New Advertising Initiative

[TurboSlug22]

Hi guys!

 

Sorry for not being around the forums in a while... After being fired from DSB related to forum use.. well yea...

 

 

Anyway.. I've still been helping out in DSB despite being fired (let that be a lesson to anyone out there having issues with senior staff, just keep talking about ideas and the right solutions will be realized by all)

 

Anyway (again) .. Ive been chatroulette spamming "Hi, do you like videogames?" and getting people to check out continuum... but I'm realizing that even putting in lots of hours into that, I'm still not getting many people to try the game... I'm thinking we really need to reach a larger audience

 

In the past, I've posted videos to youtube, and the problem there is, users must know to search "Continuum" or w/e to find it... One of our staff suggested to name the video "Hot naked chicks" but... i dont know if thats such a good idea either lol

 

So then I thought, what we need is to reach the entire audience of a popular website

 

Then i thought about Slashdot... which if you dont know this site, its a news site for nerds - if you havnt seen it, just take a look at the site so my argument makes sense to you... www.slashdot.org

 

I mean, right now there's this story on the front page http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/04/22/1433208/How-I-Saved-the-Gaming-Industry

"How I saved the gaming industry"

 

That story could Easily be "How you saved our gaming community"

 

And the million-or-so daily readers will browse it whilst drinking their coffee on their breaks at work or w/e and hear about continuum.

 

The point is, because your story is front page, for the day that its posted, everyone who visits the site, that day, will see the story... Many people will keep reading stories until they see one they recognize (So they know they havn't missed any) so either way, its wicked sick advertising and also, totally geared to us so it shouldn't be too hard to get a story posted there.

 

 

 

SO What i propose is that someone here (crafty with eloquent writing) can write up something interesting for people to read about one of the oldest and yet most unique of online games and that is also an online community/chat client.. then perhaps we can submit it as a news story to Slashdot.org

 

Ideas? Post em here!

Edited April 22, 2010 by TurboSlug22

[TurboSlug22]

Oh, fun fact:

 

 

After asking literally hundreds of ppl on chatroulette if they'd ever heard of continuum, not a single person had

 

So the issue here isnt that the game is no fun or not appealing enough, the issue is that there's a whole world of people out there whove never even heard of the game

 

so hopefully that should keep you all optimistic that there's a future in this game still.. its just a matter of reaching out to these people

 

Edited April 22, 2010 by TurboSlug22

[Samapico]

After asking literally hundreds of ppl on chatroulette if they'd ever heard of continuum, not a single person had

Well duh, people on chatroulette only want to show their penis.

 

How many penises you saw during your advertising campaign?

[TurboSlug22]

After asking literally hundreds of ppl on chatroulette if they'd ever heard of continuum, not a single person had

Well duh, people on chatroulette only want to show their penis.

 

How many penises you saw during your advertising campaign?

 

LOL

 

Well actually I was using omegle and it has a text only thingy.. but yea.. there's lots of messed up ppl on there :\ I suppose its like that anywhere you go.. our pub is pretty .... ... cultured ... at times too..

 

 

Edit: I'd initially said "Chatroulette" because i didnt think you would recognize omegle.. but its basically the same thing...

Edited April 22, 2010 by TurboSlug22

[Samapico]

On topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7XmmnlR0e0

[TurboSlug22]

LOL thats entirely off topic

 

 

Potentially NSFW

 

http://s-ec-sm.buzzfeed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/3/8/15/enhanced-buzz-26092-1268079444-13.jpg

 

 

Edited April 22, 2010 by TurboSlug22

[»Xog]

LOL thats entirely off topic

 

 

Potentially NSFW

 

http://s-ec-sm.buzzfeed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2010/3/8/15/enhanced-buzz-26092-1268079444-13.jpg

 

 

 

There's plenty of articles out there already. Find one.

 

Also, how do I get a stream from youtube to show as my webcam

[»Xog]

also i wrote this article for my New Dawn squadmates on our "MMO Discussion for New Dawn Potential Involvement" forum section:

 

Continuum has been around for a very long time. So long in fact, that it's not even published anymore. The servers are maintained by the trusted sources by one of the game's creator Priit Kasesalu.

