We can revitalize this game with good marketing.

[mindriot]

There is something this game has going for it which few others games do: 

 

Simple controls + High Skill Curve + Low on computer resources.

 

I have recently read many complaints about people not being able to play many of the games released on Steam due to hardware limitations.

 

Many gamers seek games where they can feel challenged. Hypothetically: Take any of the top gamers in the world and pit them against a few of our best and they will feel a sense of frustration. This game takes some time to get used to, to learn, and to ultimately compete in. 

 

The skill curve is always rising. I have never felt a limit in Subspace. It is perhaps the most pure form of multi-player competition ever. It has no plateau. 

 

After almost 20 years, noone has mastered this game to the point of invincibility. On any given Sunday, anyone can die out and put their team in jeopardy. 

 

What this game lacks is Marketing.

 

The basic and obvious problem is that noone knows about it. There is so much we can do to revitalize this game and build its population. 

 

1. Spread the word: Get on Blogs, introduce the game.

2. Invite players to try it.

3. Promote the High Skill Curve: Entice people with how challenging it is, no matter how much of a good gamer they are, in this game.. they will have the impact of puppy ears. 

4. Create a website sharing some of the history of this game, educating people on its long standing population, etc.. I am sure this is one of the most successful multi player games ever, if not the first multi player game ever.

 

It does not matter how elaborate other games are, they all get boring eventually and require you to invest real money, or spend incredible amounts of time to compete in. Subspace has the high skill curve to curb all that enthusiasm and humble any individual.

 

To anyone doubting the validity of this post. I rest my case with the following:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvaaGhfjrgs

 

Thoughts?

[Bargeld]

I'm going to sound like a negative nancy here, so don't get me wrong... I am all for the game growing. That being said:

 

People have been doing this for years already. There are multiple facebook groups, there have been numerous 'reviews' written about it, there was a greenlight push on steam, alternate clients/servers have been in development, etc. etc.

 

There are a few main problems, as a whole:

 

1) The multiple zones don't really coordinate on an inter-zone level. It's safe to say that it's actually quite the opposite. Due to the different styles of games and the age of the zones/games/players, there is actually more animosity between zones than there is any level of kinship. The only thing ALL zones share is a desire for players to defect from another zone and come to theirs. Then when they do, they get continually insulted for having roots outside the zone.

 

2) There is no central 'agency' to coordinate, manage, and direct any marketing effort. The same applies to funds. Historically, the only 'marketing' ever done has been by a few people who put their own money and effort behind developing a website and blasting it to the internet. Unfortunately, those efforts cannot be sustained indefinitely.

 

3) The copyright/ownership of Subspace/Continuum has always been a detriment. The really good ways of getting exposure, like Steam greenlight, require source code to be posted and/or ownership stakeholders to participate. We have neither... hence the desire to re-develop the game as a new client/server.

 

As stated, I'm all for more efforts of gaining new players, but this is not a new concept, nor will it be the first effort of it's kind. Perhaps you can do a little bit of research (like searching the overall forum for 'marketing' and see what threads/info pop up.) You might be able to learn of some of the past and current people who have worked at promoting the game and get in touch with them as well.

 

I offer a sincere, non-sarcastic, 'good luck' with the effort!

[Crescendo]

What I think is needed is to look to the future. I like this game, but it's more than a decade old. There needs to be a new subspace that uses the 15 years of progress gaming has made since it's been out (things like steam integration, friends lists, new graphics). That will be easier to market. 

[Ozn]

The issue is that there's so many facets to the overall problem that it's difficult to pin them all down and make a change.

 

One of the major problems is that this game is largely political behind the scenes. I have put in a strong level of effort with other individuals to do things like create a better website, a new SVS-settings zone that's easy to foster growth for newbies, etc and it's all been met with resistance. The guys in charge have a significant amount of influence on who can do what.

 

Another issue is what Bargeld called out. The source code and game title itself is in limbo and we don't know how far we can go pushing it into the market without Priitk coming out of nowhere to snuff it out. It's a product that has zero representation and an owner who can barely be bothered to reboot a server when it's gone down.

 

Another issue is the path which a newbie has to enter. Right now if you go and download the game there's a trick to get the zone list to come up because of the hacker garbage that went down a little while ago. Additionally, there's nothing stopping a newbie from entering trench wars first because people will gravitate towards the larger population. It's very difficult for someone to enter chaos and understand that a custom arena list is where pro practices occur.

