The Great Game Grower Group (GGGG)

[bobdaduck]

Lets make this happen. Sign up here and lets make a group of people dedicated to making bitfighter's community bigger. Lets get a skype group chat going or whatever will work.

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Idea #1: Ads: This has been discussed in great detail before. I need some prototype ads though, and if I can find some time I'll create some myself. The ad needs the following:

1)A bitfighter ship.
2)The bitfighter logo.
3)"Fast, fun, Frenetic" (this is the bitfighter slogan.)
4)Optionally, if it links to the bitfighter website when clicked, it would save massive amounts of work. If you don't know how to do this and just have the design skills, this is still acceptable.
5)Professional quality. Like seriously, no stick figures, no grainyness.
6)For a list of usual banner ad sizes, look here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Standard_web_banner_ad_sizes.svg

Once we have a pool of ads to work with, I or perhaps other group members will look into finding sites and paying money to put ads on them. I would also recommend putting the ads in signatures on forums where it is not against the forum rules.

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Idea #2: People online: If we were to hit a large enough community via advertising, this would be for the most part solved for us, but the main problem with new players is that they don't stick because of lack of people. I myself will, once the GGGG gets going, be hosting a server after I get home from work and I will leave myself generically logged on to it to welcome anyone.

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Idea #3: Word of mouth: Traditionally, bitfighter was spread by word of mouth more than anything else. This is effective but much, MUCH, too slow. Getting friends together and hosting LAN parties will help greatly in either case.

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Idea #4: Community development: Once we have a larger community (I'm thinking about four times our current size would be good), it would be powerful to continue _k's level contests thing. At this point, hosting tournaments and contests and such will help greatly with keeping the community and attracting other players (when friends see the gaming mouse I won from _k's contests, for example.)

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If you are interested in getting involved with this, contact me via PM or post in this thread. If you have big ideas but don't want to get seriously involved, post the ideas here. If you want to get involved though, I want commitment. This won't happen if we have a group of lazy people.

Also maybe when it gets rolling we can get Watusimoto or Raptor or someone to give us custom forum titles.

Also if we do this well we can put it on our resumes. RESUMES, PEOPLE.

Lets make this happen.

This sounds like a great idea. Jojo and i have adobe flash and a bunch of other adobe applications at our disposal if necessary.

[bobdaduck]

Think you could make a couple ads? (a horizontal and a tower version would be great.)

[watusimoto]

I've started a wiki page to collect links to online reviews of Bitfighter where you can leave any positive comments you like. The page is (very) short right now, but I'll add to it as I make my rounds.

http://bitfighter.org/wiki/index.php/On ... _and_links

I think community get-togethers as described in #4 is really important. At least one game night a month should help, and it doesn't even need prizes. We'll need to give plenty of time in advance, choose a time most frequented by players, and advertise it heavily on site to seek out the forum and game lurkers.

As far as #4 goes, I think we should also explore other ways of promotion besides ads though. Reddit links, Facebook sharing, etc.

Good job taking the initiative!

[bobdaduck]

Bitfighter-Leaderboard.jpg

Here's a leaderboard-size ad that I made. It may be a bit skewed looking because of my screen resolution; in hindsight I probably should have taken the shot in windowed mode. Oh well.

And here's an alternative, with "completely free" added in.

Bitfighter-Leaderboardv2.jpg

Looks really good! One little nitpicky suggestion: can the bitfighter font be filled in? While that might not be how the actual logo looks, I think it'd be a bit easier to read.

This sounds like a great idea. Jojo and i have adobe flash and a bunch of other adobe applications at our disposal if necessary.

Adobe flash huh

Adobe flash is mostly used for browser apps.

This sounds like a great idea. Jojo and i have adobe flash and a bunch of other adobe applications at our disposal if necessary.

Adobe flash huh

Adobe flash is mostly used for browser apps.

Sounds like you dont know much of anything about what adobe flash is.

Finally someone has heard my sniffs!
It is good to see I am not the only one who cares about the fact that it is hard to find players today.

But first my comment on the "ad" thing:
Seriously: Don't do it. Dump the idea. Forget it. Throw it in the dust bin. Eradicate it out of your mind. Please! Ads don't work in the web anymore (as if they ever worked …), especially banner ads. Ads piss users off, ads piss me off. I don't even see ads anymore, because I blocked them. Ads are something people do not want to see, no matter the topic.
Do you know the term "banner blindness"? It means that people who are used to the web don't see the banners anymore because they have learned how to ignore them. This is especially true for those banners which have one of those very common sizes for banners, like 468px×60px. And then there are those selfish people who have ad blockers, like me. If you are going to make fancy bling-bling Flash banners (That's even worse!), you would not only annoy people, you are going to make the complete Bitfighter community look like attention whores. So please forget this ads. Oh, did I already mention I just hate ads? No? Then I think I just mention I really just hate ads: Dude, I really, really just hate ads.


Now to the important part:
This post refers to idea #4 of the first poster. While I have nothing against about organizing some turneys and challenges and the like, I think this does not go far enough.
The problem is that turneys and challenges have to thought over first and they are likely to occour not that often. Once a month a tourney and then there's dead silence in the game? I don't like that "dead silence" part of the last sentence. So let's fix it!

It is a fact that we are small in numbers. We can't change that so fast.
But some of us are certainly willing to play. Why would we hang out here then?

