14 réponses à ce sujet

[Mengtzu]

So I think right now - this week - is a critical opportunity for all builders to market our work.  There's a huge audience fired up for more Dragon Age, who would probably be willing to pick up and play some DA:O mods rather than run through the demo for the 13th time or troll the BSN forums.

It's just a question of making them aware of the great gameplay that's been produced for them over the last 15 months.  I think it's probably even a good time for builders whose modules are still coming to plant some seeds, capturing mindshare in players who will be looking for content in between finishing DA2 and the first major DLC releases.

Now I was absolutely determined to get The Broken City out for this important window, but my problem is that I'm utterly clueless about marketing.  I don't even know how to reach out to all the people who played Fragments to let them know there's a sequel, let alone attract a new audience.

I'm not even sure where to promote mods, outside of ModDB (which seems important but I don't even know if players are looking for DA mods there) and Rock Paper Shotgun's Mod News column. 

Where else can we reach an audience, particularly in this crucial pre-DA2 window?  Can we better promote ourselves here and at the Nexus?  Is there anything we can do as a community to promote the DA:O modding scene and our library of shipped and upcoming modules in general?

[daywalker03]

With all the threads that I see asking about mods that are located in the DAO General Discussion forum, you would think that someone would suggest to the poster asking about then to look in the Toolset Projects and Recruiting forum for discussions about them... I think I understand now why Neverwinter Nights 2 modders started posting threads about their mods in the General Discussion fourms, even though evey registered game owner could post in the toolset forums.

[Mengtzu]

 Well, as a forum mod in other parts of the web it hurts me inside to post to the wrong forum, especially for the purposes of marketing.

That being said I had a crack at promoting everyone's modules - I tried to pick out the list of fully complete/polished mods from the BSN index, let me know if I neglected something people should be playing.

Modifié par Mengtzu, 05 mars 2011 - 06:40 .

[Proleric]

Well, that post was a real public service IMO. By all means use the forum that players actually read, since it's clear that the announcements forum is generally overlooked. Thank you.

[Mengtzu]

Cheers! It'd probably help if assorted builders bumped it from time to time over the next week.

[0x30A88]

Put it in your signature and go into a posting frenzy in the domains of the trolls (DAII gen. discussion).

[BulletArray]

Create a page for it.. You then spam twitter, youtube (make a short video) and facebook and other social places with it.

+ what Gisle Aune said.

Cheers.

[Arttis]

You can ask Bioware to have a little ad on the side cycling through new/older mods.

[-Semper-]

i believe that was asked month ago and never happened.

[Elvhen Veluthil]

I think we should get a new moderator for the toolset forums, someone from the community that will be able to speak up for us and keep things updated in the forums.

[Nattfodd]

Everyone should think about himself, whan talking about promoting it's creations. Modding success like Counterstrike are rare. Simply we can't have millions of Counterstrike. That's it.

[Mengtzu]

Nattfodd wrote...

Everyone should think about himself, whan talking about promoting it's creations. Modding success like Counterstrike are rare. Simply we can't have millions of Counterstrike. That's it.

I don't think that's really relevant in the current situation.

If we were dealing with a saturated market, where the question for an individual player was "which Dragon Age module am I going to play?", then ruthless self-promotion would make sense.

In our situation, we have a "blue ocean" market in the massive number of PC DA:O players that have not yet modded their game, or the smaller but easier-to-reach market of the many players who are using art or fix mods but have never downloaded a content module.

It's in our interests to promote the scene as a whole, to turn a higher percentage of DA:O players into module players.  An "Alley of Murders" player isn't a "lost sale" to me, they're someone who's massively more likely to realise classic Week exists and give it a go.  Likewise a player who goes through Fragments/Dirge/Broken City is a player who can have confidence that module series do get finished in this community (eventually >.>) and be more interested in investing in a long-running series like Baldur's Gate Redux or Dark Times.

I don't think anybody is imagining anything like Counterstrike numbers ever for a content module.  We're building one-off consumeable experiences rather than a new play ecosystem, after all.  But we can reach more players than we do today, and we're absolutely in a position where a rising tide will lift all boats.

Modifié par Mengtzu, 06 mars 2011 - 11:55 .

[AmstradHero]

What Mengtzu said. Self promotion at the expense of other modules is the exact opposite of what the Dragon Age mod community needs - doubly so for playable modules.

"You and me... we're in this together now... none of them can stop us now... we will make it through somehow"

A few months ago I created a thread asking why players didn't use mods. Many simply weren't aware that they existed, others didn't know that playable modules existed, and some (mistakenly) believed that all mods were low quality. These and many other myths were dispelled in the thread by me, along with other modders and players.

I would happily say that the number 1 issue for mods is the lack of publicity. The modding scene has simply not been supported by BioWare as they said they would try to help:
* to my knowledge there has been no official exposure of the mod community since their advertisement of the community contests on the BioWare blog,
* a promised revamp of the BSN's project section never eventuated, and;
* heck, the featured projects on the social site haven't changed in probably over six months!

Advertising mods simply isn't on BioWare's agenda.  While that's somewhat of a disappointment, modders pretty much just have to grin and bear that. I consider anything that I can do to promote my mods and the modding community in general no only makes players more likely to play my mods, but also to encourage any friends they have who might still have Dragon Age (or still haven't yet bought it) to give mods a chance.

My next mod The Shattered War is still in production, so anything I can do to keep players trying other mods and keeping DAO mods in mind will have a better chance of coming back to play my project when it is finished - which will then encourage them to return when other mods are finished... and so on.  I doubt anyone here expects to make a counterstrike... I'm merely hoping to make a damn good adventure that people will play. If I can do that and support other people in their endeavour to do the same, I'll be happy.

As for what we can do...
Aside from the usual twitter, facebook, digg, etc or trying to get kudos or advertising on gaming websites, I must confess I'm at a bit of a loss. I personally doubt the effectiveness of ModDB (at least for Dragon Age), but it's really hard to gauge what can be done.  Given I've still only got a paltry few hundred views for my video trailers for The Shattered War, and the number of hours I invested in creating those, they almost hardly seem worth it, despite my initial thought that they would provide some of the best advertising material around.

I'd hazard a guess that we need someone who knows about PR, and has some clout or the ability to get some prime advertising real estate on popular (relevant) websites to help. Where we might find such a person... I don't know.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 07 mars 2011 - 08:00 .

[MikeSunrider]

The issue with PR though, is that I don't think there is a set method to really advertise mods when not properly supported by the actual game developer. It might be possible to bank on the rampant discontent displayed towards Dragon Age II. As modders you are at the moment the other choice for a DA fix for some of those people (in theory).

One of the ideas that crossed my mind briefly, is that under the banner of 'Modders for Quality Content' there rises a website that houses all of the development blogs for the different projects (of a certain quality) and try to get certain things rolling that ye olde nwnvault did. (Contests, modder interviews, etc)

Publicity by big gaming sites -- well all you can do is approach them and ask I suppose.

My question is, what can the average non-modder do to help you guys? I was once naive, thought the Dragon Age toolset abandoned, but on a new playthrough and thanks to a PCgamer.com editorial, I found the light of mods.

Modifié par MikeSunrider, 10 mars 2011 - 09:49 .

[Sandrius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ODD-alu-_c&feature=channel_video_title

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ81fa-JPXQ&feature=channel_video_title

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elryt-8Tf54&feature=channel_video_title

Enoy!

Like this, hehe.