 

I could go on and on but it's just so all over the place. I commend anyone for trying to tackle the problem but it's quite a bit of shenanigans to navigate.

[a tool]

><span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:Verdana;font-size:14px;">there's nothing stopping a newbie from entering garbage trench wars first


and once they go in there, they usually don't come back out. </span>

[Death Artist]

It's not easy to join the zone. I thought it was easy to download the game, install it, and play a prac or two. I found out Chaos/4v4 was not in the default zone list, and downloading zones didn't provide any help. After some googling I found out this board, and found out the post "SSCX Chaos/League Zone is BACK UP", finally I thought. I entered the sscentral.sscuservers.net and downloaded zones. It showed 10 people on the download zone list. Click OK and it shows 0. I entered Trench Wars in despair, downloaded their map, and asked for help. Where do I find chaos or 4v4 zone? There were two people being helpful, another gave me his directory server address list, and another said there's thousands of players on secret server. It was helpful and funny, and gave me hope to connect the server I was looking for. Unfortunately it was the almost same server address list I already tried.

 

I'm not sure what's happening. Either I haven't found out the right server yet, or I'm somehow banned to even see the player count.

 

Anyway I can relate to the topic of hard to attract players to the zone.

 

PS. Can anyone help me, I can only play a prac today or sunday.

[Bargeld]

http://www.subspace.co/topic/27501-chaos-is-red-poulation-10/

[Death Artist]

I found a way. Join Trench Wars, and then do ?go chaos

[Nude For Satan]

Quote:<div>
http://www.subspace.co/topic/27501-chaos-is-red-poulation-10/

</div>

DA:  The zone details when updated have been updating with the wrong data. Follow the instructions in Barg's link either in full or at least with a custom zone add.

[#TWMASTERZONE]

Things like these should be discussed with other zones and it would be better, imo, if you could come to a mutual agreement. http://forums.trenchwars.org/forumdisplay.php?190-Trench-Wars-Council that's a good start. everyone's not alone!

[#TWMASTERZONE]

Quote:<div>
The issue is that there's so many facets to the overall problem that it's difficult to pin them all down and make a change.

 

One of the major problems is that this game is largely political behind the scenes. I have put in a strong level of effort with other individuals to do things like create a better website, a new SVS-settings zone that's easy to foster growth for newbies, etc and it's all been met with resistance. The guys in charge or involved in trench wars 

 

</div>

 

Low-population has hit all zones. Trench Wars is no different. In TW,  though, people have put (and are doing it) some effort into bridging the gap between the good and the bad, thus making them more interested in the more competitive aspect of the zone and involved in "leagues".

in my opinion chaos/4v4 zone are doing a poor job at this. it's too easy to run in pub, many pracs are filled with stack-teams and "veterans". so newer player teams are easily overrun. my point is: the current 4v4 prac arenas are too hard for newbies and I would like some input if iit is possible to include elim-style arenas or something similar.where newbies like I, and other tw players could prac while waiting in queue.

 

ps. i'm better than vt

<span style="color:rgb(154,154,154);font-family:Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(22,22,22);">Stupid trench wars shitzone once again and dumbass kids playing it. -vt</span>

[Bargeld]

Let me summarize my perspective on #TWMASTERZONE's input:

 

Chaos/4v4 player expresses a desire to 'market' Continuum to gain new players to the game as a whole. He does it in the sub-forum of his zone/arena of choice, on the overall forum system in which most of the active zones have sub-forums of their own and participate on this overall forum system.

 

TWMASTERZONE appears and states that it should be discussed with other zones in order to reach a mutual agreement (of something, idk) and suggests using the TW council forum to do so, on a forum system dedicated to the single zone, TW.

 

TWMASTERZONE then suggests that, TW has developed and supports the concept of a 'league', which Chaos has, but that one that basically sucks, and provides his interpretation as to why it fails and how it should be improved by creating new arenas to train players as a transition to league.

 

But there is a problem with this suggested solution and with this game, and every other game out there with a similar zone/shard/arena structure. It is the same problem that businesses run into and is evident in any marketing analysis. The concept is cannibalization... basically you have a pool of X amount of users overall. Each user in the pool has a preferred brand/flavor/game/zone/arena/whatever. In order for any of the segments to grow, it can either gain new users/players/customers from outside the current pool, or they get people to switch brands from within the pool, from one segment to another... hence 'cannibalization'.

