SoTA: Advertisement and PR

Good afternoon all,

I wanted to ask what the plans are for advertisement and PR with regards to our game. What are the plans? What media will we use to advertise? TV? Online only? A mixture? Will Gamestop/Best Buy/other brick-and-mortar stores have this game on its shelves and a spread in the window? What are we talking here?

Also, can we please have an updated, professionally made trailer without an awkward narrator? I am concerned that with the current state of things, we are unable to compete with the standard of advertisement media that is being offered commonly in games today.

What are we doing to draw in new players? What is the target demographic of our advertising campaign? Do we want young players to join (18-25)? Or are we strictly looking at players who know who/what Richard Garriott is (30+, but more realistically 40+)?

I feel that these are worthwhile questions, and I would love to see some answers regarding them if the dev team would be willing to answer with some specifics.

Thank you.

 

I believe the narrator that is used during the opening cut scene is the exact same narrator from the ultima games.

 

@Lord Blackthorne - are you referring to the INTRO to the game, that plays when you launch for the first time, or pick 'view intro' in the menu? AFAIK that is voiced by Bill Johnson from Ultima 7 (The Guardian), as Jack mentioned - and is quite good IMHO.
-- or are you referring to the community trailers, on the SOTA website and youtube, etc?

 

Good intentions. Good points. Sounds like a good questionaire to get a masterplan for PR.
Nevertheless I don't think the PR-crew will discuss this openly on a public board

 

I think most who know of RG have already heard of sota. It would be a good idea not to focus on them with advertising, but instead focus on new demographics.

 

We've been asking for this information for awhile. Those of us that went digging and did find advertisements were not in any way pleased with them. They contained basic design errors, cut and paste images, blurry images, images with mismatched colors on the same entity, shadows going in the wrong direction(s), etc.

TL/DR we've gotten nothing concrete as a response to these questions, and the efforts we have seen have been nowhere near acceptable.

To add some more random thoughts: You will never see this game advertised on TV. No stores will carry the boxes, etc. I'm not even sure they were designed or exist beyond dated prototypes. We're a month from launch, and I haven't heard anything about the code for release bring frozen , also called"going gold, etc." where the finished code for the launch of the game is complete, tested, and ready for launch day.

Update: Actually called a friend who's a Gamestop manager and he confirmed they've never even heard of this game. You can't even buy it through them to his knowledge.

Oh well. Here's hoping the marketing team gets it together in the home stretch!

 

A link to the (now closed) pointing out just one of the examples I mentioned in my first post here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...posting-blurry-images-to-social-media.110465/

 

Baron von horrible voice actor??

I miss that guy.

 

Serious question.
The seedinvest was primarily for advertisement.
So let's say the budget is 1.5 mil USD (thats a MADE UP number. Only in my head folks. So keep calm). What do you get for 1.5 mil USD?

On a side note: I never expected a boxed version outside of the backer goals. Boxed retail is expensive and if we want to believe the download platforms, it isnt worth the effort.

 

I think the total was closer to 800,000.

 

No idea. But question still stands.

 

You got gold houses! Duh.

 

@DarkStarr said they are working on a new trailer for the game, which is great since online gaming magazines are using the one from 2014. and Richard Garriott said on twitter that they will "open the flood gates" in terms of advertising after release.
That's all I know about it.

 

That is actually really comforting to hear, @Corv. The "open the floodgates" part.

My wife studied advertising and PR for her degree, so I really appreciate a well-done campaign.

Thanks, all. Great comments. I suppose only time will tell.

 

That telethon today was kinda amazing too. If they show off some of the gameplay they showed there and that MAP! (I looove the map) then all is well