Increasing social media markting effort for 0ad visibility

[Darkcity]

One thing I have noticed that 0.A.D doesn't have much presense in any content space or social media space. This is one of the reason we have such a smaller player base. Even die hard RTS fans never heard of this game. There are few things that can done to increase 0.A.D. presense and hence increase player base.

• Uploading match videos on Youtube: We have very limited Youtube channel who used to upload gameplay video with commentry (0ad newbie rush, Valihrant, Tom oad etc). These channels are highly inactive. hence follwojng things can be done. Just create a gmail like 0adusername.0ad@gmail.com, and create youtube channel.
  1. Top players like @borg- should create a Youtube channel and upload their gameplay videos. With or without commertry.
  2. Other frquent players can also create a youtube channel and start uploading game play videos.
  3. Player who are good at gamplay commeting can take replys from other players and uplaod on their youtube channel.
• Asking people to try 0ad on RTS youtube channel: There are many RTS youtube channels, where youtubers post their content and they have many followers and viewers. Followong things can be done.
  1. During live youtube stream if any, if you are watching the stream. Post the 0ad trailer and download link and request players to try this out.
  2. Commeting on newly uploaded RTS content to try out 0ad.
  3. If you follow any channal then put a request on their channel in comment to try out.
  4. There are many gamers who try new games, if you can acceoss such gamers, tag 0ad.
• Promoting during live streams: You can do the same youtube promotion on any other live streams if you watching one or follwing one. 
• Promoting on gaming disucssion websites, only related to RTS threads: Many websites such as quora has many questions where people ask games they can try or RTS they can try, if you come accross such Q&A, you can tag 0ad and ask them to try.

The 0.A.D community can only expend if all existing player base who likes the game are willing to take share 0ad. This requires only small effort from our side.

@Stan` Can we add these sharing messages in lobby? 

@borg-, @Lion.Kanzen, @ValihrAnt, Do you guys wants to add anything?

[Stan`]

Hmmm. https://linktr.ee/wildfire_games

@mysticjim @superflytom @psypherium

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Asking people to try 0ad on RTS youtube channel

Been doing that for a bit, just need names, mostly. Biggest so far, Mayorcete and SergiuHellDragoonHQ; Just need names and way to contact them.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Can we add these sharing messages in lobby? 

We can, but pretty sure people who know the game and are in the lobby are not the target audience.

[Darkcity]

If user have tried the game and left, then thats a different issue we can look into. But here the target will be mostly new users. 

As an individual it will be hard to reach multiple youtubers and influencers, but if communuity help in this then we should get enough new users. My point is 0ad is running for so many years and we deserve a large active (montly active) player base. @Stan` you and the team putting effort then it should be fruitful. 

0ad deserve a good community base, and with that we might more resources to help with.

So, we can start with small step of marketing. If we start to see results, we can explore more approaches to get more new players. So, lets add to common lobby message follwoing text.
"Enjoy 0.A.D.!! then invite your friends and other RTS enthugiasts to try 0.A.D. Shout out on Youtube and live streams, and help 0.a.d. community grow." 

[Lion.Kanzen]

• We have to boost the engine videos. (Modding and code).
• Each launch must be closed expectation a few weeks before.It is part of a communication campaign.
• Make visual guides of changes.
• Balance changes should be included or else given separately
• Obviously I don't ask for an expensive production.
• Visual charts are important. To explain balances.

[Lion.Kanzen]

this is a good example of how to do it. very visual and nothing about  read those boring patches. It's about explain them.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Reveal announcement example 

short, you only reveal a little. this creates expectation.

 

[Gurken Khan]

2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Each launch must be closed expectation a few weeks before.

That's kinda difficult. According to my download history it took nearly two months from a25 RC1 to release.

And everything depends on voluntary work. But ofc I think all suggestions how everyone can help are good.

[Player of 0AD]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

 Biggest so far, Mayorcete and SergiuHellDragoonHQ; Just need names and way to contact them.