 

But TW and 4v4 are like Diet Coke and Fanta Orange drink. Yes, they are distributed through the same avenues, they are both 'drinks', but they are soooo different that there is little to no cannibalization between the two. The same occurs in-zone, where the entire playerbase is aware of 4v4 and if someone decides to go to play 4v4, they are abandoning pub to do it. (This is how Alpha died, btw... but it wasn't 4v4 or a league, it was just a different sub arena). Placing alternate sub-arenas in a zone will only make the existing ones shrink (cannibalization again), and if you have populations that are already low, you are simply fragmenting your playerbase to the point that none of the sub-arenas will have any longevity. And this is why Mindriot made his original post. The solution is not to 'fix' league or arenas, or to make mutual agreement between councils... the solution is to bring in new blood to increase that overall pool of X players. Some will go to TW, some to Chaos, some will end up in 4v4 and some will end up in one of the other smaller zones. But you need NEW players in order for any of it to occur.

 

The current and historic difference between TW and Chaos (SVS style) is obvious. TW is a one hit kill zone, and so newbies to the game get instant gratification. It tends to draw younger players, and has always been considered less 'skillful' than SVS. I've been playing SS/Cont for 18 years, and I have no idea what TW league is... I'm sure you can take TW vets and let them play in structured matches on structured teams, and there is some level of higher skill between newb and vet teams. But that is still a completely different game than SVS 4v4. The point of the comparison is not to say that one is 'better' than the other, but simply to show that they are entirely different, and that when a legitimate new player comes to the game, they will have a preference in the type of game they want to play and will end up in whatever zone provides it. TW is simply larger because more young kids like to be able to instantly Tea-bag that vet in pub, which rarely happens in SVS pub, and almost never in 4v4. So TW gets the bigger population.

 

I'd like to say something regarding the original post and provide more input, but I got nothing... already said my peace about centrally marketing the game. I just had to point out how a TW guy had ridiculous, zone-centric input, just as I originally posted.

[7th]

Quote:<div>
 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Ozn" data-cid="291303" data-time="1405100751">
<div>
The issue is that there's so many facets to the overall problem that it's difficult to pin them all down and make a change.

 

One of the major problems is that this game is largely political behind the scenes. I have put in a strong level of effort with other individuals to do things like create a better website, a new SVS-settings zone that's easy to foster growth for newbies, etc and it's all been met with resistance. The guys in charge or involved in trench wars 

 

</div>

 

Low-population has hit all zones. Trench Wars is no different. In TW,  though, people have put (and are doing it) some effort into bridging the gap between the good and the bad, thus making them more interested in the more competitive aspect of the zone and involved in "leagues".

in my opinion chaos/4v4 zone are doing a poor job at this. it's too easy to run in pub, many pracs are filled with stack-teams and "veterans". so newer player teams are easily overrun. my point is: the current 4v4 prac arenas are too hard for newbies and I would like some input if iit is possible to include elim-style arenas or something similar.where newbies like I, and other tw players could prac while waiting in queue.

 

ps. i'm better than vt

<span style="color:rgb(154,154,154);font-family:Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(22,22,22);">Stupid trench wars shitzone once again and dumbass kids playing it. -vt</span>

 

</div>
</blockquote>
being on the pro council I have suggested doing more things like TW and elim and a ladder league where new teams can challenge others and so forth similar to TW, but I have been shot down everytime or nothing gets done.

 

PS I'm better than  vt

[#TWMASTERZONE]

Thanks for your input, Bargeld

[Gruntster]

what Bargeld said. I have been here a long ass fucking time and it is the same discussion over and over and over.  I don't like any settings but svs but I also see that someone new can come in and say oh ok this is the game. I am not anti TW I just don't like it as I have always been svs since 1995 or whatever. 

[Gruntster]

so where is a quick spot to get the right servers, as in chaos, for anyone returning or newbies?

[Gruntster]

ok then

[2pacZ]

can't revitalize if the moron SSC netops incharge keep banning vets who have actually got population into the zone, once the that structure on netbanning is fix then you will see increase in pop.

[nismo]

Lets get a booth at comic con! I'll man it! Has nothing to do with the hot cosplay girls either!