Improving SotA's Perception / Marketing

In the Dev+ area there's a discussion going on that resulted in the following comments from Retro, which I have trimmed some for clarity and bolded/underlined the parts I want to focus on:

This is something I have noticed as well; if I am a person who has not pledged or registered for the site, there are exactly FIVE things I can do/learn from the main page:

• Watch the 6 month progress video (long out of date)
• Click to the 'Latest News' updates (this is where most of the info is, but in hard-to-find chunks)
• Click to the Housing FAQ (in the middle of the FAQ)
• Click to the Magic/Combat/Crafting mega-post on the forum (from 4 months ago)
• Click to the housing decorating update (long out of date, graphically)

Now don't get me wrong, I think the main page is looking FANTASTIC compared to where it was, but I agree with Retro that there are things that can easily be done to improve non-backers impressions and perceptions of this great game.

The two simplest things I think should be done are add an obvious link to the FAQ page (and not halfway down it) and add an obvious link to a screenshot repository where CURRENT and FLATTERING screenshots from the devs and us can be seen. Slightly more labor intensive but I think no less important would be an updated 'progress video' made by the devs and replacing the 6 month one.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and maybe we can create a separate thread exclusively to post screenshots for that purpose.

 

Hear hear! Presentation is key. If it doesn't immediately grab a potential backer's attention, it's not likely to get a second glance. Let's do this!

 

I agree that a lot of changes need to be made to the website. Currently, the site is burdened with small errors, deprecated code, large expanses of blank page space, convoluted structuring, invalidity, and ofc, the blatant over-emphasis on housing. For a new player, finding information is a quest in itself. On the bright side, the readability issues on the home page have been fixed.

 

They should make "Blade of the Avatar" easier to find for those that have pledged that level. I seldom see any recent advertisements on the author to the SotA story.

 

I was also wondering why there is no 9-month progress video yet.

 

The best thing they can do for publicity at this point is release demo footage of fully functioning combat and PvP. Anything besides that isn't going to garner any interest.

 

Being only 3 weeks out from the 1-year anniversary, hopefully there will be something more recent to show. A new video is definitely needed.

 

I agree. Better marketing (website) at this point = more backers = more funds to make the game.

 

They got most of the Ultima/UO/RG fans for most of what they could, now it's going to have to ride on the game itself and see how that impresses people who aren't Ultima/UO/RG fans.
Now the game will go forth on it's own merits and not the past dreams and wishes of the founders and benefactors...some of whom have already lost enthusiasm or hope.

Now we just wait for release and see what happens.

*they already have more than a million more than they wanted to start with, I'm sure they can put that to good use.

 

A website hasn't been a marketing strategy for 15 years... even back then people would chuckle if you asked someone for their marketing strategy and you said, a website, or website upgrade. You don't market with your website. Here is an example: You don't learn about newegg by going to newegg, or ebay or amazon. You learn about it somewhere else then you go there.

I don't see anything wrong with their website. They could remove the updates section from the 2nd page, and replace it with screenshots, updated videos of gameplay. that sort of thing.

"Currently, the site is burdened with small errors, deprecated code, large expanses of blank page space, convoluted structuring, invalidity, and ofc, the blatant over-emphasis on housing. For a new player, finding information is a quest in itself. On the bright side, the readability issues on the home page have been fixed. "

I can't agree with much of anything you said here. The normal user has no issues with the code. I only see large blank page space on my 1080p monitor, on my laptop screen it fits perfectly. on my phone it fits perfectly.

So let's make sure we are looking at the same thing, make sure you are logged out and go to shroudoftheavatar.com you get a screen that has the 6 month demo, and on the bottom 3 pics that says learn more about houses, learn more about magic combat and crafting skills, and watch a house decorating video. Is that over-emphasis on housing? Housing was one of the primary reasons I backed, and the reason I backed so high.

What layout and what information would you think is more necessary for recruiting new pledges? Most of these people will likely have come from a website, following a link to learn more about it, or try to simply pledge after reading an article on it.

What do we need to present to a first time user to say, WOW, this game is awesome, I must pledge now to either help fund it, or to get cool items, or so this new feature gets here.

I think a video update, with latest gameplay directed not so much about current gameplay features, but RG talking about the game itself with some brief gameplay might be good.