 

Sergiu has made 0ad videos 5 years ago, and 8 years ago ;-)

[Stan`]

8 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

Sergiu has made 0ad videos 5 years ago, and 8 years ago ;-)

That means we missed one two years ago. His videos have more views than our 300k yearly downloads

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 07/07/2022 at 2:37 PM, Gurken Khan said:

.

 

On 07/07/2022 at 2:37 PM, Gurken Khan said:

That's kinda difficult. According to my download history it took nearly two months from a25 RC1 to release.

I did that ever since closed the cycle of add new features.

I had a FB page in Spanish.

 

It always started with...

""The release phase has started, soon we will see A## being released, stay tuned for more information.""

[Darkcity]

Context

I was conducting a survey on newer players in the game by asking question, "How did you hear about 0ad".

Survey: I asked it to about 15-20 players, and the response I received 90% of the times was "referred by a friend". Some people regarded 0ad as one of the best RTS they played.

Survey insights : It points out 2 major things for 0ad.

1. Our user growth is highly depended on referrals, i.e., on existing player base experience.
2. We don't have presense/Infulence on social media to cater to newer players.

Solutions

For eixtsing players experience we are working on it alpha after alpha but to acquire newer player we need some effort. I recommend following things, and as I said we will need help of 0ad community as well.

• Answering questions about RTS games on websites like Quora, Google forms/webistes etc.
  • If we come across a query like "What are best RTS games to try" or "RTS game list" or any other question related to RTS games.
  • Query related to free games
  • Some websites are fammous for providing free games, maybe upload our latest alpha version there.
• Commenting about 0ad on content platforms.
  • There are videos like free games to try, or best RTS to try on YouTube. We should check for a channel that has high number of viewers and video is publish recently. We should comment about 0ad and ask the community and Youtuber to try 0ad.
  • Linux advertising. With limited game available on Linux, 0ad can be a go to game. For videos like games on linux we should shout out for 0ad.
  • Twitch and other streaming platforms. If someone watch game streaming for RTS game, they should shout out for 0ad in comment section of live stream or recent streamed videos of content makers.
• Asking community to refer friends to try out the game
  • I have already mentioned ealrier that we should put a line on lobby welcome message, "Have fun!, invite your friends and other RTS enthugiasts to help 0.A.D community grow."
• More gameplay videos/channels: I'm seeing few more players come forward and uplaoding gameplay videos, but we need our old stremers to be active and new players to uplaod their gameplay on content platforms.

Extra Point

• Modding videos to grow dev community: Right now we relay on documentations which we share to modders, but I think we need videos where all the process of modding is explained. Like from Idea to end to in-game testing, each step captured and explained. This will make more people to try and make their mods. I would recommend devs to record their sesisons and share on 0ad official youtube channel. 
• Other activities: Like SEO, regional specific user engagement etc, I'm thinking of that line as well, will publish once thought that through.

@Stan` Can we modify lobby mesage a little as mentioned above? Would be great. 

Edited July 31, 2022 by Darkcity

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

@Stan` Can we modify lobby mesage a little as mentioned above? Would be great. 

We can. Ask @user1 / @Dunedan what they think of it.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Answering questions about RTS games on websites like Quora, Google forms/webistes etc.

Commenting about 0ad on content platforms.

Well if you guys have the time, sure, why not.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Asking community to refer friends to try out the game

Wonder if that's not already the case.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Linux advertising. With limited game available on Linux, 0ad can be a go to game. For videos like games on linux we should shout out for 0ad.

We're already well known in the Open-source world. In fact we are the no1 package in the App Store list on many distributions, for our name starts with a 0.

According to stats there are more Linux players than Windows players https://feedback.wildfiregames.com/os/

 

I've contacted a few streamers, most have not replied, or negatively, because their audience expect Starcraft or Age of Empires. I'm also doing a few events where I'll talk about the game. Not gonna lie though the things we need most right now are developers.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

Modding videos to grow dev community:

@superflytom aka Tom0ad wanted to do that at some point. Dunno if he ever did.