Currently, if someone wants to play, he just goes in Bitfighter, sees that
no one is there and disappers again. Only by chance even two players could meet.
I suggest we introduce some kind of organization. I am not asking for
much. "organization" in this case just means that players know who (player name) wants to play when (UTC) what (game mode) where (server hostname/address) using which version.
Maybe there could be some kind of system where everyone can post an announcement for a proposed game which signals that the player wants to play. It should answer the "w-questions" above and could look like this:

"Foobar wants to play a Bitmatch (017b) on bit.server.example at 20:20 UTC today"

The "what" question could also be omitted in case the player does not want to restrict it to one game type. In this case, an announcement could look like this:

"Foobar wants to play (017b) on any.server.example at 21:21 UTC today"

Until the playtime has come, any other player could post a simple confirmation if he/she is certain that he/she can and wants to play at the specified time.
And if one wants to play but does not agree with an existing announcement one could simply post another announcement.
Players could post announcements to games which are planned for anytime in the future.

Any comments on my rough outline on "organisation"?

[bobdaduck]

I really like the idea of some sort of banner posting system, that has a lot of potential. Very novel idea! Sadly, I don't (yet) have the technical know-how to make that happen.

You're right that ads are annoying to a lot of people. But its a big problem that people just don't know the game is out there; Ads would remedy that. They wouldn't give the game a super positive light to most people, but people would know about the game. And if one out of every 100 people who sees the ad signs up and plays, they will tell their friends that the game is cool which will break the negative stereotype.

[watusimoto]

Just a thought: When I see something advertised as "totally free" the first thing I think is that there will be some hook to get you to pay in some unobvious way. I'd rather focus on the fun aspect, rather than the lack of cost.

[bobdaduck]

"play our game we need more players :'("?

@Wuzzy you're just in the wrong target group for ads. Advertising via banners is still a powerful tool for a large chunk of the Internet-using population. Why else would it be profitable for companies like Google?

If they don't work, why do you still see them? Because they work.

[Little_Apple]

i think we should just use ads like this.

[watusimoto]

Only if it dances around a bit like an overcaffinated loon.

I really like the idea of some sort of banner posting system, that has a lot of potential. Very novel idea! Sadly, I don't (yet) have the technical know-how to make that happen.

You're right that ads are annoying to a lot of people. But its a big problem that people just don't know the game is out there; Ads would remedy that. They wouldn't give the game a super positive light to most people, but people would know about the game. And if one out of every 100 people who sees the ad signs up and plays, they will tell their friends that the game is cool which will break the negative stereotype.

If we would have a Facebook page with some Facbook ads that might work. But if we Really want some people, talk to ZAP veterans! In my opinion. most ZAP veterans would play Bitfighter.

[Skybax]

@Wuzzy you're just in the wrong target group for ads. Advertising via banners is still a powerful tool for a large chunk of the Internet-using population. Why else would it be profitable for companies like Google?

The only people who look at ads are the ones who aren't internet savvy.
I've seen a heatmap that shows where people's eyes go when they first go to a website. They never go to the ad areas. Our brains have learned to just ignore those spaces on websites.

Our brains have also learned to keep our eyes on the road, looking ahead while driving. Yet if there are emergency vehicles on the side of the road, even without sirens, our eyes are drawn to them.

Ok, pretty bad example, but my point is that we ignore ads because most ads are crap, or because they don't appeal to us. If we can create a compelling advertisement then people will almost certainly see it and pay attention. Of course, I don't think anyone here is an advertising major, but there are some creative minds. Anyway, after the advertisement is made we'll need a site to launch it on. Instead of targeting the general population, we need to focus very selectively on the population that will play Bitfighter. So, here's my proposal:

- Conduct a simple survey to profile the Bitfighter community. Ask questions that detail a player's age, ethnicity, gender, location etc. not because we're creeps but because that kind of data is the norm for statistical research.
- My guess, based solely on speculation, is that we'll end up with results indicating the target audience for Bitfighter are males aged 13-18 and 18-24. Of course, this is not indicative of every Bitfighter player, but unless we do a census there'll be no way to figure that out, so the next best thing is to know the majority.
- Then, we look for websites that appeal to our target audience and offer ads at a reasonable price. We can factor in other variables such as websites that favor open source software (ex. Linux forum, DIY PC building website, etc) or another parameter. We can find ads manually or use a tool like BuySellAds.com. We can also skip that and just use Facebook or Google or Reddit which have their own advertising aggregation tools to cull ads to the right demographic.
- The last step is funding. Advertising isn't cheap. For a cheap campaign we'll want to have at least $100 set aside. If we can't gather the funds, we shouldn't even bother with this route and try something else. But don't scrap the art, because Plan B would involve using social media (Facebook/Reddit/Twitter/Forums) to spread the word. Of course, there are other issues to deal with, like having enough people in-game as suggested earlier, but that's beside the point.

[bobdaduck]

I have a job and can set aside $100 for advertising if need be.

Sweet. Keep in mind though, I have no advertising background so anything I say is just speculation. It might be worth talking to someone on a forum somewhere (Reddit, perhaps?) who has more experience.

[Santiago ZAP]

Im gonna host (someday? wait...) A BBB, but in a Minecraft server (that means winners get things there, so blah), What im gonna do is "Hey! Win a stack of diamonds if you get to the first place in Bitfighter! Download here: http://randombitfighterlink.com/ . Start playing and train to see if you win!
Just wait for it...