Ryzom

First things first before we go anywhere, we can actually create publicity by sindicating Ryzom news to various gaming and mmo specific sites, this is something that would cost nothing to do. Along with this we can offer interviews and invite them to review the game, maybe for a second time if they have previously reviewed it.

Once this is in place we can then look at specific campaigns, incentives and offers that can be put in place to draw in new players.

As i said this is free and something that is easy to do and something that creates intrest and makes the gaming communities aware of Ryzom.

I've been submitting some of the news posts to mmorpg.com and OnRPG.

I´m volunteering at mmorpg.com to be the new InGame-Correspondent.
Will write my first Article asap. More busy with my new Job than anticipated atm. -.-

Was Correspondent at German Onilewelten.com portal, but the games site was closed last week, wasn´t able to contact anyone responsible yet... *grumbles*

Still writing on the RP³ Project. (when time permits)
The Pen&Paper Conversion of Atys.

CU
Acridiel

Indeed, for the player income to be constant, there needs to be constant news releases. You'll maybe want to shoot me for bringing this up as an example, but part of what caused AoC so much hype was all the interviews and news articles progressively released as launch was coming. It felt like no gaming community website was left aside. MMOlecule, Tentonhammer, MMORPG.com, Warcry, Gamespot, Wikia, they all had their information content AND contests held regularly.

You heard me, contests ! And most of them were for free beta keys or 1-2 month time cards. The prize doesn't have to be big, the objective is only to generate some hype.

Being a partner with those community websites sure can help get a lot of player income. The game needs to generate enough news content to attract new players. Interviews with devs, CSRs, the "player of the month" award, event coverage (be them player or CSR/dev events) are all good article subjects.

The question is : are the new owners ready to give us some news to write about ? The fact that a game company is daring enough to openly trust its loyal community to help them market the game is quite some big news content right there !

In Ryzom it is very easy to get beautiful screenshots. Maybe we can try to get some publicity via Massively's "One Shots" feature (http://www.massively.com/category/one-shots/) or similar on other MMO-related sites.

We have our own list of press contacts that get sent the major updates, but obviously we can't cover the whole internet. If you would like to (continue) helping us with this, we're very grateful

boroshi wrote:We have our own list of press contacts that get sent the major updates, but obviously we can't cover the whole internet. If you would like to (continue) helping us with this, we're very grateful

Actually, it's not about 'major updates'. Please read Kalindra's post very carefully, as she says it all.

To get attention, you need to MAKE news. In the past, Ryzom devs have always been to shy, and only announced big things like the Ring and Silan on the sites, and that was about it.

When the new owners started, 'step 1' was announced, which got picked up on mmorpg.com, and was discussed by some players, keeping it in the news section for a bit.
Then 'step 2' happened, and again the game and new owners were being discussed.

Which is exactly how the other games do it. They announce something, it gets picked up, people discuss it, and after a while the discussions stop. Around that time they announce something else, give an interview etc...
Yes, that is a lot of work. Especially because you have to keep doing it.

For Ryzom it could be a lot of things. Interviews with the new owner, with the new devs, future plans, announcements of 'double xp weekend', announcement of event weekend, a contest, announcement of a kitin raid, interview with an old time player, interview with a csr, the experience of a dev playing the game, etc etc etc...

Like I said, yes it is a lot of work, but because the game gets repeated attention, it will attract new people and remind people that the game is alive...

We could also counting story we lived in the game, i'm pretty sure all of you had a short or a long story to tell, we just have to talk about us , about the dream we are living together, the night at Pyr's Bath, the war, the invasions, events , official and players made.
we could speak of what we lived arriving in the game for the very first time, discovering a yubo ! being killed by an yzam..., first level, the trainers.
Made them dreamed.

Yesterday, there was an emission on gameone, explaining the history of videogames, they explained why nintendo had such a succes, because all of the game where comfortable to play, there was a realy good gameplay, they made us dream.

I also think that newsflow is the most important marketing tool. As it was said in previous post it is crucial to have a plan when you want to release which news.

As it was said, news don't need to be big ones. Also tiny pieces of information (lots of suggestions made already) are creating the thing that is necessary: stir up the hype.

I think you should release some news at least every two weeks so that on every mmo-site it will have an item. This gives the impression of a lively game where developers make things happen.

I'd distribute everything from event-announcements to interviews, from announcements that the website has changed to reports on events. EVERYTHING.

Blogs should also be explored.

It may seem difficult first to create enough news, but it is feasible! Wouldn't it be nice to have an event every two weeks thats announced big time everywhere? And yeah, competitions would be nice too...

Regarding your marketing team: It might be an idea to look whether a MBA-School like INSEAD or IMD needs to have a project to let their students sharpen their skills. I know that sometime they do such projects where they seek to make a e.g. marketing plan for a given company.

Another idea was to make a deal with a youth organisation. In Europe some time ago Euro<26 existed, having some hundreds of thousands members that were under 26 years of age distributing special offers to this segment (there may be other organisations today or even more profit oriented organizations may be interested). Go to such an organisation, tell them you would like to give a free-trial month key to all their members. If you're lucky they implement it (as it comes with no cost to them) and you get immediate access to some x-thousand people that are, accidentally, within your target segment of the market. And, those people will value the key as it seems to be a valuable gift by said distributing organizations.

Do any internet-café chains exist? If yes, explore whats needed that ryzoms running on every of their pc's...

Talk to Starbucks and tell them to give away a free-month keys with every macchiato, globally... or let McDonalds put it to the BigMac Menue.

Idea behind: a certain percentage of people that are installing the game will stay...

good luck

embrel

menetekel - leanon

Beauturkey and me will be producing Podcasts again, sometime in the near future

CU
Acridiel