[Dunedan]

38 minutes ago, Stan` said:

We can. Ask @user1 / @Dunedan what they think of it.

@Stan`: Sure, sounds good. You should also be able to change the message on your own.

[Darkcity]

I got one good insight while surveying random new player on how they heard about 0ad. It seems local channels are more effective (in regional language) to convert a viewer into a player. For example a polish channel has high probablity of converitng a polish viewer into player than a english channel. 

Maybe we can request small regional channels to give a try to 0.A.D. 

I have tried a campaign for 0ad on linux and ubuntu game channels "Commenting on videos to try 0ad". But results are not as good as I thought.

Maybe we can request these such regional channel then it might work out.

[kun0]

I am thinking about starting a channel and commenting videos. However I think I will only be able to do it infrequently. What about a community account?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

0ad mention by major AOE YouTuber at 1:07.

unrelated:

I think performance is a pretty strong turn off for many potential gamers. I am happy to even wait frame by frame in some cases (in bigger multiplayer games), but I am sure many players find frame rate and lag issues much more debilitating.

Some lobby players have said to me that they would be more exited for performance and "quality of life" improvements than content and balance changes. Obviously, these are much harder improvements to make, but what I am saying is they would make the game more appealing to new players and more entertaining for existing players.

Edited September 6, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Some lobby players have said to me that they would be more exited for performance and "quality of life" improvements than content and balance changes. Obviously, these are much harder improvements to make, but what I am saying is they would make the game more appealing to new players and more entertaining for existing players.

Well I'd like to put focus on this if the developers we had right now could work on it, but they have a different skillset. And obviously they are not that many. There is some progress being done, but not for A26

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

0ad mention by major AOE YouTuber at 1:07.

unrelated:

I think performance is a pretty strong turn off for many potential gamers. I am happy to even wait frame by frame in some cases (in bigger multiplayer games), but I am sure many players find frame rate and lag issues much more debilitating.

Some lobby players have said to me that they would be more exited for performance and "quality of life" improvements than content and balance changes. Obviously, these are much harder improvements to make, but what I am saying is they would make the game more appealing to new players and more entertaining for existing players.

what a nice mention.

[Darkcity]

6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Some lobby players have said to me that they would be more exited for performance and "quality of life" improvements than content and balance changes. Obviously, these are much harder improvements to make, but what I am saying is they would make the game more appealing to new players and more entertaining for existing players.

========0. A.D. campaigns as new engament for users==================================

In my opinion we need some campaigns in-game or as a mod for new players. This will esure the engagement with the game but also going forward, we can utilize the same. Can we request the modders to work toward the same?. I was thinking if it can be done in phases if possible.

Phase1 - Campaign stories designs

1. We can create a new thread for each civiclizations, where people (interested in historical context) can contribute in creating end to end story of campaigns. Someone from project governance team can collect all the relvent piece to put together the story.
2. Aksing commuity to create video for the story fianlize and upload it on 0ad official channle and accross multiple channle to show intention to new players that we are coming up with campaigns in upocming alphas
3. More balanced scenario and few cutscene intro in the game.
4. Launch campaign for atleast 1 civilization.

Phase 2- Hero-wise complete camapigns including civic campaigns

1. We can again upload vidoes for the same. and I can run in-general SEM campaigns.

I think we need to put a little more focus on non-competitive game part of it. Which we can take to new users and play 0.A.D.

==========================0. A.D.gameplay content=======================

6 hours ago, kun0 said:

I am thinking about starting a channel and commenting videos. However I think I will only be able to do it infrequently. What about a community account?

This is good idea. But we will need some to moderate it. It can have following category of videos.

1. Top -level classification based commetry or not
2. Second level classification
   1. type of game - 1v1, 2v2, ....
   2. AI game plays.
   3. City building and so on.

 

===========================Gameply videos of upcoming changes======================

We release alpha after alpha yet we get only 1 video about it and we get 0 video of what dev is working on. I think we can do 2 things here.

