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The_Fury · 12-22-2008, 06:34 PM

If all you are going to rely on is an advert on this and other mud related sites then you are likely to struggle to find yourself many if any players at all. You need to get creative and work hard at promoting your game to a much wider audience than what you find on TMC, TMS and MB. Posting on these sites will help, but that should not be the only promotion that you do.

What you do and how you approach the promotion of your game really depends on the theme, the time you have and how much money you have to put into it, but you will need both in varying amounts to have any real chance to gain new players.

My personal view is to not to focus much time and energy on existing mudders, the top 20 or 30 games have that market totally sewn up among themselves and you would have to have something exceptional to take players away from the likes of Aardwolf and IRE.

Looking further afield is likely to be more rewarding, there are lots more people who play casual games and web interfaced MMO's that have text interfaces and seems to bea market that readily tries new things, also promoting directly to people who have an interest in your genera can be extreemly benificial, DBZ games have been able to recruit non mudders just based on theme and word of mouth, I think you might find that starwars games had the same effect when they were at the peak of their drawing powers.

As for specific tactics, one that i will use myself is direct marketing to gamers, configure a client to auto connect to your game, (Aardwolf Mushclient for example), along with a pdf or set of html pages that contain a basic walkthrough, faq and some help files, along with descriptions of you classes, races and the games story, and hame them burned to a mini CD.

If you live in a city of any size, you can get these into the hands of kids quite easily, 35,000 12->17 year olds in the school district i live in alone. Make your initial promotion a competition, with $100 in prises up for grabs at the end of the first month.

You can also then submit your game client to places like download.com and try and get it into places like IGN and Gamershell, and then there are other paid advertising options like google adwords and facebook advertising, but like most things they are going to cost you money, that i think is better spent in other ways.

If your buget is small and all you can afford is banner advertising, make sure its on a per click though basis, without gaurenteed traffic to your site from your advertising dollars your getting no benifit from it at all. No traffic to your site, no potential players.

Hope that helps somewhat, Oh and something that i have done for the last 12 months is put $20 a week aside each week from my pay check that will form my advertising budget for my game, when finally released after 2 or so years i will have a tidy amount of money to use to promote my game and will not have to try and find money to do it with. Planning ahead now will make it less of a pain later.

12-22-2008, 06:34 PM	#2
The_Fury Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 57	Re: The first hurdle of opening. If all you are going to rely on is an advert on this and other mud related sites then you are likely to struggle to find yourself many if any players at all. You need to get creative and work hard at promoting your game to a much wider audience than what you find on TMC, TMS and MB. Posting on these sites will help, but that should not be the only promotion that you do. What you do and how you approach the promotion of your game really depends on the theme, the time you have and how much money you have to put into it, but you will need both in varying amounts to have any real chance to gain new players. My personal view is to not to focus much time and energy on existing mudders, the top 20 or 30 games have that market totally sewn up among themselves and you would have to have something exceptional to take players away from the likes of Aardwolf and IRE. Looking further afield is likely to be more rewarding, there are lots more people who play casual games and web interfaced MMO's that have text interfaces and seems to bea market that readily tries new things, also promoting directly to people who have an interest in your genera can be extreemly benificial, DBZ games have been able to recruit non mudders just based on theme and word of mouth, I think you might find that starwars games had the same effect when they were at the peak of their drawing powers. As for specific tactics, one that i will use myself is direct marketing to gamers, configure a client to auto connect to your game, (Aardwolf Mushclient for example), along with a pdf or set of html pages that contain a basic walkthrough, faq and some help files, along with descriptions of you classes, races and the games story, and hame them burned to a mini CD. If you live in a city of any size, you can get these into the hands of kids quite easily, 35,000 12->17 year olds in the school district i live in alone. Make your initial promotion a competition, with $100 in prises up for grabs at the end of the first month. You can also then submit your game client to places like download.com and try and get it into places like IGN and Gamershell, and then there are other paid advertising options like google adwords and facebook advertising, but like most things they are going to cost you money, that i think is better spent in other ways. If your buget is small and all you can afford is banner advertising, make sure its on a per click though basis, without gaurenteed traffic to your site from your advertising dollars your getting no benifit from it at all. No traffic to your site, no potential players. Hope that helps somewhat, Oh and something that i have done for the last 12 months is put $20 a week aside each week from my pay check that will form my advertising budget for my game, when finally released after 2 or so years i will have a tidy amount of money to use to promote my game and will not have to try and find money to do it with. Planning ahead now will make it less of a pain later.