Marketing Idea: A Special Crowdsourced Trailer Emphasizing the Game's High Skill Potential
NousWanderer
Join Date: 2010-05-07 Member: 71646Members
Join Date: 2010-05-07 Member: 71646Members
CONTEXT
The development roadmap contains a board for the 2.0 Relaunch. This has been described in an announcement as follows: “This isn’t a new game, but what we feel is the ultimate version of NS2. Once our objectives on the roadmap have been completed, we will work with our partners to do a large marketing push and even test some free to play options to get NS2 in the hands of those who haven’t had the opportunity to play.”
This board features a card for the 2.0 trailer. This is prudent. But my assumption is that this trailer will be a sleeker version of what we've seen before: something that provides an overview of the game concept, the various roles, and which provides flashy, enticing sci-fi visuals in order to draw audiences to the game. Exosuits blasting down lerks, infestation consuming space bases, etc. You're familiar with the idea because we've seen effective versions before.
That's great, but I'd like to suggest something in addition to it:
PROPOSAL
Under current conditions, the vast majority of the unique players who load NS2 on a weekly basis don't stick around. After 8-10 hours, retention drops off. The players who do stick around are usually those who have a high tolerance for getting stomped. People who are constitutionally predisposed to getting their shit kicked in until they figure something out. This goes back to NS1's original community, which was highly competitive. Even today, high skill, competitively-oriented players comprise a significant percentage of the "hardcore" audience who reliably play NS2, day in, day out.
Crowdsource an alternate trailer by asking the community to send in their very best frag clips and game footage. The percentage of gamers in the world who are predisposed to overcome massive skill gaps isn't large, but these players are remarkably dedicated once you hook them, and they're very interested in challenging games. So send these players a signal. Challenge them. Let them know that NS2 is a game that will fuck their shit up in the very best of ways. Tell them that they might not have what it takes to climb the ladder, but they're welcome to try.
A few frag videos for NS2 exist but the community would provide you with plenty of footage if asked directly via an announcement. I'm talking about awesome plays from both teams. If you announce the "contest" in advance, you'll give people plenty of time to make submissions. And then you edit that shit together and set it to some appropriately badass music.
Reward the players who send in the best clips not with money, but by giving them credit in the trailer itself - and possibly via a unique in-game patch or badge. In this way, this trailer would serve to honor the best players who're still around and serve to illustrate that the hardcore scene is of value to the game. Crediting them via their usernames should be sufficient (via a little tag in the bottom right of the video).
The biggest challenge would be establishing graphical requirements for the recordings. Because we don't have a working demo system, it's not as if these clips could be recorded using local settings and then enhanced upon playback. So you might have to draft a list of prerequisites (resolution, anti-aliasing on, particle effects enabled, etc.). But ultimately I'm not sure the clips themselves need to be that polished. You could even cut to streamer footage from Twitch, assuming you've gained permission from the streamer in advance. This applies directly to the people who stream NS2, but even some very big streamers are fans of UWE and might allow you to use their statements if you ask nicely.
PS: If you don't make use of the visual of a evolutionary phylogenetic tree being slowly overtaken by creeping infestation intercut through at least one of the trailers, you'll be disappointing me.
The development roadmap contains a board for the 2.0 Relaunch. This has been described in an announcement as follows: “This isn’t a new game, but what we feel is the ultimate version of NS2. Once our objectives on the roadmap have been completed, we will work with our partners to do a large marketing push and even test some free to play options to get NS2 in the hands of those who haven’t had the opportunity to play.”
This board features a card for the 2.0 trailer. This is prudent. But my assumption is that this trailer will be a sleeker version of what we've seen before: something that provides an overview of the game concept, the various roles, and which provides flashy, enticing sci-fi visuals in order to draw audiences to the game. Exosuits blasting down lerks, infestation consuming space bases, etc. You're familiar with the idea because we've seen effective versions before.
That's great, but I'd like to suggest something in addition to it:
PROPOSAL
Under current conditions, the vast majority of the unique players who load NS2 on a weekly basis don't stick around. After 8-10 hours, retention drops off. The players who do stick around are usually those who have a high tolerance for getting stomped. People who are constitutionally predisposed to getting their shit kicked in until they figure something out. This goes back to NS1's original community, which was highly competitive. Even today, high skill, competitively-oriented players comprise a significant percentage of the "hardcore" audience who reliably play NS2, day in, day out.
Crowdsource an alternate trailer by asking the community to send in their very best frag clips and game footage. The percentage of gamers in the world who are predisposed to overcome massive skill gaps isn't large, but these players are remarkably dedicated once you hook them, and they're very interested in challenging games. So send these players a signal. Challenge them. Let them know that NS2 is a game that will fuck their shit up in the very best of ways. Tell them that they might not have what it takes to climb the ladder, but they're welcome to try.
A few frag videos for NS2 exist but the community would provide you with plenty of footage if asked directly via an announcement. I'm talking about awesome plays from both teams. If you announce the "contest" in advance, you'll give people plenty of time to make submissions. And then you edit that shit together and set it to some appropriately badass music.
Reward the players who send in the best clips not with money, but by giving them credit in the trailer itself - and possibly via a unique in-game patch or badge. In this way, this trailer would serve to honor the best players who're still around and serve to illustrate that the hardcore scene is of value to the game. Crediting them via their usernames should be sufficient (via a little tag in the bottom right of the video).
The biggest challenge would be establishing graphical requirements for the recordings. Because we don't have a working demo system, it's not as if these clips could be recorded using local settings and then enhanced upon playback. So you might have to draft a list of prerequisites (resolution, anti-aliasing on, particle effects enabled, etc.). But ultimately I'm not sure the clips themselves need to be that polished. You could even cut to streamer footage from Twitch, assuming you've gained permission from the streamer in advance. This applies directly to the people who stream NS2, but even some very big streamers are fans of UWE and might allow you to use their statements if you ask nicely.
PS: If you don't make use of the visual of a evolutionary phylogenetic tree being slowly overtaken by creeping infestation intercut through at least one of the trailers, you'll be disappointing me.
Comments
But if I think about recording all my playing with maximum graphics (AA even LOL), well I don't know if I could even kill anything with 10 FPS. Demo system would be really helpful for this. I am not even sure if frag videos are needed though. I think at a very high quality trailer frag videos wouldn't work too well, but that one would also be very expensive to make
As for the rest: I mostly agree. As I envision it, people would be submitting footage per whatever requirements are established in the announcement should this ever happen. So that could include requirements like making sure voice is off (thereby allowing for clear sfx and trailer music).The roadmap will almost assuredly take months and months to be worked through so there would be plenty of time for interested parties to produce footage even if the requirements were fairly stringent.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLte4_NrKRvybyGqsHfHXNI0_EWDxJbqoJ