1. Make the video of upcoming changes. 0.AD will make one and request all 0.ad you tubers to do so and circulate on all channles.
2. Behind the scene is a big attracton as of now. be it movies or game development. To attract new devs and excite the 0ad community we need some behind the scene dev work videos or dev hsaring their dev session on official 0ad channel. @Stan` Please try to arrange this atleast, i tdon;t think it will be too hard :p.

 

These are my points on what we can do as of now. Of-course we can continue of our regular activities to increase 0ad visibility overall.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Darkcity

[Stan`]

Regarding campaigns any community initiative is welcome. Although maybe we should focus on making @SciGuy42 's campaign as good as it can be. It would be nice for it to be translated as well. See SeeSeewiki:TranslatingMods

I remember @Stockfish wanted to make videos for the main channel and a side (Spanish) channel. I tried to help but my time is very limited so I mostly need things to be hands-in. If they are not it forces me to take time of other things to do them which is a big no no.

Regarding streaming development we talked a bit about it with @vladislavbelov and the issue was that it would be either too technical or too boring and we haven't found a way to make it interesting.

We have an informal Discord private message for streamers but so far no large scale program.

CC: @superflytom, @psypherium and @mysticjim.

 

[BeTe]

We should also stream POVs on Twitch.tv - it's also popular platform in gaming. And it's bizzare how easy is to stream using OBS. Once configured it's 2 clicks to start stream, literary. Like (1) open OBS and (2) click "Start recording". I encourage creative and people with good narration talents to start doing it. 

Btw, small feedback as newcomer to 0AD - the biggest issue is "unable to join host" problem. It's anyways annoying to wait for game and then you can't play with only person available b/c of this... Sending Wiki page of "how to open host on router" is not solution, imho.

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 hours ago, Darkcity said:

We release alpha after alpha yet we get only 1 video about it and we get 0 video of what dev is working on. I think we can do 2 things here.

Good point. it would be nice to record streams of allowing the team to paste our quality recordings.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Regarding streaming development we talked a bit about it with @vladislavbelov and the issue was that it would be either too technical or too boring and we haven't found a way to make it interesting

You should know that when you are going to talk about technical things you have to talk about what is exciting about the new gameplay.

The thing that fans like to hear the most is, for example, what new mechanics each Alpha brings to the game apart from demonstrating optimization.

Also show you how the mechanics are going that are not in the game yet and that are probably close to arriving.

[Stan`]

56 minutes ago, BeTe said:

We should also stream POVs on Twitch.tv - it's also popular platform in gaming. And it's bizzare how easy is to stream using OBS. Once configured it's 2 clicks to start stream, literary. Like (1) open OBS and (2) click "Start recording". I encourage creative and people with good narration talents to start doing it. 

Btw, small feedback as newcomer to 0AD - the biggest issue is "unable to join host" problem. It's anyways annoying to wait for game and then you can't play with only person available b/c of this... Sending Wiki page of "how to open host on router" is not solution, imho.

Sadly it's the only solution we have right now. We cannot for now host games on our server.

22 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Good point. it would be nice to record streams of allowing the team to paste our quality recordings.

It's hard to record streams when you work ten minutes by ten minutes.

20 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

You should know that when you are going to talk about technical things you have to talk about what is exciting about the new gameplay.

The thing that fans like to hear the most is, for example, what new mechanics each Alpha brings to the game apart from demonstrating optimization.

Also show you how the mechanics are going that are not in the game yet and that are probably close to arriving.

Sadly this is not the part that we work on.

[smiley]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Regarding streaming development we talked a bit about it with @vladislavbelov and the issue was that it would be either too technical or too boring and we haven't found a way to make it interesting.

It's fun if you can manage to attract the right crowd. Usually overly technical stuff are only interesting to other programmers.

https://youtube.com/c/AndreasKling streams system development and has gained a respectable following. I recall finding the channel when it had like 100 subs from a Reddit post made on r/programming. Granted the project itself has been quite successful in attracting a big community (of 100% developers too as the only people who have even heard of a hobby OS are probably devs).