 

There are several Zones (servers) that you can choose from that offer different styles of play. For instance, in Extreme Games, your ships are given settings that compliment the zone's suggestive style of play which would be "Flagging". Flagging is a type of system where you fly around on the map and try to collect flags (by simply flying over them). These flags "attach" to your ship until the timer runs out and are dropped, or you are killed. In this zone there are several "bases" that you can go to to hide the flags, and the opposing team will try to steal these flags from your team. Quite often you will find yourself in a 15 vs 15 match in a single base. To see what it's like check these out: http://www.getcontin...eenshots/eg.png

http://www.getcontin...enshots/eg2.png

 

The Trench Wars zone is very unique. A flag is permanently placed and is unmovable inside ONE base, and your team has to control this flag for a certain amount of time (10 minutes) in order to win matches. Each ships has different abilities that compliment a well-versed team. For instance, a game with two Sharks, 1 terrier, 1 javelin, and four spiders (8 players total) can completely dominate a team of 15 trying to take the base if they're all in Warbirds. Sharks have repels which repel bullets, bombs, mines and even players. The terrier is the ship that all the players on the team attach (kind of like warping to your teammate) to get back inside the base after you die so you can support your team.

 

This zone also has a league, called Trench Wars Division (twd.trenchwars.org) where squads can play against eachother in order to claim the "best" of all in the zone. It's a very large and fully automated process created by the community themselves and has been around for nearly a decade. The four divisions that squads can compete in are the Trench Wars Dueling Division (TWDD)(4-5 warbirds vs 4-5 warbirds, each player is removed at 10 deaths, last team to survive wins), Trench Wars Javelin Division (TWJD) (4-5 javelins vs 4-5 javelins, each players is removed at 10 deaths, last team to survive wins), and Trench Wars Basing Division (TWBD) (6-8 players from one squad vs 6-8 players from another squad, first squad to hold the flag for 15 minutes overall wins). At a certain time of the year, squads go into a very competitive frenzy because it's TWL season. TWL season is the Trench Wars League, where the top performing squads in TWD compete in an annual tournament taking place over about 7 weeks to claim the #1 title for each division (TWLD, TWLJ, TWLB).

Here's some pictures of the Trench Wars Zone:

http://trenchwars.or...ile=screenshot9

http://trenchwars.or...ile=screenshot8

http://trenchwars.or...ile=screenshot1

and from a very popular and fun event called 'fishies' in Trench Wars:

http://trenchwars.or...ile=screenshot7

 

Fishies is fun. As you can see there's 95 people participating in the event. How it works is one player is picked by the Event Referee (they have next to their name, it means they're staff) and they're called the Shark. They're put in a warbird (ship 1) on a different frequency (team), and the 94 other people travel from one safe zone to the other, opposite sides of the arena, in the fast Terrier (ship 5). When the fishies get killed, they turn into a shark and join the person in the hunt. Last one to survive wins.

 

There's also a zone called Powerball, where players race eachother to get the orange "Powerball" and carry it to the opposing team or squad's GOAL on the other side of the arena. You can shoot this ball into the goal and/or pass it to your team members. You also have more powerful weapons if you have control of the Powerball. A similar zone to this one is called Hockey. It's the same concept, but with some edited sound effects and different shipsettings it's a little more like you're playing a Hockey match online with space ships! http://confluxwar.net/components/com_ccboard/assets/ccbeditor/images/smileys/tongue.gif Here's a screenshot of the hockey zone, I couldn't fine one for Powerball: http://www.getcontin...eenshots/hz.png

 

The zone I play is called Trench Wars. The division I favor most is TWBD. The squad I play with is called Anti-Scrub and we've been around for 8 years. We're VERY active and usually participate in about 5-8 TWBD matches every day. The name I use in the game is Xog. If you'd like to leave me an in-game message if I'm not online, type "?message Xog:YourMessageGoesHere" and I'll view it when I sign on.

 

Here's a video of two of the best squads (during that time) duking it out in a TWLB match: http://www.vimeo.com/10084800 ... Feel free to skip the first few minutes, the intro is a couple of minutes long, just showing the viewers the squad lineups.

 

If you're interested I'll jumpstart you on the most useful in-game commands/keys:

 

Up/Down/Left/Right - Movement

 

Shift - Afterburner (hold it and Up or Down)

 

CTRL - Shoot bullet

 

TAB - Shoot bomb

 

Page Up/Down - moves the red 'ticker' to different players.

 

/ - Private message the person 'ticked' in the arena you're in.

 

?arena (or esc+a) - Displays the list of 'arenas' in the zone that you can go to. Use page up/down to move the ticker to the arena you want to visit and hit Enter

 

F1 - Displays the zone's Help menu, describes basic features of the zone, some other useful commands, etc. Keep presssing F1 to view more info. To exit this pane, wait 5 seconds and it will dissapear. If you're not patient, keep pressing F1 until it cycles through the 5 pages or so.

 

F2 - Displays the list of players in the arena. Keep pressing F2 to view more information such as player's squads, Kills/Death ratio, Points, Frequency (team), etc. Press F2 continuously until you're out of that window. It will not dissapear.

 

?help YourHelpMessageHere - This sends a message to the online moderators - who usually respond within just a few seconds, to answer any questions you may have.

