Pinnacle
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The most recent comment ("Go on Kongregate. There are a million games like this. NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!") is a perfect example of why the current trailers aren't effective. The TSS trailer is interesting to an existing player, showing off some of the new mechanics and vague hints at the story, but to someone who's unfamiliar with the series, the only thing they have to go on is "it's a top-down 2D game."

A trailer similar to the Spacechem one is easily the best option.

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skell
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Pinnacle wrote:
The most recent comment ("Go on Kongregate. There are a million games like this. NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!") is a perfect example of why the current trailers aren't effective. The TSS trailer is interesting to an existing player, showing off some of the new mechanics and vague hints at the story, but to someone who's unfamiliar with the series, the only thing they have to go on is "it's a top-down 2D game."

A trailer similar to the Spacechem one is easily the best option.

I might be repeating myself, but do remember that there are millions of players out there, who not only don't know the difference, but are completely incapable of realising that there is a difference between a tiny flash game and a complex game - as long as there is no super fancy, mind blowing 3D being forced down their throat, they will see no difference between Flappy Bird and DROD. And I am pretty sure it will make no difference for them if the video is a fancy trailer, or a detailed explanation of the gameplay - they won't care long enough to see the difference. It's not the target audience for this game, and there will always be lots of people too stupid, too impatient, too bored or too trolly to even slightly care. Don't let it discourage anyone, do what you love!

That being said, a video showing the gameplay in more detail is a great idea. Not only that, the video should somehow emphasize that despite the simple nature of the elements on their own, they can create truly astonishing combinations.

Edit: In general - if a person does not care to offer a hint of constructive criticism, it means they either have no necessary knowledge/experience to be criticizing in the first place (and they do it for the sake of feeling better and cooler), or they didn't give the criticized work enough attention to be able to offer a constructive criticism, which means they don't really know what they are criticizing which, again, means they are just making an uneducated dis. Either way their comment holds no real value.

Edit^2: Man I am so negative. And I repeat myself. I must write an article about that and then I'll just link it whenever I feel like ranting about this.

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[Last edited by skell at 05-08-2014 03:31 PM]

mrimer
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I generally agree with you, skell. So far, on all our Greenlight pages, the only negative comments I've seen so far are basically "This game looks like X", where X is something they apparently don't like for some unspecified reason. If their complaint is graphics, then in-depth gameplay videos aren't going to remedy that. Furthermore, we made a flashier trailer to see if that could help catch the attention of players more interested in flashy visuals, but so far there has been absolutely no visible impact on the percentage of "yes" votes based on this difference in our Greenlight pages. So...it's possible players at large just want even more flashy and/or 3-D graphics in general, but it is also possible there's a completely different issue.

From this thread, it seems to me that we're thinking that a significant portion of no-voting players aren't that concerned about graphics, but rather that they're voting "no" because the game play doesn't appear that interesting, or possibly they simply don't understand the game play, or the great depth of play, etc. I personally don't generally believe this to be the case, based off the evidence I have on-hand that there hasn't been a single negative comment on our Greenlight pages to that effect.

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skell
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When I look at the comments on my Monstro's Greenlight there is a couple of people trying to explain to me, that a tactic game with no randomness cannot be a fun game. But it is not a tactic game, it's a puzzler which plays like a tactic game. Partially it might be my fault, because I might not be that clear about the order in which the genres go, but there is also the issue of people only skimming through the entries.

Funny thing I have noticed is that many of the negative comments is just that - people explaining to me that I know nothing about game design and that it absolutely can't and won't be fun.

My point is, if my game was as awesome as DROD, I'd do a gameplay trailer to get people interested in the gameplay.

Also, I have 21% of "yes" votes.

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Syntax
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At least you compiled a list of people to not speak to again.
And if you're serious about it, avoid them randomly every time

mrimer
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Some trivia.

