minority.

86

Well Kyrandia 1 has a big old maze but you hate that game!

2 Likes
87

Not only does Memoria have a maze, it also has the following location within that maze:

Spoiler ahead

http://i41.tinypic.com/wqucuv.jpg

1 Like
88

Maybe it could say O<``beep>!

1 Like
89

9 Likes
90

My DOOT:R version has crosshairs as cursor, not a finger. Once I have reach the object I press second mouse button and the UI comes to live, but I have already spotted the object/place I want to interact with. I’m afraid I’m not following you.[quote=“Nor_Treblig, post:75, topic:541”]
both doesn’t really work with my touchscreen
[/quote]

Those games weren’t designed for touchscreens.[quote=“Nor_Treblig, post:75, topic:541”]
Wheel yes, coin is not so easy:
[/quote]

Why not? I (or the designer in this case) can draw/paint/design as much coins as I want and display the one that needs to be displayed according to the character. Why are you assuming there only has to be one image?

91

Ironically that´s yet another Shepard Fairey creation.

Probably the answer to this threads original question would be “just get that guy” although he won´t come cheap.

92

This was about listing pros and cons for coin UIs (where I included and differentiated also between wheel UI). I also wanted to include thoughts about different input devices which especially need to be considered when porting games to different platforms.

My original point was:

  • When using touch: your finger/hand may obstruct parts of it (especially problematic when context sensitive)

Hence all this talking about fingers!

Yes, you are right: it’s possible, but it’s more work, that’s what I wanted to say with ‘not so easy’.

The original point actually was:

If a graphical coin: not dynamic

And with dynamic I didn’t mean different coins for different characters (most adventure games have only one anyway), but I meant you can’t easily remove, add and replace verbs at will (vs. wheel like DOTT:R which can and also does show verbs dynamically)

93

Some ideas for visibility… I have kept these to things that are “free” to do or very close to free. Obviously with most things there is an “amount of time to implement” vs. “sales created” which I’ve kept in mind too:

–Find out which famous or semi-famous people like adventure games and try to get as many of them to tweet about the game or mention it on their facebook fan page as you can (preferably with a photo or video of them with the game). If the comment/photo/video about it is funny it may also go a bit viral. This requires a bunch of emailing and sometimes tracking down a few manager/agent emails. (Also it doesn’t have to be adventure games they’re into, but that would be the obvious link).

–Make a viral video or photo of a cat or puppy playing Thimbleweed Park or even dressed as some of the characters. Everyone likes a good cat/puppy video. This is long-shot territory, because virality is a mysterious force, but this kind of video can be done cheap and fast so it’s usually worth a punt. Also get backers to share it to get it moving initially.

–Mobilize the backer-army. There are a lot of backers and everyone has favorite sites and message boards they go to regularly and pretty much everyone is on Twitter/Facebook. If a whole bunch of backers changed their forum signatures/avatars to something mentioning TP, changed their Twitter or Facebook pics to something to do with Thimbleweed Park, you would get a lot of coverage.
You’ve got 15,623 backers… let’s say you can get 10% of the backers to agree to do something like this, that’s 1,562 people… then I think if you average out most people’s facebook/twitter/forum interaction or “reach” it’s maybe about 200 people per person that the average person can reach.
So 1,562 x 200 is 312,460 people potentially reached (sure, it’s not an insane number, but it would be free besides a bit time taken to organize and maybe more than 10% would agree). Maybe provide the correct size game logo/pics for forum avatar/signature and Twitter/Facebook cover/pic to make it easy for people to do.
The backer-army could also be mobilized to share the cat/puppy video.

–Get publicity in areas outside the gaming world. TP seems to have done a great job in the general gaming press with tons of major sites covering it. I would then make a list of sites/blogs, etc. that have covered things that are related to TP… eg. places that like covering things like Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, Lost, Stephen King, etc. and make a big grid and go through emailing them to see if they would post about TP. You would need to pitch each place the game to fit their niche: “have you played our game, it’s got a lot of Stephen King influence in it, if you want to try it out for a potential post on your site let us know and we’ll send you a free copy, etc.”

–Provide exclusive behind-the-scenes stuff and interviews to different places, not just in the games world. Eg. get Octavi to do a breakdown on his process, then place it on a site that covers art and graphics and reach that audience. Get Gary to write about animation and try to place that piece with somewhere that covers animating. Also all of these things add to the long-tail because they create all these posts in different areas that keep referring people to your game.

–Create controversy (similar to the toilet paper direction thing)… is the game’s ending too crazy? Is this the start or end for adventure games as we know it? Is the Secret of Monkey Island hidden deep within TP? The press loves controversy, the downside is you have to have thick-skin to endure actual/proper controversy, but it does get coverage/visibility/sales. The book “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” is great if you’re interesting in this angle.

4 Likes
94

A lot of Kickstarters use Thunderclap during their campaign. Maybe use it for raising awareness of the game when the mobile ports come out?

1 Like
95

I’m pretty confident that for a point-and-click adventure game there is a good chance that a focused advertising campaign (even a low-cost one) would make way more sales than showing the product to one million random people on social media.

The reason is that people who like adventure games are not necessarily followed on social media by other people who would like this kind of games. It happens, but it’s probably a rare phenomenon.

A well-crafted Facebook ads campaign would probably lead to more sales, assuming that Terrible Toybox can add a way to directly sell the game, on their website.

1 Like
96

I think they’ve done a good job at reaching the adventure game fans already though…
If there are a hardcore group of around maybe 30,000 or 40,000 point and click adventure game fans out there, I think they’ve already reached them… half of them were already backers and I’ve seen the game mentioned on all the main sites and forums where adventure game fans go.
So focused ads may just show the game to people who already have it… ideally you want to harness those people who have it to reach people outside that group.

1 Like
97

Well, I wasn’t thinking about die-hard fans but about people who could enjoy adventure games.

Said that, at the beginning I assumed that Terrible Toybox did a good job at reaching the adventure game fans, but today I’m not so sure about it.

Grim Fandango Remastered has about 500,000 owners on Steam and while I’m aware that “owners” doesn’t imply “buyers”, that figure still makes me thing that TWP can do more to either reach or appeal a wider audience that already does like adventure games.

2 Likes
98

We spent $10K on a Facebook ad campaign, and only made our money back. I was not worth it. For advertising to work, you have to spend a great deal of money to push you over the hump, then it starts to pays off. We don’t have that kind of money. It’s in the $100K+ range, just to start.

2 Likes
99

Thanks for the information. Can I ask you to whom the campaign was targeted at?

100

I spend a couple of Gs a year on Facebook ads and it works well so I keep doing it, but I have to watch the figures/stats closely and keep tweaking the audience and ad message to really get the most out of it and to see what is getting the best conversion at any given time. Also spending the bulk of it at Xmas and other holidays when people are buying more stuff in general seems to work best, for me.