Making Your Game Popular (3 Stratagies)

[SawQuart]

Advertising Your Eclipse Game

So, you have a nice game. Great graphics, awesome storyline, and a great GUI (so we would hope). Your game couldn't be better… Except that you have no players. First off, dont think that your game is fail and walk away. The thing your game may be missing (besides players) is advertising. Advertising works, no doubt. It allows people to see your ads and get familar with your game. It also attracts TONS of people to your site, if you do it correctly. You may not know that it is free to advertise, although it wont get you as big of a crowd. So now I've compiled all my thoughts and previous experiance into 1 tutorial. It will explain the 3 types of advertising (youtube, banners, and social networking) that are most effective in todays world. 

Youtube Advertising
Youtube is a wonderfull site full of videos which thousands of people watch per day. But how can you get your game popular, just by posting a video? Well it isnt that simple. You have to first plan your movie (think out which places in your game look cool), then shoot it (no guns necesary, just CamStudio or Hypercam), and finally upload it. To plan your movie, talk to your mappers, or just take a stroll through your game. Visit the caves, mountains and forrests (people love these) so you can see what looks good. Also during this step, organise a group of people that can loggin on one specific day, so that you can shoot the video with lots of people (the more the merrier). So now you should have the scenes made out, and you should be ready to shoot. Download CamStudio and get ready to film. Get everyone together on one map, and battle. Shoot all the best shots you can get (dont be afraid to redo a scene) and save the video clips you have (try to get around 5 minutes of usable footage). Now you edit. Use Microsoft Movie Maker (or a professional software) and edit. Take the better shots and put them into good parts of your movie. Add your music to the project (either use ingame music or use Immediate Music) and make sure that it flows nicely and fades. Speaking of fading, make your text fade and grow larger as it is shown. You should have atleast a half decent video right now, so you can upload it. Make your tags smartly. Put a bunch of crap tags along with good, related tags (there will always be a wondering girl searching for Hannah Montana, so make sure you put that in your tags whether your game has anything to do with it or not). Also make sure that you upload your video to multiple sites.

Banner Advertising
This is the most thought of and popular type of advertising. Free banner advertising sucks... unless there is actually a good site to do it with. GoogleAdsense and the like are really good banner/ text advertising sites (they aren't free). Pay Per Click is awesome because you dont have to pay for somebody looking at your ad that isn't interested. Pay per Click also shows people your game over and over again, until custumers get familar with the name (most of us wouldn't have heard of Evony without that sexiness all over inocent websites). With banners, you also have to choose a good phrase describing your site, such as "The Bold New MMO With a Twist". Graphics on your banner also help. Create an inferno, or a dragon as the background. As long as it looks cool, people will see it. A bonus with advertising with Adsense is that they also list your site on their search engine (use Hannah Montana tags!) which helps flow in traffic. 

Social Networking
Every big company, MMO developer, or organization does it, if you realise it or not. Try Twitter or Facebook, since they are really popular right now (if somebody looks back at this in a few years, they will have no idea what they are, so make sure you always sign up with the next big site). Make sure you befriend regular people as well as big companies which you are interested in (you can always stop following them once you take off). Dont spam or post a lot of links to your site. Lure them in by posting a story, with a link at the end. For example:
"My pet dog got herpe… http://mydogsucks.com" 
Although, by looking at this, you think the dog has herpes, when really it is a marketing stratgy. People will click on the link, and find out that the dog did something else (just an example).

These are just a few stratagies used by MMO designers, and me. There are also a lot of other stratagies, such as spam (REALLY NOT RECAMENDED!!) and all that crap which really creates a bad image for yourself. If I left out any details, or if you need more info, please reply or PM me.

Thanks,
Jungletoe 

PS: I wrote this on my iPhone, sorry :)

[Marsh]

You say you wrote this on a iphone? that would have taken awhile :P.

[Dark Crusade]

I think you forgot the most important strategy in making your game 'popular'. That's making it a good game. xD

[Keebler Elf]

Ya kreator is right. The best way to advertise your game is to have it seem like a amazing game even if people dident get a chance to play.

[SawQuart]

Well I was kind of assuming that you would already have a good game, lol.

Marsh: It took about an hour XD

[MasterBit13]

@Jungletoe:

> Well I was kind of assuming that you would already have a good game, lol.
>
> Marsh: It took about an hour XD

I dunno if I want a bunch of little 'Hanah-Lovers' on m game XD Okay well, atleast not 40-60 year old men  ;)

[yorty]

Necro much? Also: Have a shitload of features on a list.

[boris]

you can also simply do blog posts with FreeTrafficSystem and it will post your articles as real blog posts on other people blogs… also, your google page rank will go way up!

[http://www.freetrafficsystem.com/a.php?p=2546](http://www.freetrafficsystem.com/a.php?p=2546)