 

?find PlayerName , Example, ?find Xog will result in Xog - ArenaX.

 

?go ArenaName - If you know the name of the arena you want to go to right off the bat, you can just type ?go ArenaName and you'll be put in that arena in the zone you're in.

 

:PlayerName: YourMessageHere - Example, :Xog: Hey! - Sends a private message to Xog (me) saying 'Hey!'

:: - pressing the colon key twice will automatically fill in the name of the person who last PM'd you. You can keep pressing the colon key to cycle further and further back. So if three people were to PM you after I did, you can press :::: and it will automatically jump to :Xog:

 

To view the ships, press the Esc key. If you're just starting out, I suggest the warbird. If you want to try another ship, I'd suggest the Spider (ship 3). To change to the Spider, you'd press Esc (so it displays the menu) and then the 3 key above W and E (not on the numpad)

****Before you hop in a ship, you can travel around the arena in spectator mode (press ESC+S). To jump to a specific player, use Page Up/Down and hit CTRL while in spec.****

 

The game's been around a long time. I gave you pretty much all you needed to know to play the game completely in all leagues. If you just want to be the "pubber" that doesn't want to get involved with TWD (if you choose Trench Wars http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif) or any other squad-related things, you don't really need to know all of this. Just hop in and start shootin the noobs! http://confluxwar.net/components/com_ccboard/assets/ccbeditor/images/smileys/smile.gif

 

I highly suggest Trench Wars as a beginner zone. If you find it too slow, Extreme Games is much more fast paced.. but you'll find yourself getting your ship blown up much more often by people who know how to play.

 

Remember, if you decide to play, try using the ?find Xog command. If it shows that I'm online, send me a private message! If I'm not online, leave me a ?message and I'll see it when I sign on.

 

Toodles!

Edited April 22, 2010 by Xog

[»Lynx]

You firstly need a means of getting onto Slashdot, and chances are we won't. Also, if SSFN server got slashdotted I'm pretty sure it would overload the site; I dunno if TT has changed anything since the last 'incident' but getting on the /. main page is a big deal of bandwidth. A really big deal. GL tho.

[PoLiX]

SSF has its own VPS dedicated to it now (renting my own). Well, it, SSO, Chaos, HS, Deva, and SSCentral. And maybe a few other zones I missed? But yeah, we have a load of extra ram/cpu resources. Also only using on avg 100gb/1.3TB each month (only been 3 months though).

[»Lynx]

Ah, I forgot it moved. http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

[TurboSlug22]

@Xog

 

Thats a great writeup about the game... but we dont want to submit information about the game to slashdot - we want to submit a story the readers can chew on and go *Hummm* And think about the meta-ethics involved.. the big picture.. something..... controvercial even

 

Something like "What makes a game last?" And then talk about continuum

 

Or... after 15 years who truly owns a game? and discuss our plight and how copyrights affects us.. (Copyright is big topic on /.)

 

Or... talk about the evolution of MMO's and where they all started (here)

 

Or... talk about network latency compensation and how our client/server software was revolutionary for its time and what that means for games these days..

 

We just need to write a story worth telling that only we could tell

 

-------

 

@others

 

Please dont over-estimate /. and how hard it would be to get a story posted there, I dont think it would be hard at all. Just look at some of the stories on there already... a lot if it is already heresay and conjecture anyway. It seems to me our story would fit right in among the others. I mean, so many of their articles are like "Bob writes to tell us that company X is doing action Y" So like... cant we just say "We suceeded from our parent company a decade ago and look at us now"

 

We just need a news-worthy story relating to continuum. Even if its talking about how we've stayed afloat under our own steam for so long. Thats a story that would be inspirational in these times and would be well received

[L.C.]

Thats a great writeup about the game... but we dont want to submit information about the game to slashdot - we want to submit a story the readers can chew on and go *Hummm* And think about the meta-ethics involved.. the big picture.. something..... controvercial even

This is a good point. Slashvertisements suck.

[»Xog]

Well, I suppose now that I have something to work with that wouldn't sound too much like an advertisement - and more like an article, I'd be able to spend some time writing it up. If anyone's got some more crucial talking points to throw in there - things like how the gaming industry has taken a toll on our population, what we've done and how we struggle to survive, etc. (dont elaborate on those points - that's my job, i mean give some talking points that are like those) then I can put together a very well-written article that can have a very good chance at being published on /.

 

i'll post the drafts here for revisions, changes and additions that can be made to it before I submit it

 

I can write very convincing articles - I wrote one about WoW back when it was first released and it got published in a magazine, i forgot which one though. its been a long time http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif

Edited April 23, 2010 by Xog