Another option is a list of features with some neat little graphic next to it so at a glance without even reading you'll know what the link is about. 1-5 in-game screenshots that show off some beautiful graphics the team has made recently might be good.

But this is still not a marketing strategy, this is website improvements to get people to purchase once they are already there. Marketing strategy has more to do with getting people to go to your website to buy something before they even know they need to... Reaching people and convincing them they need what your site has. (In this case a game and in-game items)

They can also make the in-game screenshots a slideshow that auto-scrolls with manual capability. so it isn't just a bunch of pics all over the screen.

 

Alrighty. So I guess we're not talking about marketing strategy then. Out of curiosity, what is the right term for what we mean?

This is the kind of situation I'm envisioning:

I see a potential customer hearing about shroud of the avatar on some game site or article and hitting the link to the Shroud website. At this point, a bigger project would have some cool flash intro that makes their game seem like the most amazing thing ever. Inside, I would find pages of flattering screenshots, game info, development info, and most importantly a teaser style trailer video highlighting the pure awesomeness that is their game. This would all be set up in easy-to-navigate tabs.

I know jack-all about this kind of stuff, but I do know that kind of presentation gets me way more stoked for a potential product than does Shroud's site.

 

So Part 2. Let's talk marketing.

So there are different stages of marketing, first

Market Research. You need to know your audience and your competition. Who would even be interested in a PC game like this? Where can you reach that audience?

You can do surveys and find all sorts of information, age, sex, other interests compile all the data and look for the most common things, then find what those people do, what websites they visit and what tv shows they watch.

Obviously when people are still coming in saying 1 year later, "I just heard about this game" They haven't been advertising in all the right channels.

We also need to look at what is the current state of fund raising for video games? I see a lot of people saying "they'll never kickstart anything ever again" they get one bad experience from your competition and it sours them on early fund raising in general. How do you overcome that? You have to change how your market the pledges. They aren't to help fund the game, they are for phat l00tz. But then the people who don't like "pay to win" wont pledge, so this is so they can get the in game features of stretch goals. The trick is getting your message just right so you convince them that what they are doing is so they get what they want, and aren't supporting something they don't want.

We also have to look at data to see what has worked and what hasn't. R1 was a huge boost to sales. The black friday sale of in-game items was another big boost. Founder status announcement was a nice boost as people starting throwing $45 more at their pledges via gifts.

From what I've seen their advertising budget must be 0. Everything I've seen has been either word of mouth or written about in a tech/video game website. Should they look into advertising in order to increase their exposure? Where would the best places to do that be, in which medium?

There is some other data we aren't looking at, how many new visitors do they get to their website? How have website changes impacted whether they pledge or not?

 

What is being asked for is Improved user experience. The goal is to increase sales.

So a big name coming out soon would be this:

http://us.battle.net/en/int?r=d3

or maybe darksouls 2

http://www.darksoulsii.com/us/


Anyone have some examples of websites they think are top quality for luring in people to pre-order or pledge?

I heard this one touted quite a bit:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/

Now that website, I heard they they spent a million on just the website, we don't have that kind of budget. So what about that layout and information is superior to what is provided by SoTA?

I see a slideshow of recent announcements, buttons at the top where you navigate to more info (Okay I'll be honest here, the first time I went to this website, I clicked on about and company and it says they make spacecraft, I was like I don't care about this and left the website). My friend had sent me the link to it on steam, he is a bit of an aviation fan so I thought it was something like this. I never did pledge to that game and Likely simply because of that link/information it lead me there.

The next link is Fund Raising goals, I don't care about the goals of something I don't know about, so moving on, I see FAQ, click on that and it's some terms I don't care for, subscription faq, account faq, hangar module faq, what do I care about hangers? something about credits and the final one is a chat faq? I dont' see what I'm looking for, I want some broad overview of what this game is.

So lets try the next button. Comm-Link It's just updates, nobody cares about updates to something they dont' know anything about, and haven't pledged to. I see citizens, engineering, I guess those are just updates specific for certain things that I don't even understand. Then we have community, basically same thing we have here, still not where I want to start learning about this game.

So I keep moving on, we've got the store, okay still not what I want. Star Citizen? what is that headline supposed to mean, or wait, here it is, About the game. I had no idea what the button star citizen was supposed to mean so I started from left to right..