At this point, there's basically no traffic going to the Greenlight pages. Well, maybe double-digit visitors per day if we're lucky. Maybe 0.1% of the Steam player base has come to the TSS page so far. Apparently, not that many players on Steam frequent the Greenlight pages via search or just to browse titles and vote at all. Seems it's all word of mouth at this point, point being that I'm even less incentivized than before to spend time creating alternate trailer videos.

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ErikH2000
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File: SteamButton.png (62.7 KB)
Downloaded 104 times.
License: Public Domain

That makes sense to me. This is probably a good opportunity for one or more people on the forum to collaborate on making a video too.

Here is something that might have a better effort/ratio reward. The attached image is a button that I think will work better for sending people to Steam. I designed it to replace the current link on the TSS page. ( http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games_2/TSS.html ) It should fit the page's palette and look decent.

In the current HTML, just replace the text enclosed by the "a" element with an "img" element.

My thinking is that you want your TSS page to be ready to send people to Steam Greenlight when TSS is released. Your TSS promo should end up driving a bunch of people to the Caravel site, some of them Steam players. The Steam logo on the button will help get their attention.

My feelings aren't hurt if you don't want to use the button. I'll also attach the PSD in case someone wants to tweak it.

-Erik

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coppro
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Yeah. You can get traffic from release, but that will be largely people who already know the game, probably.

ErikH2000
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File: SteamButton.psd (1.1 MB)
Downloaded 52 times.
License: Public Domain

And the corresponding PSD...

To generate the PNG, I first flattened the PSD layers, resized to target resolution, and then upped the contrast.

-Erik

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ErikH2000
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coppro wrote:
Yeah. You can get traffic from release, but that will be largely people who already know the game, probably.

Historically, Caravel was always able to get a burst of new-to-DROD traffic after each major game release. These mostly came from press mentions.

-Erik

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mrimer
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Love the button! I'm gonna use it! Thank you so much, Erik.

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PilesOfJuicyMeat
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Hey I decided to pick up TSS after trying the demo of the City Beneath.

As far as promoting a niche game like this goes, I think honestly your best option would be to send a free copy to some streamers on Youtube. It's weird and different and those guys are always looking for unique content for their channels.

In addition, video game streamers tend to have a cascading effect. When a couple people start streaming a game everyone starts streaming it seems like. Probably in an attempt to garner more views for their own channel.

ErikH2000
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PilesOfJuicyMeat wrote:
In addition, video game streamers tend to have a cascading effect. When a couple people start streaming a game everyone starts streaming it seems like. Probably in an attempt to garner more views for their own channel.

Interesting.

This made me think... is most of game discovery stuff happening on youtube right now? I know that when I want to know about a new game, I don't bother with going to sites specific to games. I just search in youtube.



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PilesOfJuicyMeat
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ErikH2000 wrote:
This made me think... is most of game discovery stuff happening on youtube right now? I know that when I want to know about a new game, I don't bother with going to sites specific to games. I just search in youtube.

That's what I do and that's what a lot of other people do. Even if all people do is look at gameplay of this and say "huh, that's weird" they still might pass it on to one of their friends or something. Or, if the streamer him/herself is especially entertaining people will watch just to hear them react to dying in horrible ways to roaches/what have you. It could be a really good way to get word out about your game I think.

They say any publicity is good publicity after all... sales of Big Rigs Over the Road Racing probably only went up after the Gamespot review.

EDIT:
Also this is the kind of game that would be good in a TwitchTV environment. People in the chat would be tossing suggestions about how to solve the puzzle to whoever was playing.

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[Last edited by PilesOfJuicyMeat at 05-15-2014 01:52 AM]

mrimer
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Hey, welcome!

You're right -- everyone knows Big Rigs from that review, don't they

These are great suggestions! If anyone was politely waiting for an Official Word or anything like that, players are welcome to stream play of any DROD titles, including TSS once it's released.

____________________________
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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 05-15-2014 02:39 AM]

Banjooie
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mrimer wrote:
including TSS once it's released.