Okay so now I'm where I need to be. I see a 9 minute video, it's well done, starts off with some nice looking space stuff graphics, then it has Chris Roberts explaining the game and systems. Some screenshots, some work being done (modeling).

Go down a bit and read some "game setting" type stuff, you wake up and a 1 minute video if you click learn more. It starts off with broad concepts and if you like what you hear you progress down into other videos/descriptions. Thats all good stuff.


I would like to see this type of About thing being the primary link most people first see when going to shroudoftheavatar.com for the first time. It should be, the Why am I here spending my valuable time to learn about this. You need to grab them and make them not want to stop till the learn every feature this game has promised.

You need to make them so SCARED of missing out that they sit and learn about it.. here is the kind of thing I would have done:

 

I think you hit the nail on the head here. That's the key. Start me out with what the game is about. The darksouls "about" page was simple and still gripping. Just some screenshots that really evoke the game with some catchy descriptive stuff about the game. Why can't we have that? It doesn't look expensive to do, but it really gets the point across.

 

I'd be happy to pitch in on a stretch goal for a "Scrooged"inspired SotA trailer. Is Lee Majors available still?

 

My original thought was not necessarily that improving the website was all that was needed, but that anyone who A. believes the graphics are poor (and that impression is out there a lot) or B. doesn't know very much about what the game IS (also pretty common in comments I've read) could come to the main website and easily find out correct info about the current state of graphics and a consolidated info list that explains what it is, what it's not, and what makes it special.

 

Okay so here is how I see doing a "scrooged inspired" promo video.

Cut together bits of gameplay people 1) Complain about or 2) Will be cool features in this game that other games lack.

So In a world where games have, objects you can't use, pointless quests, no impact for your actions etc... The master of RPG's returns to bring back what you've been missing.

That sort of thing.

 

Progress bars on the home page showing where the game is in terms of production would be helpful too. It seems like too many people don't get what 'pre-alpha' means.

 

Splash Page changes...

• 9Month/1Year Progress video
• Scrolling picture of the week (concept art or in game) \ Updates
• Development progress bars (DarkSharrt's idea, lol) great idea btw...
• Crowd funding numbers
• Number of each lot type left before Release 1 goes live (count down)

i.e:
City lots left: 44 of 150 remaining
Town lots left: 86 of 300 remaining
Village lots left: 231 of 600 remaining
(removes 1 lot out of circulation after a lot deed is purchased in the add-on store or some buys a pledge that includes a lot)

RG's Essay on his perfect modern crpg\mmo game and his goals for SotA in video form in one of those boxes, 3-5min, link to game FAQ under it.

RG and Tracy on the story in video form in one of those boxes, 3-5min, link to the book chapters just under it

RG on housing\house decoration in SotA in video form in one of those boxes, 3-5min, link to house FAQ under it

Darkstarr and that MadHermit guy on crafting (in video form in one of those boxes, 3-5min) link to crafting FAQ and forum post

RG and DS on combat\magic\circles\sigils, short video you get the idea...

DS and CS on PVP and death, short video you get the idea...

General Changes Website

• Store Cart
• Store Conversion
• New Tiers \ store items with each release
• Better organized media

General Marketing

• Exciting stretch goals
• Publicity stunts, would love to see an in game PVP match between DS and RG or an office PVP tournament
• Polls and Surveys, you must know your customer...
• More RG interviews
• Incentives to get the 5k+ non-registered KS backers to join. (better late than never bonus, pet Sloth )
• Press bundles with the latest graphics.
• Consider some form of modular release

i.e Citizens + get access to "Single Player Offline" between\after official releases
-Character builder module
-House Module (play around and decorate houses offline)
-Crafting Module (play around with crafting)
-PVE combat test module
-PVP arena module

Besides Mishri's super biased non-objective review of SC's website, and yes a website is not a marketing strategy but it is a very effective marketing tool, I agree with everything else you have stated. (and I like the Scrooged idea)

I would say SotA's biggest competition are the following games

Crowd funding competition: (single player rpg, games not direct competition)
https://eternity.obsidian.net/
https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/
http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/

Direct competition: MMO rpg's
https://www.everquestnext.com/home
http://camelotunchained.com/en/ (crowd funded also)
http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/

 

If anyone has any screenshots they want to offer to the devs for this idea - https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/representative-recent-screenshots.8444/