*fistshake*

jamesdenem
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I'm not sure if anyone here has heard of twitch plays pokemon, where pokemon is played via twitch tv chat by everyone in a sort of anarchy mode.
Wondering if DROD could get major publicity if something similar was set up. I can only imagine how hilarious it would be watching people trying to complete a simple level like floor 1 of KDD.
That may be a great way to introduce people to DROD.

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Emojk
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I *really* like this idea... DROD would be perfect for twitch play.

Jeff_Ray...
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It's all fun and games until everyone starts spamming 'R 9' and worshipping the Portable Orb.

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Pinnacle
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This is one of the puzzles that was essentially a brick wall to the Emerald playthrough, requiring democracy mode to get past.

This is what that puzzle would look like in DROD. (thrown together in the editor in a few minutes, ignore the fact that you can't actually leave the room after the "gym leader".) Notice how simple it is compared to most DROD rooms?




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Someone Else
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Make 'R' require a vote or something...

Syntax
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Spoke to my friend at Twitch and gave him the link to this thread. I know he hated the game in a loving way and let me skive off work to play KDD on many occasions...

And he also completed half of level 1.

2005 was a while ago though

Synt_x

mrimer
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TSS is up to 19% of votes to reach the Top 100 on Greenlight.

GatEB is now at 80%.

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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
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Fang
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I've actually never really thought of why there's even an option of voting "no" on a game. If it was merely "reach x Yes votes", all of the games that get filtered out because they're games you may see on Xbox Live Arcade in the indie section (I've heard horror stories) would still get filtered out since they'll never reach the amount of "Yes votes" required anyway, while games like DROD wouldn't be impeded because we end up with many "No votes" - these people who wouldn't buy have no right to deny a game that many would buy regardless of them, and it's not like the game being on Steam would negatively impact their own use.

I don't know how it works, but how it seems like it should be is "live and let live", or in this case, "play and let it be played". I don't vote "No" on games I don't want from the Greenlight, I figure not voting either is more beneficial than voting no so why even bother to say you don't like x when it seems like many, many others like x?

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ErikH2000
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Fang wrote:
I've actually never really thought of why there's even an option of voting "no" on a game.

Does it apply to Steam's decision-making process?

Maybe it is just ignored, but the option is there so people have a way to express themselves. Like some public restrooms have a chalkboard to avoid graffiti on the stalls/walls.

-Erik

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blorx1
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I suspect the main reason is so that greenlight doesn't ask the user about it again.

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The spitemaster
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Question: Does getting to the Top 100 actually mean the top 100 games in greenlight? You would think that this would actually mean that this is a moving target as the top 100 continue to receive more votes. And then what does it mean in the way of actually getting "greenlighted"?

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Fang
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Well, I don't know how votes are compiled, so it simply sounds like that for every "No" vote, a "Yes" vote gets cancelled, since Greenlight is a popularity contest and not a quality contest (Don't get me wrong, sometimes, quality is popular too!). I may be wrong on how the system operates with Yes and No votes, but it's just what I immediately think of. Most likely, it's not as important as it seems to be, but every No vote is someone who won't bring in any attention to that Steam game page, so any traffic for that for Valve and whatever else comes with it.

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TFMurphy
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Valve has stated multiple times that down-votes do not affect the outcome. They're just there to help users record that they've already voted on a game.

Up-vote requirements change dynamically based on the popularity of other games in the Greenlight process, and of course, anyone who previously up-voted a game can decide to change it to a down-vote instead. But normal down-voting, according to Valve, has no effect.

Fang
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Ah, I see. Let's hope we'll reach that requirement then; even if I'll enjoy DROD without it being on Steam, I'd love to boot the game up and show the very few people I got on my friends list that I'm solving some puzzles which they may like to solve too. Besides, it could have integration with Steam Workshop, although since we have the forum and whatnot already I'm not sure how useful it would be.

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